Monday, January 31, 2011

Entrepreneurship Traits

I took a test which will judge me on my entrepreneurship abilities in terms of aptitude, attitude and motivation. It was wonderful experience for me and to be frank it thrown results exactly I know myself. In case you are interested Click on here . it takes less than 15 minutes and results are good. It judges you on traits like stong urge to be rich, to create something, to become successful, action orientation, perfection seeker, abilities to handle ambiguity and difficult situations, perseverance, creativity a  etc etc.

This remind me an tweet by Robert Kiyosaki “ to be a successful entrepreneur one has to be a leader, a businessman and an SOB” . after the test it was confirmed that I need to hon my SOB skills. As I score low on attitude.

Beyond such tests, even one is having skill set matching to be a great entrepreneur, it need not be necessary he/she can , because starting new business comes with its own problems.

Its looks very shiny from outside that you can be your own boss and there is no rat race anymore, but the reality is you are entering a much faster rat race. While in salaried job as career one can choose to stay relaxed and still survive but in business if you lay for a while you are out of business.

you might be our own boss, but don’t forget that customer is the king.

You can be flexible in terms of working but that flexibility will extend to you loo also cos it is never ending.

After seeing above three statement one might wonder why anyone chose  startup as a career option?
With all the toiling, frustration and stress it gives at the end its rewarding, immense satisfaction of creating something out of nothing and giving employment to people.
Traits of an entrepreneur

Friday, January 28, 2011

Using sodexo for online shopping

Off late I was researching on online payment options for ecommerce gateways. All sort of credit and debit cards and cash and gift cards and internet banking payment options are available these days to shop online. I was wondering if one can shop using prepaid gift and meal vouchers like sodexo, accor etc  online. I was surprised that there are indeed online shop where one can redeem theier accor compliments vouchers. Though the process is cumbersome.  The full details can be read on the link http://www.ticket2gifts.com/ticket2gifts_guide1.html  though for the readers I am giving brief steps below
  1. Option to select paying fully or partially using ticket compliment vouchers
  2. Enter the denominations and serial no. printed on voucher. Considered paid.
  3. Cancel the voucher by writing the order no the voucher and courier them to the vendor.

This is really difficult at the age where one simply have to type amount credit card no and authentication code, who would want to use it for online shopping. It would be much easier for exchange it like currency.
I was thinking if they can use these cards as mobile recharge cards. Where a code is hidden. The value of the voucher will continue to be the value of denomination as long as the code is not discovered by scratching the voucher.  This can be used as below

  1. For online user need to scratch the voucher and type the code, no need to send the card as the code is revealed the denomination of the coupon is zero.
  2. For offline user can use it the way conventional vouchers are being used until the code is not scratched.
Going forward this can be used as mobile recharge coupons as well.

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Thursday, January 13, 2011

New Vehicle Design for product home delivery

In the last blog i wrote about the increasing opportunities of logistics companies in India due to increase in E-commerce volume. This volume has increased mainly due to small ticket and perishable items. People are buying Flowers, fruits and sweets, books CD's and other gifts online.

This also open the opportunity creating altogether new vehicle with three main features.

-Sleek Design having improved maneuverability in Indian traffic
-Fuel economy to sustain the profitability
- increased carrying capacity

currently in most of the Indian cities see an big carrier at rear end of the economy range motorbikes. This model can be seen only for home delivery of food items.

In addition to E-commerce purchase, there is whole lot of logistics which are being managed by backpack. In recent past i have welcome list of people who were carrying huge load on a two wheeler.

- Pure IT water purifier, the guy was carrying two units and some recharge kits.
- Aramax person delivered book purchased on flipcart.com, was carrying lots of goodies in a huge bag some of then were very fragile.
- Received flowers bouquet n a cake on my B'day, i am still wondering how he managed to balance them on his bike
- tatasky technician brought Disk antena, set top box and toolkit n wires in his canvas bag.

 come on some one help them bajaj, mahndra, piagio take the responsibilty.

E-powering E-India

I was searching for the traslation for E-commerce in local indian language, Google turned to be of some help but, with E-vanizya. there is no translation fot the prefix E(lectronic).

Though the word  E-commerce is being used as it is in hindi or gujrati, but indians are pefusing indianess into it. Infibeam an E-com company recently got famous for first ebook reader Pi. also got into an MoU with gujarat govt in increase penetration of ecommece even to remote villages of Gujarat.

This reminds me of services started by ITC e-choupal (see "E" remains constant) more than 5yrs ago. They were mainly "E"mpowering the bulk trades kinda B to B.

Surprizingly this initiative of Epowering villagers in selling their products, come after so later than ITC.

This recent increase in ecommerce has increased the opportunities in logistics operators, New avatar of VPP has come in the name of COD (cash on delivery), is being added by E comm suppliers as new feature. Rental and purchase of books and so many small tickets items increasing the volume of trade is adding to opportunities of logistics partners to Ecomm.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

When is the right time..

This question comes in everyones mind for numerous things..WHEN IS THE RIGHT TIME
....to start business
....to start investment
....to get married
....to have kids
....to look for dream job (translate change job for higher salary)
....to go to dream destination
etc etc.

the answers is now, the moment such thought comes to mind anytime from now is the right time for all these...infact the question should not be when but it should be what????

what should one chase in the momnet called now..to do that we need to understand the power of now, the most livable moment all saints and gurus talked about it. No amount of  quantitative and qualitative analysis about this WHAT calculations of the returns would help. analysis and calculations are not futile that helps but only when we add it with inner calling.

If one hear to inner calling he/she gets the most powerful WHAT for NOW.

Monday, January 10, 2011

21Mbps Vs 22 Knots

Creating blog site appeared easier than done, first step was easy i had Gmail account and need not to bother about what password to keep which is difficult to forget.

The next step was choosing appropriate URL, any word which appeared appealing was already taken by somebody or other. As a habit, whenever i get tired i retire my thought to my glorious past i.e. my merchant navy days...

I wanted to plagiarise the name of yahoo groups which belongs to our mariners community "22knots". its the speed to an old bulk carrier ship, which sails on high seas, fight waves and winds but moves on @the speed of 22 Knots to reach the harbour to rest epitomise life.

whereas 21Mbps is the maximum speed of 3G, it symbolises how life is changing, its moving so fast, few months ago we used to be happy with speed of 256 Kbps and used to dream about 2Mbps, and now 21Mbps is speed of the day that too on mobiles.

I prefer to blog about changes than constant so i choose 21Mbps over 22Knots.