Saturday 22 May 2010

Smoke & Drink your way up to Corporate ladder.

If you are an ambitious person who wants to achieve a lot in the corporate career as an executive and run up, mind you not walk up or hurry up but run up, the corporate ladder fast then I would advice you stop being a good guy and start smoking, drinking, partying, and on top of that remain single until you achieve what you want. Else you are never gonna be what you have always desperately wanted to be. Why I say so..? Do not agree with me? Then read on .....to end up agreeing with me!
If you are a good guy, you would not smoke, you would not drink or party as you would want to give as much time as possible to your family. So after office you would rush to be with your family to share the diner, over weekends you would want to spend precious little time with the family and family friends, so you would hardly have time to network. The ways of networking are to share a smoke in office with colleagues, call colleagues for a drink after office, party with influential people over weekend.
Since you are a good guy and you do not smoke so you would not go to smoking areas in the office. And that's the best area for networking. Over the time smokers in offices, not only from the same but from various other departments, forge great networks as they get to see each other at common area, get to ask for match box daily and very often each day. So they have great networks. But if you are a good guy you would want to finish your work in as less time as possible as you have to rush to home for diner daily. So you would avoid wasting time for smoking, in fact you would have your tea at your desk only. So NO networking during office hours. Then drinkers create opportunities for networking after office hours also by getting together with same interest guys at pubs/drinks. So over time they forge great networks there also. They may not give much time to family. Similarly weekend partying can be used for networking. As this networking is investment into the future which would ripe and grow many fold over the years and you can redeem this investment whenever you want or need it.
As a family man or mamma's boy you would not get all these opportunies for networking i.e. investing into future.
At the end it's all about networking. Honey!
Who said drinking or smoking is injurious to health. It's NOT!
Hope now you agree with me now....

Thursday 20 May 2010

An Cash-rish Opportunity at an Unexpected place

Entrepreneurial people will find some or other opportunity somewhere, that's for sure. I saw truth in this when I went to apply for my passport at a local post office. Now let me explain what the opportunity is..
The otherday I pulled my bike in the parking area in front of a local post office and before I could get down from my bike a person approached me asking if I have come for passport application. I nodded to him and he told me that the PO only accept fee in DD and not in cash and he had the DD which he can sell me for an additional amount of 100.
He had a bunch of readymade DDs with him. I did my mental calculation quickly, and I decided to buy one from him. Though I was a bit hesitant initially in buying as he may be a fake.
My calculation went something like this...if I do not buy from him, I have to find a bank nearby,
for which I have to spend time, petrol and mental and physical energy. After that I have to stand in a queue which would not be short for sure as banks are always crowded. Then I have to fill in application for getting DD, here I have to enquire or search as to to whom the DD should be paid to. And all those tensions. So I would have spent at least one hour in getting all this. So by buying I was saving myself precious time for standing in queue so I can get apply for passport earlier and faster.
So to avoid all this hassles, who would not pay just a little Rs. 100 extra?
That was the opportunity..
Coming to business model...
That person always keeps 5-6 DDs handy with him, it means his investment is 6000-7000 daily.
now if he can sell these all and depending on his average daily sale he can have that many no of DDs. So his daily investment would vary accordingly. That money will be blocked but can be encashed anytime so it's highly liquide investment.
Risks
This is purely a cash positive investment without any risk of loss so completely risk-free.
Potential
I assume at least 50-60 applicant must be coming to this post office for passport application daily. And I would guess at least half of them would be coming without DD, so that's opportunity. So it's a huge opportunity.
Additional Source of Income...
The person offers filling up the passport application forms, charging 50 each, also he sells form.. charging 30 bucks..etc..so such are additional source to earn hot money without much investment.
The biggest risk here is...
But the business is not scallable at all, it's not for educated guys and there are high chances that competion can come in or the govt policies can change and business may bomb.

Monday 17 May 2010

If Nehru were today, could he become so GREAT? NO.

I consider Nehru THE greatest prime minister of India and it's because of him that today we are a thriving, optimistic, secular and a strong democracy, else we would have been another hindu Pakistan. We, probably, still would be an IT super power. But in that case IT would probably have meant "International Terrorism". By the way that's IT too. ;)
But if I imagine Nehru were to be ruling India today, in the same circumstances as, say, Dr. Manmohan Singh is or A B Vajpayee ruled, could he have taken such decisions as to take India towards further greatness. I would say no, and an emphatic NO. Whosoever is the prime minister of India today, would take the same weak decisions as are being taken. However strong that personality could be, however smart that could be or howsoever educated and wise that could be. Barring a few decisions here or there, everything else would be same. As in last 20 years, we have seen many PMs come and go but overall they took almost the same decisions.
Why I say so, obviously the circumstances decide or influence a person to the greatest extent as to how to act and what to decide. For today's politician or so to say for PM, their immediate concern is always the next general election or upcoming assembly election in some state or to keep alliance partner happy. And these situations are not rare but they are recurring, almost daily. So in such scenarios, the decision one will take for is to reap immediate reward, not the long term rewards. So even if our prime minister (whoever he is or whichever party he is from ) is well-intentioned, he can not take far-reaching decisions else he would be hounded out from the parliament to his grave by his colleagues only on the very same day.
But for Nehru, things were not the same, they were completely different. One he was educated, he knew what is wanted, he was prepared for this as he had probably been foreseeing himself in PM's chair for quite long, so he was all along planning for what to do. He also did not have those compulsions of upcoming elections as he had no serious opponents at all at that time. So he knew that as long as he was alive he was going to be PM. So in such situations he took decisions which were good for India in long-term, like establishing secular democracy, setting up heavy industries, setting up IITs, building dams, and many more.
Today also we want someone to take similar far-reaching decisions like, making primary education compulsory and qualitative, not on papers but in spirit, building world-class hard infrastructure in India, removing bureaucracy and corruption, improving public accountability, making India's foreign policy more suitable to India's stature, improving India's relations with it's SAARC neighbors, and so on. But we have no one to do that. Because none of these decisions are going to get immediate gains to any political party.
So let us not pray for a new Nehru to born but pray to circumstances to be amicable.