Another low segment car to be launched !

After Mr. Ratan Naval Tata, its now the turn of yet another Chairperson Mr. Keshub Mahindra, chairman, Mahindra & Mahindra to launch yet another low segment car.

Now, again i would like to point out few points relating this two creations:

1) Which brand is more trusted?

2) Which brand has a better interior?

3) Which brand will give the better mileage?

4) Which brand has better looks?

Taking them one by one,

1) Which brand is more trusted?

 Now there are two categories of people in India. One category of them believe that Tata who actually owns even a tea bags made by them is more relying brand. Other category of people believe that as there is a foreign venture into Mahindra so with the luxury issues, advancement issues and mileage issues it might have an edge over ‘Nano’.

2) Which brand has better interior?

With the look and feel of mahindra cars and tata cars, one can guess which one will be better.

3) Which car will give better mileage?

Tata might have an edge over it.

4) Which brand has better looks?

Comparing the two models, Mahindra renault has built the car with more of a glass into its body. This might solve its profitability issue too. Because much of the price reduction might come from the less usage of the aluminium and plastic body into it, which actually has to undergo special denting process. While Tata Nano has a simple look but yes, looking at it, it seems to be a safer car to travel in.

 Well, these are the predictions and facts regarding these two cars, but lets see what the mass thinks about it and which make is actually going to boom the low segment.

Not a Critic but a Fact !

There are recent talks going on for the latest and the cheapest car made available in the world now by Mr. Ratan Naval Tata. Well, the whole world might be thinking about the cheapest car that will be running on the road shortly.

 

Now here i would like to consider two issues:

1) Maintenance cost
2) Unavailability of proper infrastucture

1) Maintenance cost
This car has an engine on back side and a luggage space on the front side. Now the parts of the car might be different from the other tata makes. So will those parts be readily available to the customers? Will they charge more for the maintenance parts?

2) Unavailability of the proper infrastucture
Think about each and every person in India moving on a two wheeler on the road. Lets take an example of Delhi. So many traffice jams. So many accidents. So many time consuming signals. Now with a launch of such a cheaply available car, and with the increase in standard of living, we can see the scenario even getting worse. Lets take an example of people driving pulsar. Pulsar is available at a price of 70k to 80k. Now rather than purchasing pulsar, one could invest more and buy Nano, so just think that instead of no. of pulsars moving on the road, there will be cars moving. Do we have the infrastructure to support this kind of scenario?

Now does this question started revolving in your mind?

Credits- The image of the Tata Nano car has been uploaded from http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/01/10/automobiles/533-Tata-01.jpg

Web 3.0

Web 3.0 is sometimes called Semantic Web, a term coined by Tim Berners Lee, the man who first invented www.

 Web 2.0 came to describe almost any site, service, or technology that promoted sharing and collaboration right down to the Net’s grassroots as in blogs and wikis, tags and RSS feeds, del.icio.us and Flickr, My Space and You Tube. Web 3.0 will have 4 main features like a Semantic Web where a machine or robot can read a website or check our daily schedules; 3D Web-a virtual walk through unfamilier places without leaving one’s own seat; Media-centric searches understanding natural-lauguage queries or photos, and the Pervasive Web that’s everywhere-on your PC, on your cellphone, on your cloths, jewelry, your kitchen, bathroom and office. Microsoft and Google are moving to 3D. www.polarrose.com, www.riya.com, www.like.com are offering simple prototypes. Web 3.0 is here for sure. But it has to be experienced.

Success is dependent on two things – Fate and Fortune

There is a welknown proverb which everyone is aware about. “Fortune favours the brave”. So what will one do after reading this quote? Obviously, be brave and wait for the fortune to support. But, what if person fights bravely and dont succeed? Why has the fortune not supported him for the braveness? Here comes the role of the fate. Fate brings the person to the state where no one can interfere. Interference of fate in your life is important. Important to such an extent that even till the end, both, fortune and your hard work succeeds, but its not in your fate. You actually wont. So believe in both.

There is a wellknown hindi proverb, “Naseeb se zyada, aur taqdir se badhkar, na hi kisiko kuch mila hai aur na milega”.

Its true… Everthing in the end, depends upon the fate.

2008-Its all about “May” and “Might”

To start of, “May” the year 2008 bring you the joy you ever had, success you could ever achieve, and all your “will” come true.

Buddies, the dates have changed, the pages have turned, so lets all rock and make the difference to the world to make it green and clean.

Let’s rock.

Play A Game Called Life

Some or the other things keep coming in my mind. Its a stage in life where you start developing a hobby of playing a particular game. Then comes the vision you have for your family or yourself. You plan a strategy to accomplish the vision you have built. At-last, in the end, the question always revolves around your mind, What do I want to be in my life? What is my career goal?

Well, answer to all these questions and thoughts lies in playing a game called LIFE.

In any game the ultimate motive is to win. Of-course, by right motives and with a sportsman spirit. But playing the games apart from life, is actually just a simulation. The real game according to me is LIFE.

 Lets compare life with a football match. You are always in a hurry to capture a goal in the game, so that you remain one up from the opposition. There are 11 players of the opposite team to compete you in capturing the goal. But you work hard and you ultimately succeed or you do not. Life is just the same as this game. You start it of with a goal in your life. Now there will be plenty of obstacles (Yeah! i literally mean it when i say the word “plenty”). It can be of any kind. Plenty of competition. But, if you got to survive in the game called life, you actually need to play your best. In a game called life, according to me, there is no second chance. You take the second chance and you are down the rank for every chance you miss.

There is nothing like penalty corners in the game of life. There is no passing of the ball. Once it is with you, it is you who has to take the ball to the goal post and make a kick that you should get the goal. Its like you are the only player in the field and opposite team has “plenty”. Of-course, you lose some of the games initially, but when you develop upon your skils which the opposition dont have, you can win it.

Now that is what you call a “GAME OF LIFE”. Either have guts to play it, or lay down your arms. Its upon you to choose how are you going to win it.

Well, I just love playing a game called “LIFE”.

What makes the ERP packages differ each other

There are various ERP packages available in the market. All ERP packages integrates different departments in an organization. Apart from telecommunications industry ERP can be made available to every kind of industry.

What is it that makes ERP differ from eachother?

Here are some of the insights into it:

1) Well, reliablility of the software is the first issue which comes in customer’s mind. An ERP software is said to be reliable for a particular customer when the vendor supplying that ERP software has esteemed and satified customers which cater into that industry verticles in which he operates.

2) The percentage of successful implementation sucess a particular vendor has.

3) The technology on which a particular software operates. for e.g. an independent technology like ABAP used by SAP or with the one which is provide by Microsoft (Infor uses the .NET technology for its ERP).

4) Support a particular vendor can provide over a period of time.

5) What are the extra features embedded into the system which over a period of time can benefit your business.

6) Software should be having all the necessary report generation facility according to what a particular business wants.

7) Atlast a customer should analyse as to what ROI would a particular ERP package, for which he is opting, can give him.

Comparing Traffic Signals and Cigarettes

I would like to begin this article by saluting today’s technological advancement, which controls the ever-rising population across the globe. In regards to this, you can see a traffic signal normally at each and every crossing in the city. For the non-metropolitan and non-cosmopolitan cities, these traffic signals actually serve a lot to the people and the body controlling the traffic. Now, on the other side, the situation becomes entirely different with the densely population cities

Metropolitan and huge cities have traffic signals with sensors. To some extent it does help in controlling the traffic, too, but if we think on this matter positively, there exists no difference between cigarettes and the traffic signals.

As per the findings, and what statics says, addiction to cigarettes eats 8 minutes of your life/cigarette. Well, this means that if one smokes 3 cigarettes a day, his life cuts short by 15 minutes. On the other part, our ever rising signals acts exactly like the cigarettes. Difference being that it has its positive side too. Coming back on these traffic signals, suppose the distance between your office and house is 10kms on an average in huge cities. Within this 10 kms range, on an average if we take into account 5-6 signals, 120 seconds each (2 minutes), then a single one-way trip from home to your office kills 10-12 minutes of your daily time which actually is not invested anywhere and apart from this what you get is a smoke and the dust which actually is more harmful than a cigarette.

Well, the intention of writing this article is not to appreciate smoking activity and increase the intake of cigarettes, but to make every layman understand this calculation, re-invent something and think of saving the precious time of an individual which he spends on the traffic signals.

At last, a salute to the technology of the world and the technology developers who are aiming at making the life of people better.

Hope always drives you forward and here we have the one.

Kindo.com-A Good Initiative Lacking Direction

In today’s world, where the world is becoming a smaller place to live, it is becoming a larger place to commute. There is couple of points with which I would like to support this belief.
In daily routine work, we have to spend enough time in the company working for it. This means that we have the time for the company but less time for the family. In such a situation, where, in the companies, chat servers and other chatting softwares are banned, there as to be some medium on the internet through which you can communicate with your family.

One such site which assists you in doing such a thing is kindo.com (http://kindo.com). A startup company, which is created with such a thought and which will be used by many people on the planet.

It is a site which offers a simple signing in facility (taking not much of your time to log-in to the website). Here, you being at the center can actually create your family tree which is displayed in a graphical manner.

This is how it works:

You are the person logged in the website as a starter. Now, you can invite your mom and dad to join your family tree. Thereafter, you can invite your brothers and sisters, your spouses to the family tree and it goes on. At the end you will have a graphical representation of a family tree.

Awesome! Simply a great thought and a great thing to do.

Here you can upload your own photographs and they provide certain gift features to share your photographs online. If you are looking for DVDs and Books then it takes you to amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com), you can print the uploaded photos from the net, etc. Well, seems to be really helpful!

But, I would like to describe some of the things which should be taken into consideration when you are actually launching a website.

Here are some of the points which should be taken into consideration:

Ease of Use
Fast to surf
Where to target
Features in the website
Should be easily accessible or rather more useful than the competitor websites.
And finally marketing the website on the internet so that you can drive more traffic
I would like to take this point one by one:

Ease of Use

Well, kindo.com is very easy to use. No doubt on it. But in the front page there actually should be a link provided which speaks about each and every link present on the website. It does, but it’s too heavy for a low bandwidth users. This point ill cover in the next sub-topic.

Now let’s take an example of a website, http://tribalpages.com. This site gives you a domain name once you create your family tree.

For e.g. http://viralvandre.tribalpages.com.

When you get a domain name or a separate link to your family like this, one can make their homepage more easily accessible to the people, of course only to view. They cannot log-in to the site, except the owner of the family tree.

But information remains readily available.

Fast to surf

The contents and the images used on the website should not be too heavy that it takes time to navigate. So, the heavy usage of flash, high density images should not be there. Again if you think from the user’s perspective that the website takes much time to load, then the user might find himself disinterested to use the site.

Let’s take example of such competitor sites.

1) http://tribalpages.com

2) http://www.familylobby.com

3) http://www.yourfamilywebsite.com

These sites are quite fast to surf. You actually feel interested to click on the link and you get the information at one go without waiting.

Where to target and whom to target

Segmentation always is the heart of marketing activity. Where are you going to launch the product and where? Providing a vague idea, visiting orkut.com user profile page, one can come to know whether a person is living alone, with parents, with room mates, etc. Now, there are lots of other sites available which talks about this information. You can target this kind of people who are living alone, or with the room-mates. An activity like this helps you to refine your search for the customers.

Features in the website

The competitor websites mentioned above has far more extra features from which kindo.com provides. These all features are available from the front page of the Family tree itself. You should have extra features like Calendar, chat rooms, etc. You can also upload Videos, Music files on to your website. It also portrays daily news on your welcome screen etc. Great! Simply a great thing to do and simply great features.

Should be easily accessible and more useful than the competitor websites

It is all about finding out, how much easy access to the website or information you can provide to your customers compared to your competitor websites. The site in all should be more useful to your customers. i.e. it can be loaded with lots of extra features, might have links to the other useful websites which actually a customer can use.

Marketing the website on the internet so that you can drive more traffic.

This actually should be the heart of all activities. This is the thing from which you actually can earn more customers. More the customers, more the revenue. It is all about making your presence on Internet, so that the people can know you. It drives more traffic to your website.

Well, It was indeed shocking when I started of with a simple google search as if I don’t know the sites which helps me to create my family tree.

The first keyword I searched was: ‘Family tree creating sites’ Shocking, I don’t get a link to kindo.com anywhere in the top ten links displayed by google.
These are the top three links displayed by google.
Just signup now, add names and instantly create your family tree. If you already have a family tree created elsewhere just import the GEDCOM file.
tribalpages.com/ – 9k – Cached – Similar pages

FamilyLobby.com provides free family websites, forums, message …

At FamilyLobby.com, you can create a private website just for your family. Creating a website is fun, fast and it’s free! And there’s no trial period to.
www.familylobby.com/ – 18k – Cached – Similar pages

Family Websites for Free – Photo Albums, Blog, Share, Create …

free family website family reunion website family site watchdog web family tree website a private website for your family build family website create a www.yourfamilywebsite.com/ – 67k – Cached – Similar pages
Well, this should be your first step while you are a start-up company and you want people to know you. Like wise you can feature the ads on various other websites like orkut.com or similar community websites.

To sum-up I would say that kindo.com is a nice initiative and I think if it chalks out a strategy to hit the community we could see bright days ahead for kindo as every family wants to stay connected in the age of Web 2.0.

Investment Scenario

Hereby i would be discussing something about the present scenario of the Indian Market. A week ago Indian Stock exchange (Sensex) traded at the third largest loss approx. Rs. 680. Now such a situation took place due to the major effect of FDI. Again there is a well known proverb that ” A bigger fish always eats the smaller one”. Such is the thing with our stock exchanges too. Today the world has become a smaller place to live, apart from living, it has become a smaller place to trade in too. Every business is interdependent. Smaller companies invest in the bigger companies.

Like this there becomes a whole heirarchy of the business. Now the answer to the question that “Why does a market experience a sudden rise or a fall?” comes here.

All smaller businesses are dependent on the parent company they invest in or they trade with or they are in business with. When such a parent company experiences a great profit or is growing then the smaller businesses associated with it will also grow. This is the time when you see the bull run in the market.

Now, when the same company is going bankrupt, or the business slows down for such a company then the partner smaller business with also be affected. This is the scenario when the market goes into the bear run.

Now discussing about which is the best sector to invest in in the present scenario, my view goes towards the PSU banks.

Banks uptill now have increased the interest rate so higher that now it is nearing the saturation limit. Above which it would be difficult even for the normal being to invest in. Also comes the question of Rupee strengething against a Dollar.

We can forecast a stage with in one year of span when these PSU banks has to lower their interest rates. And this would be the best period when the market for such a sector will boom and you can get the best return on your investments when you invest in them now.

Well this is what i liked to share with you.