Anand sweets at home for Diwali and then...?

Anand sweets advertised heavily in Bangalore for Diwali to order sweets from them for homes and corporates. I was really wondering how will they be able to scale up their production capacity to meet all the demands of corporates and homes. Unfortunately, our company also ordered sweets from Anand sweets and were delivered on Friday afternoon to our respective locations. Outside the box, it said consume milk sweets within 24 hours, but the box failed to indicate when these sweets were manufactured or packed in it.

When I opened the box to thank our company and savor these sweets, I was suspecting the smell. This is not the usual Anand sweets quality. Either they outsourced the production or ignored quality to meet the scaled up demands. I only had a small bite to save myself from any consequences. After I reached home, I gave the sweets to my security guard and the next day morning he reported sick to work. It was none other than one piece of Anand sweets I gave him that caused diarrhea. I did not know how to feel.... thanks for not eating them or sorry for giving them to my security guard who suffered from it !!!

A search engine syndrome?

Or something else? The readers of my blog, please help me. I am suffering from the following syndrome. The symptoms are... I dont memorize things purposefully which can be quickly found on the web with the help of a search engine. Any docs watching this blog? Help me out to get rid of this. For example, my friend told me about Gurucharan Das recently and two books he wrote that were quite popular - you see... I already forgot the book names because I know the keywords to describe the books. I know that he wrote this popular book that has a word Elephant in it, and another one that took examples from Mahabharata, relates human qualities to characters in Mahabharata. Since I know all these keywords, I just dont want to remember the names of his popular books. I think its really really bad on me !!

by the way, checkout his blog: http://gurcharandas.blogspot.com/ .

Man... I need to overcome this syndrome. Alright, his popular books are: Difficulty of being good: on the subtle art of Dharma, India Unbound, The Elephant Paradigm.

GDP and GNP

Following post is a courtesy from the text book Macroeconomic Policy Environment by Shyamal Roy.

We all know that GDP is Gross Domestic Product. It is a measure of economic activity in any country. GDP is simply calculated as sum total value of all goods and services produced in that country. It is usually measured every year, but of late due to volatilie economic conditions, it is measured every quarter. Ofcourse, more than the absolute number, the rate of change in these numbers every quarter is what makes interesting for stakeholders.

Now, what is Gross National Product (GNP)? GNP is simply the total value of goods and services producted by the residents of a country, irrespective of their geographic location. For example, people employed in Infosys India, goes abroad and earns money will be counted in the GNP of India, but will not be part of GDP of India. Let us say this employee is working in USA, his income will be part of US GDP and GNP of India. Now, you might say is it true for NRIs? No, the GNP is calculated only for resident Indians. So, obviously if this employee is staying beyond 180 days, his income will not be part of India's GNP.

Let us consider one more interesting number called, Net Factor Income from Abroad (NFIA). This number is very easy to derive (theoratically). Just take all the income earned by residents of India from rest of the world and subtract the income earned by non-residents of India in India. Currently this figure for India is negative, which means the income earned by foreigners in India is more than the income earned by Indians in outside India.

Do you now see the link between GDP, GNP and NFIA? Can we say, GDP = GNP - NFIA? Do you want to think how? Comment me if you dont get it.

Are you serious? Do you really want to blog that way?

check it out...

http://www.ted.com/talks/yossi_vardi_fights_local_warming.html

Whats Local Warming?

Get a mac campaign..

Youtube has become increasingly popular among corporates as a new medium of their marketing and advertising. Check out the new Get a Mac campaign in You tube.. few ads that I could not stop myself laughing out loud are..

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrJTiAwpM6I - ask what you can give to Vista, not what vista can give you

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNnX6XRQBec&NR=1 - movies made on a PC

Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection

Economists refer to this term 'Moral Hazard' as someone's behaviour is not observed, then it affects the probability or magnitude of the payments. For example, if your car is fully insured, then you are less likely to be careful while driving. Or if you house is fully insured against theft, you will be less diligent about locking doors or installing an alarm system.

Adverse Selection is a form of information asymmetry. For example, in used car market, the seller of the car knows much more information than the buyer. When making a purchase, buyers view all cars as 'medium quality', in the sense that there is an equal chance of getting a high-quality or low-quality car. Because of such asymmetric information problem, low-quality goods drive high-quality goods out of the market. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the lemons problem. Another example is, how insurance companies sell premium. They hope that there are more healthier people taking policies than less healthy people so that the costs are averaged for Insurance companies and they can make some money too.

New Drug for a Pharma company

Did you know that under guidelines established by US FDA (Food and Drug Administration), no drug could be sold in the US market until it underwent three stages of successful clinical testing and sruvived a rigorous approval procedure?

Only one in 20 trail-phase drugs was eventually approved for public use and even successful candidates often took 10 years and 50,000 pages of documentation to win FDA approval. The total cost of this process was reported to be between $500 million to $880 million.

Now do you know why someone sells an antibiotic for 300 rupees a tablet?

Would you buy imported Apples or Domestically grown?

If you are a sensitive Global citizen caring for climate change, consider answering this question. Lets say you live in Bangalore, Would you buy a domestically grown Apple or buy an imported apple while staying sensitive to the climate? If you answer Domestically grown apple would have less impact on climate, you could be wrong. The producers store domestically grown apples in cold storage warehouses for long duration (could be 3 to 6 months based on summer) and this energy would have resulted in more carbon emissions than the ones due to transportation of imported apples.

Wal-mart's Annual IT budget

Here is another 'amusing' fact - Did you know that WALMART's IT spending is only second to Pentagon? With sales of around $253 billion, WALMART spends roughly $4.5 billion on IT. Though this figure is not publicly available, this is derived from the usual percentage terms (1.8% of sales) of retailers.

BMP Property Tax

Last week I paid the property tax for the assessment year 2009-10 via online. Its so cool. All you need is last year's application number (that you paid under new UAV scheme) and you are all set to go. Once you give the application number, the system shows how much you owe and just pay that amount online. This site also gives you the facility to inform BMP of any mis-calculations that occured during previous filing. I found it very cool and convenient. Just search for BMP Online in google and click on Online Tax Payment.

Air Express: Document Carrier

Another post in my 'Did you know' series. Air Express service, in other words the courier service that air ships your documents or non-documents which weigh below 50 KGs check in the collected consignments as excess passenger baggage. :-) In a normal case, any cargo beyond 50KG goes as air cargo in cargo planes. But this has certain limitations such as timing, synchronizing flight connections, safety of documents etc. So, courier companies became innovative and they actually carry your documents or small boxes that you want to ship by air, either domestic or international with the help of passengers. There are some intermediate companies that are into this business of 'supplying' passengers who just tag along the baggage of courier companies and 'travel' with them. Once they reach the destination, the courier company's baggage is taken over by the respective local office. The passenger has absolutely nothing to do with the baggage.

Now do you know how Scotty and his friend Cooper flew from Ohio to England for just $18? ;-)

Carbon Capture

We all know how serious the threat of green house gases (GHG) these days is. There have been considerable discussions, awareness and activities worldwide to reduce carbon emissions and to look for alternate energy sources more actively. Many nations are planning to cut their carbon emissions or GHG emissions or try to offset them by purchasing carbon credit. One way to reduce carbon emissions is not to use fossil fuel like coke or oil. But the problem is for the industries to switch to alternate energies, it would take sometime (could really be a decade or more). This is not an immediate solution.

Few nations are trying for some alternate ways of reducing emissions. One such method is, CCS Carbon Capture and Storage. In this method, the carbon is captured at the source and pumped underground. Such a method is expected to reduce CO2 pollution by 40% according to oil major Shell. Ofcourse such a method can shoot two birds with one bullet. Shell is providing this services to companies that want to reduce carbon emissions. Shell makes money from these companies by helping them reduce carbon emissions and guess where do they pump this gas? They pump this gas into oil fields so that the oil that could not be extracted from the normal levels can now be extracted because due to the pressure created by CO2 in these oil fields, the oil levels raise above. :-)

Did you know series

Oflate I am getting lot of gyan. So, I thought of putting them in my blog under the theme 'Did you know?'. I will label them as 'Did you know'.

Hillary wants emission cuts from India

The carbon foorprint of US is 22.2% of the world and that of India is 4.9%. India is one among the few countries who is expanding the forests to offset carbon footprint. And Hillary is asking India to commit on the emission reduction?

By the way, China I think has gone past US in terms of Carbon Emissions.

Excellent way to learn Casio Keyboard for a beginner

I have been enjoying Carnatic Music for long time... but never thought of learning. Recently when I saw Casio Electronic Keyboard, I thought, why not try out? I picked up SA-45, the basic keyboard from eZone for 1800 and started trying my luck. I thought I would get sufficient resources on Internet to learn play this. I m not such a great fan of Carols, so I wanted to stick to South Indian way of playing Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Da Ni on this keyboard. I tried few on the net, but there is one series that I liked most. The lessons are in the form of short videos uploaded to You Tube. The objective is to teach Bhajans, but they go along with a Raaga. Its a nice way to learn Casio Keyboard. Check out this link for more details: http://www.youtube.com/user/kpax1008

Risk of Commoditizing

When a product becomes commodity, customers dont need choice. They just look at the price comparison. For example, if Stategy becomes a commodity (as I see the risk now in current times), no customer would want to pay premium to a straight forward stategy. They would just look around, find any MC company that can deliver strategy and get the cheapest one. So, you are a product vendor, you constantly need to watch if your product is being commoditized. And keep innovating on your product to stay afloat if you want to be unique.

June 5th World Environment Day

Yesterday was World Environment Day and I took public transport to work along with my colleagues to reduce my carbon footprint.

Quote...

What you are is God's gift to you. What you become is your gift to God.

Parantha holic - Bellandur

This is a new speciality eat out joint opened at Bellandur two weeks ago. I had been there last week and writing my experience. As the name suggests, its supposed to be 'the' place for those who love parathas. But u know.. Bangalore is such a cosmo city that you hardly find large punjabi community in just one location. Bellandur area has a mix of people from various locations. These are the people who eat Parathas once in a while and for a change from routine. With that perspective, Parantha holic is doing well even though the parathas are not really delicious.

The prices start from Rs.30 and go till 60 for each Paratha. One paratha comes with achar and curd. The size is not really big. I would eat two such parathas for lunch along with some rice & dal. The curries are to be bought extra. Average meal costs Rs.100 per head and this is a self service joint. My first experience from this place is, this will create confusion in the customer about the positioning. This is not a fast food center that churs out 10 parathas in 15 minutes for high volume visitors and at the same time this is not an order, eat and pay restaurant with comfortable seating. If the target customers are bachelors, one has to shell out roughly 70-80 rupees for a filling meal. If the target customers are family of two or four, it would be around 400, but would such a family want to spend time in a self service eat out where not so great parathas are served? I still like Dummas parathas than Parantha holic !

So, my suggestion to you is, 'Improve the taste of Parathas, Price Competetively, Process the orders quickly'.

3rd Generation Honda City

I wanted to write about my new Honda City for a long time. Here it is...

The 3Generation Honda City was launched in October 2008 in India (after its first launch in Thailand). It has new arrow shot design that makes it look like Civic at the first glance. I got this beauty on Nov 26th.

By this time there are many Citys running on Bangalore roads. So, its not much fun to write about the features of this car. I will write about my experiences. This model of City has got an bigger wheels which helps in increased ground clearance. With just two people in the car including driver, any bump can be easily negotiated. With 3 in total, you need to be careful at certain bumps. With four passengers, you have to be careful all the time when there are speed breakers. After two three weeks, you will know this yourself and also the bumps which you can handle with some speed.

Eversince I got this, I have been filling Shell Super Petrol and I have been getting a mileage of 13KMPL in city traffic with occassional A/C. With all the time A/C and bumper to bumper traffic it drops to 8.5 KMPL (As shown on the dash board).

Just comment if you have any questions on this car and I will be happy to answer.

SMART Ulips

My investment agent approached me with the SMART Ulip products introduced by SBI, Tata AIG and Birla Sunlife. All these products have similar unique feature, i.e. they promise the highest NAV the funds touched during 10 years period at the time of redemption . The ppt is either 3 or 5 years and if you surrender before 5 years it attracts surrender charges. Although, you are very likely to get sold to the idea that you are guaranteed for the highest NAV, you must remember that the number of units you hold by the end of the tenure are the ones that you can cash on. For example, you have invested 50,000 for 3 years. The total amount you invested is 1,50,000. But this product also has administration charges and monthly recurring charges. On the days when the market is doing really bad, you will lose more number of units because the NAV is less. Lets say for first year the invested amount is 50,000 and SBI charges Rs 60 per month flat thoughout the policy term and additional Rs 5 for every 1000 of sum assured for the first 3 policy years. Incase of SBI Life Sum Assured = 5 times Allocated Premium. For a 3 year ppt, around 34,500 goes out in fixed charges, remaining charges go out in cancellation of units. Lets say the units started at initial NAV of 10 and when the NAV goes up you get less number of units and when it goes down you get more (remember when it goes down you also lose more units interms of monthly admin charges). So finally you ended up after 3 years total number of units accumulated are around 10,000 and by the time you surrender, this 10,000 units would have shrunk to 8800 or 9000 and for you to break-even at the time of surrender after 10 years, the NAV should have touched minimum 17 (17*9000 = 1,56,000) and to really reap good benefits of holding amount for 10 years, NAV of 35 would fetch you 3,15,000 and a NAV of 45 would be 4,05,000/- . 

We are talking about an MF that started with Rs 10 and touched 45 (an appreciation of 450%) atleast once in a period of 10 years. If you think this sounds logical, dont think twice to invest in these funds.

BBMP Property Tax - Finally paid it

When I was reading the ads by BBMP in ToI by Citizens who paid property tax about the ease of payment and help they received, I was thinking BBMP was exaggerating. But when I paid the tax by myself, I realized it was not really the case. I went to one of the make shift BBMP offices near my apartment and they had around 10 chairs to sit, one assistant to ensure people are sitting in the order they arrived, two tax collectors, one clerk to print the paid receipts (has got a computer, printer with UPS) and two ceiling fans in running condition. It took me not more than 30 minutes because they also helped me with filling of the form. I wrote a cheque favoring 'The Commissioner, BBMP' for the amount he specified and thats it. I collected the receipt and got it signed by the Tax Collector. One thing I still did not like is, despite of Times Of India's alarm against using '2007 Army Flag Day' stickers on the receipts and collecting money from Bangalore citizens, this practice is still continuing.

BBMP - New Property Tax Rules

Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike has announced new rules for assessing and paying property taxes in Bangalore city. If you pay the property tax before 31 March 09 you will receive a 5% discount. :-) Following is the procedure to pay property tax.

1. Visit this link http://www.bmponline.org/propertytax/hand%20book.shtml. This link gives the basic details of new scheme introduced by BBMP.

2. The next step is to find out which zone your property falls into (A to F zones).

3. Remember: If your property is AUTHORIZED property, fill the pink form. That is Form-II. Do not fill the LIGHT GREEN Form (FORM-III) even if you are insisted by the BBMP Officer. This form is for un-authorized property and it seems they are asking citizens to use this form. Do not forget to carry your last year fee paid receipt. This receipt contains your Khata number.

4. Calculate the property tax as per the handbook and visit your nearest BBMP office.

5. Pay the fee and obtain proper receipt.

Commitment and Involvement

Once a chicken and a pig decided to open a breakfast restaurant. They were discussing what should be served for breakfast. The chicken said, 'What else ! Ham and Eggs'. Well, the pig then said 'No way !! IF we serve Ham and Eggs, I would be commited and you would only be involved'.

How to obtain Marriage Certificate

Last week I completed one long pending activity, to get my marriage certificate. The process itself is pretty simple if you are already married. Oh.. yeah, by the way this process is only for thos who are already married as per hindu marriage customs. This process does not describe how to get married infront of a registrar. I was already married and wanted to get my marriage recognized by the Government of India. Of late there are many software engineers visiting foreign countries and obtaining marriage certificates so that they can take their spouses along. I am not one among them, I just thought I would keep the marriage certificate with me. The marriages are registered with Sub-Registrar - Special Officer for Marriages. Everybody in the sub-registrar office responsible for marriage registration are pretty much aware why does someone need a marriage certificate and they have certain expecations from you interms of 'donation' you could offer to the clerk there.

Step by step procedure to get marriage certificate:

Step1 - Find the sub-registrar office

You could get your marriage registred in a city or town where you can produce residence proof. As I said, the marriage is registered in the sub-registrar office. The sub-registrar office is usually located in the same premises of the same sub-registrar who registers property deals. So, its not a tough job to find out where this office is. Just ask any real-estate broker in your area, he would guide you where the sub-registrar office is.

Step2 - Submit the required documents

Following documents are required:

1. Age proof in the form of 10th standard certificate or passport (A Photocopy of either of them)

It is better to inquire at the office which one do they accept. For me, they did not accept passport as age proof, he specifically wanted 10th certificate for age proof for both of us.

2. Residence Proof (Passport or Driver's License) 

I submitted two wheeler driver's license and my wife submitted her passport

3. Three photos with clear faces of bride and groom 

The three photos taken during three important stages of marriage (one is during Muhurat, next while tieing the knot and third what we call Talambralu in telugu-I dont know how to say it in other languages).

4. Form 1A - can be obtained outside the regitrar office for Rs. 5 or Rs.10/-

5. Two applications one for bride and one for groom on a Rs.10/- stamp paper with the details of marriage (They can also be obtained from the vendor outside the office for a nominal charge - Maximum Rs.100).

6. Wedding cards from both parties

7. A certificate issued by the Wedding Hall that your marriage took place at certain date & time with your names including your family name.

All the above documents are mandatory and lack of any can not be excepted.

Step 3: Three witnesses

After you have all the above documents, just walk into registrar's office along with your spouse and three witnesses. The registrar will examine your documents and you require three witnesses to sign on Form 1A. Once the documents are examined, you would proceed to a clerk who would ask you and your spouse to sign in the marriage register. All the three witnesses would also have to sign here.

Step 4: The clerk would then ask you to come back on the same day - usually in the evening when nobody is around so that you could make your 'donation'. I donated six hundred after he demanded.

I hope this post is useful for you. There might be slight variations to the process depending on place to place. But the required documents might be the same.

Why did Raju do this?

Satyam's Ramalinga Raju is well educated man. He is from HBS and as I read from one of his contemporaries article, he is the person who is tech savvy, passionate about his business. But, what lead him to make such faulty decisions? What could be the take away for us? In my opinion, tough people last during tough times only if...

1. They maintain their integrity all the time - my understanding of integrity is dont settle with 'convenient' way of doing things when you are in a tough situation. Instead, stick to what is right, what is ethical and what is appreciated.

2. You really dont have to change yourself or your way in tough times. If you are really the one who is doing right things you naturally withstand tough times - for example, look at Infosys.

3. Trust people, delegate tasks, spread the information, dont micro manage. Had Raju really kept his books transprarent, he would not have to ride the tiger at all. (He confessed that he was riding a tiget and wanted to get off without being eaten).

Satyam - Asatyam

When Ramalinga Raju admitted that a fraud has happened in their books, I wondered about the timing. He said in his message that what started as a narrow gap by mistake had grown into a massive black hole that sucked an entire company of 53000 employees. Someone says this is Financial Terrorism. If a terrorist gets shot dead mercilessly in an encouter, what should be done to such people who cause Financial Terrorism ?

Could it have been announced without Raju telling his friends to sell Satyam stocks? Could not it have been dealt much early? He said he did not take a single rupee from Satyam stock except for some philanthorpic activities. If he had such good intentions, why should he wait till date?