Eco friendly Clothing

Lot many times we come across the word “ECO-Friendly” be it eatables, deodorants, shopping bags or beauty products; but the latest entrant in this series is eco friendly clothing.

Eco clothing is still at a nascent stage, and not adopted by many of the entities in the entire supply chain of the Clothing (right from the farmers; fertilizer provider; to cloth manufacturer). As “Eco Friendly” as a concept in clothing is a “Road less travelled” the cost of products based on this concept is very high.

Eco fabrics are generally more expensive due to the fact that mass production (economics of scale) is not implemented. Organic cotton is available only in limited quantities. Low impact dyes are used in coloring these fabrics which causes less or no impact to the environment as well as to the human skin.

The extra processing applied to avoid hazardous chemicals makes it all the more costly. The manufacturing process for eco clothing makes the complete cycle more expensive.

All these factors add to the total cost of the garment thus the product gets a high price tag and goes out of reach of common customer. Eco friendly uses chemicals and processing processes that are not polluting the environment or are less hazardous, right from chemical used as fertilizers; Dying till processing and converting into fabric.

But how eco friendliness can be implemented in clothing?

Everyone in the supply chain requires a considerable amount of money and time to change from conventional to organic approach.

Not many players (for finished product) exist in the market. I know one of my favorite brand, has some products in this domain; world famous Levi Jeans has tow eco friendly lines ; Levis Eco and Levis Captial E. Eco is made with a large percentage of organic cotton and Capital E has all organic cotton as well as recycled buttons, and zippers. However both lines feature the same style and quality that Levi Jeans is known for.

Product Positioning

A newly launched advertisement of Dairy Milk chocolate, which says "Din hai suhana aaj pehli taarikh hai; meetha hai khana aaj pehli taarikh hai".

The question that comes in is how salary and Cadbury is related and how Cadbury and celebration are related. Well that;s what they are trying to relate; trying to position there brand and promote it as a sweet.

You might have came across many incidents where parents are shouting at their kids “don’t eat chocolate,” or you might have been asked; not to give chocolates to the kids.

Now if kids stop eating chocolate then who is going to consume them; Cadbury might have sensed it and to increase the penetration of their product they touched upon the sentiments and they positioned chocolates in a way that everyone can consume it and it’s no more a product that is to be consumed only by kids.

There use to be days when there use to be no salary account and the salary was distributing by the accounts department of the firm after signing some documents. People use to get there salary in cash and they use to carry sweets and gifts for there family member on the salary day.

With the advancement of technology; banking sector and penetration of so called corporate culture salary account came as a concept.

There advertisement indirectly gives you a message that “Buy Cadbury chocolates for your loved on your salary day”

The previous advertisement use to say “kuch metha ho gaye.”

Here the company might have planned to promote; replace sweets with a substitute (chocolate). We Indians have been exchanging, distributing sweets since centuries on good occasions, news etc and in case on unavailability of sweet at that point of time we never hesitate to use sugar as a substitute.

It’s all about how you position your product and how you market the product.

Change is inevitable

One of the most visited portal http://www.rediff.com/ has gone a change in the design and appearance. Well change is inevitable and Packaging of the product and services needs to be changed at a regular frequency to keep the interest of the users alive

The day when I opened the site it was entirely a new look and feel, I thought by mistake I might have misspelled it, I closed the browser and keyed in rediff.com again and this time too the same site appeared, I was taken a back, the site got changed without any notice or opinion Poll.

Though it’s there asset and they can change it anytime but I expected /anticipated a user survey about the look and feel, ease of operation before moving to the newer interface with new aesthetics.

I think the previous version of the site was easy and grouping of the contents was done with appropriate hierarchy but right now the grouping area has been expended enormously. A visitor new to the site will never come to know that this a portal, the competitors of rediff look rich in content and asset.

The first view at the home page gave me an impression of the site being a search engine. Home page is as clean as Google’s home page. The point to ponder over here is the Google’s home page has been intentionally kept blank because they might not want there visitor to get defocused from there job of “search”

Today’s rediff appeared me as search engine. With no advertisement, in the home page neither in the inner page, The priorities on the home page has been changed to News, Movies, Cricket. Earlier version has the best tagging in place for example if I’m reading the business news it used to show the Sensex on the right hand panel (Most close relation with the content). But now this facility got lost. Right panel is free with some “Stars Spotted” getting displayed across the portal and no relevance with the content.

Though this are my views and might differ from yours. Wto have you comments on the same and probably we can represent it the rediff board.

Post Office

When did you last wrote anything to your friend, colleague, or relative using a pen and paper and how many time have send it through the Indian Post. (if at all you have written it on piece of paper). Writing letters to loved one is a passé and letters are now digitized or have been replaced by voice.

But still as I’m writing on Indian Post I wanted you to think of the Indian post, now what is the picture that comes inforont of you. Correct me if I’m wrong on any of the points

1) A postman with a old bag on a bicycle.
2) A postman who may not be shaved propery.
3) A face with less aspirations, and energy
4) A Person tired of cycling and heat and what not.

But very few of us might know that Indian Post works on six sigma. I’ll not go much deep in six sigma but try to dig some hidden jewels from Indian post office and its services

1) It has most widely distributed post office system in the world.
2) It has been the only medium of communication in remote villages where the courier boy will not dare to deliver.
3) It has delivered the cheapest and easiest mode of communication, even the postman in villages will write and read a letter for you, because the association is relation based

Apart from the services mentioned there are some excellent Financial services provided by Indian post, In the time of recession where most of the bank have reduced there deposit rate this is the only organization providing a high interest rate to the depositors. For a person who want to safe guard his investment from fluctuating interest rate Indian post office offers excellent investment option


Post Office Monthly Income Scheme
The scheme (MIS) provides monthly payment of interest to investors. This is ideal for Retired person or to the investors who want to invest and earn interest on a monthly basis for their livelihood. This is an excellent source of regular income on a long term basis.

How you can Put it your Use
If you are an aggressive investor invest some 1,50,000 in it for 5 years, This will fetch you an Intrest of 1000 Ruppes per month, Now invest this amount in any of the SIP available in the market and you are done, Your principal is safe and you are betting on intrest component. Believe me SIP from any of the mutual fund will give you a 10-15% return whatever may be the condition.

So you are enjoying the benefits of wealth protection and Wealth multiplication as well

National Savings Certificates
National Savings Certificates (NSC) scheme combines growth in money with reductions in tax liability as per the provisions of the Income Tax Act, 1961. The duration of the same being 6 years.

How you can Put it your Use
The maturity period for this scheme is 6 years and if you keep on investing each year till 6 years you will be relieved from tax burden for ever, because the first investment will double and mature in 6 year and so the remaining investment maturing every sixth year and for the upcoming year 6th year onwards you can invest the matured amount again to the same scheme.

Strategy needs to be changed

A recent Article published in McKinsey quaterly reveled that People in US has slowed down there spending because of recession (an obvious response to recession) and this slowdown is across all categories. The alarming this is that more than half of the customers are planning to control there spending even after the economy recovers.

This Control on spending by US customer will put pressure on exports from India. People might look for more value of money as compared to previous days.
China may feel the pinch to a larger extend as compared to India, the reason’s are obviously understood.

Because of this new pattern the Indian manufacture might be required to revive there long term and short term strategies.

How you express love, affection and Belief.

It’s very common question and a matter of argument in human relations “how much do you love me” and “how I can make you understand how much I love you and care for you”.

Well is this question and argument justifiable in all the relations?

When you love someone you often buy one or the other thing, keeping your interest and yours partners interest, likening and disliking in mind. (I will not call them as gift because every purchase for someone you love is not gift.)

You may have lot of aspiration and planning to buy something for your loved one and near and dear ones. The way I dream of purchasing a Battery operated bike for my kids as they are crazy for bikes and I can imagine how happy and delighted they will be when they will ride on that. We can fall in love with anyone right from any living or nonliving thing, somebody loves his/her car and is very possessive about that; somebody loves his/her pets and so on.

I came across several incidents when people show there love and affection towards God, I don’t say that it is wrong to express the love because even I purchase costly Incense Sticks for the Pooja thinking that as I like the smell, so will my Lord.

But the question is "Is God looking for or accepting costly offerings ?".

I do have opinion on that but writing them explicitly will attract wrath of devotees and I do not want to hurt the sentiments of the people

Project management and Planning

If you have came across or if you Know murphy’s law (Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong) hold true when I recently visited pune along with my family. Applied all the project management, Risk management practices, critical path in place, and with all the knowledge of profit maximization, Return on investment (mine), cost-profit analysis, but things still went wrong and were above our imagination.

We started our journey on 7th July-2009 and everything went smooth till we reached my cousins place. There we were supposed to scout for a TAXI which we can use for next 4-5 days; we collected the information from various mouths, with lot of constraints in place of kilometers/day, price per kilometer, blah blah we zeroed in one TAXI wala who was charging us 6.50 Rs/ Kilometer and no constraints of per day average.

We loaded the Taxi with our belongings and started on 8th jul7-2009 at 7.00 AM. After travelling few kilometers an unexpected thing happened my younger kid vomited, we took it lightly and we went to Dagduseth Temple and after that we went to my sis in law’s place to change ourselves. We again started at 8.30 am after moving some 10-15 minutes he again vomited and atleast 4 times, now this was a concern and we were not planned for it. We dropped our plan and came back to pune. Visited doctor immediately as I was worried of food poisoning and intestine infection. Doctor said its nothing to worry, might be moving sickness or because of diesel vehicle.

Now we were struck and couldn’t do anything because the places we were supposed to visit were all inaccessible by Rail route and taxi was a must. At one point of time I thought that we would have to be stationed in pune only and we will not be able to visit anywhere.

All the planning, shortest path and the entire contingency plan, backup plan went hewer, we were prepared for all the things but never thought of moving sickness as the kids are accustomed of travelling in car, flight and buses. So I though of Murphy’s law and started preparing for the next day schedule making an assumption that things will go in my favor as the date striking was 9th July-2009

Image source: blaahblaahblog.wordpress.com

Rain Rain went away

Many of us will agree and must have observed that this year Rain God is upset and not in a mood to shower there blessings. I recently visited Pune and places around pune and interacted with lot many peoples (because of my talkative nature) and a conversation with them reveled that there is hardly any rain and whatever shower has been there are far below the average rainfall.

It is almost mid of July and the cities in and around pune have hardly got 2-3 spell of rains and that too for a short duration.

The situation is no more different in states like Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.

It is almost one month to the onset of South West Monsoon over Andhra Pradesh but there is no sign of rains as empty clouds are hanging around with yielding any rains. As the state recorded a huge deficit of more than 50% deficit in the rain fall in the month of June, serious crisis is looming large on the horizon and specter of drought is staring at the state.

The desert state of Rajasthan has recorded 25 per cent less rainfall than normal this year.
The Haryana government drew up a contingency plan for farmers, as the situation looks grim with monsoon playing truant. The contingency plans chalked out by the government include alternate crops which do not require much water and new production technologies.
The fitful monsoon has created havoc in India's biggest city, Mumbai. Lack of rainfall in catchments has created a critical water shortage. Mumbai authorities last week imposed a 30 per cent cut in town water and have stopped supplying water to non-essential services such as swimming pools.

If things doesn’t change sharply the entire nation will be draught affected, while economic growth has dipped from 9 per cent to 6 per cent in the past 12 months, rural demand has helped underpin the economy.

But a below-par monsoon could wipe a percentage point from India's growth rate this year.

Sources:

http://www.hindustantimes.com/
http://www.theage.com.au/
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/drought-crakced-earthGETTY.JPG

Wish List - Economic Survey - 2008-2009

Some of the Salient features of a wish list in the Economic Survey for 2008-09 released by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in parliament Thursday justifying the article and sectors
1) Raise foreign investment cap in insurance to 49 percent

2) Allow 100 percent foreign investment in health, weather insurance

3) Raise Rs.25,000 crore from divestment every year

4) Sell 5-10 percent in profitable non-Navratnas

5) List unlisted state-owned firms, divest at least 10 percent equity

6) Auction loss-making state-owned firms

7) Remove fringe benefit tax

8) Remove commodity and security transaction taxes

9) Provide fertiliser subsidy directly to farmerscovered in my previous article “Stocks to collect Pre Budget”

Walk when you talk.

Recently came across with a T.V advertisement popularizing a concept “Walk when you talk”, though I didn’t understood the concept fully but whatever I could understand that they wanted to say that people should walk when they are talking on the phone because of some hidden health benefits.

There is already an enough hue and cry for the health hazards related to usage of mobile phones. Now the debatable question is that whether one should walk when he is talking on the phone.

My opinion would be to do nothing when one is talking on the phone the few justification to my opinion are

1) If you have a pen in your hand you will scribble the paper lying in front of you, the paper might prove something very important when you hand up.
2) If you are walking while talking you may jump a signal and encounter some accident. I came across news when a doctor attending a call from patient was crossing railway tracks and was knocked down by the speeding train.
3) If you are moving restless and talking on phone you might enter a wrong loo.

These are just some incidents which I came across personally, but I believe that there is not thumb rule of doing things while attending the call.

Image source: http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=5814515059786942310&postID=6647217218257386675#

Stocks to collect Pre Budget

1) FDI: Limit of foreign direct investment can be increased to 49% from the existing limit, Earlier Left was opposing the proposal of allowing share of FDI. Insurance companies stock and other companies who are related to FDI can gain looking at the brighter prospects in terms of availability of finance / funds

2) Disinvestment: Disinvestment or diluting government stake in companies will be a major agenda. The companies from which government can sell out its share can be BHEL, NTPC

3) Power & Infrastructure: Power and infrastructure is expected to focused in the budget and may lead to long term rally in power and infrastructure stock

4) Agriculture: RCF And other fertilizer stock are expected to rally post budget, because agriculture will be main focus area for the govement to improve it’s bottomline, but weak monsoon may cause a push back to the fertilizer stock.

5) STT: Security transaction tax is supposed to be abolished in the budget so the companies who’s revenue model is based on brokerage of stock traded will be benefited, as the contribution from the retail investors in the equity market will increase. Market will also improve because the entry load on mutual funds is supposed to be withdrawn and exit load is supposed to be brough down, this will increase the participation of investors.

6)Textile: Textile industry is facing a stiff competition from neighboring countries, so the import duty can be reduced the way there is no import duty on cotton, Technology up gradation fund scheme (TUFS) is likely to be extended, textile companies stocks will be sky rocketing from there current prices