Super Star India: From Incredible to Unstoppable

By Mubeen Khan
Shobha De who recently turned 60 celebrated it by coming out with a book called Super Star India: From Incredible to Unstoppable.
De's new book draws a co-relation between the author and the country's age that is 60 years of independence and how India is evolving into a superpower. Characteristically in her latest book, De tries her hand at social commentary and serves up what is supposed to be a congratulatory and formal expression of praise to a confident and resurgent India. Whatever De’s intent might have been, what the reader gets, however, is a catalogue of all that is shameful in India. Poverty, hunger, social inequities and the less than commendable attitude of Indian men towards women in general; all of these find a place in this hall of shame. Why the writer would choose this particular title for a book that chronicles India’s negatives in such detail is hard to fathom. At the end of each section, where she details the ills of our country, there are a few lines about how and why India is unstoppable. For this book, De has turned an observer of the Indian society at large and gives a vivid picture of our problems but takes care to simultaneously inform the reader of the privileged perch from which she does her observation.
The funny part is that De takes great pains to emphasize her own credentials as one from the upper crust by writing that 'The Ambanis live in their palatial residence-not far from where I stay' or talking about her globe-trotting with specific attention on the place of stay (either a five star or expensive clubs).
There is a mention of reference to various high-end brands everything from Cartier watches to Fendi bags to Gucci to Prada stuff that is clearly out of reach for 99 per cent of India's population. To use this as a barometer for any kind of India’s progress is in itself very skewed.
De’s writing style has been well-honed over decades of writing and editing society magazines for years now. Popularly known as the queen bee of Penguin India Like all other De writings, it's an easy read, though it's a bit of an irritant to see her pepper sentences with Hindi words like, 'Goli Maro, ajeeb, halaath to the skeptics. She also in her writing employs phrases like "pretty confused", "pretty sinister" which will give you an idea of her literary style too.
In the end, it's a book that if read should be done a section at a time with time gaps in between. Although it is a book that does not add up to much, the tone is too elitist and too narrow in its assumptions. It is very much like a drawing room discussion where nothing is verifiable and anything goes.
Happy Reading if you choose to read!

Home Based Jobs, Get Rich Quick Schemes & Scams

Kiran Kumar, CEO, forexveda.com , a Foreign Exchange Trading company shares a very informative piece on Scams and how to avoid getting caught in the scam web

Congratulations: you have inherited $ 12 million. Let me hear from you URGENTLY by my private e-mail address: dr_dereklamber@yahoo.co.ukPHONE:+44-703-183-4622
How many times have you seen such e - mails in your inbox? Though we know that even a known person will not give Rs 1200 for no reason but in our heart we want to believe this stranger now dead in some far away country who of all the people in the world thought of leaving $ 12 million for you. Let's think hypothetically, even if this were true, will the person who is sending you this mail, choose to reveal such important information merely through an email. Won't he come and meet you personally and give this good news? Many of us sensible people just ignore this and laugh it off as a wishful thinking but still there are some who believe this and go all the way replying to the mail and enquiring details about it and ultimately falling into the trap. Before the better sense prevails to them and they realize that it was a fraud, much harm has already been done and instead of recipient of the email getting any money, he realizes that he has lost not only his peace of mind but also some money in the transit. Adding one more to the list of scams is internet scam. These scams originate in various forms but the objective of all the scams is to extract as much money from you. These scams clearly state that the transaction is absolutely clear and you need not pay anything but as you start communicating with them and getting into their trap, you end up paying a few thousand dollars as a courier charges or agent's fees. 'After all what's the harm in paying $10,000 as courier charges when you are getting $12 million', one may think. Many well educated people who are computer savvy and are well versed with evils of internet have succumbed to the pressures from internet. Perhaps the thought of getting rich in a jiffy is too strong that we lose our common sense and see no harm in trying. The modus operandi is same in all these scams. They never ask for money in the beginning. Once you start communicating with them, they say that they have sent money through an agent and you will have to pay the courier charges. People who believe, send the money for the courier. It may end there or they may start getting demand for more money for various reasons. "In one such incident, a client of mine showed he has 36 million dollars in his bank account in first caveman bank. It took me few minutes to find out there is no such bank" tells Kiran Kumar, CEO, Forexveda.comRecently CNN IBN reported about a girl in Delhi who stole a few lakhs from her company to pay those Nigerians who lured her in to an internet scam. She was later arrested by the police.Most of the Home based Jobs, get rich quick schemes and Internet scams fall under one category. If it was so easy to earn Rs 15,000 in a month by working for just two hours, all the organizations adhering to eight hour working shift will close down. Why only internet, newspapers are loaded with advertisements about getting rich quickly, work two hours a day and earn Rs 20,000 in a month. Internet is a place where you find thousands of get rich quick kind of schemes. People who don't understand the work from home concept still fall prey for these schemes.
Earning money through GoogleOne can advertise in Google as well as become a Google partner and let companies advertise in their websites. One has to have high traffic to the website/webpage and each click on the advertisement gets them a small money. Search engines are smarter than we think, before giving us money these search engines make sure that the clicks are genuine. This is again not the right way of earning money online and people end up paying money to middlemen who promise to teach them the tricks. If these clicks are fake, it is possible for them to track it down. The penalty can be cancellation of your account. Network Marketing
Network marketing is another way of earning money but selling is not everyone's cup of coffee. These are called MLM or in people's lingo 'chain schemes' 90% of the people who join these schemes lose money because they fail to sell these schemes to their friends.
Day Trading in Stock market
I was surprised when I read some investment advisors recommending day trading in stock market as a good work from home /home based business opportunity. In day trading mostly brokers make money through brokerages. Most of the day traders lose money in day trading. Online trading is one of the toughest professions and one must be very careful in investing in day trading. Do not trust people who only talk about profits, but not risks associated with the trading.
Mutual Funds and Unit Linked Insurance Products
Investments in Mutual funds and ULIPs are exposed to risk as the asset management companies invest your money in the stock market. Recently a well reputed insurance company collected crores of rupees from the market for their insurance scheme. Company did not offer high returns but their agents did. People invested money going on the verbal assurances from the insurance agents. The tip is to ask the agent to give their promises in writing before trusting them and investing their hard earned money. Be an Insurance agent is another way to earn money.
Most of the Insurance companies find it easier to sell their products by recruiting large number of insurance agents. They advertise like this " Be your own boss. Work 2 hours a day and earn more than Rs. 20,000 a month" People are lured into this profession by development managers with attractive commissions and renewal commissions. Insurance companies have appointed more than 20,000 insurance agents in Mysore alone. Those who join as insurance agents manage to sell few policies within their circles. Most of them drop out in the 2nd year as they exhaust all their contacts in the first year. These people don't even earn their renewal commissions. They cannot go to court to demand renewal commissions as they don't get anything in writing from these Insurance companies about renewal commissions. When you join as an Insurance agent, ask the company to give you the commission structure in writing. Some companies give the proposal letter in their letter head but commission structure will be on a plain white paper. This holds no good when you try to demand the renewal commissions.
It does not mean that anything mentioned on internet about earning money is fraud. Internet provides ample opportunities to make money but one should know how to make use of it. One must use common sense while getting in to these kind of schemes. Schemes try to get members by showing few examples of people who have made lot of money. In the days of online learning, learning about how internet can be used to your advantage is child's play. “People with good understanding of the internet can surely make lot of money but there is no get rich quick scheme in Internet. One has to really work hard to make money. People with just one or two hours of spare time a day shouldn't venture into online business expecting huge income” - says Kiran Kumar
Internet is not good or bad as far as earning money is concerned. It is up to you how you use it to your advantage or disadvantage.

Brand in your customer’s mind

An intersting piece by Kavya Shankre Gowda
One of the truths of modern business is that there is almost nothing that your competitors can't duplicate in a matter of weeks or months. If you have a great idea, you can be certain that somebody will copy soon!. And not only will they follow your lead, but they may also be able to do a better job or sell the product or service at a lower price. The question is, "What competitive edge do I have to offer that cannot be copied by anyone else?"
The answer would be simple, your brand.
Branding is more than just a business buzzword. It has become the crux of selling in the new economy. If the old marketing mantra was," Nothing happens until somebody sells something," the new philosophy could be "Nothing happens until somebody brands something."
A brand is something that you can own and nobody can take that away from you. Everything else, they can steal. They can steal your trade secrets. Eventually, your patents will expire, your physical plant will wear out and technology will change but your brand can go on and live for ever. It creates a lasting value above and beyond all the other elements of your business. A brand cannot be all things to all people. By definition, no single brand is going to appeal to all customers. On the contrary, branding is based on the concept of singularity — targeting individuals in a personal manner— and therefore precludes the concept of universal appeal.
The foundation of your brand is its name. After its uniqueness wears off, it will be your brand name against the brand names of your competitors in the marketplace.
Many companies have committed translation faux pas when they failed to cross reference the brand's name in other languages or cultures. One of the most popular instances was the marketing mishap with the Chevy Nova. The car didn't impress the Latin American Customers, as the vehicle’s name in Spanish means" It doesn't go."
Brand’s name should be catchy, easy enough to communicate, and should be acceptable to consumers from various ethnic backgrounds.
If possible, the name should also complement the overall core values of the company. For instance, Pampers was a perfect name for the diaper line that Procter & Gamble launched in the late 1970s. The name is easy to say, has positive associations, and links to the performance of the product. Besides that, the brand came out at a time when cloth diapers were still largely popular with mothers. By its name alone, mothers could make the switch to disposable diapers without compromising the comfort or pampering of their baby. There are also chances of de-branding that can happen when the entrepreneur fails to associate the brand-name with a positive value-added product. The best illustration would be Vijay Mallya buying the Bangalore Royal Challengers team in the current IPL cricket series. The performance that the Bangalore team has put up, may contribute to de-branding his already built brand.
So most importantly, a brand must be endearing and rest will endure on its own.

Tips on English - Part 2

Another useful piece from Supantha Banerjee on tackling English
Cultural differences
Same words may mean different things to different people. E.g. ‘Fix a flat’ may mean, ‘arrange for an apartment’ in some parts of the world, whereas the expression may mean, ‘fix a broken tyre/tire (both are correct, though ‘tyre’ is more common in India where as in US ‘tire’ means car tire) of your car. The example stresses that the content of a communication package should be written keeping the receiver in mind.
Short & Sweet
Shorter sentences are always better and create less confusion in the minds of people. Shorter usually means clearer, less awkward and unambiguous. Given an option a sentence should be revised to make it shorter.
Jane and her boss have differences over the way in which the program should work.
The sentence above is wordy. A better version of the above sentence could be:
Jane and her boss differ over how the program should work.
Consider As
Consider means ‘regard as’. Usage of ‘consider as’ is incorrect at the least and wordy at the best. As should never follow consider although we see this usage time and time again.
Incorrect: Bob is considered as a guru in Oracle
Correct: Bob is considered a guru in Oracle

Incorrect: Consider this email as my code review sign-off
Correct: Consider this email my code review sign-off
Magic Modifier
Incorrect placement of a modifier in a sentence can change the meaning of the entire sentence. E.g. Great care should be taken to align the word ‘only’ with the word it actually modifies.

I coded the new program only yesterday – I don’t need to code any today.
I coded only the new program yesterday – I did not code any other program.
I only coded the new program yesterday – I did not do anything else.
Only I coded the new program yesterday – Nobody else coded any.

Back to school

The holidays are over and the children are back to school. There is a routine in the house and the life for us mothers is more structured and disciplined now. What a relief! …But relief for whom ? Definitely not for the children. Stress is not the prerogative of adults alone. Children average or above average lead a very stressful life now a days. Not only academics, they are expected to excel in everything they put their hands into be it theatre, dance, sports, drawing. The day we enroll our child for tennis, we expect him/her to play US Open one day. Though we tell ourselves we don’t pressurize our children but the undue anxiety by mothers shows it all and they understand our expectations from our body language.

There is a constant struggle in their minds to do well because doing well is the sign of getting accepted. An average child finds it very difficult to cope up with the competition. If they are unable to reach the bar created for them, it leads to stress. Studies show that most of the children are with average intelligence, the percentage of children with below and above average intelligence is very less.

I know a young mother whose son has just joined first grade. The child doesn’t like to write and writes very slowly in the class; he is unable to finish the class work in the class. The young mother is so worried about his future as if his slow writing may lead to his failure in life. Her undue anxiety does reflect in her body language

It's the beginning

Majority of the youngsters living in Mysore do not want to begin their career in Mysore because Mysore is not a happening city – divulges one survey. The most logical cause for non happening tag of Mysore is its dawdling industrial growth. The survey also reveals that big industries do not demonstrate much interest in setting up a shop here because of city’s laid back image. The million dollar question is how to make Mysore a happening place? ‘If rapid industrial development takes place in Mysore, other things will follow suit and it will automatically become a happening place’. It is like a chicken and egg story. Every entrepreneur wants to play it safe by setting up a unit where the risk is minimum and the basic ingredients for success are aplenty. It certainly requires gargantuan courage to set up your own venture, but the bigger courage lies in being the first one to do so. It required enormous courage when SPI’s CEO Sid Mookerji ( in the pic -extreme right being introduced to Ms. Indra Nooyi, CEO PepsiCo) contemplated setting up SPI more than a decade ago in Mysore after Bangalore shed its nickname of Pensioner’s paradise and became the hot spot for new ventures. He dared to dream big and today SPIzens are living his dream. Mysore’s IT growth owes a lot to SPI for SPI being the first home grown company to provide employment to local talent in a big way and securing a significant place for Mysore on state IT map.
Software Paradigms International, the parent company being named in as one of the fifty fastest growing Asian American companies in USA is a testimony to this. It was a moment of immense pride for all SPIzens when this announcement was made in the White House last week.
We were elated when SPICity, our state - of - the - art campus was built. We were euphoric when SPI acquired select BPO business from COMAT in its debut acquisition. Walking the talk has become a habit with us today. Well wishers often compliment us and say ‘SPI has come a long way’. We beg to differ here - ‘we have a long way to go and this is just the beginning’.