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Latest Updates: business RSS

  • fritz Says -> gd ads on TV recently
    11:32 am on December 17, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , business, , , ,

    Well sometimes you feel good watching ads instead of the actual programs on TV this days.
    like the recent cleartrip ads and vodaphone ads have caught my attention

    The cleartrip ads about orange juice and the bar one about a cross dressing dude are both hilarious but I feel both are targeted to the right audience as well and the upmarket hip young generation which is the target audience for cleartrip will get the humor . but out of both the ads the one about orange juice is really good for some reason both the ads looks cliche

     

  • fritz Says -> interesting interview of citibanks biggest individual shareholder
    1:10 pm on November 13, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , business, , , , ,

    (This) interview of prince alwaleed is a very interesting read for the past few days citi group has been in a lot of news in the international financial markets with the resignation of their CEO Charles prince after huge huge billion dollar write offs (the likes of which us mortals cant withstand just imagine if i suddenly realized that I had lost 11 billion dollar one fine day well I don’t have that kind of money :) but if I did and someone came up to me and said you lost that amount today pal my first reaction would be OH MY GOD WHAT HAPPENED and you should not be showing your face to me with that news dont you get scared I might just throw something I can lay my hands on at you hahahahha)

    But citigroup is not a person but a business entity and such huge one that it can absorb such huge losses without much hiccup’s but still someone had to face the wrath and it was the CEO as always who had to face the executioner and the axe.
    In the interview there are some very interesting pointers like the fact that prince alwaleed points out that they should have a person from banking and goes onto say next time no lawyer DUH how dumb are you who understands banking ?? a person from banking and why did you hire a lawyer in the first place.

    The second point is since he is the largest individual share holder and most of his personal net worth is tied up with citigroup what sort of a financial reporting system do you’ll have in place where the write offs can change in 3 weeks?? it is scary very very scary and this is something that needs to be looked at this cannot be the CEO’s mistake he just presented the details given to buy his financial team it is not that he accounted every cent of it by sitting down this discrepancy is not a concern not only for prince alwaleed but also to other shareholders of citi group and raises serious doubts about the management at the top level not just the CEO.

    Also the complaining about the the share prices hmmmm well the company is not well managed what do you expect I am still surprised with all this antics that their share prices have not sunk lower yes its a big big entity and that is the only reason that their share holders have been optimistic but if they don’t deliver well the prices can go down south and not up north if the antics continue. Well from all this it looks like the management was sleeping and all the others doing their jobs at citi were sleeping and the scapegoat was none other then the CEO from all of this the important lesson to learn is it is better to own a company then run one :)

     

  • fritz Says -> can it be done ?
    11:43 am on November 12, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: business, , , , , , ,

    For the past couple of days there is only one question on my mind is it possible to build a company worth 1 billion dollar in 3 years yes 36 months now don’t ask me how I got the magic numbers of 1 billion or 3 years but I guess the reason for such crazy questions going in my mind are the number of interviews I see on TV of entrepreneurs and new generation of business leaders in the making taking over family run businesses in India after their studies saying that their targets are to take their family businesses past the 1 billion dollar mark and make the business more professionally managed and not family run.

    Hmm all this has certainly got me thinking is it possible to build a company in a small place like goa worth a billion dollars in 3 years well maybe it is but has it been done in goa not yet anyway I don’t think it has been done in india also yet but one place where it has been done is US and in a place like silicon valley anything is possible for example in recent history youtube.com was founded in February 2005 and in less then 3 years was sold to Google for more then a billion dollar in Google cash and stock.

    So the conclusion is if you target a global audience with your innovation then it is definitely possible to build a company worth a billion dollars in 3 years the vital factors to achieving the goal being innovation,usefulness and global audience but if you are building a small entity with focus on smaller geography then it is not possible unless maybe you start digging in your backyard and you strike oil or a diamond mine hahahahahaha :) as they say for striking it reach you don’t just require smart work but also a bit of luck :)

     

  • fritz Says -> wow what a crib
    6:09 am on November 12, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , business, , , , , , , , ,

    For all you who are wondering what is this post about well this post is about Mukesh Ambani’s proposed new residence in bombay called Antilia.

    Well I personally don’t own a residence of my own yet but will do so someday :)
    but I do follow a lot of this residential luxuries of famous people whether they are shown on forbes mag or on MTV Cribs yes I watch cribs because looking at those houses you learn what are the things you need to get for your crib when it is up.

    Well for a sneak peek at the proposed 4000+ crore residence of reliance CMD mukesh ambani the pic is given below of what the proposed architecture might look like once complete more details can be seen here in short it is

    • 27 storeyed
    • 6 floors for parking of 168 imported cars
    • one floor for an inhouse car service center
    • entertainment floor with a mini theatre with sitting capacity of 50 (looks like the rich guy does not have many friends hahahaha)
    • health floor with swimming pool and facilities for athletics
    • for visiting guests there will be 2 floors wow does this mean now all the visiting dignitaries of reliance be staying there instead of a hotel somewhere ?
    • 600 staff will be working there
    • three helipads on the terrace

    Way to go man what a place to stay hats off to you for that you should work hard and also stay in luxury and party hard after reaping in the rewards and finally the Indian Businessmen are realising it with the huge number of private jets being purchased, expensive imported cars, luxury apartments etc etc it is a good sign for a booming economy.

    This residence will go well with his new flying office worth 245 crores see (this) for more info. Wow I am just imagining what the other ambani brother is doing who is keeping a low profile with all this big ticket spendings by elder brother well its not that he does not have the money but then again he does not have as much as his elder brother hahahaha

    Well it will take some serious spending by another Indian to belittle Mukesh’s crib in India but hey it can be done even though I would say all this are the things that even I look for in a crib but there are more facilities and a hell of a lot of cutting edge tech inside and outside.
    my crib so now you know the list of luxuries that I want to own someday is not just restricted to a private island and private jet for my world travels for holidays, partying and cuisine tasting hey who wouldn’t want to just board their plane and go to italy and have a pizza and come when in the mood rather then settling for a domino’s or pizza hut one :)

    Realistically(as reality sinks in sob sob sob) speaking at present I need a single bedroom apartment of my own and a small office to work on my building empire dreams :)

    Hmm am wondering why name a residence after a mythical island ?? any ideas y ????


    (image is shown from mumbaimirror.com)

     

  • fritz Says -> facebook the 15 billion dollar social network
    4:04 pm on October 29, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: business, , , , ,

    Yes facebook is valued at that much when microsoft picked up a 1.6 percent stake in facebook for $240 million it gave facebook the valuation of 15 billion read this for more info.

    Well if this is not a sign of a bubble building then what is as far as investing $240 million in a company goes for Microsoft well it is no big deal for a company who is having close to $6.6 billion in cash reserves but the question remains why would microsoft give out such a huge amount for such a small stake in a company which does not have a solid business model yet the rumors floating around is that facebook is planning to monetize its user base by launching its own ad network. Well yes good that is very good but for how long can a social network claim they have a active user base well the normal trend now is where your friends move you move.

    For example I was on hi5 then moved to orkut and now am very active on facebook and orkut.  I don’t even bother much to login to my hi5 account to check it as my friends are no longer active on that so what does facebook believe will not give another startup an opportunity  to come and swoop  all its users to their network  will facebook be able to maintain its user base after all it is a plain vanilla social network it is no  yahoo or google where there is not just one thing but many things that can be done with one id you get mail, social network,shopping etc etc yes facebook has opened their platform to third party developers but so are other networks.

    I am really struggling to understand why Microsoft would value facebook so much when myspace is termed as the king of social networks and I recently read somewhere that it is valued at $10 billion  now when the market leader is valued at $10 billion and and upcoming star is valued at $15 billion based on factors like opening up the network to outside developers which other competitors can easily copy and are copying and opening to third party developers.

    Well bubble or no it is good news for all tech entrepreneurs as it shows that the market is right for tech ideas and the VC’s are willing to invest in any ideas whether they are built on good business models or no.

    As of now it looks like millions of users is more important then having a good business model

     

  • fritz Says -> startup pains release 0.4- Motivating the workforce
    11:09 pm on October 10, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , business, , , , , , ,

    Well for those who came in late (yes this line is taken from phantom comics of which I am a huge fan) in this series so far I have discussed the issues on the formation of startup then the human resource issue and then the funding so the first three articles in this series covered the above mentioned issues. Now for the 4th article in the series it is all about the motivation factor how do you keep the team motivated through the thick and thin?

    Motivating oneself is very very difficult but motivating others is virtually impossible with that said it is always good to give a shot at solving something which is impossible. when you are putting together a team they are all pumped up thinking about what they will be doing and how they will be doing it but once they join they get in the comfort zone and then they can go in a bit of a rut which can ultimately lead to becoming a unproductive employee who pulls everyone down and this is one problem that every entrepreneur should look for don’t allow anyone to get into the comfort zone how to do that? have ideation meetings, have brainstorming sessions regularly, update the people about the overall progress what has been achieved and what is remaining to be achieved all this meetings help in keeping the morale up and also keeps the people on their toes.

    Motivation factor varies from person to person some would be motivated by money, others by praise and some would some other way. Identifying what are the motivational factors for the team members is very important. Well in long term if you find that some member of your team is pulling everyone down then that member has to go out to keep the startup ecosystem healthy and motivated. Well being good at what you do and being motivated are two different things in a startup what is required is person who is good and one who is motivated.

    The Motivation factor is not only an issue for startups but also for established firms as motivational factor lacking in established firms lead to lack of growth and can stunt the growth most of the time this leads to disaster for long term prospects of the firm as innovating and striving for growth is not only the mantra for a good startup but for any company.

     

  • fritz Says -> why intel why??
    11:33 pm on October 9, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: business, , , , , ,

    Intel has silently launched a new product no no it is not a new chip or a server or a gadget but a website yes yes a php based website that they have launched you can see it here. BTW the coolsw in the name of the site is for cool software and it is a digg clone for submitting upcoming software applications but the question which everyone is asking is why did Intel do this site?? yes were they bored from all their hardware adventures that they needed a small laugh so they went ahead and said lets create a niche version of digg and see if it gets a better evaluation then our entire biz maybe it will since we are heading towards a bubble. But I guess the investors wont be laughing at this and will seriously take note of why such a venture came into existence and why is it having the Intel stamp all over it as if this venture fails it will take down a bit of the value from the Intel brand.

    Well I still remember that once Intel was criticized for getting into consumer electronics space with their digital cameras and microscope for kids but even this offerings didn’t divert much from intel’s core competence which is hardware and internals of systems but this totally beats me lets wait and watch they might have more such ventures to hit the market in the future only time will tell. Well if you ask me this wont last long as this category is also there on digg so why would someone come to this site and not go to digg? beats me but maybe Intel knows why Wink

     

  • fritz Says -> gold rush for alternative source of fuel
    10:57 pm on October 9, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: business, , , , , ,

    Well the global fuel market is worth trillion dollars yep that is what some of the VC’s are claiming and I guess they are right and fuel affects every aspect of our life one way or another.
    The VC’s are not just crazy about alternate source of fuel they are in the hunt of clean fuel and which is also renewable. So lots of VC funds are pumped into this technologies right now there are various research being carried out in this issues and how we can achieve clean renewable source of fuel.

    Well (this) is a good place to know a bit about how most of the money is being spent on ethanol and the other segment which attracts equal interest and investment is solar energy.
    I used to be interested a lot in solar energy a lot when I was young and didn’t have the scientific know how on how the solar panels worked those small solar powerered calculators were a big mystery to me and kept me involved for quite some time have broken a few of them too to see the shiny display panels the enthusiasm lasted till I learnt about it and that is when I lost interest why you ask? Well it was simple you could not do much with it thats why it was good for small small projects and you could not do anything large scale with it and plus once realized the space constraints and how it impacted the power generating capability and also a few other shortcomings.

    The other research which has caught my fancy is the ethanol space now that is something that I might be able to do something in am looking at the opportunities on how I can be a part of this revolution. I feel the energy crisis might be better averted if we can perfect the cold fusion technology and that would give us enough energy not to worry about anything but then again we should see that all this energy which is getting created should not go into creating a whole different problem of pollution and global warming that is why For the sake of everyone and the future generations I hope some one finds a good cheap, clean and renewable source of energy or as I would call it someone should achieve the 3 C’s (clean, cheap and continuous) in their product for the good of all of us in the long run.

     

  • fritz Says -> Too much user activity and feedback channels out there???
    2:22 pm on October 7, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: business, , ,


    Viewer Voices: Where We Respond To The Opinions Of Our Uninformed Viewers

    This is a very funny video that I came across during my normal daily dose of blog reading. This is very enlightening video it goes to show that in the so called user generated web 2.0 world there is sometimes too much of content for you to go through even for big sites (not like this blog) there are so many comments and moderating those must be pain and not to forget track backs and other similar technologies are not the effective.

    But the biggest problem is still with the feedback channel that you provide to the users feedback as shown in the Video and there are a few of opportunities for innovative startups in the Feedback channel, Comments channel and tracking user activity there are few of them but there is always room for more innovation in this field

    Couple of days back I had asked one of a regular readers of this blog(aka abhimanyu) why he does not comment on the posts he said because he does not feel like it well there are people like this and then there are people who write comments so the opportunity is there but I guess not on my blog :) where the comment activity is non existent.

     

  • fritz Says -> Would Google buy RIM ??
    12:27 am on October 5, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: business, , , , ,

    No No RIM is not Reliance India Mobile but the acronym for the Blackberry makers Research In Motion.

    Just stumbled across (this) found it very very fascinating but would Google make such a purchase who knows but In my opinion don’t think so my reasons being the price tag is too big even for a company like Google with huge pile of cash and they can easily raise a bit more if needed to fund such a acquisition but will they be able to digest and integrate this into their offerings is what would be interesting to see if this does go through with the $54.13B price tag it can go more then that too.

    Well with such an acquisition they would not just get a ready made hardware platform the blackberry but they also get a very important chunk of the corp clients who are users of the RIM platform so the only thing left for them would be integrating the hardware with their hosted applications for corporate domains and viola an enterprise class mobile collaboration suite and I guess that Google is bound to announce something huge since they have already taken their cash cow Adsense mobile so the Gphone is definitely on its way whether blackberry turns into a Gphone or there is another route Google will take only time will tell and their recent acquisition of zingku also shows their interest in the mobile space this is important for them in countries like India and China where the mobile penetration is more then PC penetration and they are definitely lagging in both this countries but so far Google’s mobile strategy has been a bit shaky am still wondering why they bought dodgeball some time back and their founders quit and left on an unhappy note with lot of media attention at their claims of how Google was not providing them with no resources to take the product further.

     

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