Why rent is better deal than mortgage?.

Recently,read this article on "mortgage loan" and felt worth sharing.

 Though the article had been written with US market in mind, the points mentioned would very well be applicable for Indians as well. On top of this, Indian system is suppose to have additional drawbacks,

 Indian interest rate is almost twice when compared to US, which mean higher out go of cash towards interest component in earlier years. Another point is that, one who invest money in mortgage, would have invested all his earning and he has to keep paying the interest component for the first few years. After few years, if one is able to make saving or his income increases and decides to pay back or part pay the home loan, its going to only reduce the principal amount for which the interest component is already paid during earlier years of loan.

 Hence, the real benefit is for the mortgage company or financier.

Finally, the cost of real estate in India seems to much higher than developed economies. An article related to " India property bubble".

Is worth to think through and decide before investing. 

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Yours Spiritually

Hinduism is one of the oldest religion in the world. Recently, started exploring  'Tirumantiram' by Tirumular written in Tamil. One of verse, I found  interesting at the start, which is very true as how any one get attracted to materialistic world,

    Marathai Maraithathu mamatha yanai
    marathin marainthathu mamatha yanai
    parathai maraithathu parmutharputham
    parathin marainthathu paramutharputhame.

A child looks at a toy elephant carved from wood. It sees only elephant and is not aware of the wood. A carpenter, on the other hand, looks at the quality of the wood and is not bothered about the carved creation. Like a child, we might be ignorant and aware only about outside attraction and materialistic needs and not aware of the lord who has manisfested the world. A saint or jnani on the other hand, sees only God in everything living or non living. He is not aware of the material world as we see it.

Hmmm... seems very true to me...

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Everything evolves, so is ERP

Recently, I received a forward note from my friend about an article "The End of ERP", however could not agree with key point mentioned in the article and hence thought of sharing my view points.

Any high tech product, whether hardware or software evolves over period of time, one would normally end up getting a better product by features and easier in use over certain period of time. Now to the topic of discussion, ERP had evolved over period of time. It was started as MRP(Manufacturing industry) and mainly in a mainframe environment, in early 90's with advent of client / server technology it evolved into ERP with finance based modules introduced. Still remember the days, in late 90's when ERP did not have modules to support marketing or sale activity and generally it started, with the business flow from order processing.

With Internet boom starting from year 2000 onwards, saw ERP vendors venturing into 3 tier architecture of browser, middle tier and DB tier. Naturally, when field force like sales and service can access ERP system from anywhere the ERP module footprint got extended into sales, service, CRM etc. All this time, the server and  application had to be procured and owned. In the last few years, a new paradigm is getting evolved in the form of cloud or subscription based computing model, where the company need not procure IT asset. This concept is catching up slowly, but may not be without challenges particularly if data is related to financial / statutory requirement. Some countries, may not allow a company financial transaction data to be stored in a different country due to statutory requirement.

These days with even business intelligence part being integrated with ERP, the ERP module footprint getting wider across industries with standard industry specific modules built and put to use. Hence, one cannot compare features across modules of ERP with specific functionality of sales and further ERP module footprints and features will evolve over period of time.

The cloud computing or subscription based model is more to do with where and how data is stored and accessed or its about the ownership of IT infrastructure. Hence, I feel this yard stick cannot be used to compare the specific products or its features.

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Indian Cricket team - Strategic management needed #$#!!!

With Indian team loosing out against Australia without any fight, a weird thought came to my mind. Is it weird?!!!.. may not be,......... might be a strategic management, the need of the hour ... .. : ).

 

If corporates can has strategy to sell their products and so is the army having strategy  to win wars, then why not the Indian cricket board  have strategy. Here goes the strategic suggestion...

The cricket board should have two teams,

Team A : All stalwart players, these players will play only at home series and they would be in position to win all matches including ODI world cups, T20, 10's , test etc. Apart from home series matches with wins, they can concentrate on advertisement, sponsorship and earn for themself and board.

Team B : All the rookie players, these players would only play at abroad series. In this case, there is nothing to loose and even if they loose one can always says the team is without experienced player and if they win the series, the best performers can be graduated to A team.

Won't this be win - win strategy plan #%???!!. :)

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Good bye, 2011... Welcome 2012.

As 2011 come to a close and a new year begins, wishing you all a very happy and prosperous new year!

Looking back at 2011 from economic perspective, we have seen reports, that the world had not come out fully from recession and some even predicting a double dip recession. 'Gold' has out shined all other investments in the year. From about 1900 INR (22 carat) towards close of 2010, it had reached to about 2600 INR, a whopping 40% return on investment.

Had predicted and written in my blog in Sep 2010, that gold will continue to raise and the same happened. However, along with gold, the USD appreciated against INR towards close of 2010, the likely reason provided by experts is the slowing down of Indian economy in the last quarter of 2011. In spite of repeated raise in the interest rate by RBI, the inflation refused to come down, which can also be the possible cause of slowdown in the economy.

While developed countries real estate sector woes continued, I would say, India real estate market was able to sustain in 2011. However, I read an article about the challenges in Indian real estate sector and hence one need to see, which way it would go in 2012.

Indian automotive sector which had  been reporting increase in sales even during 2008-09 recession period had for the first time  reported a dip in the sales towards in last couple of months of 2011. So, would this be the indicator for Indian economy in 2012?.

Lastly, the Indian IT sector had been able to sustain its growth, though it did not have an exponential growth. The operating model might see a change in coming years. To me, the word onsite, offshore or near shore might disappear in few years time and the focus would be towards ' Cloud' computing.

Well, time is the answer..... For the moment lets be optimistic, welcome year 2012, which is my 4th year in blogging as well ....

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Unleashing Genius - A review

To me, our Indian school education is more oriented towards testing memory power. No doubt, getting high marks in school is a significant achievement, but at times students and parents tend to overlook the importance of logical thinking or apt handling of situational problems, which arises from time to time . In this world, analysing and  handling situational problems effectively is  paramount towards successful living.

Unleashing Genius by Dilip Mukerjea is one such book for children which, I would say, particularly to the teenagers to put their brain to test and enhance its capabilities towards logical thinking

The book's opening chapters details out as how the brain functions and then takes you through various technique towards enhancing one’s mind power.

Technique like ‘Mind mapping’ would greatly help children to understand & remember any topic which they study. In Management, there is common used technique called Ishikawa or fish bone diagram, which is toward product design or quality defect prevention and I found ‘mind mapping’ technique similar to Ishikawa’s diagram.

I found details like 'reading dynamics' interesting, more particularly, the description and illustration on ‘A Learning miracle’, ‘ Recall during Learning’, ‘Recall after Learning’ can provide significant assistance to anyone who wish to learn new chapters or subject. This technique would be quite useful for examination preparation perspective as well.

The book also takes you through topics such as creativity, braintertainment – basically an entertainment to brain, Jokes & some memory exercises as well.

In all, quite a good book for children and good one to be included in school library. However, I felt pricing is on the higher side (INR 1195). Hence, to make it more attractive, I would suggest the author, to look at the feasibility of including  CD / DVD with voice and animation along with the book. This would make reading interactive, so that knowledge dissemination and the presentation flow is effective.

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!

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'Aadhaar' - The challenges ahead.

Read an article in a leading daily about Aadhaar card . To me, it looks like "Aadhaar"may hit a road block.

Apart from cost, which is estimated to be very high, I had other thoughts, when I went to 'Aadhar' centre for getting enrolled about a month back.

A. For each card, it took about 15 to 20 minutes per person to get all details & biometric captured in the system. If this is the case, imagine the amount of time / locations it would take to get 120 crores of population, further the article point out, that less than 10 crores had been enrolled so far, from the start date.

B. The support or maintenance cost of these system would be quite huge. Since biometrics image of 4 finger, thumb impression, retina images are being stored for each record, the database might run in Giga or even terra bytes.The maintenance of such system would require huge cost for servers, software/ database upgrade, issue fixes, application patches etc. The running cost may run into multiple crores of INR annually.

C. A common man might have enrolled for these identification namely, Voter Id, PAN, Passport. Except for biometric data, all other relevant data should be present already with corresponding government agencies. If this being the case, not sure why the same data cannot be cleansed and used (particulatly, if biometric data is not used). Majority of our population would have any one of the above identification, hence it would have been much easier for the UIDAI agency to focus on left out population.

In any case, I believe UIDAI might have answers for the above?.

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