Category: Business

The Big Fat Geek’s thoughts on Business and how business processes can be automated via workflows and technology.

Financial Services: A sunrise sector

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

In any developing economy, the one thing that’s always on the rise is the GDP, the expenditures and yes, the expendable income available with an individual.

Over a period of time, the same individual realises that keeping money in the bank is the same as wasting that money away. This is due to the high inflation rates that developing economies have. With a saving interest rate of 5-6% and an inflation rate of 11%, the opportunity cost of keeping money in the bank is a whooping 8% (give or take a few basis points).

Soon, this individual will start looking at a portfolio of financial investments to get better returns on his savings. Depending upon the risk appetite, he will choose between vehicles such as Mutual Funds, Bonds, Commodities and more. These are Financial Services … a rising sector in all developing economies.

In fact, with a rising economy, you will find a host of international firms looking to set-up shop in that country. With international firms come top-paid jobs. In this case, jobs in the Financial Services sector. Careers in some of the top financial institutes of the world.

Needless to say that such specific and specialized knowledge work requires specialized people to find the right people for the task. Of course there are sites such as Monster, et al for your normal run of the mill jobs, but what about specialized portals for financial services?

I came across AP Executive, which does executive recruitment for some of the top financial institutes in the world. Recruitment is a big cost driver for many companies and most organizations have a clear cut recruitment policy. In the past 6 months or so, we have seen recruitment on the rise, even in developed nations. Sectoral growth leads to higher recruitment, better players, more competition and finally a better consumer experience.

After what happened nearly 4 years ago, it is great to see this growth in the past year or so. Put the right people behind the wheel and there will be success. Financial Services as a sector shows great promise and increasing dividends … but only if the right people are in the leadership positions.

Customization in Retail Fashion

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

Back in the year 2006, when I was working for eYantra (which is a firm specializing in brand merchandise for corporates and corporate gifting), the buzzword in the merchandising industry was customization.

If it was a good looking merchandise, then it’s value rose by nearly 30%-50% if you could customize it to the customers needs. That was the time we got into a narrow niche of branded merchandise. Everything from iPhones to t-shirts used to be branded by the target corporate’s brand logo (as defined by their marketing team’s brand logo guidelines).

The going was good, and soon we had acquired our series A round of funding. This obviously attracted other players and companies based completely on customization were formed – companies such as Myntra.com (whose ads you see even today). Needless to say that Myntra has grown beyond customization and is now almost a full blown e-commerce portal.

It’s been almost 6 years since and I had almost forgotten about the retail and fashion industry. That was until I came across this smart company – they specialize in providing woven labels with the text customized as per your needs. You can check this site out – look here. The thing is that woven labels is not a new idea, in fact they have been around in Britain (in Coventry) for more than a century now.

The cool thing about these labels, is that you can order any amount you want and have them customized right there on that site. There is almost zero manual intervention in the order placement process and that’s what makes a strong case for customization in the retail markets.

If this kind of technology and business processes were there in India, then it would have taken the branding and merchandising market by storm. In a developing economy wherein almost everything needs to be branded, having a custom made woven label takes the branding experience in retail merchandise to the next level. The good part about developing economies is that they have ready access to the developed markets to look at successful business models.

In fact this idea is so awesome, I won’t be surprised if I start seeing a Label Yourself outlet in India within a few years!

Jinx’s awesome service

Prasad Ajinkya1 Comment

I have always been a fan of Diablo, and even better cool Diablo T-shirts that I can wear at work. Jinx, is one of the few online e-commerce fronts which provides such products. This is the story of their service, and what makes this entire event worth mentioning!

Prelude

It was the 6th of June, and my family wanted to gift me some clothes for my birthday which was in the next month (9th July). So after great deliberation and going through their broad choice of shirts, I finally decided to purchase 4 shirts and opted to ship them to India using the basic shipping method, that’s USPS.

Now, for those of you who have not shipping anything from abroad, keep in mind that USPS is the US equivalent of the Indian Post Office (I certainly was not!!). What this means, is that they are as efficient as their Indian counterparts!

Eternal Wait

I ordered the goods, and the expected date of delivery was after 20 odd days. Great, no problem. After a good 20 days, the dispatch was yet to arrive. So I started tracking the dispatch. Turns out that USPS does not provide tracking of the dispatch once it leaves the American shores. That means, its pretty much lost in the darkness!!

Thus, started my period of eternal wait. Everyday I would try following up with different agencies – USPS customer center (as bad if not worse than their Indian counterpart), Indian Customs Office (try find their number online, even Google fails!), Indian Postal Office (who keep directing you to different numbers).

Re-Shipped!

With the d-day close, I got in touch with the folks at Jinx and informed them about the lack of tracking. The support was understanding and they immediately shipped a second shipment. This was due to arrive in India by the end of July. The shipping was still the same, USPS, which meant that I would face the same problem tracking the shipment. As expected, tracking shipment was an impossible task (we visited the GPO, the local PO, the Customs Office), no luck.

Now I was getting pissed off, and quite disappointed, two shipments dispatched and not one was being tracked. I gave up hope and did not follow-up for another month.

And there shall be Light!

Finally, in the month of August (near 25th or so), I dropped the support person a mail, and asked what can be done regarding this issue. This time around, they verified my shipping address and informed me that they would be using the premium shipping method … whew, I was glad to be rid of USPS service!! Or so I thought, the premium service used USPS in the backend as well! Contacting them was even more futile and I had more or less given up all hope of those 100 dollars that I had spent 3 months back.

It was the first week of September, when I received a call from my wife, and she informed me that a shipment had indeend arrived and it was from Jinx! I was elated .. finally the package had arrived!!

Thank you Jinx!

Not only was this service patient and understanding, but also they were willing to go the extra mile and provide me outstanding service. The package delivery was not exactly their problem, however, they owned the delivery and ensured that it finally was delivered. Good show on you folks!

Bollywood doesnt know finance

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

In case if you have seen any of the following movies then you will agree with me that almost all the protagonists in Bollywood do not know what are the different debt instruments available in the market these days.

Take the movie Om Jai Jagdish, or Hum Hain Rahi Pyaar Ke … or any movie where in the villain somehow coaxes either the hero’s family or woe be gone, the hero himself into an unsecured loan. Then when the hero is near bankruptcy, forces the hero to sell all family heirlooms and property in the classic filmy neelami. Fortunately, since all bollywood movies need a happy ending, the hero somehow pulls through by sheer dumb luck or hard work (or a script writer’s blessing).

But in real life this is vastly different. Yes, there are people who take unsecured loans, and yes there are people who declare financial bankruptcy. But there are easier debt solutions out there than doing an all out public auction or going bankrupt!

Here is one – an individual voluntary arrangement (IVT). An IVT is a solution wherein the repayments can be lowered, the interest rates can be kept constant and it can more importantly stop the creditors from chasing our hero. Now all he has to do is click for an individual voluntary arrangement. He has to fill in some simple forms and within a few months, his bankruptcy problems will atleast be averted. This form of debt management has been around for some time now, and is making headway in the UK. In the past year or so, BBC reports suggest that many individuals are opting to go this way instead of simply declaring bankruptcy.

You can find more about IVT, simply google for it or find the wiki on this. Now if only our Indian heroes were that smart and could keep up with the times! Not only would it save so much heartburn for their family, but would also save so many reels of trashy melodramatic cinema!

The Office-less Organization

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

As someone who has been working on the web for the past decade or so, I have always dreamt of my ideal organization as the one which does not have any offices (read that as a work from home). Obviously, I have heard of many IT organizations working on this model viz., Accenture, IBM to name a few.

However, my idea was not just that. I thought it could be possible to have an organization which does not have any offices! All the employees will be operating independently on their own. This utopian organization seemed a dream and I had more or less dismissed the thought … until today!

An excerpt from Wall Street Journal

The Web-services company Automattic Inc. has 123 employees working in 26 countries, 94 cities and 28 U.S. states. Its offices? Workers’ homes.

At Automattic, which hosts the servers for the blogging platform WordPress.com, work gets done wherever employees choose, and virtual meetings are conducted on Skype or over Internet chat.

The company has a San Francisco office for occasional use, but project management, brainstorming and water-cooler chatter take place on internal blogs. If necessary, team members fly around the world to meet each other face to face. And if people have sensitive questions, they pick up the phone.

How freakin’ awesome is that!

I decided to dive further, and learn more about this organization.

Guess what, they are awesome –

Being the makers of some of the web products that I have come to love and cherish – WordPress, Vaultpress, Akismet, Jetpack, CodePoet … damn, their lis goes on. Google cannot be a dream company, this should be the dream company for all of us WordPress tinkerers!

Financing Retirement for Seniors

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

Some time back I had written about equity release, and I wanted to talk about several things at once in that post (possibly the reason why I ended up sounding a bit cautious and a bit enthusiastic at different points in that post). In order to avoid this confusion, here is a simpler post … equity release is the perfect retirement financial vessel for senior citizens.

This article is aimed for senior citizens who might have been aware of this instrument but are scared of taking any kind of action to ease their livelihood. The idea is to help you make informed decisions instead of blindly signing on the dotted line.

A lot of seniors face the same question – who will support me in the later part of my life? Well … now that question is answered … its to use your house as a vessel to fuel your future income.

In case if you have not thought of any source of passive income, then this question might put people in a quandry.

Once the value is arrived at, then the next step should be finding the right firm whom you can come to terms with. Here you need to ensure that the people you end up transacting with are open, friendly and willing to put your concerns to rest. A smart idea would be to see if the financial organization is not putting any undue pressure on you to use up your release amount faster.

Once the terms of agreement are mutually agreed upon, then you simply have to enjoy the benefits of your home and the income generated from your house’ sale.

It’s like having your cake, and eating it too!

Equity Release: Debt Instrument

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

Just when you think, what will these crazy bankers think of next … and boom comes the latest financial instrument ready to stupefy you … with its sheer ingenuity and innovativeness.

This latest debt instrument I came to know recently from a friend in UK is the equity release. Lets take a case of a country home in the UK which has a bit of mortgage attached and the owner wishes to make some new purchases. The first condition of this instrument is that the owner has to be above 55 years of age and the value of the house needs to be higher than the mortgage value. This difference is called the Equity of the house … now private financial institutions will provide these house owners with a method to slowly sell their house for a part payment on that equity value.

What’s so great about this opportunity is that the house owners are not on the streets trying to sell the house directly. Take for example, this equity release from Age Partnership, the ownership will be transferred only after a long long time … until when the house owner has access to a ready pool of funds. With the minimum age requirement of 55, and the average age in UK rising to 78, this means that the house owner has typically a good 20-25 years access to this pool of funds, which otherwise would only be made accessible post the sale of the house.

Thus, finances which would have opened up very later … and mostly by the inheritors, are now suddenly available to the house owner itself. This is great news for elder citizens who are having a hard time trying to maintain a lifestyle. This instrument clearly benefits both the institution and the individuals … a win-win instrument. I wonder, does this idea seem as good as those CDO’s back in 2008.

PS – The problem of all such financial instruments is the same – lack of regulation. With this, we can be sure to see the same … without any overseeing authority to stop malpractice, rogue institutions will realize the loopholes in the system (or lack of one), and exploit this. Any system without regulation is bound to the same problems. So the CDO statement back there really is not fair, but it’s always a risk to consider!