Indian companies to sponsor F1 team now :)

After making news in M&A by buying out companies abroad, its turn for Indian companies to make news by sponsoring F1 teams.
After Tata promoted Narain for driver, its none other than Kingfisher group owned by Vijay Mallya.
Kingfisher is sponsoring Toyoto team for F1 2007 for its kingfishers airlines brand.

This was announced and displayed at recently Toyota F1 launch in Germany.

Indian companies are all set to leave their mark everywhere :)

Retail chain/business moving to a new era

I am not being partial but seeing Kishore Biyani expanding his business from a kirana store in 1998 in calcutta to million dollar retail business surely deserve recognition.
Entering a new business maybe still easy for corporate with money and muscles,but I think its takes a vision to built such a business from scratch.
I have read books which talks about strategy and features of growing company and I am happy
to see those models working at company like Future group.
Biyani has surely tried to blend glocal touch with his thoughts. He hired executive from Goldman Sachs for Strategy and Business, working big time on supply chain, developing a volume based business which surely has chances to click more in India.
Although, I havent purchased anything besides a tie at Pantaloons but its surely keep updated by latest fashion and daily trends.I have realised this recently so surely Pantaloons will be worth trying next time for economical and good shopping.
With talks of FDI for retail moving towards 74%, I know Biyani group will be one which is going to be hit hardest and this shows clearly from his articles and interviews.
Recently, N R Murthy of Infosys shared views saying retail should be opened up.And my views here is that maybe its little early to open FDI In retail. The very emotional reason to support is that Indian group should be given some lead in the race to atleast grow and come to a platform to handle competition and form perfect competition in the market which are going to then benefit customers.Secondly, MNCs and retail biggies if allowed so early in market will lead to resource crunch thus moving costs up and also it will create a wave of mergers and acquisition too early in the market.

M&A is good for any market in little long run to being that correction which in turn benefit customers.But if it happens early,biggies creates a seller market which will also make it difficult for any new start up to penetrate in market.
Govt should first alllow Indian players like Reliance, Future group, Bharti, etc to set their operations and create awareness for retail market. This will also get more revenue for govt when foreign players will enter market.
Retail surely in next market to cheers after Telecom in India.

Retail going online-FutureBazaar

India surely makes a different market in terms of business models and customising approach towards customer.Retail business is the one which has started trying new models now.Today, saw huge billboard of FutureBazaar,owned by Biyani's Future group.I think they are wroking to rebrand their retail chain.
As far this futurebazaar goes, it is online retail shop. Looks like click and pay and home delivery.I still remember during my B-School days,when Me and my friend actually had discussion on such a online model in retail. And I even mentioned the idea on my blog in August 2005.

The challenge which for these retail chain in India will be modifying the business model.Such a model is visible in cities and metro wherein people are short of time.One thing important here is supply chain.Now Biyani is investing lot of money and also it has started working on its back -end,maybe they will be able to Click the opportunity.

Book Review!! Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins

First of all I would like to thank my friend Rahul at ISB who get me great books to read issued from there.

Surely, ISB has good collection of books, you name it and it has :)

Now, this book which I am reading surely give some out of the box thinking.How can one win by making most mistakes!!!?
Well, like most of us I also had the same thought, until I came across this interesting book written by Richard Farson and Ralph Keyes.Authors here, have pen down a different approach and thinking as to how mistakes eventually take us more closer to success rather than taking us away from it.
The book with introduction of terms success and failure as defined by most of us, which shows that overcoming a failure is defined as success by most of us. Given a chance to quote one event of success in anybody's life, most of us would narrate an example how we came across a challenge and overcame it. Still, we always fear failures which gets us success eventually.
The next part explains how one normally fails towards success. Taking example from once daily life it can be easily seen that everyone has passed through troughs and crests of success and then failure.So, its not that success can be a repetitive phenomenon instead it is driven more from failures and what we learn from them. Authors have taken ample examples from corporate and individual world to explain that most of the innovation and discovery are results of failures.For example, widely used 'Post-It' was a result of failure of an experiment, which 3M later realized. Examples are mentioned in books of IBM, Xerox, Abrahim Lincoln and many others which shows that it is failures that is most important path to success.
Book later provides a very different approach to definition of word 'Success' which I think will make everyone sit and analyze that what we curse today by saying 'Failure' is actually a path to victory in disguise.
Although the book is of small size and just 120 pager, but every page is filled with learning and execution.I will definitely recommend this book as worth sparing some time, which not only will add a new dimension towards our approach to success but will also adopt a more optimistic approach towards failures

Top Tax saving Mutual Funds

Year Closing is back again and season to invest to save Tax!!! :)

I would recommend these tax saving mutual funds

1. HDFC Taxsaver
2. SBI Magnum Taxgain
3. Principal Tax saving
4. Birla Tax saving
5. ING Vysya Tax Saving ( little risk but good returns)


Cheers and Hppy savings!!

Accident!!

Well just relax, Its not a real accident like falling from rooftop or etc!!
Its a virtual accident ...and only one person can understand it :)

And the best thing it resemble accident because it takes 2 months to recover from your accident too..


More to follow soon on this!!

Stress and Relax- Can we do it??

Recently in meditation lecture at Patni, I observed something.

We as human being were originally having a very different lifestyle and then we observe one word in everybody life, Stress!!!

There is anxiety, health problems, hurriness,etc which most of us are facing. These are very well symtoms of stress.
Why did people in history doesnt had stress then?? or did they?

Well I wil say, they did but less since they had a balanced way of living. They had patience, balanced good diet, proper way of breating,etc.

Just look at a small baby, he enjoys life like anything..why??

Because he does things with patience, he enjoys everything he does.. playing, eating ,etc.

So one thing we should do is enjoy our present, do simple little exercise to feel fresh air and gain good diet

Sensex at 14000

2007 opened on good note for Sensex .
It traded and touched at 14000 today on 3rd Jan....

So what is in future..? I think 15K surely but correction is also on the way next.