Micro finance Empowerment

Microfinance - Empowering the world's poorest people

Microfinance is often considered one of the most effective, flexible, and sustainable strategies in the fight against global poverty.
Microfinance consists of making small loans, usually less than $200, to individuals, usually women, to establish or expand a small, self-sustaining business. For example, a woman may borrow $50 to buy chickens so she can sell eggs. As the chickens multiply, she will have more eggs to sell. Soon she can sell the chicks. Each expansion pulls her further from the devastation of poverty.

Microfinance, the Grameen way, includes several support systems that contribute greatly to its success. Microfinance institutions offer business advice and counseling, while clients provide peer support for each other through solidarity circles. This contributes substantially to the extremely high repayment rate of loans made to microfinance entrepreneurs.
An equally important part of microfinance is the recycling of funds. As loans are repaid, they are re-loaned, multiplying the impact of each dollar.
Microfinance has a positive impact far beyond the individual client. As families cross the poverty line and micro-businesses expand, their communities benefit. Jobs are created, knowledge is shared, civic participation increases, and women are recognized as valuable members of their families and communities.
Microfinance and Technology
Information and communication technology provide an unparalleled opportunity to improve the lives of the world's poorest people. With a doorway into the information age, people in the world's poorest villages are able to generate economic opportunity and better address the needs in their communities.

One of the greatest success stories in international development is the Grameen Village Phone Program from Bangladesh. In rural villages where no telecommunications services have previously existed, the program provides cellular phones via a sustainable financing mechanism to poor entrepreneurs who use the phone to operate a business. Today, the program is being replicated in Uganda and Rwanda.
Latest microfinance news
from Grameen Foundation
Microfinance and the Capital Markets
Building bridges from big banks to small villages
Microfinance is capable of growing large enough to be available to serve all of the world's poor. However, its potential, as of yet, remains largely unrealized. In human terms, more than 75% of the world's 560 million poor families still lack access to efficient, affordable and appropriate financial services.

Funding from donors is key to growing microfinance programs, but taken alone it is not enough. The microfinance industry requires as much as US$5 billion in financing to support annual growth estimated between 15 to 30% each year. The only way to bridge this gap is by using the vast financial resources of the capital markets, more commonly used by the business world, with banks and other investors providing loans, guarantees, bonds, equity investments, and other mechanisms.

By using loan guarantees and other financial tools, microfinance institutions can build on the base provided by donations -- multiplying the money, and the number of poor people helped, by as many as twelve times over. Thanks to these new tools, millions more poor people will be helped sooner. Learn more about the capital markets and microfinance.
Microfinance organizations
Grameen Foundation
We're a dynamic, nonprofit organization that uses microfinance and innovative technology to fight global poverty and bring opportunities to the world's poorest people. With tiny loans, financial services and technology, we help the poor, mostly women, start self-sustaining businesses to escape poverty.
Grameen Bank (Bangladesh)
Grameen Bank was started in 1976 by Professor Muhammad Yunus with the money in his pocket. Today it serves over five million poor clients in Bangladesh, helping thousands rise out of poverty each week.
Opportunity International
"Giving the poor a working chance - that's what Opportunity International is all about. Small loans, sometimes as little as $50, in the hands of a poor entrepreneur can transform the lives of individuals, families, and entire communities."
Microcredit Summit Campaign
"The Microcredit Summit Campaign brings together microcredit practitioners, advocates, educational institutions, donor agencies, international financial institutions, non-governmental organizations and others involved with microcredit."
FINCA
Provides financial services to the world's poorest families so they can create their own jobs, raise household incomes, and improve their standard of living.

Introduction to Blogging

What is a "blog"?
"Blog" is an abbreviated version of "weblog," which is a term used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog features diary-type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites, usually presented as a list of entries in reverse chronological order. Blogs range from the personal to the political, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects.

Many blogs focus on a particular topic, such as web design, home staging, sports, or mobile technology. Some are more eclectic, presenting links to all types of other sites. And others are more like personal journals, presenting the author's daily life and thoughts.

Generally speaking (although there are exceptions), blogs tend to have a few things in common:

A main content area with articles listed chronologically, newest on top. Often, the articles are organized into categories.
An archive of older articles.
A way for people to leave comments about the articles.
A list of links to other related sites, sometimes called a "blogroll".
One or more "feeds" like RSS, Atom or RDF files.
Some blogs may have additional features beyond these. Watch this short video for a simple explanation for what a blog is.


The Blog Content
Content is the raison d'être for any web site. Retail sites feature a catalog of products. University sites contain information about their campuses, curriculum, and faculty. News sites show the latest news stories. For a personal blog, you might have a bunch of observations, or reviews. Without some sort of updated content, there is little reason to visit a web site more than once.

On a blog, the content consists of articles (also sometimes called "posts" or "entries") that the author(s) writes. Yes, some blogs have multiple authors, each writing his/her own articles. Typically, blog authors compose their articles in a web-based interface, built into the blogging system itself. Some blogging systems also support the ability to use stand-alone "weblog client" software, which allows authors to write articles offline and upload them at a later time.

Comments
Want an interactive website? Wouldn't it be nice if the readers of a website could leave comments, tips or impressions about the site or a specific article? With blogs, they can! Posting comments is one of the most exciting features of blogs.

Most blogs have a method to allow visitors to leave comments. There are also nifty ways for authors of other blogs to leave comments without even visiting the blog! Called "pingbacks" or "trackbacks", they can inform other bloggers whenever they cite an article from another site in their own articles. All this ensures that online conversations can be maintained painlessly among various site users and websites.

The Difference Between a Blog and CMS?
Software that provides a method of managing your website is commonly called a CMS or "Content Management System". Many blogging software programs are considered a specific type of CMS. They provide the features required to create and maintain a blog, and can make publishing on the internet as simple as writing an article, giving it a title, and organizing it under (one or more) categories. While some CMS programs offer vast and sophisticated features, a basic blogging tool provides an interface where you can work in an easy and, to some degree, intuitive manner while it handles the logistics involved in making your composition presentable and publicly available. In other words, you get to focus on what you want to write, and the blogging tool takes care of the rest of the site management.

WordPress is one such advanced blogging tool and it provides a rich set of features. Through its Administration Panels, you can set options for the behavior and presentation of your weblog. Via these Administration Panels, you can easily compose a blog post, push a button, and be published on the internet, instantly! WordPress goes to great pains to see that your blog posts look good, the text looks beautiful, and the html code it generates conforms to web standards.

If you're just starting out, read Getting Started with WordPress, which contains information on how to get WordPress set up quickly and effectively, as well as information on performing basic tasks within WordPress, like creating new posts or editing existing ones.

Things Bloggers Need to Know
In addition to understanding how your specific blogging software works, such as WordPress, there are some terms and concepts you need to know.

Archives
A blog is also a good way to keep track of articles on a site. A lot of blogs feature an archive based on dates (like a monthly or yearly archive). The front page of a blog may feature a calendar of dates linked to daily archives. Archives can also be based on categories featuring all the articles related to a specific category.

It does not stop there; you can also archive your posts by author or alphabetically. The possibilities are endless. This ability to organize and present articles in a composed fashion is much of what makes blogging a popular personal publishing tool.

Feeds
A Feed is a function of special software that allows "Feedreaders" to access a site automatically looking for new content and then post updates about that new content to another site. This provides a way for users to keep up with the latest and hottest information posted on different blogging sites. Some Feeds include RSS (alternately defined as "Rich Site Summary" or "Really Simple Syndication"), Atom or RDF files. Dave Shea, author of the web design weblog Mezzoblue has written a comprehensive summary of feeds.

Blogrolls
A blogroll is a list, sometimes categorized, of links to webpages the author of a blog finds worthwhile or interesting. The links in a blogroll are usually to other blogs with similar interests. The blogroll is often in a "sidebar" on the page or featured as a dedicated separate web page. BlogRolling and blo.gs are two websites that provide some interesting functions or help related to blogrolls. These sites provide methods for users to maintain these rolls effortlessly and integrate them into weblogs. WordPress has a built-in Link Manager so users do not have to depend on a third party for creating and managing their blogroll.

Syndication
A feed is a machine readable (usually XML) content publication that is updated regularly. Many weblogs publish a feed (usually RSS, but also possibly Atom and RDF and so on, as described above). There are tools out there that call themselves "feedreaders". What they do is they keep checking specified blogs to see if they have been updated, and when the blogs are updated, they display the new post, and a link to it, with an excerpt (or the whole contents) of the post. Each feed contains items that are published over time. When checking a feed, the feedreader is actually looking for new items. New items are automatically discovered and downloaded for you to read. Just so you don't have to visit all the blogs you are interested in. All you have to do with these feedreaders is to add the link to the RSS feed of all the blogs you are interested in. The feedreader will then inform you when any of the blogs have new posts in them. Most blogs have these "Syndication" feeds available for the readers to use.

Managing Comments
One of the most exciting features of blogging tools are the comments. This highly interactive feature allows users to comment upon article posts and link to your posts and comment on and recommend them. These are known as trackbacks and pingbacks . We'll also discuss how to moderate and manage comments and how to deal with the annoying trend in "comment spam", when unwanted comments are posted to your blog.

Trackbacks
Pingbacks
Verifying Pingbacks and Trackbacks
Comment Moderation
Comment Spam
Trackbacks
Trackbacks were originally developed by SixApart, creators of the MovableType blog package. SixApart has a good introduction to trackbacks:

In a nutshell, TrackBack was designed to provide a method of notification between websites: it is a method of person A saying to person B, "This is something you may be interested in." To do that, person A sends a TrackBack ping to person B.
A better explanation is this:

Person A writes something on their blog.
Person B wants to comment on Person A's blog, but wants her own readers to see what she had to say, and be able to comment on her own blog
Person B posts on her own blog and sends a trackback to Person A's blog
Person A's blog receives the trackback, and displays it as a comment to the original post. This comment contains a link to Person B's post
The idea here is that more people are introduced to the conversation (both Person A's and Person B's readers can follow links to the other's post), and that there is a level of authenticity to the trackback comments because they originated from another weblog. Unfortunately, there is no actual verification performed on the incoming trackback, and indeed they can even be faked.

Most trackbacks send to Person A only a small portion (called an "excerpt") of what Person B had to say. This is meant to act as a "teaser", letting Person A (and his readers) see some of what Person B had to say, and encouraging them all to click over to Person B's site to read the rest (and possibly comment).

Person B's trackback to Person A's blog generally gets posted along with all the comments. This means that Person A can edit the contents of the trackback on his own server, which means that the whole idea of "authenticity" isn't really solved. (Note: Person A can only edit the contents of the trackback on his own site. He cannot edit the post on Person B's site that sent the trackback.)

SixApart has published an official trackback specification.

Pingbacks
Pingbacks were designed to solve some of the problems that people saw with trackbacks. The official pingback documentation makes pingbacks sound an awful lot like trackbacks:

For example, Yvonne writes an interesting article on her Web log. Kathleen reads Yvonne's article and comments about it, linking back to Yvonne's original post. Using pingback, Kathleen's software can automatically notify Yvonne that her post has been linked to, and Yvonne's software can then include this information on her site.
There are three significant differences between pingbacks and trackbacks, though.

Pingbacks and trackbacks use drastically different communication technologies (XML-RPC and HTTP POST, respectively).
Pingbacks do not send any content.
The best way to think about pingbacks is as remote comments:

Person A posts something on his blog.
Person B posts on her own blog, linking to Person A's post. This automatically sends a pingback to Person A when both have pingback enabled blogs.
Person A's blog receives the pingback, then automatically goes to Person B's post to confirm that the pingback did, in fact, originate there.
The pingback is generally displayed on Person A's blog as simply a link to Person B's post. In this way, all editorial control over posts rests exclusively with the individual authors (unlike the trackback excerpt, which can be edited by the trackback recipient). The automatic verification process introduces a level of authenticity, making it harder to fake a pingback.

Some feel that trackbacks are superior because readers of Person A's blog can at least see some of what Person B has to say, and then decide if they want to read more (and therefore click over to Person B's blog). Others feel that pingbacks are superior because they create a verifiable connection between posts.

Verifying Pingbacks and Trackbacks
Comments on blogs are often criticized as lacking authority, since anyone can post anything using any name they like: there's no verification process to ensure that the person is who they claim to be. Trackbacks and Pingbacks both aim to provide some verification to blog commenting.

Comment Moderation
Comment Moderation is a feature which allows the website owner and author to monitor and control the comments on the different article posts, and can help in tackling comment spam. It lets you moderate comments, & you can delete unwanted comments, approve cool comments and make other decisions about the comments.

Comment Spam
Comment Spam refers to useless comments (or trackbacks, or pingbacks) to posts on a blog. These are often irrelevant to the context value of the post. They can contain one or more links to other websites or domains. Spammers use Comment Spam as a medium to get higher page rank for their domains in Google, so that they can sell those domains at a higher price sometime in future or to obtain a high ranking in search results for an existing website.

Spammers are relentless; because there can be substantial money involved, they work hard at their "job." They even build automated tools (robots) to rapidly submit their spam to the same or multiple weblogs. Many webloggers, especially beginners, sometimes feel overwhelmed by Comment Spam.

There are solutions, though, to avoiding Comment Spam. WordPress includes many tools for combating Comment Spam. With a little up front effort, Comment Spam can be manageable, and certainly no reason to give up weblogging.

Pretty Permalinks
Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings. A permalink is what another weblogger will use to refer to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message. Because others may link to your individual postings, the URL to that article shouldn't change. Permalinks are intended to be permanent (valid for a long time).

"Pretty" Permalinks is the idea that URLs are frequently visible to the people who click them, and should therefore be crafted in such a way that they make sense, and not be filled with incomprehensible parameters. The best Permalinks are "hackable," meaning a user might modify the link text in their browser to navigate to another section or listing of the weblog. For example, this is how the default Permalink to a story might look in a default WordPress installation:

/index.php?p=423

How is a user to know what "p" represents? Where did the number 423 come from?

In contrast, here is a well-structured, "Pretty" Permalink which could link to the same article, once the installation is configured to modify permalinks:

/archives/2003/05/23/my-cheese-sandwich/

One can easily guess that the Permalink includes the date of the posting, and the title, just by looking at the URL. One might also guess that hacking the URL to be /archives/2003/05/ would get a list of all the postings from May of 2003. Pretty (cool). For more information on possible Permalink patterns in WordPress, see Using Permalinks.

Blog by email
Some blogging tools offer the ability to email your posts directly to your blog, all without direct interaction through the blogging tool interface. WordPress offers this cool feature. Using email, you can now send in your post content to a pre-determined email address & voila! Your post is published!

Post Slugs
If you're using Pretty Permalinks, the Post Slug is the title of your article post within the link. The blogging tool software may simplify or truncate your title into a more appropriate form for using as a link. A title such as "I'll Make A Wish" might be truncated to "ill-make-a-wish". In WordPress, you can change the Post Slug to something else, like "make-a-wish", which sounds better than a wish made when sick.

Excerpt
Excerpts are condensed summaries of your blog posts, with blogging tools being able to handle these in various ways. In WordPress, Excerpts can be specifically written to summarize the post, or generated automatically by using the first few paragraphs of a post or using the post up to a specific point, assigned by you.

Plugins
Plugins are cool bits of programming scripts that add additional functionality to your blog. These are often features which either enhance already available features or add them to your site.

WordPress offers simple and easy ways of adding Plugins to your blog. From the Administraton Panel, there is a Plugin Page. Once you have uploaded a Plugin to your WordPress plugin directory, activate it from the Plugins Management SubPanel, and sit back and watch your Plugin work. Not all Plugins are so easily installed, but WordPress Plugin authors and developers make the process as easy as possible.

Basics-A Few Blogging Tips
Starting a new blog is difficult and this can put many people off. Some may get off to a good start only to become quickly discouraged because of the lack of comments or visits. You want to stand out from this crowd of millions of bloggers, you want to be one of the few hundred thousand blogs that are actually visited. Here are some simple tips to help you on your way to blogging mastery:

Post regularly, but don't post if you have nothing worth posting about.
Stick with only a few specific genres to talk about.
Don't put 'subscribe' and 'vote me' links all over the front page until you have people that like your blog enough to ignore them (they're usually just in the way).
Use a clean and simple theme if at all possible.
Enjoy, blog for fun, comment on other peoples' blogs (as they normally visit back).
Retrieved from "http://codex.wordpress.org/Introduction_to_Blogging"

Aim Behind Corporate Social responsibility should be?

Image building and risk management

A positive image holds the organisation in good stead through ups and downs. It provides the kind of security that no amount of capital gains or profits can ever equal. Coca-Cola India had started with a corpus of US$ 10 million for its CSR activities in 2008. It had undertaken US$ 25-30 million a year project on water conservation, and the project "Elixir of life" to provide drinking water to nearly 30,000 school children. Coca-Cola India won the 'Golden Peacock Global Award for Corporate Social Responsibility - 2008' for these initiatives. That is the reason why the company has managed to report burgeoning sales and profits despite the tons of negative publicity they garner, with respect to health hazards of drinking aerated drinks.

Build public opinion and initiate action

The Confederation of Indian Industry's 'Mission on Sustainable Growth' has set up a code which was formulated in 2006. It provides consultancy services and technical assistance on social development and CSR. The mission's aims are to promote the reduction of excessive consumption of natural resources and emission of greenhouse gases. The code had started with 23 new signatories and the total number of code signatories had gone up to 102, by September 2008. Many large corporate houses are taking up projects-along with the help of the government-which are 'green' to promote the cause of sustainable development. When the organisation spurs people to act through its initiatives, the aims of the company stop being just to sell its products. Instead, the company becomes an agent of change and evolution in its chosen field. In fact, businesses can go a long way in eradicating long standing socially unacceptable practises.

Opportunity for creativity

Many corporate social responsibility ventures are immensely creative in the way they are so suited to the company and its objectives. India Inc has started encouraging 'intrapreneurs' or employees who have ideas that could potentially become a venture, and most of these intrapreneurs end up directing these projects and ventures. Some companies promoting intrapreneurship include Adobe, NIIT, KPMG, Pepsi and Microsoft.

Create a win-win situation

Many products encourage do-gooder customers to choose their products over others, by offering to pledge part of the sales to a charitable organisation. It is a common practise in many shopping malls to ask customers to contribute one rupee extra to their bill. If they do, the mall also contributes a rupee thus doubling the contribution.

Provide multiple business opportunities

Corporate companies like ITC have made farmer development a vital part of its business strategy, and made major efforts to improve the livelihood standards of rural communities. Unilever is using micro enterprises to strategically augment the penetration of consumer products in rural markets. IT companies like TCS and Wipro have developed software to help teachers and children in schools across India to further the cause of education. The adult literacy software has been a significant factor in reducing illiteracy in remote communities. Banks and insurance companies are targeting migrant labourers and street vendors to help them through micro-credits and related schemes. In this way, the company achieves its goals of diversification and increased sales markets and profits, along with fulfilling its social responsibilities.

Beginning of Islamic Banking in India

The first Islamic bank in the country with active involvement of the Kerala government is likely to start operations in Kochi by next year as the bank's registration formalities are currently being fulfilled on a war footing.

Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation, which is the designated agency for the formation of the bank, will have 11 per cent stake in the proposed banking company.

It will be registered as a non-banking finance company in the beginning and later get transformed into a full-fledged Shari'ah-compliant bank. It is likely that the registration formalities will be completed in the current year itself and the NBFC will become operational in 2010.

The project proposes to raise an initial capital of Rs 500 crore (Rs 5 billion) from leading non-resident Indians and Indian business houses. According to sources close to the development, leading NRI businessmen such as Mohammed Ali, MA Yusuf Ali, CK Menon and other Kerala-based industrialists such as Azad Mooppan have shown keen interest in the venture.

Though an RBI study group had eariler rejected the concept of Islamic banking, it got the backing of the Raghuram Rajan Committee on banking reforms. Purely based on Shari'ah principles, the bank will avoid interest-based business activities.

The proposed Kerala-based bank plans to invest funds in infrastructure projects, and two areas, Bai al Salam and Instinsa, under Shari'ah have been identified for such investments.

The bank will invest all its funds in wealth generating investment avenues and will distribute profit to its shareholders. The proposed Islamic bank will also set apart a social fund, compulsory under Shri'ah principles and the Islamic banking concept, and will provide interest-free loans to the Gulf returnees to set up business or small scale ventures.

The concept is getting widespread support among the Muslim community of the state as a large number of rich Muslims are strictly practicing Shari'ah principles in business.

A major chunk of such persons do not have a bank account. A lot of discussion is also going on whether investment in capital market is against Shari'ah principles. A section of the community believes that share trading is against the fundamentals of Islam. So the formation of an Islamic bank will be a relief to them.

This concept is very popular in West Asia and in predominantly Muslim nations such as Malaysia and Indonesia. Leading international banks such as HSBC and Standard & Charted have exclusive Islamic banking windows.

The biggest challenge before the Kerala-based bank will be the formation of a Shai'ah Supervisory Board in order to monitor the activities of the bank. The board should include independent scholars on Shari'ah and banking business.

Marketing In A Virtual World.

Before the Internet, small business owners like yourself were usually limited to a local market -resorting to expensive advertising and brochures, direct mail, cold-calling, networking at the local Chamber of Commerce or Rotary. You hoped customers found you through word- of- mouth or a Yellow Pages ad.
Today, you can work with a consultant, a financial planner, or a business coach across the country as easily as someone across town. In the Internet age, prospects often find you (instead of the other way around).

This is the age of the virtual customer. Yet, although the Internet has made it perfectly reasonable to land a major client you've never met in-person, it has also created new expectations among consumers.

Prospects now "Google" around to find someone with your skills. They expect you to make a good virtual "case" for yourself. If you don't pass the test, or make a bad impression, or appear lackluster compared to your competitors, you will lose the potential client.

The only way to be truly successful in business is by establishing a good reputation. And understanding the way business has shifted in the Internet age can help you bring the potential of marketing your business into the virtual world.

The Virtual First Impression
The Internet has increased the expectation among consumers that businesses will have a credible online presence.

Many of us now form "first impressions" of people and companies via our Internet browsers. From the moment your name and business appear in a Web browser to the moment your Web site loads, your first impression often means the difference between a shot at your prospect's business, or being shut out.

Think about it. You have probably used the Internet to research a company or a person you're considering doing business with. Certainly potential clients and customers are checking you out online, too.

Prospects you've never met are forming opinions about your business at the click of a mouse. Internet first impressions are not just influenced by how your Web site looks, but also by how often your business appears or how high it ranks in a web browser.

Become an Online Center of Influence
We all know people who command rapt attention whenever they speak. Others want to listen to, learn from, and emulate them. They are centers of influence, a distinction you can pursue online by developing the following qualities:

Share inside knowledge with your target market;
Participate, listen, contemplate, and offer thoughtful responses;
Be willing to voice an opinion;
Assume leadership positions in your industry
Certainly, experience counts. But this is not the only prerequisite to becoming an online center of influence that will earn you the distinction of 'trusted advisor' within your target market.

Start by making your Web site a resource for your industry. Feature lots of useful information, including articles, links, downloadable files, customer resources, and anything else of use to your target market. Be generous and give, give, give!

Create a Virtual Podium with Teleclasses
Teleclasses are a great way for businesses to develop a virtual reputation. They can be promoted easily by email, and provide information to prospects, clients, and customers all over the world, with minimal cost and effort.

Business coach and teleclass leader Michael Losier set up a teleclass about exhibiting at trade shows: 'I had 60 students in my first class, which was very profitable, and many later hired me as a consultant."

Also, it may be just as effective and less effort to participate as a guest lecturer in another professional's class rather than producing your own teleclass.

Placing Articles Online
Online articles draw upon your expertise by providing useful information that Web site visitors are actively seeking out. Online articles position you as an expert in your field and convey a level of authority that establishes trust and sets the stage for sales.

When high-traffic, high-credibility Web sites and newsletters publish your articles, you ride on the coattails of their loyal relationships with readers. Your articles are seen by visitors as referrals from trusted friends.

Some of the most prime "real estate" in the world these days is at the top of the search engine listings. The most widely used search engines rank Web sites by the quantity of other Web sites that link to them. This means that every article you publish that links to your Web site can improve your search engine rankings.

Build Online Relationships
Most business networking used to happen when we recommended an associate, swapped business cards, or connected with colleagues over lunch. But increasingly, social networking is migrating to the Internet.

Through social networking Web sites and online discussion lists, entrepreneurs can access virtual communities of prospects and associates while developing virtual "platforms" to generate leads and sales and establish themselves as recognized experts.

Marketing consultant Max Blumberg credits his involvement in Ecademy.com, a business networking Web site, with elevating his business profile and generating new clients. "When I first encountered Ecademy I'd never heard of online networking, but the benefits of a large community where I could share ideas and cultivate new relationships was very appealing."

Blumberg started by posting a profile about his business, then started sharing his knowledge with other Ecademists. "I set up a club where members could get help with common marketing challenges. Many of these people became clients and friends with whom I socialize. We reciprocally use each other's services," says Blumberg, whose Ecademy presence has even been noticed by large companies who are starting to contact him.

The key to building a niche community is identifying your ideal customers and the communities they belong to. By targeting the best, most favorably inclined prospects within a niche, you can become your target market's vendor of choice, and sell more with far less effort.

Q&A: Greece's economic crisis

Q&A: Greece's economic crisis

Greece has a debt of more than 13 per cent of its GDP for 2009 [EPA]
Greece is undergoing financial turmoil over its $400bn debt, with increasingly expensive repayments and a continually downgraded credit rating.

The country's credit rating has been lowered to junk status, a risk level that will now force many groups to stop investing in the country's bonds.

Consequently, Athens has even less money to pay back its huge loans and there are now fears that its problems will spread to other EU nations and some countries further afield.

The country's so-called austerity measures, a combination of severe cuts to public expenditure and increases in taxes, has met widespread public opposition.

The European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have agreed a $143bn bailout package over three years to to help pay its immediate debts but the package still needs to be approved by the 15 other countries in the euro zone.

Why is Greece facing this crisis?

Greece's debt rose to more than 13 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) in 2009.

The Mediterranean nation incurred annual budget deficits of billions of dollars via overspending in several areas.

These included benefit programmes, the public sector and government committees, as well as loss making utilities, such as Olympic Airways, the national airline, that was eventually privatised in 2008.

The government's benevolence allowed civil servants to retire in their 40s and permitted their unmarried or divorced daughters to collect their pension after they had died, the latter at a cost of about $70 million annually by some estimates.

As tensions with Turkey have continued, Greece has also spent far more than most other EU members on arms, about six per cent of its GDP in 2009.

However, about 80 per cent of the defence budget is spent on administrative and staff payments.

The costs of paying off this debt have spiralled since October 2009, when Greece revealed that its budget deficit was double previous estimates.

The announcement led to continued credit rating downgrades, meaning that increasingly investors did not want to buy the government's bonds, making it harder for Greece to gain the finance needed to pay back debt and shore up the economy.

Investors have also not been reassured by measures taken by both the Greek government and the EU to restore confidence in the country's finances.

With the downgrade of its credit rating to junk status on April 27, Greece could not secure the money it needs from the open market to pay its debt and thus had to go to the EU and IMF for bailout money.

What are the main effects of the crisis?

With the downgrade to a junk credit rating, Greece's debt became one of the most costly in the world for investors to insure.

Fears mounted that this will affect other nations using the single European currency - the euro.

Therefore, investors have been scarred off putting their finance into euro zone nations with high debt such as Portugal, Spain and Italy.

Consequently, these countries now have less money coming into their economies meaning that they are less likely be able to make payments for their own debts.

The euro has fallen to a one-year low against the US dollar due to the crisis.

This has hit US exports since they have become more expensive for euro zone nations to buy, reducing their demand.

What austerity measures is Greece taking to reduce its debt?

Greece has introduced a number of austerity measures in order to tackle its debt, leading to widespread public opposition.

The measures include cutting civil servants' bonuses - for instance, those given for speaking a foreign language and Christmas and Easter windfalls - by between 12 and 30 per cent, saving about $2.25bn.

It has pledged to trim social security payments further by raising the retirement age and will ban early retirement.

The state pension will also be frozen, saving $600m.

It is raising VAT to 21 per cent from the current rate of 19 per cent, raising $1.7bn and is to introduce a two per cent supplemental gas tax to bring in $600m.

The main VAT rate will be increased by 2 percentage points to 23 per cent.

Excise taxes on fuel, cigarettes and alcohol will be increased by a further 10 per cent.

In addition, the government has said that it will merge some state firms and sell stakes in others, in a measure to limit losses.

Military spending is to be scaled back, with arms purchases limited to 0.7 per cent of GDP in 2010.

Where is the bailout coming from?

The EU and IMF has offered three-year loan package of $143bn to Greece.

One third of the package is coming from the IMF and the rest from Greece's 15 partner countries in the euro zone.

The 15 countries will extend loans to Greece with interest rates of about 5 per cent - higher than those they face themselves, but far lower than the prohibitive rates of about 10 per cent that Greece faces at the moment on the international market.

The package must be approved by each government of the 15 other euro zone members before it can be handed over to Athens.

If approved, the first payment will be made before Greece’s next bond redemption on May 19.

Initially Athens decided not to take up the aid, preferring instead to secure finance on the open market whenever possible, but when that was no longer possible Greece had to ask for the aid package.

Will the aid and austerity measures succeed?

Greece has to make a debt payment of $11.2bn on May 19. If a deal on the aid package is not secured before then the country could default on its debt or have its debt restructured.

Increased austerity measures could have a detrimental effect.

Cuts will reduce citizens' income and reduce spending. This has the potential to lead Greece into an even more severe recession, meaning a weaker economy and a reduced ability to repay debts.

Increased unemployment felt during such a recession and cuts to key services could also lead to social unrest.

Some economists expect Greece's GDP to shrink by three per cent even if deficit cutting measures are only moderately successful.

That is one per cent more than hoped for by the EU and IMF as part of their bailout package.

Professor at IIM A was explaining marketing concepts:

You see a gorgeous girl at a party.

You go up to her and say, "I am very rich. Marry me!"

That's Direct Marketing.

You're at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl.

One of your friends goes up to her and pointing at you says, "He's very

rich. Marry him."

That's Advertising.


You see a gorgeous girl at a party.

You go up to her and get her telephone number. The next day you call and

say "Hi, I'm very rich. Marry me."

That's Telemarketing.


You're at a party and see a gorgeous girl.

You get up and straighten your tie, you walk up to her and pour her a

drink. You open the door for her, pick up her bag after she drops it, offer

her a ride, and then say, "By the way, I'm very rich. Will you marry me?"

That's Public Relations.


You're at a party and see a gorgeous girl.

She walks up to you and says, "You are very rich.."

That's Brand Recognition.


You see a gorgeous girl at a party.

You go up to her and say, "I'm rich.Marry me" She gives you a nice hard

slap on your face.

That's Customer Feedback !!!!!


You see a gorgeous girl at a party.

You go up to her and say, "I am very rich.Marry me!" And she introduces

you to her husband

That's Demand and supply gap.


You see a gorgeous girl at a party.

You go up to her and before you say, "I am very rich. Marry me!" she

turns her face towards you ------------ she is your wife!

That's competition eating into your market share

Who is your competitor?

Think who is your competitor, have breakfast or be breakfast :-))


Who sells the largest number of cameras in India?
Your guess is likely to be Sony, Canon or Nikon. Answer is none of the above. The winner is Nokia whose main line of business in India is not cameras but cell phones.

Reason being cameras bundled with cellphones are outselling stand alone cameras. Now, what prevents the cellphone from replacing the camera outright? Nothing at all. One can only hope the Sonys and Canons are taking note.

Try this. Who is the biggest in music business in India? You think it is HMV Sa-Re-Ga-Ma? Sorry. The answer is Airtel. By selling caller tunes (that play for 30 seconds) Airtel makes more than what music companies make by selling music albums (that run for hours).
Incidentally Airtel is not in music business. It is the mobile service provider with the largest subscriber base in India. That sort of competitor is difficult to detect, even more difficult to beat (by the time you have identified him he has already gone past you). But if you imagine that Nokia and Bharti (Airtel's parent) are breathing easy you can't be farther from truth.
Nokia confessed that they all but missed the smartphone bus. They admit that Apple's Iphone and Google's Android can make life difficult in future. But you never thought Google was a mobile company, did you? If these illustrations mean anything, there is a bigger game unfolding. It is not so much about mobile or music or camera or emails?

The "Mahabharat" (the great Indian epic battle) is about "what is tomorrow's personal digital device"? Will it be a souped up mobile or a palmtop with a telephone? All these are little wars that add up to that big battle. Hiding behind all these wars is a gem of a question - "who is my competitor?"

Once in a while, to intrigue my students I toss a question at them. It says "What Apple did to Sony, Sony did to Kodak, explain?" The smart ones get the answer almost immediately. Sony defined its market as audio (music from the walkman). They never expected an IT company like Apple to encroach into their audio domain. Come to think of it, is it really surprising? Apple as a computer maker has both audio and video capabilities. So what made Sony think he won't compete on pure audio? "Elementary Watson". So also Kodak defined its business as film cameras, Sony defines its businesses as "digital."

In digital camera the two markets perfectly meshed. Kodak was torn between going digital and sacrificing money on camera film or staying with films and getting left behind in digital technology. Left undecided it lost in both. It had to. It did not ask the question "who is my competitor for tomorrow?" The same was true for IBM whose mainframe revenue prevented it from seeing the PC. The same was true of Bill Gates who declared "internet is a fad!" and then turned around to bundle the browser with windows to bury Netscape. The point is not who is today's competitor. Today's competitor is obvious. Tomorrow's is not.

In 2008, who was the toughest competitor to British Airways in India? Singapore airlines? Better still, Indian airlines? Maybe, but there are better answers. There are competitors that can hurt all these airlines and others not mentioned. The answer is videoconferencing and telepresence services of HP and Cisco. Travel dropped due to recession. Senior IT executives in India and abroad were compelled by their head quarters to use videoconferencing to shrink travel budget. So much so, that the mad scramble for American visas from Indian techies was nowhere in sight in 2008. (India has a quota of something like 65,000 visas to the U.S. They were going a-begging. Blame it on recession!). So far so good. But to think that the airlines will be back in business post recession is something I would not bet on. In short term yes. In long term a resounding no. Remember, if there is one place where Newton's law of gravity is applicable besides physics it is in electronic hardware. Between 1977 and 1991 the prices of the now dead VCR (parent of Blue-Ray disc player) crashed to one-third of its original level in India. PC's price dropped from hundreds of thousands of rupees to tens of thousands. If this trend repeats then telepresence prices will also crash. Imagine the fate of airlines then. As it is not many are making money. Then it will surely be RIP!

India has two passions. Films and cricket. The two markets were distinctly different. So were the icons. The cricket gods were Sachin and Sehwag. The filmi gods were the Khans (Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and the other Khans who followed suit). That was, when cricket was fundamentally test cricket or at best 50 over cricket. Then came IPL and the two markets collapsed into one. IPL brought cricket down to 20 overs. Suddenly an IPL match was reduced to the length of a 3 hour movie. Cricket became film's competitor. On the eve of IPL matches movie halls ran empty. Desperate multiplex owners requisitioned the rights for screening IPL matches at movie halls to hang on to the audience. If IPL were to become the mainstay of cricket, as it is likely to be, films have to sequence their releases so as not clash with IPL matches. As far as the audience is concerned both are what in India are called 3 hour "tamasha" (entertainment). Cricket season might push films out of the market.

Look at the products that vanished from India in the last 20 years. When did you last see a black and white movie? When did you last use a fountain pen? When did you last type on a typewriter? The answer for all the above is "I don't remember!" For some time there was a mild substitute for the typewriter called electronic typewriter that had limited memory. Then came the computer and mowed them all. Today most technologically challenged guys like me use the computer as an upgraded typewriter. Typewriters per se are nowhere to be seen.

One last illustration. 20 years back what were Indians using to wake them up in the morning? The answer is "alarm clock." The alarm clock was a monster made of mechanical springs. It had to be physically keyed every day to keep it running. It made so much noise by way of alarm, that it woke you up and the rest of the colony. Then came quartz clocks which were sleeker. They were much more gentle though still quaintly called "alarms." What do we use today for waking up in the morning? Cellphone! An entire industry of clocks disappeared without warning thanks to cell phones. Big watch companies like Titan were the losers. You never know in which bush your competitor is hiding!

On a lighter vein, who are the competitors for authors? Joke spewing machines? (Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, himself a Pole, tagged a Polish joke telling machine to a telephone much to the mirth of Silicon Valley). Or will the competition be story telling robots? Future is scary! The boss of an IT company once said something interesting about the animal called competition. He said "Have breakfast ...or.... be breakfast"! That sums it up rather neatly.

What We Must Know?

THE CONSTITUTION OF INDIA

WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly
resolved to constitute India into a 1[SOVEREIGN
SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC] and
to secure to all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political;
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and
worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;
and to promote among them all
FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual
and the 2[unity and integrity of the Nation];
IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twentysixth
day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT,
ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS
CONSTITUTION.


1Subs. by the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976, s. 2, for “SOVEREIGN
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC” (w.e.f. 3-1-1977).
2Subs. by s. 2, ibid., for “unity of the Nation” (w.e.f. 3-1-1977).

Tryst with destiny

Tryst with Destiny was a speech made by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India.

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.

At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this Assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now.

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

And so we have to labor and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.

To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill-will or blaming others. We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell.

The appointed day has come-the day appointed by destiny-and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning-point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.

It is a fateful moment for us in India, for all Asia and for the world. A new star rises, the star of freedom in the East, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materializes. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed!

We rejoice in that freedom, even though clouds surround us, and many of our people are sorrow-stricken and difficult problems encompass us. But freedom brings responsibilities and burdens and we have to face them in the spirit of a free and disciplined people.

On this day our first thoughts go to the architect of this freedom, the Father of our Nation [Gandhi], who, embodying the old spirit of India, held aloft the torch of freedom and lighted up the darkness that surrounded us. We have often been unworthy followers of his and have strayed from his message, but not only we but succeeding generations will remember this message and bear the imprint in their hearts of this great son of India, magnificent in his faith and strength and courage and humility. We shall never allow that torch of freedom to be blown out, however high the wind or stormy the tempest.

Our next thoughts must be of the unknown volunteers and soldiers of freedom who, without praise or reward, have served India even unto death.

We think also of our brothers and sisters who have been cut off from us by political boundaries and who unhappily cannot share at present in the freedom that has come. They are of us and will remain of us whatever may happen, and we shall be sharers in their good and ill fortune alike.

The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavor? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.

We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.

To the nations and peoples of the world we send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy.

And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service.

Investment Banking Simplified: Variants Synergized

Investment banking is about synergizing the variants. These variants are open to any industry whether it is manufacturing, hospitality, information technology. It is about capturing the dollars. It is adding one plus one and bringing in three. Investment banking about understands the past analyzing the present and taking decision for the future. The variants for IB can be divided based on-

1- Steady time (a world in which there is a lag between a customer’s need and a market solution)

2- Real time (a world in which the market creates solutions at the same time customers have a need)

3- Zero Time (a world in which the market creates solutions before the customers have expressed a need)

Investment banking is about company evaluation, company acquisition and company growth strategy. For it to happen we need to understand which direction the industry is moving. We are at present in a consolidation. Because of these market forces, industries across the board are having a lot of mergers and acquisitions. Inefficient companies are and will be taken over and efficient companies will become even bigger. At the same time, there might be some smaller companies which will be there serving their niche. They will certainly not have the revenues and the range of services as their larger brethren but they will continue to survive on the basis of their lean operations.

For an investment banking firm simplifying variants is of immense importance. This starts from understanding company’s performance, its hidden value, market share, competition, industry overview etc. Next step is the valuation of information and reaching an acquisition price and acquiring the company. From here it is a strategic decision making whether one wants to build on it or want to follow a strategy of divestiture. Build on strategy will be based on cost cutting, restructuring of management and operations, improving the human resource and other management gamut to bring in solid growth and desired result to the balance sheet. On the other hand strategy divestiture will include strategic sale of whole or part of the assets.

Investment banking brings about synergy, creates values and simplifies the mergers and acquisition and alliances (MA&A). It is a descending stream of pure activity, which brings in dynamic force to the business. It is about thinking differently, as Winston Churchill said that kites rise highest against the wind -- not with it.

What people reading around the world!

Let's go around the WORLD

The world has many countries, some big and some small, and I want to find the best books about each country. The book should help us learn something ABOUT that country and not just be one written by somebody who lives there. Let's "book around the world" and find at least one excellent book for each country in the world.

At Book around the States we have a long list of books about states of the union, but we don't need EVERY book about a country, just the best ones. What have you read? What did you enjoy reading? Let's name some possibilities.

North America
Central America
Caribbean
South America
Europe
Africa
Middle East
Central Asia
Asia
Southeast Asia
Australia
Oceania
Anarctica

These are some of the areas of the world, so let's set out to find some books about the countries on the world's continents.

An ingenious example of speech and politics

Recently in the United Nations Assembly that made the world community smile.

A representative from India began: “Before beginning my talk I want to tell you something about Rishi Kashyap of Kashmir, after whom Kashmir is named. When he struck a rock and it brought forth water, he thought, What a good opportunity to have a bath.

He removed his clothes, put them aside on the rock and entered the water.

When he got out and wanted to dress, his clothes had vanished. A Pakistani had stolen them.”.

The Pakistani representative jumped up furiously and shouted, “What are you talking about? The Pakistanis weren’t there then.”.

The Indian representative smiled and said, “And now that we have made that clear, I will begin my speech.”.