Category: Work

Valuation of Tanishq Gold Harvest Offer

Prasad Ajinkya4 Comments

If you are in India and watch Television, then you surely must have watched this ad –

 

 

The ad is targeted towards working women who take charge of their lives and planning their future on their terms. The ad which is timed brilliantly is launched in sync with the India International Jewelry Week, talks to the right sentiments, however the product itself is questionable.

Tanishq Gold Harvest Offer is a scheme where one has to make 11 monthly payments and at the end of the year, you get the same value in jewelry. At a first glance, I thought that the financial returns amount to roughly 8% of the investment. Turns out that I had valuated it in the wrong way from the start itself, the formula to be used should have been XIRR, and it gives a 15% return.

Jyothi, our resident content creator then pointed out that it’s a loss making investment. Consider the inflation of gold (or the Indian Rupee for that matter) over the period of one year, and you end up with a loss-making product. Average Indian Consumer, beware of this product!

We are hiring!

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At Neev Knowledge Management, the focus is on growth. When the market you are addressing is fragmented with individuals and companies who have yet to make a mark, there is a requirement of good hands on deck who can ensure that the clear market leader is the organization they work for. As their toil brings to fruit, the firm grows and grows, so much that they have to look at bringing in more people who want to make a difference.

Such is the story at Neev, where the hires are not only checked for mettle but also if they gel well with the other people working in the firm. If you think you are a team player and can work well with different teams, then we have some openings that you may apply for –

  1. Account Executive
  2. Digital Marketing Executive
  3. Graphic Designer

To apply, simply drop a mail to the below mentioned email address with a copy of your resume and mention the post for which you are applying for in the subject of the email. We will be shortlisting the applications and will contact you within a week of your mail. If you do not hear from us, then you were not shortlisted for the interview process.

Do note that these openings are listed in the order of urgency. So we would be looking to hire an Account Executive immediately and a Graphic Designer later. For more details, please drop a mail to prasad at edupristine dot com.

10 things you need to do as a programmer

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Computer Engineer? Software Developer? Programmer? I have been in those shoes for quite some time, and I thought that I might share these tips with you folks. The article was originally published on Crazyengineers, but I have added to those and edited the article a bit.

  1. Read: Not only technical textbooks, but also other material. It gives you a good break from the programming, and it also builds your capacity to read and interpret long business requirement sheets.
  2. Cogitate: Before jumping into any program, think it through. Do you know the exact logic to be written? Do write down on a piece of paper what you intend to do. It may sound trivial but writing down helps clarify the problem.
  3. Communicate: Talk with your team mates, friends, colleagues, seniors, clients (if you get the chance) … talk about the project, talk about the technology involved … it helps solve problems that you could be stuck, it also helps you in understanding the subject matter better.
  4. Collaborate: Offer to help your team mates, understand what they are working on. There is a deep satisfaction in helping your friends and colleagues. Not only do you learn new things, but also you earn the respect of those colleagues.
  5. Why?: Do not be afraid to ask this question. Sacred cows can be slaughtered when you ask questions. One who asks a question may seem a fool, one who does not remains so forever.
  6. Revisiting: Do not cringe from revisiting your own code. It gives you an opportunity to improve your work.
  7. Change: It is constant. Businesses change, systems change, people change, requirements change, and scopes as well change! Do not for once think that a static view of applications is acceptable. So when you work on something do ensure that it is flexible and open to change.
  8. Documentation: This is the key to your freedom. If you do not do enough of this, you will never be able to make your work independent of you. In this case, you will never be relieved of that task. Point number 5 becomes all the more important!
  9. Humility: Do not be ashamed for asking help. Help within the team, to seniors … even asking for help on public forums and IRC networks. Most people are more than happy to help someone who asks nicely.
  10. Disconnect: Sometimes you need to stop the fast pace of work, and take breaks. Go on outings on the weekends, go out with your friends, your family. Connect offline and disconnect from work. It helps.

Clone Wars

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First came Best Buy.

People were happy, they got good deals, saved some money. Good … but meh! Perhaps their launch was before time. Avante Garde.

Then came Groupon.

A multi-billion dollar valuation, e-commerce 2.0 buzz, social media tongues wagging about. It was the next big thing since the Internet.

I guess over a period of time, folks soon realized that the business model was pretty simple really. Get bulk, negotiate with vendors and give back a small share back to the users. That was also the eYantra model. I hear its gotten its second round of funding as well.

Followed by a slew of Groupon clones … there are too many of them really to name a few. The unfortunate thing is that not one of them is willing to call themselves a Groupon mee-to. We are different is what they all say.

Everybody on this planet is unique, just like 7 billion other people.

If you thought that I would be writing another nerdy review of Star Wars, you are mistaken, Ser.

With Groupon clones sprouting everywhere on the Indian e-commerce scene, its going to be a war out there. The war is going to be played out in our inboxes, on our cellphones, on our social media pages and in our tweets. Our credit cards will be the trophies, each transaction a battle on who will get us the cheapest deal. If you thought that it would make me happy, its not.

All the discounts in the world are not worth the beauty of a spam free life. It’s been ages since I have seen an empty inbox, gotten no sms-es. The Clone Wars are on, and you are the next battle!

Indian Services: A bleak future

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With the Indian economy shifting from an agrarian focus to a service-based industry, a lot of foreign investors are attracted to the nation. However, the sustainability of this is under question. As service experiences from bad to worse and consumers are crying bloody murder in the courts, how will the Great Indian Dream be achieved?

The word service comes from the term – to serve, i.e. to work for another.

I am sure you will agree with me that this is hardly the case these days. To measure the quality of service, all service providers have come up with an excuse called as SLAs (Service Level Agreements). What it means is that the service provider is giving certain time limits for each of his failures, and he won’t recognize the failure until and unless that SLA has been crossed.

Ironically, its very logical and you can’t argue against this. But zoom out a bit and think seriously, if you are providing SLAs for life and death services, what would happen? I won’t call you sick, until you have been sick for three days. Dead until, you have been dead for a day.

I won’t spring into action until and unless the given time goes by.

I will ignore your pleas, until you start shouting murder at me. Then I will create tickets, and play the game of the escalation matrix. Then I will care, and once the issue is resolved, I will stop caring.

As consumers, what can we do?

Well for starters –

  1. Read the SLA’s before taking on the service. Do they seem reasonable? Try negotiating on the SLAs and make them sharp.
  2. Clearly define the Plan ‘B’ – What happens if the impossible does happen? What happens if a service promising 99.95% uptime goes down? Who takes the risk and who takes the hit?
  3. Danda works top-down. Sad, but true. Remember that. If you want the cronies to spring into action, knock at the top.
  4. Get a back-up. It’s expensive, it’s redundant, but it’s a safety net ready to catch you when Plan ‘A’ fails.
  5. There’s an interesting start-up Akosha, consider contacting them
  6. Lastly, switch providers and rinse repeat!

Why VC funding is important to SaaS industry

Prasad Ajinkya1 Comment

If you have worked in a start-up and have been a part of the core team in any start-up, you would be familiar with and know the importance of venture capital; and their steep terms and targets :-)

If you want a higher funding in the next round, give me more revenues.

How many of us have heard this line? In fact, it’s interesting to note that VC’s are not looking at higher bottomline, they are looking at increasing the topline. I am not complaining, it is a good perspective to hold if you want to keep an eye on the big picture.

This stand is also helping the slew of applications which are being launched as Softwares-as-a-Service (SaaS). Why? Read on.

As a business owner, one of the major targets dictated by a VC would be revenue targets. Not profitability. So I, as a business owner, will be willing to try out different new services in order to increase my offering. If a service exists which otherwise will take me ages to build or acquire, I am now more than willing to try it out on a month-on-month basis.

The overall cost of a SaaS pricing would be more, but the brunt of it on a monthly basis would be less. This impacts my profitability, but these days I am not looking at profits as much as I am looking at revenues. If I able to increase the reach or richness of my service offering using SaaS, then so be it. I will go ahead for the same at the cost of profitability.

Your thoughts?

Focus

Prasad Ajinkya10 Comments

Today, we received a query on our website from a 16 year old boy. It was about wanting more details about the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Program. I was absolutely stumped. This program is generally attempted by folks who are doing or have done their MBAs, or at least graduates. Of course, the CFA Institute has no qualms with an under-graduate talking the first exam, in fact the boy is completely eligible for giving the first level of the exam.

Now, go back 5-6 years (or in my case 15) … when you were in your 10th standard, did you have such clear aim in life?

I mean, its astounding.

I have nothing but respect for one so focused. When you know what you want, then getting it becomes easy. Kudos Kiddo! and God Bless!!