1) The much awaited and eagerly hyped marriage has indeed come to an end. No, I am not talking of the Indo-China bhai-bhai pact or the India-Pak Aman ki Asha initiative coming to fruition. The talk of the town has indeed been the Shoaib Malik-Sania Mirza nikah. The media as usual went ga-ga over a nikah which had controversy written all over it with glee. Some commentators, of course, astutely questioned whether Sania Mirza should play for India or Pakistan? (considering the way she’s playing currently, do you really care?). And then came the news of Ayesha Siddiqui and the Pati, Patni aur Woh angle which made Ekta Kapoor’s mega-serials look childish. The media lapped it up with relish and played it more times than the Mahabharat repeat on Doordarshan. Subsequently, news emerged that Shoaib-Sania marriage ‘may be’ postponed. By now, everyone and their great grandfather had stopped caring about an event that hardly concerned them. Everything was going fine and no one was really bothered until the keeper of our national conscience, Arnab Goswami and Times Now, told us to GET ANGRY at the baseless allegations of Ayesha Siddiqui and rumors of the nikah being postponed. Various anchors at CNN-IBN were so damn loud that one could hear them even after muting the volume. The Mirzas and the Maliks could take it no more and pre-poned their nikah with Shoaib divorcing Ayesha Siddiqui first and marrying Sania almost immediately (In one of those moments off work when I was thinking about Shoaib, Sania, Ayesha and their future, I was struck with an epiphany. Shoaib divorced Ayesha, whom he denied marrying earlier. Then he marries Sania. That dude is brilliant!  His net marriage count is still zero. And according to Quran, he can technically marry 4 more!). Of course, you would not believe that there is a recession going on in the world today, if you looked at the food menu and the Mehr amount involved in their marriage. Anyhoo, let’s get to the Lahore part of the wedding quickly, shall we? Last but not the least, Times of India, in its infinite wisdom gave a peek into their elegant, yet insightful news ticker -  ‘Aman ki asha: Are Indo-Pak marriages the first step?’ Why didn’t we ever think of this before? (V had warned me against squeezing this topic further because of my extensive comments on it on Facebook. I think it was more like STFU. So yeah, this rant will be the end of this topic unless of course something incredible comes up in Lahore).

2) The other big news of the week was CRPF jawans getting slaughtered in a Maoist attack. Of course, keeping in line with existing media standards, I will not, WILL NOT devote much space and analysis on some event like this compared to the exiquisite and eye-ball grabbing news of Shoaib-Sania. However, being a responsible blogger, I have to reluctantly point you to some news which will obviously lead to incredible happiness among us, the taxpayer junta in India.

Sample this very well written report for instance.

In summary, once the remaining few jawans who were alive at the scene were rushed to the hospital,

“No chief minister, no state home minister, no other minister, no member of Parliament, no MLA, no director-general of police (Vishwa Ranjan, a man popular with journalists in all seasons), no chief secretary, no home secretary, no inspector-general (TJ Longkumer, who Chidambaram later told journalists had planned the dead men’s fatal foray into the forests), no district magistrate (frenzied a few hours later as reporters surged at Chidambaram’s press conference because he didn’t want anyone to throw a shoe at the Union home minister), no superintendent of police, not one high-ranking officer of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), to which 75 of the dead belonged, were here; just the very angry CRPF sub-inspector.”

“Typically, the survivors mattered less than the dead. Head Constable Raj Bahadur and Constables Pramod Kumar Singh and Baljeet Singh are lucky to survive the carnage, having taken bullets everywhere but in the guts. A hundred paces from the mortuary, they lie writhing in pain on dirty hospital linen stained from previous occupants’ dried blood. Only one has a mosquito net. There are no doctors or nurses. Two constables who’ve come on their own watch over their wounded mates. The ward is a hovel; the toilet is a stinking blocked drain.”

There is much more. The article is a must-read for such issues which cause immense delight and mirth.

So, in summary,

We had a surprise attack by Maoists.

The Policemen didn’t have proper equipment to fight them.

The Policemen didn’t have proper training to fight them.

The Policemen who fought valiantly and got injured were neither treated nor cared for.

Now, why have I heard this before? Anyone remembers 26/11? (and in this case, no prominent guy arrived at the scene till much later!)

Of course. We are Indians. We don’t learn from our mistakes. We are like that only.

Surprisingly, no relief packages have yet been announced. It’s a real shame that some politicians can’t get richer with this relief money. What has our country come to? Time for another useless bill? Certainly.

3) Not that this news is worth linking to, but then again again, how else do we document and understand our Indian PM’s calmness and calculated moves to assert global and moral superiority in the world?

First, our Un-Man-mohan Singh requests (and maybe grovel) Obama to put pressure on Pak.

In line with keeping relations harmonious, President Obama urges Pakistan to bring the 26/11 perpetrators to justice. (Of course, you might ask, what exactly does ‘bringing to justice’ mean? Silly you. Justice means different things to different people. For you and me, justice is behind bars and rigorous punishment. For people like Hafeez Sayed, it is a palace-lifestyle with Muttom biryani everyday!)

If that is not embarrassing, news is leaked that Obama pressed Pak on terror at India’s insistence. What I do not understand is why should someone leak this? Even Arjun Rampal would have seen through it like a transparent polythene paper.

And the brilliant Gilani wants more evidence against Lashkar. I have no comment. Just Respect.

I am just seething with happiness at us being called a global economic superpower, but with softer principles, nay, Gandhian principles. I think the time has come for us to slap on our own cheek and apologize to the perpetrator. The circle would be complete. As Miley Cyrus told me one day during our yoga class with Deepak Chopra, Karma it seems, is a bitch.

A: i can’t believe he’s dead  so sad

me:   i think u shud fly to LA for the last rites

A: it’ll be unbearable

Now, i’ll just think its all a dream

infact, i’ll try and fool myself that he’s alive

me:

A: anyway, he’s a legend which can never die

me: i think u shud visit a temple or smthg and meditate for sometime :

A:   u think i’m crazy?

me: lol, no, really

A: he’s a magician dude

not just his music, dance, singing but also his capacity to mesmerize billions all over

look at his fans during his tours, the girls have orgasms literally dude

me: Baltimore MJ sangham start cheyyi {‘A’ lives in Baltimore and I am advising him to start a MJ club}

me: maannn this is like made for the media kindaa situation, exploitin to the hilt

A: you got to be a fan to understand

i understand  :)

me: cha!  :)

A: is that it? is this all there is for life?

work your ass off, succeed, get money fame etc and then finally, thats all you get?

very unfair dude

me: 3000 yrs ago…Bhagawad Gita – same message

2) Watched ‘The Hangover’ and ‘Transformers’ over the past weekend. ‘The Hangover’ is an extremely funny movie, too gross in certain parts but funny nevertheless {Never ever watch this movie with your parents/kids}. ‘Transformers-Revenge of the Fallen’ is easily one-of-its-kind movies, especially with the IMAX experience that I went through. The grouse as usual from the media was that it was all fight and no story. Cars and Motorcycles morphing into AutoRobots – and you expected a story? Really? The graphics are mind-blowing and so is the cinematography. Watch it for sure, preferably in IMAX.

3) With news such as this trickling in, we are well on our way to our past of splintered princely states, this time managed by the well and truly proven morons of the world. Why just states? Let’s split them into different countries and see where it takes us!

The genesis of this ‘Free ISD’ idea was in a conversation with a friend of mine (Arvind).  As the conversation progressed about some other business idea that we were trying to brainstorm, I had this brainwave of offering Free ISD calls. For starters, I certainly thought it was a crazy idea. However, the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Nothing revolutionary, Nothing iPhonish – it’s just a simple idea borrowed from the ‘Search’ and ‘Movies’ world.

Let me explain.

Search engines like Google are able to provide us services like search, google maps and other gamut of services – all for free. However, these services require a huge amount of processing power and lots of mathematical modeling (which in turn means, hiring a lot of smart Ph.D candidates). All these cost money. Google, however, as we all know makes it money through selling Ads for the most part.

Entertainment sites like Hulu stream movies and tv shows for free, some of them being fantastic classics. However, any person who has used Hulu.com would know that there is an advertisement for about 30 seconds every 30 minutes or so. Those ads pay for the movie itself.

I am sure, by now, the drift is very clear.

Why not, offer free ISD calls, with ads in between.

Let me explain a wee bit further.

What is the average cost of a per minute call from US to India? Some sites like Stanacard, FreeCallPlanet charge 3.3 cents per minute, while established players like Airtel charge 4 cents per minute.

For simplicity purposes, let’s just average both and conclude that the average cost of a per minute call from US to India is around 3.6 cents per minute.

A 10 minute call would cost 36 cents per minute. That’s about Rs. 17 (exchange rate taken at Rs. 48 per dollar).

The idea here is to place an ad just at the start of the call, and an ad every 10 minutes. That is basically two ads, working out to Rs. 8.5 per impression within 10 minutes.

From a customer experience perspective, restricting the ads, to say, 15 seconds duration would probably be optimum, although some tests need to be done to validate that.

So, there it is – an extremely effective way of reaching a consumer at a very low cost.

Why is it effective?

a) Low cost

b) High impression – brand recall of these ads will be very high

c) Hopefully, will lead to increased revenues.

What kind of companies might want to put their ads? Well, let it be context-specific.

a) Money – Marketing money2india.com, Western Union Money Transfer etc

b) Stock broking – NRI broking companies

c) Gifts to India – Companies which supply gifts to your loved ones back in India

d) If consumer demographics are collected well, marketing of Shaadi.com type websites might also not be a bad idea.

What are the disadvantages? And Solutions to those?

a) The consumer might be turned off by the ads – Well, no way out for this. He/She is getting ISD calls for free. Whosoever doesn’t like it, will move away to paid services.

b) The consumer might be apathetic to these ads – Here is where creative ads come into play. A 15 second, creative audio ad competition will do the trick.

c) Conversion might be low – That was always the case with Google ads, ain’t it? The right placement of ads is definitely going to be the key.

What about competition? And Solution for that?

a) Internet Messenger to Internet Messenger talk is free anyways. What is new? – Well, the pervasiveness of computers in India is not as much as in the US. Mobiles are more pervasive, hence it makes more sense to call mobiles than computers.

b) Skype to mobile – Well, this one is definitely a competitor. But then again, which company doesn’t have competition. We need to work out details to beat the competition.

c) Vonage services, VoIP to VoIP is free – Yes, it is indeed free. However, I have heard hundreds of complaints from my friends wherein the broadband in India was not proper and hence the VoIP phone couldn’t work properly.

Any other ideas in concurrence with this?

Oh yeah. If this idea takes off, we can as well extend these services to inter-city (STD) calls. Say, village to village calls might have agriculture related ads etc. Service extension ideas are plenty.

The idea is awesome. So?

Here is where I have a problem formulating my business case. I, for one do not have the capital to set up an Airtel network nor do I have the capital to borrow Fibre Optic capacity. I am definitely not a company that can advertise like money2india.com or shaadi.com. And, starting an advertising company is a far shot. So, who am I in all this idea thingy?

The only role I think I can play is bring the advertisers and the phone companies to-gether to think about this idea. However, once I do that, there is every chance that they will cut me off and strike a deal with one another. The question really is, what can I do to build a business here? Rather, is there a business case at all to this idea – for me?

Thoughts are very much welcome and would be appreciated.

]]> http://kirandhanwada.com/2009/01/29/new-business-idea-free-isd-calls-say-us-to-india/feed/ 4 http://kirandhanwada.com/2009/01/04/preview-2009/ http://kirandhanwada.com/2009/01/04/preview-2009/#comments Sun, 04 Jan 2009 18:20:34 +0000 Kiran http://sarvamekam.wordpress.com/?p=172 One phrase to sum it all – ‘Hold tight, brave the storm’

Now that we are done with the excitement and enthusiasm of ushering in the New Year and all that, let’s look at what 2009 has in store for us.

With the hypothesis of ‘data doesn’t lie’, let’s look at some of the news across the world and India before meshing in our conclusions depending on the data  -

a) RBI has cut key lending and borrowing rates, esoterically called repo and reverse repo rates (Simply put, these are rates banks pay to borrow from the RBI and get from the RBI for keeping cash there). Repo stands at 5.5% and Reverse repo stands at 4%. RBI cut interest rates for the fourth time since October and has unveiled thousands of crores of stimulus package. If this doesn’t amount to ‘measured panic’, I don’t know what is.

b) In September-October 2008 timeframe, inflation was 12%. It is around 6.6% now. (Inflation, as a simple concept, is rise in prices). Since inflation has reduced from 12% to 6.6%, it is a good thing, no? Actually and worrisomely not. In usual circumstances, reduction in inflation is good for the economy. However, we now have a serious risk of deflation where it might touch 0% or go negative. Economics 101 will tell you that reducing inflation is a slightly easier job than pulling out an economy out of deflation, or even worse stagflation (Lots of jargon like inflation, deflation and stagflation used. Our dear friend Wiki has loads of explanation on them).

c) If Indian economy was on the rise over the past 4-8 years, Real Estate in India was on cocaine. Simple example. In 2003, a 2 BHK (bedroom-hall-kitchen) in one of the very good localities in Hyderabad cost Rs. 17 lakh. In 2007, the same flat costs Rs. 50 lakh. That’s close to a 200% increase. I am not sure any of our salaries rose by 200% in the same period, barring a lucky few. If income doesn’t keep up with investment avenues (or is it the other way round), sooner or later, that particular investment avenue has to be disbanded. Now that we hear that prices are coming down (drastically in some places), speculators will go out of business which will lead to a further spiral. My call is that real estate should correct itself by atleast 20% if not more by end of 2009.

d) Other general news in India includes

- Investments being drastically cut down by manufacturing and service companies.

- Risk of layoffs (massive in some places) to calibrate supply and demand (the offshoot of this being that people would be fraught to take home loans where EMI is more than 1/3^rd their net income and hence further reduction in real estate demand)

- Good startups would find it difficult to find funding, and hence many a innovative idea would die a death for now.

- With banks not reducing interest rates in line with RBI reduction (although they had no problems increasing it immediately when RBI was increasing the rates), discretionary spending will drastically reduce. Small businesses will have difficulty getting working capital (Wiki again!) to sustain their business in this difficult economic scenario.

e) Globally, US has cut interest rates close to zero percent, while Japan magnanimously has reduced interest rates from 0.3% to 0.1% to stimulate the economy. US, UK and Japan are already in a recession, while I believe Asia will be truly hit by a recession in 2009. Asia’s biggest revenue generator is exports. With worldwide spending clampdown, exports have already taken a hit and are expected to take a bigger hit in 2009. US’s economic stimulus package – $850 billion, China’s stimulus package – $585 billion. Aren’t those numbers just plain awesome. I think they are avoiding mentioning a ‘trillion’ since it sounds a big number. In fact, I forget the number of zeroes in a billion or trillion now. South east asia’s manufacturing and shipments are down dramatically and expected to continue over the next half year. I wonder what’s up with Antarctica?!

By now, you would have arrived at a conclusion that I am extrapolating at a doomsday scenario. Not really. The end of 2009 will see some light, although recession is going to continue well into 2010.  IT service providers especially will benefit due to the strong dollar-rupee equation along with increased outsourcing from US and UK companies. The health sector is not cyclical and will not be affected by the recession. There are some stocks which you can really buy cheap (although, for the risk of repetition, the word ‘value’ is being bitch-slapped around in media for any and every stock). As Buffett says, ‘I don’t know what will happen 1 year down the line or 5 years down the line. The only thing I know is if I invest in good businesses, they will give me a decent return over the long run’. The advice is valid both for stockmarkets as well as life.

]]> http://kirandhanwada.com/2009/01/04/preview-2009/feed/ 0 http://kirandhanwada.com/2008/12/13/what-has-india-done-and-what-should-india-do/ http://kirandhanwada.com/2008/12/13/what-has-india-done-and-what-should-india-do/#comments Sat, 13 Dec 2008 23:59:07 +0000 Kiran http://sarvamekam.wordpress.com/?p=158

1) It is strange that each one of us would be willing to be involved in some form of cathartic activity to demonstrate our opposition to terrorism. We suddenly had a spurt in the number of ‘I hate terrorism’ communities/groups on different social networks like Orkut and Facebook. It was as if we suddenly woke up to the fact that terrorists were scheming right across the border only from yesterday. Another form of highly visible but least efficient way of opposing terrorism is to hold candle rallies and signature campaigns. As far as I can remember, none of the above activities proved to be even as effective as a squirrel’s ass to prevent terrorism or for our politicians to make ‘Anti-terrorism’ a part of their party agenda.

2) Another extreme form of cathartic activity seems to be heavily arguing for bombing the hell out of Pakistan – smug with the feeling of ‘we are bigger and stronger than them and hence we’ll win’. There is no doubt that we would win but at what cost. The US might be willing to attack and bomb countries which are thousands of miles away from its soil. There is little cost in terms of human lives/development except for outrageous outflow of money. Would the US attack with same fervor, say Russia which is across the Alaskan border? Forget the fervor, would it even attempt to attack at all, say even with snow dinghies? Talking about winning is one thing, getting atleast 3 or 4 of our major cities bombed is another. The cost of human lives and to the corresponding development would be enormous.

3) My friend asked me a question the other day ‘Has India as a whole gone so aloof – why did some states let Congress win inspite of their non-performance and incompetence to tackle terrorism?’. Performance has never been a hallmark of any political party since our Independence. In fact, I would go so far to say that we have had this tremendous economic development, not because of the government but inspite of it. Secondly, looking back at history, India has always been a conglomeration of princely states. We never were one single country except under the aegis of Asoka and Akbar. Expecting the rest of India to be tuned and sensitive to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai is a far call. The rest of India might in turn ask difficult questions like ‘What are you doing about the Naxalite movement in Chattisgarh?’, ‘What are you doing about the ULFA in Assam and NE states?’, ‘What are you doing about the Gujarat riots?’. There is no one right answer to any of these questions. Finally, politics in India is and probably never will be based on one single issue (or any issue for that matter). Identity politics is rampant – and I particularly don’t see any immediate solution to move away from votes based on caste, creed and religion. Congress has won/BJP has won in those states purely based on anti-incumbency and not on any particular issue.

4) So, what can we do to prevent terrorism? Again, there is no one answer – rather the approach should be multi-pronged. The biggest and the greatest weapon we have is our education and favorable demographics – in other words, our economy. We need to get stronger and stronger in our economy, through entrepreneurship, investments and growth in general. It is an open secret that politics in the global world is nothing but managing the imbalances in economies. Given that state, we need to improve our economy multi-fold. Another approach would be to cripple Pakistan’s economy through tough economic measures (cutting off trade, holding off on bilateral talks etc) and probably getting it declared as a terrorist state. The present government is taking the right steps in that direction. This approach however, is fraught with risks as a unstable Pakistan with a crippling economy is a disaster to India (excessive immigration, legal or otherwise, more people resorting to terrorism due to hunger etc.) It is indeed a fine line between the two approaches – the question really is, do we have the leaders to lead us through the fine line? Honestly, I don’t know the answer.

]]> http://kirandhanwada.com/2008/12/13/what-has-india-done-and-what-should-india-do/feed/ 2 http://kirandhanwada.com/2008/10/21/festival-of-india/ http://kirandhanwada.com/2008/10/21/festival-of-india/#comments Wed, 22 Oct 2008 04:35:43 +0000 Kiran http://sarvamekam.wordpress.com/?p=137

Last weekend, ‘Festival of India’ was conducted in our city. Now, ‘Festival of India’ in any city in the US necessarily attracts lots of food caterers first, along with the usual unnecessary audience which doesn’t make noise at an event. There were many interesting events, most of them with tiny-toddlers dancing away to glory while their parents were basking in reflected glory. There is indeed some magic in those little kids below the age of 6 not dancing, yet dancing (if you know what I mean!) – most of our group were spellbound by their charm and innocence. That, I must say, was the best part.

The second best part, was of course, the food – from chat to idli sambar, from rasmalai to falooda – we had it all. Not top-notch, but decent enough to carry the day.

The worst part (‘of course’ would be a cliché!), were the desi couples and the desi gang who congregated the place out of sheer boredom rather than to contribute anything significant – either in terms of performance or in terms of noise (which we specialized in).

Sample this conversation between the married guys -

Guy1: So, I took I-95 for about 70 miles and then hit the beltway, went round it and merged into 264. That took me about 90 minutes from X to Y.

Guy2: Ohh…that is a slightly longer route. What you should have done is taken Route 288 for about 40 miles, Exit 31B and then I-64 west. That way, you avoid the traffic and save about 15 minutes atleast.

Guy1: Ohh!!

(at this point, I am thinking…guys, get a life – buy a GPS)

The wife of Guy2 steps up to the challenge now

Wife of Guy2: You know Guy1, my husby is too good with all these routes. He remembers almost every exit and route we take – here or anywhere on a holiday. He just remembers every route. Call him up in case of any route discrepancies you may have.

Guy1: (doesn’t know whether to smile or cry) mumbles smthg to the extent of ‘Sure’

(I have already excused myself from the conversation, but couldn’t help laughing at first, Guy1’s expression, two, Guy2’s amazingly stupid memory capacity of seemingly nonsensical things and Guy2’s wife’s leadership initiative, propounding superiority! I don’t want to sound condescending…but then, can’t help but say – specimens, specimens!!!!)

Another excerpt conversation from friend of friends I overheard (with so much fun going around, you do want to overhear things and laugh about it very discreetly – that way, the cycle of fun grows exponentially)

The scene – The kid of A performed on stage. Kids being kids, always look cute on stage, irrespective of whether they dance or not. It is the parents who should be shot. Anyways, so, B walks in (enters the audi just then). B is a friend of A (or act as friends, you can never tell with these ladies). B suddenly realizes that A’s kid has finished his performance. She comes rushing towards A, with all the enthusiasm of a little gadfly – all buzz and no performance – ‘Ohh…your kid looked soo cute, no? Aiyyooo…what a performance, what a performance…you are very lucky I say’. I am totally stunned at the sudden turn of events (I, for all my innocence had thought that B was rushing towards A to apologize profusely for missing the event). My friend shakes me out of stupor and says ‘ye sab chalta hai, tension mat le’. As I pass out of the auditorium, I notice A and B hugging each other like best of friends, putting Caesar and Brutus to shame.

Such is life.