Indian Economy - Depreciating INR

I came across an article , providing the details about fall of INR in recent time. The illustration and explanation was excellent however outflow of FII Debt funding alone may not be the only reason towards fall in INR value. India had been a closed economy till 90's and was forced to open up the economy in early 90's due to balance of payment crisis at that point of time. In a 'open' economy the many factors contribute or triggers such fall . 

To me, the other factors which is contributes to depreciation of INR can be,

 Foreign Equity inflows (FII and  FDI) are good for open economy, not only from investment perspective it is also said generate employment. But, then at the some pint of time, there is bound to be repatriation of profit in form of dividend or other investment. So naturally there would be an outflow. No business man would like to keep the equity for ever, without appropriate returns. 

Corporate Debt: It is said debt content with major corporate has increased over the years. More importantly about 40 to 50% of debt is in foreign currency. Now with dollar appreciating, the Indian corporate have to burn more money not only in form of interest, principle but also due to depreciated INR. This would certainly increase outflow of foreign exchange in future.

Oil import: There is no respite for oil bills import expenses or rather the outgo of foreign exchange on Y-n Y basis. It has been on increase always. Just look at the number of vehicles registered in an RTO in metro’s, one could judge the increase in vehicle registered, so naturally consumption of fuel is bound to increase, unless the country has efficiently planned public transport. 

Gold Import: Amid all the efforts being made by the Government to curb gold imports, demand for the precious metal in India zoomed to a 10-year high (310 tonnes) in the three-month period ending June 30, according to the World Gold Council. Gold is very dear to Indian families and it is said to be second to China in import of precious metal. With return from Indian stock market not looking good in last few years and gold returns looking good in the last few years, the gold is also looked upon as an investment these days. However, this causes stress on foreign exchange due to import of gold. 

One may not know which factors can trigger a fall in exchange rate at any point of time in a global economy, unless there is a well planned and coordinated execution of growth oriented policies towards development of economy. Hence, is India really prepared for 'Open' Economy?

Also, at same time, fail to understand as how some of the developed countries even though have a higher deficit budget and with higher content of debt as percentage of their GDP has better currency exchange rate when compared to India?

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Gold bounches back

While stock market is taken a beating on Friday, gold seems to bounced back in the last few days and it was trading Rs 2946 per gram (22 carat) on Sat 17th Aug.

Apart from hike in gold prices in world market, following other factor seems to drive prices up,

•  Depreciating INR.
•  Import restriction and higher duty. 
• Condition of world and  Indian economy at this point of time.
•  Last but not the least the start of festive season in India.

Next to petroleum product, gold import is the highest drainer of foreign exchange in India. Added to this India is top consumer for gold. Further, its never going to easy for Indians to move away from attractiveness gold .

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Managing Oracle EBS implementation better.

Over the years, ERP product modules foot prints have grown and so is the complexity associated with product.  In about a decade time with increased complexities, the implementation need to take care business requirement vs module fitment for solution, shorter implementation time frame, and quick turnaround testing the solution, performance issue due to volume of transactions and accessing transaction on wide area network needs to be taken in to account.

If application is available to access though internet, it also increasingly difficult to perform load test or predict volume growth of users. It is increasing common these days, witness certain systems like Banking, Railways getting into performance issues at the peak hours as due importance might not have been given to loading of application during implementation stage. 

Appropriate product fitment to business requirement and product license of modules alone would not make an implementation successful. Implementation needs to be managed effectively right from conceptualization stage to beyond post implementation to be successful. Had earlier written about factors ( part1, part2, part3) which influence success of ERP implementation in a phased approach.

Apart from ERP product & managing implementation project, there are products available to enhance / support & manage the implementation at pre & post implementation stage better.  It’s critical the project stakeholder analyses the feasibility of using these tools. 

Brief overviews about the products, which can support Oracle EBS implementation, are, 

Oracle EBS Business accelerators: Every effort is made these days to reduce implementation time of Oracle EBS without compromising on business requirement. Hence one would find OBA quite useful during the requirement gathering & thereby automate functional set up during CRP stage (iterative process) of the implementation and thereby shorten the discovery start phase of the project.  Additionally, It provides information about flow based functionality of implementation, which is also quite critical in understanding the overall business process end to end, right at start of the project.. 

Oracle application testing suite: Oracle Application testing suite can used automate functional regression testing, Oracle Load testing. Process of manual testing can be a time consuming and hence OATS place a critical role in faster testing process and enhance productivity.

Oracle application management suite: The task of managing Applications is complex, time-consuming, and costly.   The Application Management Suites for E-Business Suite can reduce this complexity, and dramatically improve the availability, reliability, and predictability for E-Business Suite. The Suite leverages Oracle Enterprise Manager to provide enhanced system and user monitoring, configuration monitoring and change management capabilities.

Oracle Enterprise manager: Enterprise manager is quite useful to manage the entire technology stack of Database, middleware application. OEM is useful right from start to post implementation support.

Oracle Infrastructure: During implementation or post implementation, the infrastructure plays a crucial role in success of implementation. There could be a situation where, the ERP implementation from business solution perspective is said to be very effective. However, infrastructure challenges might prevent the effective implementation.  For example, tasks might take a long time to be executed, this issue may be related to network bandwidth, multiple time I/O operation, resources busy due to peak hour or resource intensive. Its critical, infrastructure is given right focus at right point of time.  Exadata machine, RAC, Data guard can be thought about and explored to overcome the infrastructure issues. Also, Saas (software-as-service) concept related to cloud computing is catching up. One of the characteristic of cloud service is Rapid elastic scalability, which means the ability to add computing capacity on demand. This feature would be useful to allocate resource for computing during peak time. 

With positioning of global single instance for multi-org operation, the application needs to be available for access 24x7 towards global operation. An application scalability suiting ever evolving business requirement is one part of it. Cost optimization in form of shorter implementation, effective testing, managing application post implementation, reliability and scalability of hardware infrastructure also plays critical part in success of implementation. Hence, naturally, one needs to look at various software tools which would enhance productivity of Oracle ERP implementation.

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Ancient Shiva temples

Some time back, I read this article, spiritual health, a nice short article. I personally feel materialistic world has taken the world by storm, which made people lose focus. However, I keep wondering there are places in India which keep spirituality and heritage live.

Many of the spiritual temples do not have date associated with it. Shiva ‘s pancha bootha stalas does not require any introduction. Apart from Panchabotha stala, felt some of the Shiva temples are so very divine and peaceful.

Kailasanathar temple, Kanchipuram: This is in outskirt of Kanchipuram (approx 80 Kms from Chennai) and currently maintained by Archeological department of India. This Shiva temple is believed to be one among the oldest temple ( more than 1000 years).

This temple withstood time in its pristine form and believed to be built through sand ('pittu man'). There is a tunnel around the Shiva Lingam (god), which is symbolic representation of Birth (crawl to get in), adulthood (walk) and finally death(crawl again). Interesting it also mean only before birth and after death one might be spiritually aligned \ view god and during living time the materialistic world (called Maya) might make us forget or not remember about god and seek pleasure in materialistic comfort. It is also believed by going around the tunnel would reduce number of re-birth.

Brahmapureshwarar temple, Trichy: It's an ancient temple near Tiruchi (approx 40 km), Tamil Nadu. It is believed Brahma (Hindu god for creation) did 'tapas' by installing 12 Shiva idols million and millions of years ago due to curse from Shiva due to ego and finally got liberated from curse.

This is one of the very few temples, which has Brahma idol prominently. It is believed since almighty Brahma's destiny got changed, any one who visit this temple would have their destiny changed, positively. Jeeva Samadhi of Pathanjali Maharishi is said to be here. Pathanjali is said to guru or father of Yoga and he is believed to be incarnation of almighty god - Narayanan. Much easier to reach by car, if you are traveling from Tiruchi to Chennai by car, its worth a visit (about 4 km from main highway) and one can spend about few hours. Some of the temple gopuram is believed to be constructed 100's of years ago.

Suruthapalli (near Chennai): Its is believed 'Pradosham' time started from here. Nice temple in outskirts of Chennai. This temple is believed to be constructed in 14th Century. The temple 'Stala' history is very interesting. In Satya Yuga (millions of years ago), during churning of 'Par' Kadal, the churning rope (snake) vomit poison.

The Devas and Asuras becomes jittery on seeing this and make an earnest appeal to Lord Shiva to save them, as the poison could destroy all living being in Universe. Lord Shiva consumes the poison and save all living being in the universe.

Further it is believed Lord Shiva feels dizzy due to consumption of poison and is said to have taken rest on lap of goddess Parvati at Suruthapalli for some time on his way back to his abode in Kailash. Hence, Lord Siva in this temple is in unique reclining posture. There is also 'Valmiki Lingashwarar' and 'Rama Lingashwarar', which is believed to be worshiped by Valmiki Muni and Lord Rama respectively.

Though, the temple is believed to be built in 14th Century, there is no date associated with main deity - Pallikondeswarar (Lord Shiva) in this temple. Very calm and serene temple in outskirt of Chennai.

Other unique temples with spiritual divinity I could associate are Kumbeshwarar Temple at Kumbakonam, Tanjore Brahadeshwarar. Heard about Darasuram near Tanjore and Gangai konda Cholapuram, which are on list of temples to visited soon, looking forwards to such visit.

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Spicy air travel

Was on short vacation to Goa few weeks back , while on my return I did have enough turbulence before we reached Chennai safely. Well, it was not turbulence due to weather, but due to cancellation of flight from Goa to Chennai. One would think, so what, flight cancellations are common, but I felt mine of unique.

Our return flight was at 4:40 PM, since we had visited scenic beaches the previous day, we did not have any plan to visit place the day of our return journey. Our initial plan was to check out at Hotel around 1:00 PM have lunch and proceed to airport, which is about 35 KM from our hotel. However, the previous day our cab driver suggested to start an hour early and he can take us to couple of beach in south Goa near airport before dropping us at airport for flight. This seemed fine and we agreed.

The next day, the driver picked us up at hotel post check out at 11:30 AM and we went to restaurant for lunch. Post lunch as the driver was taking us to a beach, it was 12:20 PM and a got a recorded phone call from airline stating the flight is cancelled for the evening and asking me bluntly to reach out to call center.

While on the way to a beach, I called up airline call center at 12:30 PM and gave my ticket PNR number and waited for a moment. The rest of it,

Call center: Yes, Sir how may I assist you.

Myself: What does your system say about my booking

Call center: Sorry sir, we really apologize for inconvenience caused, you flight is cancelled for the day.
(This was after I asked about the booking).

Myself: Why?.

Call center: Technical problem in flight,sir.

Myself: That's you problem to fix, so what are the options?

Call center: We have a flight tomorrow at 1:00 PM and you can travel with same ticket with no extra cost.

Myself: What??.... Will you provide for accommodation for stay, as I am not native of Goa and checked out of hotel? It will cost me a fortune for a night stay with family.

Call center: Sorry sir, we can’t provide accommodation (same reply came again and again).

****I was asking myself whether I have taken air ticket or a bus ticket to get such response? ****.

Myself: Come on, if you are not providing accommodation, is there alternative flight to other location like Bangalore, Hyderabad or Mumbai from where I can take flight to Chennai.

Call center: No sir, it already 12:45 PM, we have a flight to Bangalore at 1:55PM and to Hyderabad 2:15PM (then onward to Chennai at 19:25). From call center system allows for changes only upto 2 hours prior flight. Hence, unable to make change.

** I got some solace, immediately asked the cab driver to how long it takes to reach airport from that spot as he was driving towards beach location. He told me 30 minutes, immediately instructed him to drive to airport. ***

 Myself: Please get your supervisor, online. I will be in position to reach airport in another 40 minutes should be in time to reach in time Goa to Hyderabad flight. Hence put me on Hyderabad flight and had to shout" *********** and finally"

Call center: Hold on sir……….. Finally call center person confirms flight changes are done.

My wife and daughter, watching this, made a remark that they way, I was handling the situation was as thrilling like a movie scene..:).

In fact, there also a call few minutes later from airline spokesperson, stating my flight was cancelled, I shouted and asked her to check my reservation update in the system, she took few minutes and confirmed back...Hmmm....
 
Finally, we reached airport for flight by 1:10 PM and where in time for the flight check in and reached Chennai via Hyderabad.

Though, I was able to reach my home and flight cancellation is part and parcel of this industry, I had to manage the crisis on my own initiative for the fault on airline part.

Few question, for which I do not have answers,.

1. Airline being part of travel and hospitality industry, is it not the airline, who should have called me and informed about the flight option as from their internal computer system as they would know that, I am traveling with family and base location is different?.

2. In worst case, if airline cannot provide alternative on same day, should they not provide with appropriate accommodation?.

3. Being a no frill airline, compensation or accommodation are not applicable ?. If this is true, then passengers can be taken for a ride, particularly for small aircraft, when there are no adequate bookings and they can cite this point, if really needed.


Interestingly, the in flight crew circulated the feedback forms and collected it back, though I did mention few points in feedback. Not sure, whether these would be addressed OR is their a guideline/rule of law for passengers in event of cancellation by airline regulatory body for domestic flights in India?.

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Goa, India - Travelogue - Part 2

This is part 2 of my Goa Travelogue. Part 1 is here.

Next day, based on reviews on web short listed some of the Goa – North beaches and started from hotel at 9:00 AM. Being monsoon, it was drizzling intermittently in morning and little worried that it may play spoil sport, however post 9:00 AM the rain stopped.

Our first stop was Fort Aguda. The Portuguese built fort in 16th century has a history behind it (refer Photos). I believe it might be one of its kind in the world where you can view the Arabian Sea from on one side and lush green on the other side. Normally in the vicinity of sea shore, one would not find greenery, but here you would find lush green around you. Interesting all north Goa seashore is different. Most of the north beaches were unique, it might be from top of hillock with greenery around.

Short distance from Fort Aguda is Sinquerim beach. This is one among the scenic beach in Goa. At first look, this was similar to ‘Uyire’ song location in film - Mumbai, but later I got to know that ‘Uyire’ song sequence was shot at Bekel fort in Kerala. But Sinquerim beach resembled almost similar with fort like wall at certain places. One can have good view of scenic coastline from old fort like structure. Added to this there is greenery, coconut trees around, hillocks and rocks spread across provides nature indication as why these beaches are unique of its kind.

Next on our list was Baga beach. It looks to be a regular beach when you just look at it and was crowded and hence did not like it at first sight. However, on the other side there are hillocks, greenery and more importantly the water streams into backwater flow as you walk across some distance away from crowd. We went to this place in the afternoon, the backwater formation was wonderful and scenic. Nice beach for nature lovers, once you get absorbed and look around.

Ajuna and Vegator beach nearby to each other. These beaches are unique, more than sea shore with sand, you will find yourself perched on top of hillock and apart from Arabian sea, you can get absorbed by greenery, coconut trees and hillock on sides. In Vagator, one would be in position to look at Chapara fort at a distance, this would require some trekking for which we did not have enough time or energy as its was already 2:00 PM and were just was just munching snacks. Time for our lunch, and hence had to travel back close to 40 KM to reach Panjim had late lunch.

Next day, we had initial plans to visit couple of places on way back to airport, but gave it up and proceeded to airport straight as Spice Jet provided with some anxious moments on travel back to Chennai with cancellation of Goa – Chennai flight for the day. 

Goa…… has not lost its charm, still worth a trip to experience the uniqueness of its beaches.

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Goa - A travelogue - Part 1

Travel to Goa was in my mind for some time now. As Goa is approx 1000 km from Chennai, traveling by car was ruled out, the alternative option was only Train or Air. I understand there is a weekly train from Chennai and considering travel time, this was ruled out, since had a very short vacation in last week of June and the option was only air. Train to Goa from Chennai is said to go via picturesque view of Dudh Sagar falls approx 80 km from Goa.

Short trip of with 2 nights, 3 days stay in Goa and had the hotel booked with Marriott resort. We took Spice jet as it offer daily flight to Goa, however we did have some really spicy time with Spice jet on our Goa to Chennai return which will write later.

We reached Goa in evening around 4:00PM and found the weather pleasant, with short spell of welcome rain as this being monsoon season in Goa. Goa airport to Marriott take about an hour’s time. I was pleasantly surprised by the greenery all around. My thought was Goa being a city on shore, I thought it would be like Chennai and however it was different than I expected and more importantly, not much of traffic on road towards Marriott.I understood from the cab driver,that it was off-season now and the peak season would be towards Christmas.

Marriott resort was right on the beach, and it was altogether a new experience to view the beach right on from the reception just about 100 meters away. I still remember Kanyakumari, which  used to have a TTDC hotel right opposite beach, but it was about 500 mts away, not sure whether Hotel TTDC at Kanyakumari is still there?.

Though Marriott is right on Miramar Beach, the particular stretch along Marriot is not attracted by public and as it looks to be little far from main Miramar beach. It was calm with some scenic view. Just in front, in about few kms away right on the Arabian sea, one would find hillock, with fort Aguda housing the ancient light house built by Portuguese in 1612 AD. On the other side, one would side Mandovi river flowing into sea with a greenery hillock on other side. There is ferry spot along Mandovi river. All this provided an awesome view...

We had Dinner in a near by restaurant and were back post dinner relaxed till about 10 PM on Miramar Beach.

The next day, we choose to visit some of the north side beaches of Goa… Will continue about it later....

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