My Introduction to stock markets …

When I first heard about stock markets way back in 90’s, it was always from the kind of money my relatives or my neighbors are making in the business, they all became my role models. They used to be surrounded by people asking for tips to invest or rather trade in the market.I used to think if I have money, I will invest in a 5 Rs stock , it will jump to 20 than again I’ll invest in another 5 Rs Stock and it will again jump to 20 in few days , the money will become 16 times .. Oh is it so easy, I said to myself, I just need to have 1000 Rs and I will become millionaire one day..this was how I was introduced to the stock market and I was barely 8 year old.

My father used to invest only in IPOs (Initial Public Offering, where one invest in the companies going for listing). I used to wonder why he is so conservative with investment, why not invest in the rapidly moving stocks in the exchange, the money is so huge there, you need to just bet on one and make merry for yourself.

I used to check out daily stock prices of father’s holdings, finding out whether we are making money or losing? In a classic bull market everything used to move so fast, wow we are making money even in IPOs. Everyone just used to talk about share and its returns those days. I used to feel that everyone is so intelligent, I should also know about it. Then there was an Uncle living close to our home and used to always talk big about the latest killing he has made in the market. I used to think, he must be so rich.

The euphoria didn’t lasted long, the whole market crashed, few of the people were badly hit, few sold of their houses, Harshad Mehta became the talk of the town. The Uncle living next door was never seen again in the neighborhood, people say he fled with his family due to the fear of creditors..

Then I thanked my father for being conservative, It’s not so easy after all.. but still that feeling was there inside me ,may be these people were not wise enough I can still make money in this market .. They should have short sold the stocks and they could all had been so rich.. I can do it one day, I used to say to myself..

To be continued..

Insurance against Alien Kidnapping ..

What are the chances of you being kidnapped by Aliens ? You can call it a Hollywood effect, some kind of phobia, good marketing game by Insurance company but there had been more than 40,000 buyers of such insurance policy which will protect them from it .

Goodfellows Insurance offers such a policy which provides massive coverage of $1.7 millions for just 400$ premium . Needless to say that insurance companies makes money out of diseased state of our minds.

The protection against terrorist is one more popular policy nowadays chances of which is again minimum but people are happy to pay a high premium for it !

Top Websites in India

I was just surfing through internet and found alexa.com, it is one of the most popular website for finding out traffic of a site on Internet. It is being used as one of the industry wide benchmark for checking the popularity of the site . Infact one can very easily create his account on Alexa and check out the traffic ranking of it.

I was just curious to know that how many google websites are there in top 20 of India . The list goes as such .. ( Courtesy Alexa)

1. google.co.in
   

   No surprises . Google , nice start (1/1)
   

2. google.com

   Google wins it again 2/2
   

3. yahoo.com

   Legacy of yahoo , which started the email revolution in India , quite deserving but more tech savvy people have moved on ...
   
   

4. facebook.com

   This was a surprise (pleasant one ), I thought orkut is more popular in India .. online games like Farmville and mafia wars has improved its visibility ..
   

5. blogger.com

   Another google website and host for our blogs .. 3/5

6. youtube.com

   hmm , right there on the top , number one streaming videos website, even when webspeed is not great here . The content is just too good . (4/6) for google

7. orkut.co.in

   Orkut, number 1 website of Brasil but at lucky 7 position in India , offlate it has got real tough competition from Facebook . ( 5/7 )

8. rediff.com

   surprise surprise , an Indian website in Indian top 20 ,

9. wikipedia.org

   I am a big fan of Wiki , they are doing a great social service .. Very deserving .

10. orkut.com

    Orkut.in and Orkut.com combined might overtake facebook , what do you think .. (6/10) . wow google is killing the competition here

11. twitter.com

    Social Networking redefined , I see great future for this website and should enter top 10 very soon .

12. indiatimes.com

    Another desi website , good portal

13. linkedin.com

    Recession might have improved the popularity of this website in India . Another social networking website just behind facebook , orkut and twitter .

14. live.com

    Another surprise , Personally I found this website really good but never seen anyone surfing it though .

15. wordpress.com

    Blogging is becoming a rage in Indians , second blogging webpage in top 20.

16. cricinfo.com

    It has to be there , by far the best Cricket webpage , Automated page refresh after every 20 second might again be making it easier for it.

17. ie100.net

    never heard of it ..

18. msn.com

    Still popular , specially people love hotmail and the new page on Indian news is very popular amongst youth.

19. microsoft.com

    Windows default homepages might be helping it to enter top 20 otherwise I dont see any daily need for anyone to visit this portal.

20. in.com

    Indian website which has made waves in last year , another surprise for me .

Sites to look out for :

I believe two the website which can enter the top 20 in next 4-5 years : -

1. moneycontrol.com with excellent research on Equity markets .

2. valueresearchonline.com : - One of the best websites I have ever seen on Mutual Funds

Nursery Admissions in Delhi..

In the last blog I was comparing the ease of admissions in good Engineering colleges of India and USA, now take a look at even tougher admissions, admissions in Nursery for Delhi kids.

Their is again a huge demand supply mismatch of good schools in Delhi inspite of good efforts by the government . Their are more number of children running for fewer seats and the competition is breathtaking. The admissions committee of nursery schools devise a 100 point system for admissions and the point allocation varies from one school to another.

So the first step for parents is to fill the forms for various schools and they will be awarded points on various parameters which often looks absurd to me. The common criteria are : -

1. Alumni : If any of the parents have been alumnus of the school they will get 5 to 10 points . Now is it the mistake of the kid if his parents are uneducated or were not brought up in Delhi.

2. Neighborhood :- It is again a most important criteria and nearly 20-30 marks are allotted to it. This criteria makes lot of sense as without it the ambitious parents will try and put their kids in far located or may be best schools putting pressure on both the child and the traffic of the city.

3. Girl Child : If the candidate is girl, she will be awarded 5 to 10 points which varies from school to school. Now its good to encourage girl child education but is it the fault of the young boy or his parents if he is a boy ?

4. Sibling : Delhi school wants sibling to study in same school and provides extra points for it which makes it tougher for first kid or parents who wants just 1 kid.

5. Single Parents : Single parents are given 5 to 10 extra points.

6. Your views on Education System : This is a qualitative analysis of your thought process based on which the parents are awarded points..

One of the welcome moves has been the removal of extra points for the parents education. It has not been taken very well by the elite class of Delhi but I fully support it and even believe that uneducated parents can even be given few extra points to educate their wards.

So after the shortlisting of children based on points its the interview round, previously there used to be interview of the candidate (Kids! ) but now it has been abolished by the government ,we still have interview of the parents . There are FAQ of the same which lot of parents are reading and preparing for it these days .. the day is not far when we have classroom coaching for the same..

T are parents who gets zero points out of the this point system, does it means that there children are not worthy of good education ?

College Seats.. Demand and Supply ..

Just got hold of the data of selection rate (Engineering Courses ) in Top US Universities , courtesy app2us.com

1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 23.5%

2 Stanford University 28.0%

3 University of California Berkeley 20.4%

4 Georgia Institute of Technology 36.8%

5 University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign 19.2%

6 California Institute of Technology 13.1%

7 Carnegie Mellon University 21.8%

8 University of Southern California Los Angeles 46.6%

9 Cornell University 19.8%

9 University of Michigan–Ann Arbor 36.4%


If you compare it with Indian universities, getting admission is far tougher. To get admission in IITs one has to be in top 2% even after massive increase in intake of IITs. Needless to that there is supply crunch in this sector.

Indian Entrepreneurs tried to tap the opportunity by opening lots of new colleges and universities but the quality and infrastructure, education, professors is still lagging behind in most the new colleges. I believe next 7-10 years will see massive capacity creation of institutes with good education and infrastructure . It might come from Indian Business houses or foreign universities setting up their colleges in India to reduce the large gap in demand and supply of good educational institutes.

The issue of supply of good professor is one factor which might trouble the growth of the industry and it might lead to massive increments in the salaries of Professors.

Google Home Page

Google just keep surprising me with its products and there features. Google homepage is the new addition to my favorite internet page. When I first looked at it , it just made me say " Oh, how could i miss it .. "

Normally homepage are not customized as per the user requirements and the website promote themselves by asking you to make there website as your homepage. In this new era of internet frenzy companies decided to provide more flexibility to the internet user by providing a platform where one can himself decide which website he want to follow on a regular basis. So now instead of wasting time in separately logging in to the different websites one can check out every thing at one go by logging into Google homepage . For example you can add Your Email account , social networking Website, Youtube , Blogs you follow, News Website, Weather Forecasting of your area etc on it and the moment you login to your Google ig account it will show you updates from all the websites. Its like a dashboard for you customized as per your requirements.

There are no advertisement on the homepage and you can even compose mails and chat with your friends through your gmail account connected through homepage.

IPL 3 : Pakistanis out of game

New IPL controversy , None of the Pakistani players getting selected for IPL 3 by any of the teams. Good , Bad or Ugly ?

The way Pakistani players were shown the door back to there country, may not be the best way of sending a message. But the message is loud and clear, if you keep killing people, spreading hate and terrorism, you are not fit enough to be the part of civilized society.

Mr Shahrukh Khan has shown lot of concerns about Pakistanis not being picked up. If he thinks this is wrong, why don't he surrender his money churning KKR team . He said that Pakistan is a great neighbor, I dont know what greatness he has seen in the terrorist nation, his family might not be the one which is affected out of the Pakistan's terrorism but as a respected citizen of India he should make careful remarks about such issues.

We had enough of it now, Pakistan does not deserve any of the privilege of a normal country. They should reform themselves first before pitching for fair and equal treatment.

Volkswagen Beetle - Too high Price

Volkswagen Beetle is easily one of the cutest car in the world and is finally arriving in India. I am really excited and waiting to see car running on Indian roads. But what came as surprise to me is the high price quoted by the company. The company is quoting price range starting from 20-22 Lakhs in India which by no means looks affordable.

If we look at the Volkswagen vehicles, they are known for yesteryear's styling and fun driving dynamics but are inefficient in fuel efficiency. Beetle is positioned as affordable car throughout the world and costs nearly 10 to 13 Lakhs in US. The car is called as people's car and is one of the largest selling vehicle in the world. Given the positioning of the product in the market I can't really understand the logic behind high pricing in India as it will be tough for the car to achieve high volumes at this price.

What segment of the market are they really targeting ?

Rocket Singh

When I went to watch Rocket Singh, I was not expecting much from the movie but found it unexpectedly good and a must watch for all management professional. The movie is a story of a Sales organization rather than a sales man, surprisingly a bollywood movie without any hero.

I think the way movie's promos were designed, it couldn't gave a feel of the quality of the story and looked more like a comedy to me. The promos could have been made more meaningful to pass on the real message.

The characters of sales man looked quite original, dialogs were perfect. The experienced sales man acted really well and his dialogue " Jo sales man ulta nahi pad sakta wo andha hai " was awesome.

Few of the important messages from the movie

Importance of values and ethics in a business without which the business wont survive for long.

It also teaches us the importance of customer value proposition . When for one businessman the customer meant just sales value and for another customer satisfaction was more important.

The employees/ sales force does not meant just to be exploited, pressurized for targets. Just keep your employees happy, targets will itself follow.

The best message was to all the people who are employees and think that things can be done better . Become a Entrepreneur, its not that tough. " Risk to spiderman ko bhi lena padta hai, mai to sales man hu".

Kartikh's Team Spirit

Mr Kartikh , one of the unrated players who rarely scores runs in double digits spoiled the party of Sachin by hitting the winning six against Srilanka. I have , never seen Sachin so clearly upset about not getting a century .

What Karthik did can never be justified by even the worst critics of Sachin, I am sure none of Indian Cricket team fans were amused by such display of batting by Kartikh. He should have curtailed his rare heroics and should have allowed Sachin to complete the century.

3 Idiots !

Just watched 3 Idiot yesterday, truly refreshing movie with great messages. The movie reminded me of good old Engineering college days and the fun I had there with the friends. Yes it has larger than life character of Aamir Khan which looks a bit stretched at times but we need to discount it for the sake of bollywood.

Chetan Bhagat has all the rights to feel cheated as the movie actually has twisted all his scenes and non of it truly resembles 5 point someone but I still think that the real Five point someone story would have been tough to sell in the market. Five Point someone was a great story full of realistic scenes but something which is too specific to the Engineering colleges..

Interestingly movie also touches upon the real problems with Indian education system, fear of failure and pressure on children to perform and excel in regular educational streams . The freedom to choose your own profession is a bit subdued in Indian context and the problem is very clearly depicted in the story. The message is loud and clear to the parents which try to force there children into certain profession just for the sake of there own prestige and societal pressures.


Two of the personal learning from the movie

Al iz Well

Don't delay your dream for Long, do what you really want to do in life.


Some of the Dialogues I loved in the movie ..

Agar dost fail ho jaye toh dukh hota hai aur woh agar woh first aaye toh aur bhi dukh hota hai

Hum science ki taraf se hain

Millimeter Virus Ko bahar nikal

Saari umar hum Mar mar ke jee liye Ek pal to ab humein Jeene do Jeene do

Give me some sunshine

Al iz Well

Where are we Heading ..

It’s been Sixty two year, seems to be a long period. What’s in store for our futures? Is India going to be anywhere close to a supreme power in the world?

If we do a reality check to see if we have any chance to be next China or USA of the world, it’s not going to be an easy task. Where exactly are we lacking?

For initial few years of my schooling it looked like the population growth is the real issue which eats up all the resources. After the advent of globalization the scenario changed and so was the thought process, population was no longer looked upon as the real weakness, we became the knowledge capital of the world, but no real breakthrough yet. Most of the population still doesn’t have the skills to get employed in the newly generated opportunities.

Where are we heading now? What are the plans to revive the condition of the deprived sections? What is the strategy for the next decade to take India to the next level?

I am hopeful that people at the Top have the vision for the future for this great country and they have plans to make significant difference to the life of 1000 million people.

N.D. Tiwari's Biggest Mistake !

N D Tiwari Ji might be one of the fittest octogenarian in the world. 86 year old man was caught in bed with 3 women. The incident is nothing new for the politicians .

I only fail to understand that why did he offered his resignation on health Grounds ?

Good Wicket

Over the years life has become tougher for bowlers, I don't know how can a youngster watching Cricket nowadays will get motivated to become a bowler when a bowler is thrashed to all parts of the ground.


Mediocrity is something which can be appreciated by more number of people and this is precisely the reason why Cricket authorities are trying to woo the audience by making pitches full of runs. It might make batting look more spectacular but it comes at the cost of being unfair to bowlers.

I still remember good old days when bowlers like Wasim, Waqar, Donald, Mgraw, Ambrose, Kumble, Warne use to test batsman for their skill, there use to be a great anticipation for contest between the bat and the bowl. Are we seeing it any of it these days ? It looks like we are just watching batting and not Cricket.


Sometime I really don't understand how can someone call a dead pitch devoid of any life for bowlers as a good cricketing pitch. Making the teams score 400 runs in 50 overs might be making Business sense for the Cricket Lords now but i strongly believe that its a short term trend and eventually people will get bored out of it.

Good Question ..

Why do scientist/space mission looks for water on other planets?

Stay Hungry Stay foolish

Read the book stay hungry Stay foolish , found it really motivating, interesting and a must read for all budding Entrepreneurs. I have noted down the parts I liked most.

Naukri.com

Don’t do it for money, Do it for your Passion!

Don’t exaggerate the cash flows, under commit and over deliver

Be generous with stake sharing.

Employ people who are smarter than you or atleast smart.

Learn the art of delegation!

Funding is important, don’t hesitate on Venture Capital Funding.

Educomp

Look for Need Gap.

The scalability of the venture.

Even if your salary is 15lpa, in 5 yrs you will earn 50 lakhs after tax , If you run a business for 5 yrs , it will be in crores very easily.

Feed Back Inc

Apni Aukat mai kaam karo , check the level of risks you can take

Adequately capitalized

A complete team , competency Mapping

Don’t bother about the peer pressure , “ Koi phikr nahi hai apna kaam kar “ ?

Mastek

If you want to keep your friendship with your college buddies for life, start a firm in a partnership.

Choose a leader not based on shareholding, age but on trust, respect and competence.

Team with trust for each other.

Implemented Balanced score card and incentive schemes very early.

Get 4-5 years of experience; learn at somebody’s cost, get a bit of feel, financial stability and savings.

Don’t just think of it, don’t just wish for it, Jump in it and do it if you are really serious.

More than synergies of skill, synergies of attitude and values is more important.

Subhiksha

Join the company where you want to operate

Work for smaller companies to get the exposure to the nuts and bolts of the company.

Shree RENUKA Sugars

The kinds of jobs which comes on Campus are not suitable for budding Entrepreneurship.

TEGA

Don’t give it up half way.

Have patience during the difficult time.

Plan to put 50% more money than you have calculated .

For midsized company, don’t spread in too many geographies as the management focus will dilute.

Eklavya School ( Sunil Handa )

Can join a company for 2-3 years

Join a company which makes you a CEO of a sick unit, and gives you power to make it profitable

Or

Join a company which provides you opportunity to work fully on a new project from planning till implementation.

Or

Executive Assistant to the CEO , Promoter

Narayan Murthy – Give capital stake to people who add value to your company, not to attract capital.

Edelweiss Capital

As human we grossly overestimate the short term and underestimate the long term.

Financial literacy is very important to run a business.

Make a person head, with slightly more equity holding, not more than 4 partners. Equal partnership is not possible.

Don’t worry about temporary loss of status, money and address.

India Infoline

Be prepared to fail, if you can’t take failures, Entrepreneurship is not for you.

Work for a good medium to big size company before jumping, It helps.

Select a leader, having 3-4 equal share partner and looking for consensus is the worst thing.

EXL

Don’t start fresh out of college, spend some time in industry.

BE conversant with Finance, VCs don’t teach you that, you should know the finance well.

Orchid Pharma

Aim to create value, lasting value, no dearth of capital in the country.

Mphasis

Diversify wherever possible, as u can’t see the future.

Not be over emotional about your company

Important Traits – Networking, Risk Appetite and Luck!

Promoter has to spend lot of time with customer; sales people cannot match yr energy and passion.

As a small company you need to very transparent, refund the money yourself if you did a bad job.

Learn about networking, cash flows, loans, negotiations before taking a plunge in entrepreneurship.

Try to tell your negatives first in power point, than come to your positives.

Take customer reference (Written) to add value to your power point.

Precious Formals

Business plan can be made by anyone, but plans are not enough.

Maths is Fun

I was just searching on net the value of cos 30 and I came across a very informative website. They had displayed a easy way of remembering sine/cosine values.

sin 0° = sqrt(0)/2
sin 30° = sqrt(1)/2
sin 45° = sqrt(2)/2
sin 60° = sqrt(3)/2
sin 90° = sqrt(4)/2

cos 0° = sqrt(4)/2
cos 30° = sqrt(3)/2
cos 45° = sqrt(2)/2
cos 60° = sqrt(1)/2
cos 90° = sqrt(0)/2

The website http://www.mathisfunforum.com contain other interesting Mathematics games , puzzles too.