E-Wastes

Now a days every one has a need to own a cell phone.
Check up with your Gardner, Car Driver, Dhobhi or your Servant Maid if they need your old cell phones before you store it in your dump yard.
You can also get rid of your guilt of generating e-waste this way if you donate them to the needy.
While this segment of people who support us in managing our daily chores can pay the recurring expense and get into a plan that suites them, they find it difficult to pay and buy a phone upfront.

Are we responsible corporate citizens ?

Each desk top PC consumes 30 watts per hour when it is kept switched on. Of the 24 hours in a day close to 8 to 10 hours is what a PC is used in a working day. When most of the PC users leave their PCs on during off office hours during a week day and during weekends- 4 units of power goes wasted every week. Just because we can afford to pay the bills, doesn't entitle us to waste the resource that is at our disposal.
LET'S BE RESPONSIBLE HUMANS.

80,000 tree sapling created in 2 months

Thanks to the Project Green Hands(PGH), who hold the Guiness book of world records for planting over 185,000 tree saplings in a single day.
We(1800 of us) at my office actively participated, starting 2011 Sep for 2 months to prepare 80,000 tree saplings through PGH

This is how the year 2012 started for me

Thanks to the Isha Organizers to invite me to be part of the first Isha Arogya inauguration in Chennai.

புதியதலைமுறை தமிழர் விருது

On 15th April 2012, a legend "புதியதலைமுறை" was creating a history which when properly used can sow the seeds for a new culture in தமிழ் நாடு and in the media industry.

The award winners and the program was unique and worth a ton of gold if not diamond.

Tremor in Chennai

There were 2 tremors one at 2:15pm & the other at 4:30pm today 11th April 2012. I felt the first one ... Lasted for well over 25 seconds. In the next 5 min the building was evacuated. The twice a year mock drill we performed came in handy. There was no commotion or confusion. While there were tsunami warning around 5:00pm and the coastal road and settlements (shops and public) were evacuated , later the warning was with drawn.

Simple systems

Why in well established offices like HDFC there are no token system to regulate visiting customers.

Using Montecarlo simulation

Using Montecarlo simulation to arrive at the PFE (potential future exposure) of the Credit limits extended to the clients.

Agasthyar temple at T Nagar

One temple where I saw a statue of Agasthyar and his wife Lopamudhra

Bellaria - an ice cream shop with a difference

Enjoying an address adjacent to Park Sheraton, this shop is one of it's kind in Chennai that makes ice creams to order.
Your choice of ingredients shape up into an ice cream of your choice in 10 to 15 minutes in front of your eyes.
You could choose the base - from low fat milk, soya milk, coconut milk or rice milk.
Tiramisu flavor was the one I "picked".
Coconut milk blended well too.

Opportunities a plenty but no one to take it

Building maintenance is poorly done with people involved not being trained or certified.

This leads to poor maintenance and hence leading to poor standard of living.

There are no takers to create this vital infrastructure. An institute with certification course on plumbing, electrical, carpentry and masonry can go a long way lifting the poverty line a big way in india.

This could create job opportunities and also improve the service level.

Samsung Smart TV with 3D

You could connect this TV to Internet.
Remote Control using your iPhone or iPad
Play any Internet based videos seamlessly accessing the content through any smart device and using Allshare feature of the Smart TV.
The 3D feature is awesome in this model UA40D6600.

Is not taking risk the riskiest thing in life ?

The bar is kept moving high in the minds of people as to what it really means that one has arrived in to the success zone.
This trend deprives human race of it's potential to explore the new and higher possibilities. As the majority of time is spent in survival game.
It is necessary a social structure is put in place with the government intervention to put an end to this direction less race. So that higher possibilities can be achieved by human specie.
Is it true that the future evolution that is awaiting to happen may be in several thousands of years is something to do with inner aspects of human being than on physiological changes ?
This aspect of evolution is getting delayed because of current culture that predominantly makes human spend their precious time in the current trend on survival game.

For seekers of God

An autobiography of a YOGI by Paramahansa Yogananda is a must read for all seekers of God.

Reverse mortgage: Unlock the value of property

The number of Indians with a net worth of Rs 1 crore has grown exponentially in the past decade. But you won’t find these crorepatis zipping around in flashy cars or splurging at shopping malls. That’s because for many of these crorepatis, the biggest chunk of their wealth is lying locked as the property in which they live. They may have an eight-figure net worth but their monthly income is in four figures. Madan Gopal Mathur, 67, is among the asset-rich but cash strapped property owners.

But three years ago, this retired PSU manager found the key to unlock the value of his property when he reverse mortaged his 1,000 sq ft apartment in Delhi. Reverse mortgage is just the opposite of a home loan. In a loan, a person buys property with money given by the bank and repays it with EMIs.

In reverse mortgage, the bank starts giving the owner a monthly payment as a loan against his house. The owner can borrow up to 75% of the value of the property. After his death, his heirs have to repay the reverse mortgage loan taken by him against the property. “It acts as a forced saving for the owner’s children,” says Mathur. What’s more, the house is revalued every five years and the borrowing limit is accordingly revised.

In 2007, his house was valued at Rs 60 lakh and he was allowed to borrow up to Rs 40 lakh against it over the next 15 years. The EMI was fixed at Rs 9,600. The move helped Mathur more than double his monthly income from Rs 9,000 to Rs 18,600. “The government’s decision to introduce reverse mortgage is a godsend for retirees like me," he says.

Till then, Mathur was facing difficulties trying to make ends meet. After taking voluntary retirement in 2001, he found that his nest egg of Rs 22 lakh was not as big as it appeared. A good chunk went into repaying loans and he was left with Rs 12 lakh which he invested in a few insurance plans for annuity income.

“It was difficult to manage the household with the Rs 9,000 I got as annuity,” he says. Mathur tried different options to supplement his income. Since he had a financial background (he had retired as general manager, finance, of Bhel), he started selling life insurance. But he could not keep up with the pace required for the job. He also had to travel long distances to explain the policies to prospective clients. Most of the times, the visits didn’t translate into sales and he made barely Rs 3,000-4,000 a month.

“I was spending more on fuel than what I was earning in commissions,” he says. He could not take help from his children who had immigrated to the US.

STRATEGY	BENEFITS
To reverse mortage his 1,000 sq ft apartment worth Rs 60 lakh	Receives monthly income of Rs 9,600 for his flat. This supplements the Rs 9,000 he gets as annuity from his investments

The first glimmer of hope came in 2007, when the government announced the reverse mortgage scheme. “It was a novel concept and not immediately understood by the public,” says Mathur. Some people even saw a stigma in the scheme. Imagine, funding your living expenses by pawning the house you live in. Yet, Mathur saw in it the panacea for his problems.

When the Punjab National Bank launched the scheme in 2007, he was among the first applicants. Though most of his problems are behind him, Mathur has broader concerns on his mind. “The life expectancy in India is rising but few people are financially prepared to deal with this,” he says. “Reverse mortgage can help them tide over the problem in their sunset years,” he says.

Why you should know the alpha value of your mutual fund

An interesting article from ET wealth dated 3rd Jan 2011

While evaluating the performance of a fund, analysts look at several factors such as the asset size, expense ratio, past returns and company or sector allocation patterns among others. Out of these, the past performance of a fund is widely quoted in fact sheets, research reports and advertisements that solicit mutual fund investments. Though the past performance of a fund is important, it completely ignores the risks taken by the fund.

Mutual funds face two types of risks while investing in stocks: i) Company specific and ii) market specific. A fund aims to eliminate company-specific risks by diversifying their holdings. However, market risk (also known as systematic risk) cannot be eradicated. A well-diversified mutual fund then is prone to market risks only. The returns that a fund generates must be in accordance with the risks it is exposed to. Such risk-adjusted returns are called expected returns.

For making risk-return analysis, analysts use a statistical tool known as alpha (also known as Jensen’s alpha after American economist Michael Jensen who developed it). This measures a fund’s returns relative to its expected returns. A fund that consistently generates higher return relative to its expected return is an outperformer. Alpha is also used by analysts to evaluate the performance of the fund manager. A positive value of alpha means that the fund manager’s stock picking and market timing skills.

For a retail investor the alpha value is important because it measures the excess returns a fund has generated in relation to the returns generated by its benchmark. Alpha values are readily available on websites like valuereseachonline.com and myplexus.com.

Do such positive alpha funds really perform better than the negative alpha funds? We decided to test this by studying the performance of equity-diversified funds. The funds were filtered by looking at funds that are more than five years old and only growth-option funds were selected. After applying these filters we zeroed-in on 116 funds. Out of these, 69 were positive alpha, 24 were negative and 23 have alpha value of zero. We ignored funds with zero alpha values.

We then analysed the performance of positive and negative alpha funds over a period of one year, three years and five years. In these three time periods 56% of the positive alpha funds consistently outperformed their benchmarks. On the other hand, 58% of the negative alpha funds consistently underperformed their benchmarks. This shows that the funds that generate excess returns have the ability to outperform in the medium term and the long term.

However, alpha should be used cautiously while evaluating funds that are not fully diversified. This is because alpha only considers market risk and ignores company-specific risks. Therefore, it gives a distorted picture of the risk-adjusted returns in case of less-diversified funds because such funds are also prone to the company-specific risks.

Do Believe the Hype - NYTimes.com

Do Believe the Hype - NYTimes.com: "India today is this unusual combination of a country with millions of people making $2 and $3 a day, but with a growing economy, an increasing amount of cheap connectivity and a rising number of skilled technologists looking to make their fortune by inventing low-cost solutions to every problem you can imagine. In the next decade, I predict, we will see some really disruptive business models coming out of here — to a neighborhood near you. If you thought the rate of change was fast thanks to the garage innovators of Silicon Valley, wait until the garages of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore get fully up to speed. I sure hope we’re ready"

Philipines to become world's Call centre capital :

"India, at one time, held a huge advantage as far as BPO services are concerned. This was primarily due to the low cost advantage that it enjoyed. Not just that, Indians were also considered good speakers of the English language. But the country has now lost its edge to Philippines, especially for voice based customer support. It is in fact believed that Philippines is set to become the call centre capital of the world. What had made the latter an attractive destination is that it has a much stronger affinity with the Americans, attrition rates are much lower than that in India and there are more tax incentives. Plus, the firms in the West themselves want to de-risk their revenues and not depend entirely on India. For instance, of India's total BPO exports, nearly 45% comes from voice-based work. This is expected to be around US$ 5.6 bn this year. However, the Philippines BPO industry will post almost US$ 5.7 bn of pure voice-based revenues in 2010, thereby overtaking India. US controls 65% of the world outsourcing market. Naturally, this is an important market for those dabbling in the BPO space. Although it may not be possible to wrestle the top slot from Philippines anytime soon, India will have to seriously find a long term solution to ensure that it does not entirely lose its edge in the BPO space."

India to become world's fastest growing economy by 2013-15: Morgan Stanley

The two hands to produce count for more than that one mouth to feed, after all. Driven by a sterling demographic dividend, continuing structural reform and globalisation, India is poised to accelerate its growth rate to 9-9.5% over 2013-15, even as China will cool down to a more sedate 9% by 2012 and to 8% by 2015. So finds a new report by Morgan Stanley, authored by Chetan Ahya (managing director for Asia and India economist, who writes a monthly column for ET) and Tanvee Gupta.

India has one of the lowest median ages among the major economies. When an economy prospers, first its death rate and then, its birth rate falls. As this trend proceeds, there is a big bulge in the working age population while the non-working population (the young and the old) shrink as a share of the population. The lowering of the dependent (non-working) population to working age population ratio has twin effects.

One, it allows people to save a large proportion of their income, raising the country’s rate of savings; two, it boosts the number of people who work and contribute to growth. Thanks to structural reform, the additional hands available for work find work. Even with stagnant per capita output, the sheer increase in the number of workers would raise GDP growth. With reform pushing up productivity per worker, GDP would rise even faster.

The report also assumes that less than 5% of those who enter the workforce will be illiterate in India in the next two-three years, and that there would be a big jump in the number of young people, who go to and finish college, making India the largest contributor to the pool of tertiary educated workforce in the world.

All these changes would be supported and complemented by further reform by the government in fiscal consolidation, opening up of retail to foreign direct investment, public sector reform and divestment, and improvement in governance that would reduce transaction costs.


Globalisation gives additional job opportunities, additional capital to augment rising domestic savings and additional know-how. With this happy combination, the report expects India to become the world’s fastest-growing economy. The government’s chief economic advisor Kaushik Basu has been forecasting such a development as well.

“Real GDP growth in China has averaged 10% annually over the past 30 years, compared with 6.2% in India. During this period, China’s GDP grew 16 times to $5 trillion whereas India’s rose seven times to $1.2 trillion. China’s exports (including services) surged 65 times over this period to $1,330 billion while India’s exports increased 22 times to $250 billion” says the report.

China has overtaken Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy. China’s demographic transition pushed up its savings rate above 30% in 1985, while India’s savings rate crossed that level only in 2005. India’s consumption level will now come down, even as China’s will rise.

Underlying the Morgan Stanley forecast is the assumption that India will significantly jack up its expenditure on infrastructure and in plant and machinery. Infrastructure expenditure has gone up from 5.4% of GDP in 2005 to 7.5% in 2009 and is poised to go up to 8% of GDP in 2010. Over 2012-17, the forecast is that India’s infrastructure spend would be $1 trillion as compared with $530 million over the previous five-year period.

Another assumption is on the quantity and quality of the young people coming into the workforce. While India will be the largest contributor to the world’s workforce — all of 136 million people — over the next 10 years (fully a quarter of the entire world’s additional workforce), China will add just 23 million

Indians - the most happiest consumers

As per ET dt 8th May 2010.

In the whole world, Indian consumers are the most confident lot. According to a global survey, consumer confidence in the country reached its highest level since the third quarter of 2007 and India topped the pack of 55 countries with 127 index points followed by Indonesia at 116 and Norway at 115, the latest edition of the Nielsen Global Consumer Confidence Index has found.

“It is amazing that Indians are far more confident about the prospects of their economy than people from any other country. Even the gap between India and Indonesia is a huge 11 points, which goes to show how bubbly Indians are at the moment,” says Piyush Mathur, managing director-South Asia, The Nielsen Company. The rising index shows a rebounding faith in the economy and hope for a more optimistic future. Indian consumers believe that recession would soon be a thing of the past.

Consumer confidence rose in 41 of the 55 countries surveyed. As consumers across the globe started to spend again, they drove the global index up to 92 points (100 = average) in the first quarter. This represents a six-point increase from six months ago and only two points short of the 94-point index mark in the third quarter of 2007, just before the recession hit. Consumer confidence hit an all time low of 77 index points in early 2009, following the collapse of the international financial system.

This new wave of optimism though highlights the disparity between the east and the west. While all global regions posted positive increases in consumer confidence, the pace and extent of economic recovery further widened between the booming Asia Pacific and Latin American countries compared to the sluggish recovery in the United States and western Europe.