If Startup Is A Tree...

Startup - A Tree

If you are an entrepreneur, Haven’t you wondered ever about the Idea that building a startup is like growing a tree. If you neither have an experience of growing a tree or building a startup, but still you can read this stuff out of curiosity. Analogy looks interesting with lots of characters and processes are similar in start up and tree cultivation.

As tree needs a sapling or a seed to start growing in some land and a caretaker to protect it and give it a necessary nutrients like water, fertilizer to grow. The Startup needs an idea and a capable team to play caretaker role and investors money and team’s blood and sweat acts a fertilizer.As per one’s expectations of fruits or flowers, one would choose seeds. Also one need to have people with right skills who can help in growing a tree or number of trees.

What role customer does fits-in for this analogy?

Imaginatively Customers are like a segment of soil which tree roots clung to. They try to exchange as much nutrient from soil also help soil from heavy rains. Similarly for startup, you need to have customers to grow your business. Roots are like customer relationships, more stable and deeper your relationships, better stability and bigger the tree you would have. Your business can in turn provide customers something valuable which will help them meaningfully in something.

Though Like entrepreneur, a tree owner always want to have big tree, but many times seed doesn’t tell you what the tree it will grow. You can’t guess from its size or color. if you are really expert you will spot the correct seeds. Then you will need to land with correct type of soil, else tree won’t grow. Similarly however good idea you have ifv market is not receptible, your baby may not grow to be a superstar.

Building startup and growing it into stable business machine has similar challenges.

Are CSR groups solving correct problems?

Social corporate responsibility
1) in pune's teschforseva conference , I was amazed to know abt various initiatives taken under CSR. And will to do more work by various CSR reps.

2) I was wondering if it is  real? Is there way to measure how CSR is touching lives of people who are really away from all great things happening in India - supposed shining india?
3) There are still multitudes of social problems to solve. How does CSR of some company identifies correct audience and picks up suitable problem.

4) is there data available to make these choices?
5) how to involve youth into this?
6) can we build an information system to highlight  problems which are being solved and where efforts would be mostly needed?
7) what common problems are need to get solved? What efforts are put up by government to solve them.
8) what are the primary problems solved by these companies?
9) I also wonder various companies, specifically manufacturing, which are doing CSR, are they treating own employees well? Are they properly paid and not to make worked in non-human conditions or even by their vendors.

Onion - price fluctuation analysis - Gujrat Vs Maharashtra - Who are in Better shape

As per 18th April news in ToI & business standards about Onion price rise in Maha & Gujrat. See who use to get more and will get more due to environmental.


In the district APMCs, the average wholesale onion prices, which were in the range of Rs 575 to Rs 801 a quintal on April 10, rose to Rs 750-Rs 1,011 on Thursday. In the retail market, good quality onions were sold in the range of Rs 12 to 15 a kg. 

My Analysis: This means, farmer were getting 5.75 rs to 8 rs per kg. now they will get 7.5 to 10 per kg in Maharashtra

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Onion-prices-rise-about-40-in-a-week/articleshow/33877660.cms


Industry insiders say hailstorm and unseasonal rainfall across many parts of India have damaged significant amount of crop. As a result, prices of best quality onion has risen from Rs 75 -100 per 20 kg to Rs 125-150 per 20 kg at Mahuva market in Gujarat. Average price has stood between Rs 60-120 per 20 kg.

My Analysis: This means, farmer were getting 3.75 rs to 5 rs per kg. now they will get 5.25 to 6 per kg.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/gujarat-farmers-set-to-reap-benefit-as-onion-prices-go-up-114041400881_1.html


Original -

Some facts
1) Onions are the second-most consumed vegetable in India, after potatoes.
2) Onions can be stored for long without much expense.
3)  Maharashtra and Karnataka accounts for the half onion market. e.g. in   2011-12, Out of 15.8 million tons of onion produced in India, 32% came from Maha and 17% from karnataka.
4) In Maharashtra, most of the onion come from the Pune-Nashik belt..
5) Both states harvest onions in Winter, Mandi's in Bangalore get onion between sept and jan while in Maharashtra, between dec and february.
6) Most of the production is done by small farmers.
7) These farmers sell after harvest at low price to traders.
8) Traders sell across india at high price. Referring to point 2 , traders have storages to keep purchases for longer time. (Hoarding)
9) Traders have credit link with Farmers which creates space for exploitation.
10) Trading business has monopolistic tendencies, for historical and financial reasons, large storage capacities for onion have remained with private traders and that too in nashik belt.
11)who are Onion Traders?
    a) Commision agent-cum-wholesalers
    b) forwarders-cum-store owners
    c) transport or railway agent
12) Market is imperfect with very few buyers (traders) and many sellers (farmers)            
13) India exported 3 lakh tonnes of onion this year between January and may.
14) Whats reason behind export: if the country abruptly stops exports, it will not be seen as a reliable supplied in international markets.


Solutions:
1) Other states like Punjab, IP, Assam and Chattisgard should start growing onions.
2) We need to have onion warehouses, who avoids supply-demand manipulations.

 Political
Small wonder that the onion prices have been an important political issue: They were the decisive factor in the 1998 state elections in Delhi and Rajasthan, and were responsible for bringing down the central government in 1980.

Reference: Article in Economic Times , Dated 1st Oct 2013

journey - quotes

"I think that wherever your journey takes you, there are new gods waiting there, with divine patience -- and laughter."
--Susan M. Watkins
http://studenttravel.about.com/od/boardaboat/qt/motionsickness.htm

ReInvent the Toilet Challenge - India [RTTC-India]

Here is the list of winner candidates from 2012. Click Here


Republishing this from Announcement from Today's Economic Times
 
Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), A Government of India Enterprise (Section-25, Not-for Profir Company) is announcing the Second Grand Challenges India Funding Opportunity with Support from department of Biotechnology(DBT), Ministry of Science and Technology, Govt of India and Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation (MBGF), This collaboration seeks to support the development of innovation sanitation technologies, products and services under the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge India(RTTC-India)

Solving the sanitation challenge in India requires leading edge innovations deployable across diverse landscapes. UNICEF report on India Sanitation showed that poor sanitation is responsible for 62 million children under-5 being stunted and no reaching their full physical or mental potential. Sustainable solutions supporting the entire value chain of sanitation from collection till treatment are important. The overall goal of the RTC-India is to find sustainable sanitation solutions for processing was that include controlling the environmental contaminations, improving users acceptance and experience, ease of maintenance and operation in resource poor settings.

Under the Grand Challenges India Intitiative, we are looking for

• Conceptualizing novel ways to process human waste, design and field-test prototypes having stand-alone, self-contained practical sanitation modules.
• Innovative technologies incorporating new system and modification of existing toilet solutions that creat affordable services and have on-site proessing with no further transport requirement
• Creating completely new systems for train-cars that intake bodily wastes directly and process them onboard with no further transaport of hazardous waste from the train.
• Neighbourhood level systems that swiftly dispose of bodily wastes and faecal sludge collected from local pot latrines and septic tanks.
• Preference shall be given to proposals catering for end-end-end approached (prototypes and processing that resposon to all aspects of the challenge

 Who Can Apply
 We seek expression of interest under the RTTC-India from :

• Indian researchers, Innovators, Entrepreneurs
• Indian entities such as Academia, Research Institutes, Medical Institutes, Industries, Not-for-profit Organizations

Indian led projects will be supported but we would encourage partnerships with researchers in other countries, especially where the opportunity exists to build on established collaboration or developing consortium 

How to Apply:
Interested applicants can submit a letter of Intent (LoI) online at www.birac.nic.in latest by November 15, 2013. For more details you can contact, Dr. Shilpi Gupta, Manager Technical (Discovery and Product Development) BIRAC
Email: sgupta.birac[at]nic.in, swarup[at]dbt.nic.in

Detailed guidelines for RFP, visit www.birac.nic.in

Car Pooling As a Startup Idea - Doesnt Make Sense to Me!

Recently I attended a demo session at in50Hrs in Thoughtworks Office Pune. In50hrs is India's premier Idea to prototype Platform. You can read more about it here : http://www.in50hrs.com/

They arrange events across india where, group of entrepreneurs/wannabes try to build a product from Idea to Proto in 50 hrs. Its Interesting Concept and event.

One group demo'ed Car pooling Mobile application where a person who is interested in car pooling can search for cars using GPS. They even integrated Voice search to make it funky.
It was nicely done thing! Great work by people involved in it!

But Somehow, I see Carpooling as overhyped concept.

I read many articles in business newspaper about Car pooling applications in the past. I talked with few of entrepreneurs who are chasing this crazy Idea, but was not satisfied with their answers.


Who, Why, For What need this thing?

- Lets think from Car owners perspective,
   Why does anybody buys car in  India?
   - It provides Big Social Status
   - It provides means to Long, Private Family Travel.
  -  It will assist you in shopping when you do heavy grocery shopping
  -  They can reach to office on time and in good condition, without breaking finely pressed clothes.

He might not have big concern in saving money by car pooling.

Would he be looking for sponsoring his fuel expenses using Car Pooling? None of Car pooling folks talk or present ideas to Car Owner promising them Free Fuel.

Car pooling may attribute to few cents saving his fuel cost at behest of him playing driver's role.

If He is Socially responsible, He would love to help people waiting on the roads.

But overall OptIn from Car Owners in large scale looks distant possibility. Car pooling with Friends is okay but with unknowns, I doubt.

2) From Car Poolers perspective :
    - They want comfortable, AC travel
    - They dont want to chase Auto's
    - They want to travel by Buses, Wait for it
    - Many can not afford buying Car and Car Parking.
    - Many can afford buying a car but cannot afford fuel for daily travel.


Safe, Secure, Reliable Transport is Need of Hour, But Car pooling alone cant be an answer.

Instead of Investing in Carpooling by creating certain Websites or Mobile Apps.
We need much bigger, Heavy investment in Improving Bus Transportation and Bus Routing Mechanisms. We need Macro solutions to our Transportation problem and not micro solution which will serve to fewer audience. People should not hate bus travels. They are, at end of day, human beings only.

In cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad, People do travel with Buses comfortably. They have multi-tier of buses as per classes. People who can pay higher, will get more comfort. 

Copy/Paste Is Easy? Not Really!

Can anyone who uses Computers can live without Copy/Paste ( Ctrl-C & Ctrl-V)?

Ctrl, C & V buttons takes away lots of loads from all the keyboard buttons and make your keyboards live longer.

These three buttons would have saved billion years of typing efforts of billion users all over the world.

So Why this post?
In one of our product which uses HTML/JS, we want to have a button to let person copy the content of some div and paste it on some other window.



But there are not JS/HTML provided way to do this. Only browser takes care of this is Unfortunately the most cursed browser, IE.

 I dont know why rest of the browsers have ignored this functionality.

 It is not that you cannot implement it, there is savior in ZeroClipboard which helps you implement copy paste in any browser. But it uses flash/swf the adobe solution. I fear if it will work at all on tablets as most of the phones/tablets havent given programmatic facility to copy paste.

It works perfectly with ZeroClipBoards, We created small demo to test this lib.


If browsers provide such a functionality in built, It will save a atleast a million horse power of energy of people who are using mouse or long press to select, copy and paste some content.


I dont know how bit.ly is doing it but I guess they must be using flash support to enable on button copy paste.

Adding Twitter Follow Button on Blogger

Today I was trying to add Twitter followup button on Blogger. Somehow I got tricked in to thing that I can only add Extra widget through URL only. While Twitter provides Javascript for adding Followup button.  I wasted around  ~30 minutes on this. I noticed that there is much simpler option to add Twitter followup button on Your blogger.

I am giving here step by step process to add followup button on your blogger and save your precious 30 minutes.

Part 1:

1) Log In to Twitter:

2) Create Button Script on Twitter
https://twitter.com/about/resources/buttons#follow

3) Copy Twitter JS

Part 2:

1) Log in to Blogger.com


2) Go to Layout

3) Click on Add Widget

4) You will see following Popup

5) Scroll Down, You will need to select HTML/Javascript option

6)  Configure HTML/Javascript

7)  Add Title as Twitter, Copy paste JS script from Part 1 in to content box.

8) Save the JS
9) On Template Page, Save the Arrangement.

10) You will see Twitter followup button on RIght Sidebar

Task Management using Check List - Can it be Improved?

How do you manage your tasks?

The most popular way of doing task management is Lists.
One fine day, You sit on your desk and sees that there are lots of things in your mind which you think need to be worked upon.

What you do?
If you have a notebook. You will list down all the tasks in your notebook. You mark up the priority and tick each you task as a tiger in you efficiently finishes each of tasks.

   Now come the Computers, Workplace where your tasks are not your tasks, Tasks has other stake holders, they need to know what you are doing, when you are doing, it help your bosses to measure you, it helps your co-workers to manage their own tasks.

  You will find many popular tools which uses HTML Select boxes for Task Management lists.  You can do it online on Gmail, on Macbook. Some websites like Asana has created fullblown product based on Task List Management.

I use Confluence for my Product Managment and Use Confluence provided Task lists for Managing various To Dos.

It looks this :



I see its incomplete. It doesnt cater some important need to task management.
Current way of things, As it uses paradigm from HTML world - Checkbox, you can have only two states. Checked or UnChecked.

Checked - Task Done
UnChecked - Task Not Done


Now there is Time dimension which is most important in any task Management, is missing here.

In above list, If I starts working ing Hiring recruitment consultant, I cant mark it as anything to indicate that I am working on it.

Current Workaround for me is to add #tags  at end or start of Task description but it doesnt suffice.

I need to have some way to mark checkbox with intermediate steps.


Somebody like Asana who is betting whole thing on checkbox way of task management can do something about it. Or even company like apple who believe in making things intuitive, they have started with providing inbuilt solution with Checkboxes. They can definitely bring some minimalistic innovation.

It would be difficult but not impossible for Asana. As Asana is an SAAS solution, it uses in existing Checkbox tag of HTML. They can use different Images or lobby for new Checkbox with HTML Standards group.

Hope someBudding entreprenuer takes honour in disrupting this tiny but vary effective, existing Task management solution.

My Experience : How to Give a Elevator Pitch?

I am first time entrepreneur so dont go by my word, but here is my experience.

In Month of June'13, I visited Dubai for Mobile Apps conference. There I got a chance to interact with various dubai based Startup Accelerators. Event organizers also gave us opportunity to give elevator Pitch.

My Co-founder Gold and I took this opportunity to deliver our First Elevator Pitch in front of audience. It was small gathering with Reps from Accelerators playing role of investors. 


Gold has prepared small pitch, It contained lots of industry stats for Mobile Usage. We started with it, I explained about what we are doing as protos.

We got following feedback from Investors abour Elevator pitch.

1.  Self Intro - We missed it completely.
2. Explain Problem - We didn't pin down on direct problems
3. Explain the solution - We directly jumped on Solution Aspects
4. Leave other things for Q&A - 

Overall we got good feedback about our Ideas, They liked our Idea.

Now Here is details about Whats is Elevator Pitch?  I jotted down a document to understand more about elevator pitch when I heard about it first time in Oct 2012. 

Disclaimer: I have picked following thing from the internet. I have tweaked it a bit.

What is an "Elevator Pitch"?

It's small, concise and effective pitch about your business, you give to anyone whom you meet in elevator.

 

An "Elevator Pitch" is a concise, carefully planned, and well-practiced description about your company that your mother should be able to understand in the time it would take to ride up an elevator.

What an "Elevator Pitch" is not

It is not a "sales pitch."  Don't get caught up in using the entire pitch to tell the Investor how great your product or service is.  The Investor is "buying" the business, not the product.  Tell him/her how you will run the business.

How to Create An Elevator Pitch?

You will need to answer following questions to create pitch.

1) What is your product or service?


Briefly describe what it is you sell.  Do not go into excruciating detail.  


2) Who is your market?
What industry is it?

How large of a market do they represent? 


3) What is your revenue model?how do you expect to make money?  


  Briefly discuss who you are selling the product or service to.
4) Who is behind the company?

  "Bet on the jockey, not the horse" is a familiar saying among Investors. Tell them a little about you and your team's background and achievements. If you have a strong advisory board, tell them who they are and what they have accomplished

5) Who is your competition?


Don't have any?  Think again.  Briefly discuss who they are and what they have accomplished.  Successful competition is an advantage-they are proof your business model and/or concept work.


6) What is your competitive advantage? 


Simply being in an industry with successful competitors is not enough. You need to effectively communicate how your company is different and why you have an advantage over the competition.  A better distribution channel?  Key partners?  Proprietary technology?

What your "Elevator Pitch" must contain:

A "hook" 
Open your pitch by getting the Investor's attention with a "hook."  A statement or question that piques their interest to want to hear more.


About 150-225 words 
Your pitch should go no longer than 60 seconds. 


Passion 
Investors expect energy and dedication from entrepreneurs. 


A request 
At the end of your pitch, you must ask for something.  Do you want their business card, to schedule a full presentation, to ask for a referral?  


Product Startups - Hiring Challenges

 I have spent around 4 years in running a startup, Screen-Magic. We are now ~20 people Technology Startup.

Whats different in Hiring for Product Companies in Comparison to Software Services companies?

   You don't hire only Software developers. Currently My Dev team attributes 30% of total employees. I guess in services, around 80% would be Developers.


In software Services, your majority hiring is of Software engineeers. While in Product Companies, you need to have mix of guys from Sales, Marketing, Designer, Techies, Ops guys, vendor Managment & procurement.

So there is very much possibility that founders don't have experience of each of departments.

Problem Statement: 

Suppose I want to hire for some position X, say - Product Manager.  I have created this position considering some Business importance it have. As I am entrepreneur and its my first venture, I have certain background i.e. either I am from Tech background or from BizDev/Sales Background.  I can create the JD by reading or referring various job posted across the internet. I will get various applications if I posted openings at various places like Naukri, LinkedIn or on Company Blog.

Disclaimer: 
Startups don't afford to hire full time HR and Full Time and Experienced HRs are not available to Startups. As Startups have small sized companies, founders play role of HR initialy.

What are the Issues:
1) How to shortlist matching Candidates? Sometime resumes dont depict correct picture.
2) How to define interview Process.
3) How to judge person for his competence.
4) What Questions are correct questions?

Present Case Scenarios:
Recruitment Companies can work with Startup founders to help them recruiting. They can ease Search and Shortlisting Ops. But Actual Recruiting Process is quite long. It just doesn't stop there.

Whats Missing?Recruitment companies don't have people who have done actual Hiring for themselves. For Example they don't have successful product Managers as Hiring Managers for Hiring PM, who can draft questions and judge actual experience of Candidate. Create Real life situations for candidates during hiring process.

Its Multi-dimensional problems to solve, Medication which may effective for Person A may not be Person B. But Still comparing with Pharma guys giving Medicine to Patient on his knowledge, can not be compared with Doctor's knowledge. 

But External Experts say from Google may judge candidates differently so Startups may need to keep somethings in mind.

Have you seen a famous Movie "Moneyball" starring Brad pit?

Lets with Billy Bean Quote from Moneyball :

The problem we're trying to solve is that there are rich teams and there are poor teams. Then there's fifty feet of crap, and then there's us. It's an unfair game. And now we've been gutted. We're like organ donors for the rich. Boston's taken our kidneys, Yankees have taken our heart. And you guys just sit around talking the same old "good body" nonsense like we're selling jeans. Like we're looking for Fabio. We've got to think differently. We are the last dog at the bowl. You see what happens to the runt of the litter? He dies. 

It has analogy to Startup world, Startups are poor team, they have less money to spend. They need to spend it carefully for a person who is bang on money, Person who may not be best in the Market, May be rejected by Best of the Companies, But bang on Value for Your Company.

Problems are many in hiring, But There is no Silver bullet!

Tribute to a Rationalist - Dr. Narendra Dabholkar

On 22nd of August, I came home pretty late from office. It was a heavy work day. Immediately sat for dinner as a habit switched on the TV to check out news on Hindi News channels. While channel surfing a newsline on one channel,  caught my attention "Activist Narendra dabholkar shot dead in Pune". News was unexpected. It was great Shock as Dr. Narendra Dabholkar is well known person in my home town. so I switched to Marathi news channel to see details. Obviously for Marathi Newschannels, it was big breaking News as Dr. Narendra Dabholkar seems to be well known figure in Maharashtara. From Reactions coming from Various parts of Maharashtra, It seemed like, whole of Maharashtra was in shocked state.

 I felt proud to see, such a simple man getting so much support from people due to his work and his thoughts. Otherwise why would be Big city like Pune's core area will go for Band on their own without being forced on them.

Who was Dr. Narendra Dabholkar? WHy was I so concerned?
If you are resident of India, you would know who is Narendra dabholkar as His martyrdom got such a coverage from national media, which even any very famous politico or Bollywood would not get.  Answer to other is, I have heard this name since my childhood, He was known personality in my hometown, Satara. Anti superstition knowledge were common to us and very uncommon to have for a students in small school in small town back in 1990s. But Thanks to Narendra dabholkar and some of our teacher who was assisting Dabholkar in his AntiSuperstition movements.  Though I am not in the fortunate once who got to work with him.



Great Sports Person!I heard his name for Anti-superstition movement but few months back I amazed to see his name being referenced in Sports news section. There was big kabaddi event in Maharashtra and People were getting crazy about a guy for "Hanuman Udi" (Hanuman Jump).  Newspaper and Many sportsman remembered "Dr. Narendra Dabholkar" for same thing. I was amazed and amused knowing about all roundedness of this man.  These guys fired on his back like coward, I still imagine if these assassins have had come from front, even at his old age, He would have easily dodged bullets and would have helped in nabbing these criminals But May be these guys too have known this.

His efforts in various fields did help Maharashtra to be progressive state.

I am not finding proper words for writing about this Great Man but with Heavy Heart I say Good bye to such a great man. His work is totally inspirational and he would be great role model for anyone wants to contribute to societies well being without expecting any return but goodwill.

I hope to take inspiration from him for his rationalism and support any movement which will help India to go next and Will not fear about talking against any irrational thing I do see.

I would ask readers of this blog to take 5-10 minutes of your time to read a bit about Dr. Narendra Dabholkar's Mission and Contribute your bit, by Speaking Against any wrongness or Blind Beliefs you see.

What is Software or IT services Company?

India is considered as a  exporter of Software & Services. Considering figures published by NDTV, its $68.02 billion for year 2011-12. Refer  There is no doubt that major percentage of this revenue would be contributed by Software services company. and Indian product companies would be contributing in minor way.

Now What generally a Software Services Company do?
Broad answer to this is:
1) They do maintenance of softwares built by companies in US.
2) They do resource extension - Supply trained professionals to work on client site, who know abt software.
3) They take up configuration projects for big products like SAP, Oracle, Salesforce.
4) They provide support for Softwares to answer the queries.

Software service company's 80% workforce is software engineers/IT engineers or people who can do some support activities around software.

If you see major In-College Job Placement Scenario,  Majority of jobs were and are offered by IT Services companies like TCS, Infosys, HCL, Cognizant. Apart from these big names, Lots of mid and small services companies are there who are working on small scale projects and earning livings.


How do they earn revenue?

These companies normally takes project from US & Europe. They charge from $10 to $1000 per hour (or more) for work done by an employee. It means ~INR 500 to INR 50,000. More the number of hours estimated for a project, more is the revenue. Whatever revenue they earn from customer, they charge some fixed amount to employees. For Example. If an employee in XYZ company is working on a project for a month. His total work days would be ~20 days. If we count 8 hrs of work every day. It would come to ~160 hrs. Normally a company charges $50 or INR 2500 per hour. So monthly they would get arnd Arnd 4,00,000 or whopping 4L rupees. while company normally pays arnd 40k Rs to an employee as monthly compensation. So Company earns arnd 3.6 Lakhs per employee per month.

What is on Bench?
As companies do outsourced work and business is generally profitable when employee is working on some project. so These companies need to constantly
hunt for projects. Sometime a projects get over and company doesnt have any other project for an employee to work on. So they ask employees to wait or sit on bench. He is not allocated any computer to work on. They do pay salaries without him to have to do any work. Its loss for company certain period.


What are challenges?

Although it looks all is well and very goody-goody affair, but it may not for some companies.

There are certain challenges in running business

1) They need to find Projects and Negotiate on per hour and Total Project Duration.  Sometimes for acquiring projects, sales guys give less cost and less duration, Which may result is more stress on end workers who are software manager, engineers.

2) Retaining employees - During onbench period, Its hard to retain good people.

3) US/UK visa - Many times client demands that they need employee work from their premises. For this companies need to enable visa's but Visa processes have become more stringent day by day.

Evolution of Communication Channels

Communication is a basic need of human being.

Human being is a social animal. They need to be in a group, in touch with other human beings. They want acknowledgement from fellow beings, wants to interact to achieve their goals. Communication is a basic need. To serve this basic need, lots of inventions has been made throughout the history.

And its open ended problem, many are still working on it in present, to make it much better for future. Lots of communication channels has been discovered, used extensively.

Existence of different languages in different part of world supports this assumption. Language is base of communication pyramid. People discovered languages, they standardized language, a education system evolved around this standardization process.

Then came the need of storing spoken communication so scripts were invented. With scripts, came paper communication media like newspapers, books.

As world expanded, people traveled around. People wanted to be in touch with people from differen geographies, But either these people are far away and means of transportations are not evolved and time & cost were not affordable. So People started sending letters to people, they want to communicate. In 19th century, Political history can be tracked from Postal communication between political leaders. There was need for quicker channels for communication.

Telecom Revolution

Alexander Bell invented Telephone in 1974, and enabled the world. Discovery of Telephone is one of the biggest on in the field of communication. People could now talk with each other. Quickly & reliably connect with. It was the hottest area of the research.

After 1874, world got new toy to play with. It started era of telecommunication. The geographical & political situations at that time made it spread quickly to most of the part of world. People started using fixed line telephones to communicate with each other. Any from US can communicate with person in UK.

In 1973, The first hand-held mobile phone was demonstrated by John F. Mitchell and Dr. Martin Cooper of Motorola, using a handset weighing around 2.2 pounds(1kg). A decade later, a first commercial mobile phone was launched. [wiki]

From 1990 to 2011, worldwide mobile phone subscriptions grew from 12.4 million to over 6 billion, penetrating about 87% of the global population and reaching the Bottom of the economic pyramid.[wiki]

Businesses & Telecom

Throughout the history of mankind, Businesses/Enterprises/Need of people to get rich, acted as a major investor for fueling inventions. They consumed, supported inventions. Business problems became a thought starters for many of new Ideas.

In terms of Communication, Business has obvious need of communication. In fact they gave birth to new paradigm of 1 to many communication. Peer to peer communication is personal need but Business to peer communication is business need. They seek major support from Telecom and fueled lots of evolution. Telephones were used by businesses for internal as well external communications.

“Having Telephone numbers for Business is Primary or Basic Need for any Business”

Anyone seeking new service/product/support from a business, were provided with facility of contact numbers which they can call to. Telecom made support & inbound lead generation process easier, affordable and manageable. Lots of tools like IVR systems were used by businesses to serve inbound queries, requests in automated way. 

SMS - Short Messaging Service

The first SMS message was sent over the VodafoneGSM network in the United Kingdom on 3 December 1992. [wiki]
SMS is the most widely used data application in the world, with 3.5 billion active users, or 78% of all mobile phone subscribers.The term "SMS" is used for all types of short text messaging and the user activity itself in many parts of the world.[wiki]
With wide spread of sms usage for short and asynchronous communication, businesses adopted SMS and started usign VMNs, shortcodes, Longcodes so that Mobile users can send text messages to them. As SMSs are text messages, lots of automation can be placed in the system.

 

Era of Internet

The Internet was commercialized in 1995. Since then Internet continues to grow, driven by ever greater amounts of online information and knowledge, commerce, entertainment. With Demand from business to have access of internet on Mobile devices, Telecom is empowering infrastructure to support Internet over Telco network.

 This will further fuel growth of Internet. Comparing Openness of Internet with Government controlled Telecom industry, It became major source of Consumer oriented discoveries. Voice over IP was being provided by Telecom companies but It was not satisfactory for business communication so adoption was low although cost was lower.

Year 2000 Internet bubble played major role in setting of internet infrastructure across the world. Although Telecom was 150 year old company, It failed gave cost benefits to people. Telecom costs were quite high for consumers when they wanted to communicate long distance.

Convergence of Telecom And Internet

Skype tried to solve this problem for internet users so they can connect with peers with minor or free cost. Lots of consumer world who were on internet adopted Skype with much excitement and skype and similar companies are keep growing. Skype is used massively even by lots of businesses for internal communication. WhatsApp has changed whole peer-to-peer messaging paradigm with its mobile app.

Communication and Collaboration is still the space or vertical to target for budding entrepreneurs. Many more discoveries/inventions are yet to unfold in coming decades.

Fortunately I am part of the startup, Screen-Magic, working on some of the interesting problems in Enterprise Communication domain.

Lets Wait and Watch for Interesting things.

Leave Letters or LOL Letters :)

.The Leave Applications: from Facebook Share

-Infosys, Bangalore : An employee applied for leave as follows: "Since I have to go to my village to sell my land along with my wife, please sanction me one-week leave."

-This is from Oracle Bangalore: From an employee who was performing the mundan ceremony of his 10 year old son: "As I want to shave my son's head, please leave me for two days.."

-Another gem from CDAC. Leave-letter from an employee who was performing his daughter's wedding: "As I am marrying my daughter , please grant a week's leave.."

-From H.A.L. Administration Dept:"As my mother-in-law has expired and I am only one responsible for it please grant me 10 days leave."

-Another employee applied for half day leave as follows: "Since I've to go to the cremation ground at 10 o-clock and I may not return, please grant me half day casual leave"

-An incident of a leave letter: "I am suffering from fever, please declare one-day holiday."

-A leave letter to the headmaster: "As I am studying in this school I am suffering from headache. I request you to leave me today"

-Another leave letter written to the headmaster: "As my headache is paining , please grant me leave for the day."

-Covering note:"I am enclosed herewith..."

-Another one: "Dear Sir: with reference to the above, please refer to my below..."
-Actual letter written for application of leave:"My wife is suffering from sickness and as I am her only husband at home I may be granted leave".

-Letter writing: "I am well here and hope you are also in the same well."

Income Tax Return ITR - Which form should you use?

ITR 1 (Sahaj)

For Taxpayers with Income from:
1) Salary of pension
2) Rental income from one house
3) Income form interest and other sources (except from lottery)

ITR 2 

For individuals and HUFs with income from:
1) Salary or pension
2)  Rent from more than one property
3) Capital gains
4) interest and other sources, including lottery and race horses
Dont use it:
If the taxpayer has income from business or profession.

ITR 3

For partners in firms  with income from:

1) Interest, salary, bonus, commision or remuneration

2) Capital gains, rent from more than one house

3) interest and other sources, including lottery and race horses
Dont use it:
If firm is a sole proprietorship business.

ITR 4

for taxpayers with income from:

1)  Business or Profession

2) Income from any other head

3) Foreign Assets

ITR 4S

for taxpayers with income from:

1)  Business or Profession computed under Sec 44AD & 44 AE

2) One house property (excluding loss from previous years)

3) Interest and other sources

ITR 5

The Acknowledgement form is to be used by all taxpayers. If you file offline, sumit this with the ITR. If you e-file without a digital signature, send the signed ITR V to CPC in bangalore by POST.

How Capital Gains are taxed

The profit from the sale of any asset is a capital gain and has to be mentioned in the tax return. The tax on capital gains depends on the holding period and the asset class. Here's a ready reconer on the tazation of different capital gains.


Reference: Economics Times.

Asset	Holding Period	Type of Gain	Tax Rate
Stocks, equity funds and balanced funds	Less than 1 year	short term	15%
	1 year and above	Long term	Nil
Debt funds, debt-oriented hybrid funds	Less than 1 year	short term	Added to income and taxed at normal rate
	1 year and above	Long term	10% flat or 20% with indexation
Gold(physical)	Less than 1 year	short term	Added to income and taxed at normal rate
	3 years and above	Long term	20% with indexation
Gold ETF	Less than 1 year	short term	Added to income and taxed at normal rate
	1 year and above	Long term	10% flat or 20% with indexation
Real Estate	Less than 1 year	short term	Added to income and taxed at normal rate
	3 years and above	Long term	20% with indexation

Ecommerce - Buying Experience - Electrolux Microwave Oven Online from EzoneOnline

Finally I made up mind to buy Microwave oven, it was long pending demand from Home ministry but due to policy paralysis and  home budget deficit was larger, couldnt make decision like GOI :)

I do detailed research when it comes to shopping, so in my first survey, I visited Vijay Sales, Foodbazaar, Next & Croma. I liked electrolux 23 l model and decided on that, Vijay sales store has listed arnd Rs. 7999 price but I asked him to reduce the price so he finally agree to give me at Rs. 7500. And Vijay sales guy was giving me glass vessle set along with Starter kit for free.

I thought I may get better deal at other stores. I went to Foodbazaar in Baner, there same model was placed which was priced arnd at Rs. 6500 but tragedy was that no one knew where the box was and no starter kit. and it was the only piece lying there in dust. so I ditched that. at croma and next price was on higher side. Next guy quoted 9.9k which is too high while croma guy quoted arnd 8k. Reliance Digital didnt have electrolux item in their store.

Meanwhile I was also searching for online deal, Ebay and Flipkart was selling at higher price while Homeshop18 has at cheaper rate but it item was out of stock.
Ezoneonline was offering 15% discount so final price came to Rs. 7200 which was the cheapest one. so I decided to go for Ezoneonline. I also wanted to try out online shopping experience.

Webportal was good, It sent me order emails and informed me that item will be delivered in 7 days. but item got delivered in 2-3 days. so far so good.  but their was glitch. As per my research, we should have got starter kit with oven. but they didnt send starter kit. Market price of starter kit is around 1.2k.

I thought it may be with Electrolux to give us starter kit, so I called electrolux, they quickly responded saying that they will send a person for demo and starter kit. but demo person told us that starter kit only can be obtained from Dealer.

So I tried calling ezoneonline number, but it was unreachable. so I emailed them
They responded by saying that kit will be delivered in 4 days. I had go to bangalore for 4 days trip after 2-3 days but kit didnt get deliver. After coming from bangalore, I again emailed ezone support, this time they replied that due to bad weather, they didnt ship the item, it will be shipped next day. but nothing happened. so after daily followup on email, We finally got starter kit afte 14 days of purchasing item and we could start using oven.


Moral of story is dont buy from Ezoneonline, instead go for vijaysales, you can negotiate and get better deal and you can also negotiate face to face for extra freebies. Best is you can go for local small shop owner, they will give you much better deal.

ECommerce - Experience of buying from PrintVenue

I recently bought a small item from PrintVenue. Its online-printing e-commerce company. Just want to share my experience of this process.

I  interacted with PrintVenue a year back when I wanted to get some visiting cards printed for my wife. They took the order initially, I paid online but they declined to send visiting card with reason that they print Visiting cards only for registered businesses not for personal use. They also refunded my amt.


This time again, I got engaged with them for similar reason, this time I noticed that they were offering a visiting card holder with personalization. It was 250 rs but they were offering at Rs. 200 with Rs. 50 discount.

I chose one steel card holder, It looked nice in the images/photos. I personalized it. at purchase time it add Rs 50 more as delivery charges.  I was thinking weather to  buy or not as it was charging almost 25% as delivery charges. so I just went to home page. but noticed that some Sale is there. I found that they have some coupon for this item. I again started to process and applied the coupon. with coupon, I got the discount and final price of item remained with Rs 200, no additional delivery charges due to discount. I was happy.

There delivery process was wierd, they keep sending sms for 2 days telling abt delivery but Item received after 5 days of purchase.

Quality of item was not that good. Quality of item is not as shown in pictures on portal. I dont think I will do purchase from PrintVenue in the future.

Online Rectification of IT Return - 143(1) of IT Act 1961

I received 143(1) intimation from IT department 2-3 months back. I was quite clueless about what to do about it. It was showing that I have paid less income tax, although I have paid full tax via Self assessment tax. Intimation was showing that I paid zero self assessment tax.

This 143(1) Intimation didnt have much information abt what need to be done. I was thinking of consulting some CA about it.

But Thanks to Economic Times, They saved lots my efforts and time. There is an artical abt IT return rectification in today's ET. It tells in detail abt what to do for IT intimation.

I followed their instructions and could successfully submit request for intimation.

I have decided to take pain of writing in whole article about Rectification of IT return so that lots of clueless souls like me, will get some relief.  I have also corrected some of the things as per latest IT website.


----------------------------------------------- Article as follows -------------------------------------------------

A taxpayer can rectify his income tax return online if there is an apparent mistake in the return already filed. The change can be effected only after the taxpayer has received an order under Section 143(1) from CPC Bangalore for the e-return. Rectification enables correcting the error and refilling the return for assessment. To do so, one needs to log in to the income tax e-filing website with the login name and password that have been user for filing the return.
Login name should be your PAN number.



Log In
After logging in to the site, go to the "My Account" page and click on the "Rectification Request" link in left sidebar. You will be guided to a form for rectification.

 

Details

 The taxpayer must fill in the assessment year for which the rectification is sought. The latest communication reference number and CPC order date. as it appears on the intimation under Section 143(1). also need to be filled.  if the return is audited under Section 44Ab, sign the rectification return digitally. 

It gives you 3 options after you give above mentioned info in form. you choose second option and in that 3rd option of IT Return. It will show you next page to enter additional data about your self assessment tax return. You can get this information from you Tax Credit Statement.

Processing

Once the rectification return is successfully uploaded, a rectification request number and acknowledgement will be displayed. The request will be processed at CPC Bangalore. A rectification order under Section 154 can be issued or the request can be rejected.

Withdrawal

The taxpayer has the option to withdraw the rectification return online with seven days of filing the same. 

Points to Note:

• Only one rectification request can be filed for an assessment year as per the CPC order unless the rectification return is withdrawn.
• A rectification should not be filed for any change in income. instead a revised return should be filed for this.
•  Rectification request can be filed only for the last five assessment years.

Hope this information is helpful to anyone getting into similar IT tangle and take proper action in time without much energy.

Reply from IT Department:

After 15 days of filing rectification request, I got reply from IT department with Corrected data.
So looks like it got resolved.