Finally they realized it. No free lunch!!!

In my previous post “Now, withdraw from any ATM, free!” Dated 15th May-2009 I have written that it is not going to be prudent decision to allow withdrawal from any ATM and how it is going to affect the cost of operation of large bank and what implications the decision may have.

Finally whatever written in the previous post “Now, withdraw from any ATM, free!” appeared true and some restrictions are going to be implemented very shortly on the number of other bank’s ATM transaction and the amount of transaction.

Now the number of free transactions in any other bank’s ATM are to be restricted to be 5 / month and the maximum withdrawal allowed will be 10,000 INR per transaction.

I’ still believe that they need to again rethink there decision of offering free breakfast.

Optimum use of Money

There being an adage that “money saved is money earned”, I do not agree to this fully, because I think to earn more money, you should not stop spending. There is no limit to which you can cut your expenses to save money. Instead of saving more my focus will be to earn more money so that more money gets saved.

How to make more money is a debatable question and I’m not interested to write a book on “make money in 21 days” the way we have a book learn “java in 21 days”. Neither have I intended to give 1000 tips to make money but I believe that whatever money one is spending it should be put to an optimum use. Some of the example of putting money to an optimium use are

1. Should i ask for Full tank:
   
   Whenever you park your vehicle at petrol station, ask for a full tank fuel, because every time you open the lock of your vehicle to fill in the fuel there is an unavoidable loss of petrol due to evaporation. I will explain it further….
   
   Say your monthly petrol bill is 3000 bucks and you fill in your car by 500 bucks 6 times in a month. So with every purchase the tank remains open for 10-15 second without any reason and supposing even 5 ml of petrol evaporates due to hight temperature, make it 30 ml in a month. Besides there are some losses during the filling itself making it to 100 ml in a month and 1 liter in an year.
   
   
   
2. What is the best time to fill petrol?
   
   Seems to be surprised? If not then according to you the best time to fill in petrol will be off load time or any weekend day or lunch hours.
   
   Your choice of time is okay as far as convenience is concerned; becuase you are avoiding long queue and other traffic hassles. But if I put optimum utilization of money in place than any time except night time is not the right time to fuel in your car. I will explain it further….
   
   Petrol being liquid and measure in liters and whenever the temperature rises its molecules gets expanded (In fact every thing expand with the rise of temperature) So as the molecules have expanded themselves there will be less petrol in a liter because of thermal expansion of molecules.
   
   On the contrary in the night because of temperature going down molecules will contract themselves and there will be more petrol in a liter but this time because of thermal contraction.
   
   These finding may not save considerable amount of money for everyone but for those guys who have a fleet of vehicles in their family and together they consume 400-500 liters of petrol in a month for them it may prove a saving of 1-2 liters in a month.

Image Source : http://www.topnews.in/

What are we waiting for?

With the scare of Swine Flu gripping the nation and number of causalities growing day by day I started looking for answers of some of the question which came to my mind.

1. Shouldn’t we allow participation from private hospitals?


2. Is government machinery and hospitals are sufficient enough to cater the Indian population?


3. Are government doctors competent enough?


4. Are we not infringing the right of individual to seek medical treatment as per his wish?


5. Are we not forcing the patients to refer to a specific hospitals which is far away from his residence?


6. Are we not creating inconvenience to the family members of the patient?


7. Are we deferring our self with early detection of ailment by making the test available only with government run hospitals?


8. Are we not delaying the identification of ailment by providing test facility for a limited number of hours?


9. Are we not prolonging the detection of ailment by providing the test report one day after the test is conducted?


10. Are we waiting for catastrophic condition for our self?

Image source: topnews.in

When to buy gold?

With the festival season a dawn away and so the seasons for marriages, you might come across with lot of speculations and discussion regarding the right price at which one should purchase gold. There is no formula for the right price but of course there is some relation which can help us reaching near to bottommost strike price

Gold is considered as a safest investment the very natural reason being; Gold gets consumed when it is transformed into jewellery etc (not unlike oil which cannot be restored to its original state) but can be also restored to the original state.

Indians have a high regard for Gold and so being an Indian do I have, it is considered a symbol of prosperity, richness, wealth etc. My love for gold and desire can’t be expressed in words but in short it is more that the fairer sex have. I remember purchase 10 gms of gold for 4400 Rupees in the year 1997, well that purchase was purely for trading purpose and to earn some profit within a short term. The entire transaction was for 10000 odd rupees and I got 22.somtheing.something gms of gold. That time I was not that matured to understand the integrities of price movement but since then, the net present value of my investment was tripled by 2007 and till date this holds true.

Very late I discovered that it is not only the demand of jewellery that is pushing the demand but it is something else that is working in the background. Gold is basically the safest investment and mostly used for hedging and to safeguard nation’s interest from worldwide economic shocks or tensions. The so called economic shock is because of US Dollar fluctuations.

With dollar appreciating in the recent trade will push the gold prices south, well there is not algorithm/mathematics for there price relation but if you have closely observed the relative price movement of US dollar and Gold you might have seen a reciprocal relation between there prices.

When the dollar weakens on the foreign exchange market over an extended period then the Gold price will generally rise during the same period; and when the dollar strengthens over many months the Gold price will usually fall.

With the downturn investors holding gold reserves sold their gold to make up the losses made, Ordinary people too sold their gold jewelry during recession, which increased the supply of gold in the open market and the price was stagnant.

With economy shaping up if the dollar price moves south then there are changes for gold prices to head north, so if you are an investor or planning to purchase jewellery that probably this might be the right time to purchase.

In future too if you have planned to purchase gold then keep a watch on the dollar/ rupee movement; may be that you can get a better strike price.

Vow, 7 Years

In my initial years of carrier I was working for a webhosting company and was majorly responsible for website development, maintenance and client communication. It was a nice job and I was happy with the job but not satisfied. I was not satisfied because there were very few things to do in terms of experimentation new things and very few opportunities to grow.

After working there for 2 years I joined another company, this company was promoter of a textile B2B portal http://www.fibre2fashion.com/. I joined in the capacity of senior software engineer. Being a Portal there were ample opportunities to explore and lot of new things to experiment and implement, I grabbed and exploited the opportunities to the fullest of my potential.Some of the statistic & numbers I remember

1. I very well remember there were 25 guys working for the portal and the head count of IT Team working behind the portal was of 7.
   


2. In 7 years of my carrier with this company I have seen a turnover of 65 professional in my functional area and the total head count growing to 150 from the initial count of 25.
   


3. I have seen movement of excellent talent during this tenure at every point of time.
   


4. I’ve seen association of “A” class companies with the portal and still counting them.
   


5. I’ve seen ISO 9001:2000 audit and faced the same at least 5 times, out of which 4 times I have been the Management Representative for the same
   


6. I’ve seen a sea level change in the IT Infrastructure from one server to 15 online servers
   


7. I’ve seen and witness and was instrumental in rooting aesthetic changes and adding new functionalities to the portal.
   


8. I’ve witnessed alexa.com Ranking moving from 50000+ to 8000+
   


9. I’ve seen page views for fibre2fashion.com rising from 500000+ in March 03 to 15000000+ in March 09 i.e. more than 30 times in 6 years
   
   Whenever I look back and think I realize that 7 years has passed away so fast (as if I have just blinked my eyes) and there are lot many things yet to be done.
   
   Though after a careful examination of what I wanted to be and what I am doing I found a total disparity, I always wanted to join armed forces (Indian Navy to be specific). It is not patriotism that encouraged but a sense of disciplined life, clear chain of commands and distinctiveness in itself.
   
   I don’t regret and I’m happy and enjoying whatever I’m doing because I tried to implement a disciplined life within myself and my surrounding, I tried to implement clear chain of commands and hierarchy in the current organization and tried to do things distinctively smarter and efficiently.
   
   I changed my success mantra a little bit and rephrased it to the below one”
   
   “Success consist of doing common things uncommonly well”
   
   

Image Source : http://www.thelawofattractionteacher.com/

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.