Problems Grappling India rite now

Everyday I hear, that India market index has suffered the most losses this year apart from the Middle east crisis and Japan Quake. So I thought of compiling a list of problems which India is suffering rite now. The non exhaustive list is given below. I have also created a poll for people to vote. So you can vote which is the biggest problem India is suffering rite now

Red Tapism still exists
Corruption and Scams
Inflation
High Interest Cost
Highly dependent on Crude Oil
Delayed Judicial systems
Caste Related Favoritisms
Vote Bank Politics
Power Shortage
High Cost of capital
Aged Politicians
Crippled Infrastructure

So vote for your favorite option in the window aside this post. As always for any comment use the comment section. If you got some other point too present it to the public also.

Do Earth (Hour) Matters

Earth Hour is more talk and less action.  It’s more of being with your friends and family rather than concerned about environment.  If it would have been, it should have action related to environment in its itinerary. So rather than just switching your non essential lights for just an hour, you should give a thought of replacing them with more efficient lights.  It could save electricity round the year.  Is it not more relevant to the Name “Earth Hour”?

Currently Europe is mulling to ban the Yellow Edison Bulbs which emits more heat than light, but it is met with resistance from people.  I read somewhere that people in Europe are purchasing those incandescent bulb in bulk which could last their lifetime.  So effectively the ban on incandescent bulb will be of no effect to them. 

If we come to home, India, we always make very ambitious plans.  We thought of replacing some of the incandescent bulbs with CFLs with the cost recovered from selling CERs.  We don’t know the result of this scheme yet.

The Earth Hour takes care of just 0.01% (1/ (24*365)) of the time in the year.  Do you know that it takes hours to power down a coal fired plant and hours more to power it up back again?  World over the contribution of the coal fired plants is maximum.  So during the Earth Hour, they maintain the frequency in the grid even if the demand is low, but the production is never changed.

Another thing is with the candles people burn during the Earth Hour.  These candles are made from paraffin, a component of crude oil.  So they emit those CO₂ (or even more) supposedly lost by less usage by powering down the lights for one hour.

If you will search the net, regarding the benefits ( or loss) of the Earth Hour, you will find many links.  Now what do you think

Interest rate in Savings account: Pebbles or Boulders

The difference between NBFC and Banks are the offerings like savings and current account and other special services which only banks are allowed.  In some time, RBI would be awarding banking license to these NBFC also.

The interest rates offered by these banks on saving account are a matter of great concern. Some year’s back I remember Kotak bank offered higher interest rate on idle cash in your savings account.  Now 30% of their customers have switched to this facility and they are managing around 44% of their retail deposits through this scheme now.

Now RBI is soon going to be discussing and publishing a paper on deregulation of interest rate on savings account.  While SBI chief is being sounded cautious in the speech where he is clearly against deregulation of interest rate.  What I think is this will result in good competition...I have always recommended expansion of market.  This could be a new pitch for the existing and new coming banks to play on. While this could be detrimental to the existing banks like SBI and other nationalized banks.  I hope this brings some level playing among all the new banks and NBFC.

All these years these banks have been regulating the savings accounts by offering miniscule interest rate and offering loans at much higher interest to other customers. Last year, in April 2010, RBI mandated daily calculation of interest instead of 10-days average savings account balance.  Further, with the deregulation of interest rate it would result in good competition among banks to offer better rates to the depositors.  Of course this would hurt the bank prospects in terms of cost of capital and their margins would squeeze a little to lot.  But I think this would make them more proactive.  They would start taking risks.  Is it for good or bad?  What do you think?  Seriously I think, the Indian banks were saved from the turmoil the whole world was suffering from because of the lack of pro activeness of our bank employees. 

What do you think? Deregulation of savings banks will be good or bad.  Tell us your views through the comment section.

Japan Quake on India

Today I and my friend were discussing a possible impact of the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami on Indian shores and market.  Due to the blast in the nuclear reactor, Japan will be more cautious in the nuclear fuel and reactor treaty for India-US.  Japanese companies are deeply entangled with US and French companies which have the expertise to build nuclear plant.
Due to the destruction of nuclear plants there would be change in the pattern of power production in Japan.  Japan had 3 nuclear reactors on their land.  Currently due to blast at one of the reactor, there would be huge impact on  the power production at the island.  Lot of demand will be on the crude oil and natural gas.  So the world may observe a little hike in the prices of crude oil and gas in medium term.  India will be impacted due to the increased prices of crude oil and gas.

Many of us may not be knowing that Japan is the biggest lender to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Manila, Philippines and India is one of the biggest borrower from ADB.  This year we may see a trend reversal and Japan may borrow some money from ADB for reconstruction and rehabilitation activity.  So the proportion of loan which India may be seeing from ADB this year would be less.  The proportion of investment by ADB in may see a decline for 2-3 years.

A good news may be for India would be the export of Steel and cement to Japan may rise for the reconstruction activity. It may result in mild rise of domestic prices of steel and cement but I suppose Government will take care of that.

With that I may rest my case.  If you agree or disagree please use the comment section.  If you think, there would be some more aftershocks, please share with others.
Bharat   

My Name is Khan....and I don't have much work these days

Have you recently observed Shahrukh khan and work he is doing these days.  Recently he has been awarded Bollywood Razzies award for being the worst celebrity for 2010 and I totally support that.  Currently he hosted a show  (zor ka zhatka) on NDTV Imagine and it had TRPs even lower than that of Rakhi ka insaaf.
I think it was a total wastage of his talent. Today I saw an ad of some toothpaste brand in which SRK is a brand ambassador.  The words were buy the paste and do something for making SRK ask yours kids do brushing daily.
Common man.  We know you are old enuf running around trees and doing stuff.  But that does not mean you should be shitting around.  Currently he is seen in every award function hosting events.  I really liked how he climbed from being no one in the industry to the king of the bollywood.  He is not coming in much film these days.  I suppose he is following Amir Khan's formula making one film in a year.  Lets see how he fares out this year.
Share your views and comments through the comment section.

Personalized list of websites from Discount Guru

I am known as discount guru in my office circle for the discounts and savings I bring to them. The previous post was taken from Pluggd.in.  Here is my personal list of deal sites which I visit very often to have discounts for me and others.  Hope you would like it.  Please appreciate me through your comments and sharing the list with your friends.

Some of the websites which I visit often and offer good deals (and Pluggd.in missed them in their list) is below.

• Khojguru.com: They have recently received funding from investors to expand their services.  They dont charge anything to the user.  All the deals are free and charge the user in points which they can acquire by adding friends in their network.  Previously good deals used to appear on this website but currently it seems they have lost their lustre.
• apnacashback.com:  Every website offers some commission for referring them and this website offers a part of the commission to the user back.  So apna cash back.  Deals i would say are ok with some good websites in its kitty like flipkart, cleartrip and others.  Do register if you are concerned even for your last penny
• retailmenot.com:  Its an websites which carries coupon in a better manner.  It actually hosts coupons from the users who upload them.  So it may or may not work for you.  It has got an extensive list of websites but beware not all coupons may work for you.  
• upto75.com:  Its a multicity website.  The deals are often for registered customers.  It is free to register on the website.  The offers by them are ok.  
• fishthedeal.com:  It offers a single deal a day.  Usually the product are from IT.  They offer good discount.  
• buytheprice.com:  Recently they received funding from investors.  This Hyderabad based company offers discounts at various websites and their prices are the lowest among all Ebay and allied websites. The shipment is fast.  The number of products offered by them is currently less but they are expanding their portfolio.  They offer deals in which prices decrease as more number of people purchase the same product. 
• tradus.in:  This website is a sister website of ibibo.com and offers good discounts on various products. Their prices are at comparison with Ebay and sometimes even less.  Discounts coupons can be found on many websites.
• goibibo.com:  This websites is also a sister website of ibibo.com.  It offers flights and holiday booking for travellers.  With discount coupons, it offers prices which are even less than the operators website (like spicejet).  Usually Travelocity offers the cheapest rate in the travel segment.  But this website with its discounts is among the cheapest.  It also offers referral scheme where you can earn money by booking tickets for you and your friends.  (If you are a heavy user of flight, you can become my affliliate)
• freecharge.in  This website offers prepaid online recharge and offers coupons of CCD, McDonalds, Dominos Pizza.  The coupons come by courier to your location.  For delivering they charge 10 rs for the courier.  Currently limited to 4 coupons per brand, they used to offer good deals before.

This is not the complete list but the majority of it.  So people have fun and Happy shopping saving.  Will appreciate or any commets on the list.  If you know any other good websites, please share through the comments section.

Deal ya No Deal

Pluggd.in recently carried a huge list of Groupon Clones.  For the people who don't know Groupon, it is a website which gives deals and offers for various products and offering online and offline.  Groupon is currently active in 35 countries and recently have entered India and purchased Sosasta.com.  I knew this website from long ago.  There is not much change in the website or the deals they are offering.  So here is the list from Pluggd.in

1. SnapDeal – They are the leaders in terms of traffic with Alexa India rank under 25. That is more traffic than Naukri or IRCTC, making it the No.1 ecommerce portal in India in terms of traffic. Yes, I just said that.

Not only that but it has actually crossed Groupon.com’s reach in terms of global traffic (Alexa). How much did they spend to get there? How many transactions/revenue do they do per day? Well, we will keep that for the founders to reveal. SnapDeal is a one of the only ecommerce player, apart from OTAs to take up the TVCs route (to best of my knowledge).

Bangalore based Grabbon was acquired by SnapDeal and according to the founder that was the turning point for them. They are lately aiming to be THE place for deals and offers with even deals from institutes like NIIT on offer. I have been a big critique of SnapDeal’s execution strategy all along but it seems the marketing $s can actually buy you all the attention in world and in course a multi Bn. 

$

 Rs. valuation also.

Startups, they are into a different ball game. They are good at what they are trying to achieve with SnapDeal, the way they want to achieve it. Don’t burn your fingers by replicating or following them. The game is beyond our playground.

Oh, did i mention they roped in a deal for date with Gul Panag.

2. Taggle – $8.75Mn funding is what got it the initial attention. Traffic is rising steadily with a major upbreak in mid-January. Advertising is driving traffic but the spend isn’t much. They have about 187K fans on Facebook but the activity is really negligible. The whole idea of mixing ecommerce with social reach of consumers seems to be almost dead in all other sites as well.

3. MyDala – This was my favorite in terms of quality of deals but with time the edge is lost. Traffic is pretty much stable. 54K fas on Facebook with little to no activity.

4. Koovs.com – Traffic is seeing new high since new year. They are bringing in electronics on sale as well. Not much action apart from Delhi / Bangalore. Exclusive local deals just seem to be missing.

5. SoSasta/Groupon India – The action seems to be just starting here. The ads are getting more visibility lately. Surely will be the player to watch out for. For now they either have repeated deals from other competitors or it is mostly ecommerce deals. They have all the insights from their global presence but will the international strategy work in India?

6. Dealivore – Traffic is very unstable and on a downtrend. The 306K fan base seems to be sleeping. The team hasn’t shown anything remarkable yet. They already claim to have spent over Rs.2Crs. and this is the reason why Zuckerberg is so rich.

7. DealsAndYou – The founders hate me for their acquisition announcement that we covered earlier but I will try and reciprocate some love (while being neutral). The fanpage with 171K fans is the most active amongst all the above players. Their initial stand of making it a mix of social media promotion + lead generation for local businesses seems to be strong. They are also exploring a dedicated section for travel/holiday deals. The ad spend is aggressive and they stand second to SnapDeal in terms of traffic.

8. BuzzInTown – Their long standing content play is definitely visible on the fan page. Their updates about deals get double the feedback as compared to DealsAndYou, though same in % of fans. The presence is only in Delhi and Mumbai, with Bangalore being added lately. The portal is willing to spend Rs.25 per new registration for the deals(DGM) which seems to be a sensible UAC but isn’t very low. As far as I remember they were earlier spending Rs.10 per registration during non-deals days. They haven’t entered deals for electronic products yet which is a sign of the fact that they have more in the kitty to show before they give up, if they ever do.

9. Ebay – The big daddy of e-commerce is still testing its local deals app with presence in Delhi and Mumbai. It is certainly giving a step-motherly treatment to local deals though. Who in the world came up with the URL koupananIndia.ebaysocialapps.com. Its even difficult to find a link from ebay.in to this app. No doubt the traffic is so poor. They are barely able to sell 3-4 deals for every offer.

10. Groffr.com – One player that is actually standing out with deals for high value purchases like real estate, cars, bikes etc. They seem to have some offline action as well. Activity is mostly around Mumbai.

11. Groopoffers.com – These guys are trying to achieve everything with deals on restaurants, salons, real estate and products. The action seem to alive and building up, may be they will make some buzz.

12. Coupon2Buy – A relatively new player that is not showing much action and not doing anything remarkable yet. The deals are just getting started in Delhi, Pune and Mumbai.

13. CityOffers.in – Based out of Ahmedabad the action here is around this city only. Again a very new site with not much moolah to get in the race.

14. Foodome – Based out of Chennai these guys are concentrating on restaurants deals and home delivery of food only. Absolutely no marketing at all till now.

15. Dealmagic – Not sure if these guys are starting up or shutting down as they have no live deals. The fanpage hasn’t seen any update in past 3 weeks.

16. Masthideals – Not sure what they are upto. The “h” in the name suggests they are south India based, Chennai indeed. No deals live currently, past deals were around beauty salons and electronics mostly.

17. Groupon.in – Started as Groupoff they claim to have acquired the “Groupon” trademark in India. Deals are decent and traffic seems to be building now.

18. Scoopstr.com – Based out of Bangalore with presence in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore. Deals are decent, not much to talk about.
In the next post, I will be posting my personal list of discounts and websites which I visit personally for the discounts.  Hope you like them.  Meanwhile please send your comments and happy savings

Cool Roofs - A small answer to Global Warming

Everyday we hear about Global Warming and we feel singled out thinking what we can do as individuals.  We stay in India, where the average temperature varies through out the year.  We have very hot summer and very cold winter.  These days due to Global warming (or cooling) the temperature have broken their records either side.  Now the summers are approaching.  People are getting busy buying coolers and ACs to lower the temperature at their office and home.  All these additions will further aggravate the Global warming situation as more power would be required to power them.  As summer approaches, the power generation due to hydro power plants is reduced due to water shortage in the reservoir and increased demand for water consumption and irrigation.  So more and more power is derived from coal and natural gas fired plants.  This means more carbon dioxide is pushed into atmosphere.     

 Apart from that, it would also mean increase in the requirement of peak load.  The peak load is the high load at particular points rather than average power demand. This is the time when the demand for power is maximum i.e morning and evening.
So what can we do to fan out the heat.  One thing which Stephen Chu, US Secretary of Energy, promoted was painting your roof white.  The roof is always exposed to sun rays in day time.  Just like earth (as they made of same materials) they capture heat in the daytime and release them in the night time.  So the even the nights in the summer are very hot.
The pavements and the roofs in an city (currently covers around 60-70% of city area) form a effect called urban heat island effect.  Due to this, the city is hotter than the outskirts and surrounding villages.  As they are black, they absorb around 70% of the heat incident on them.  So whats the solution, paint them white.  This will increase the reflectance of the roofs.  This will also reduce the cooling needs of the room and the building.  Current estimates of the savings is around 15-20% of the energy demand.  Thats a substantial savings.  Also as a result, less energy is needed and less CO2.  Thus reducing your carbon footprints.  Will this technology work even in winter.  I would say no.  The places where there is high snow fall, should avoid it coz less sunlight means less evaporation of snow.  But most of India, is not facing snow and they can do their contribution with whatever they can.  What do you think.

150 days of Kricket

Ever wondered how much cricket are we exposed to in a year.  I tried to find the stats, through ESPN statsguru.
In 2010, India played around 14 tests, 27 one day and 7 T20 matches . Considering each test matches of 5 days, these are equal to
14 *5 =70 days
(27 +7 )* 1 = 34 days
 This makes a total of 104 days.  Now IPL was of 44 days.  This makes it total of 148 days.  This makes 40% of the days in a year.  Now some people in India are just mad about cricket.  They follow match day in and day out even if they are very late in to night.  Apart from that leave other forms of cricket played at local level.  
And believe me this year the count would be even higher, given the world cup and 51 days of IPL (again).
Also found this nice video.  Its title is Kricket se aapko kya mila.
Seriously I don't understand what people are getting watching this much cricket.  If you know, please lets us know by the comment section.

Google Maps Code - Possible Extension

A year back or so I gave an interview for Google Maps.  Though I could not clear that interview, I really like the organization and the facilities inside.  I believe Google is the most innovative tech company.

An amazing idea struck me today. I ordered a pizza from Domino's and that was my first order online at my room.  I had great difficulty explaining the room location to the girl at the other end.  Although after two minutes, I told her another landmark and asked the delivery body to call me.  In my mind I wished if there was a code or something which I could give to them, it would make my task and other customers task easier.  Then Google Maps came to my mind.  

I suppose Google can implement a 8-digit which anybody can share with anybody to give there whereabouts.

To search for the person, you can either click the whole link which can be something like "http://maps.google.com/code/aFG78ert" or go to http://maps.google.com and enter "aFG78ert" in the search box.  By having such a code its possible to shorten your address and also show your location on Google maps.  For Google it can be a medium to create shortage and increase the usage of Google Maps.  With shortage I mean, these codes can be custom made or computer generated.  So the appropriate ones, disappear first.

 With these 8 digit code, it is possible to create 2.8 trillion codes as it can includes 26 letters of alphabet and 10 numbers.  I suppose these would be enough for Google maps initially.  Later if they want they can increase the number of letters.   What say guys do you think this will work out.  Share it with friends to find out what they think.

P.S. My room mate is working with Google Maps and I had no discussion about this with him.

Birth of Twitter and Guide

Hi,

A lot many of my friends are not there on Twitter.  So I thought of introducing them to Twitter.  Here's how Twitter is born.


Mashable introduced a Twitter Guide Book and some videos. One guide book they introduced in 2009 is given below. Hope you find it helpful.

Mashable Twitter Guide Book 2009

http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/
http://mashable.com/2009/05/31/twitter-tutorials-youtube/

So after watching this if you hop on to Twitter be sure to add me as your follower @Bharatag

As one of my friends said " Facebook is for keeping in touch with friends you have and Twitter is keeping in touch with friends you want to have"
If you like this, share this with your friends .

Nice Poetry - Washington Post

WASHINGTON POST COMPETITION ASKED FOR A TWO-LINE RHYME WITH THE MOST ROMANTIC FIRST LINE, BUT THELEAST ROMANTIC SECOND LINE


This is the winner:-

My darling, my lover, my beautiful wife,
Marrying you screwed up my life.

I see your face when I am dreaming.
That's why I always wake up screaming.

Kind, intelligent, loving and hot;
This describes everything you are not.

I thought that I could love no other --
that is until I met your brother.

Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are you.
But the roses are wilting, the violets are dead, the sugar bowl's empty and so is your head.

I want to feel your sweet embrace;
But don't take that paper bag off your face.

I love your smile, your face, and your eyes --
Damn, I'm good at telling lies!

My love, you take my breath away.
What have you stepped in to smell this way?

My feelings for you no words can tell,
Except for maybe “'Go to hell.”'

What inspired this amorous rhyme?
Two parts tequila, one part lime             

Indian Rail - Step-brother treatment to online Tickets

Recently I went home through Indian Rail.  To save time and efforts, I booked my e-tickets online.  I took a print out of the tickets.  On the D-day I went to the station and the train was late by 30 mins.  When the train came, I tugged my luggage inside the compartment and arranged it.  The old couple sitting opposite asked me to change the seat with their grandson sitting few seat later.  I gladly complied.  The Train Ticket Examiner (TTE) came and ask for tickets from everyone.  Some young guns like me handed over the printed e-ticket.  Next he asked for some sort of identity.  In my Identity card (Driving license), the photo is not clear.  Another guy showed his college identity card.  All were okay.  Don't know what he confirmed from my driving license and the other guy's college identity card.  Now the same story repeated for 3 times as there was checking 3 time during the whole route. 

So whats the difference in a identity card and not without one.  Lets analyse whats there in a identity card

Name, Address, Phone no, Issuer Name and other details. 

When we are buying physical tickets we give the details like Name, Address and Phone no, but there is no verification whether they are correct or not.  So why for online tickets.  The TTE was not concerned about the photo.  I suppose they were confirming whether the name was same or not.  When we are buying online tickets, we are giving our email address (on which online tickets come), our phone no (on which sms is received) and unknowingly our IP address.  So in case of any emergency they can connect to us.  

I don't understand when 1/3 of the tickets are currently booked online , why this step brotherly treatment to tickets booked online.  Either seek the details of the physically booked ticket also to confirm the same passenger is travelling or stop asking for identity proofs from eTickets.

Interesting Search Engine - Wolfram Alfa

Today I discovered an interesting search engine called Wolfram Alfa through the blog Digital Inspiration.  I don't know how many of you know about this search engine. Wolfram|Alpha introduces a fundamentally new way to get knowledge and answers—not by searching the web, but by doing dynamic computations based on a vast collection of built-in data, algorithms, and methods.WOLFRAM|ALPHA uses built-in knowledge curated by human experts to compute on the fly a specific answer to every query.

 May be this tricks from Digital Inspiration will help you.  Do check out this awesome search engine/computation platform

Want to know the current time in London, or how much is 10 pounds in grams? Google can directly answer some of these common questions without requiring you to sift through pages and pages of links.

However, it is not the only tool that offers instant answers. Wolfram Alpha, a search engine developed by Stephen Wolfram, can solve a much wider array of problems and unlike Google, it doesn't require to type queries in any particular syntax. Here are some examples:

1. Your Location

A query like "where am i" will reveal your IP address and your current geographic location. Alternate queries that will get the same information about your computer include "who am i" and "what is my ip."

2. Date and Time

You would normally need an Excel spreadsheet and may have to learn some formulas to perform basic calculations involving date and time but not with Wolfram Alpha. The tool lets you work with dates using natural English (similar to Outlook Calendar).

If you are to calculate the number of days before your next holiday, use "how many days until <holiday name>". You can subtract dates  like regular numbers or compute new dates with natural phrases like "second saturday of next month" or "now + 10 days."

3. Food

Wolfram Alpha can instantly answer most of your food and nutrition related questions like how many calories are present in a bottle of Coke? Which is healthier – the french fries served at Burger King or the ones at McDonald's?

4. Time Zones

You know that a query like "time in <city>" will display the current time of that city. This works for most search engines but Wolfram has an additional feature that works in reverse.

You can specify the time of any city and it will convert that time into your local timezone. This should be handy when a client suggests a meeting time using his timezone and you have to quickly figure out if that time works out for you.

Also see: A Less Confusing View of World Time Zones

5. Astronomy

If you are a fan of Astronomy, you'll absolutely love Wolfram Alpha and it can compute the position of stars and planets for any given day.

The tool can tell you the exact dates for astronomical events like when the next solar eclipse will take place while a specific query like "solar eclipse in new york" will show you the date for the next eclipse that will be visible from New York.

6. Finance

Want to know the number of people who are working for a particular company. Wolfram Alpha can get this information and more using simple queries like "market cap of Apple" or "revenue of Google." You may also use the tool to query past stock prices and indices.

7. Colors

What do you get when you pour some red paint in a bucket of yellow paint? What's the HTML and RGB equivalent of Purple?

8. Comparisons

Wolfram|Alpha is an excellent tool for performing comparisons and it presents results in a neat table making it easy for you to interpret the data.

You may compare almost anything and everything from airports, universities, size of popular structures (Statue of Liberty vs Eiffel Tower), quantities (10 lb vs 12 kg), stock quotes, sales tax rates in various cities, sports teams, and even standard paper sizes.

9. Weather

Most search engines offer weather forecast for the next 7 or 10 days but with Wolfram Alpha, you can get historic weather conditions of a city as well for any given date.

And unlike Google which will only give you sunrise and sunset times for the next day, Wolfram Alpha can compute that information for any past and future date.

10. Understand Relations

This is one of my favorites. Put it any complex family relationship – like your mother's sister's son's wife's father – and Wolfram will map it into a genealogical tree making it easier for you make sense of that relation.

These are just some uses of the very-awesome Wolfram|Alpha. Do check this page for more examples and then go here to add Wolfram to your browser's search box.