Cleartrip.com - an online travel portal has started a new section called Small World. The feature showcases select destinations around one's residence or internationally. This a is really novel service - not only users get to 'preview' a holiday location, the approximate travel and lodging expenses are flashed immediately on the screen. Once you click on a chosen destination, you are taken to a detailed view of the destination with a Google Map 'to' the location, a slideshow of photos from the destination, flight and hotel details arranged in 4 boxes on the screen. The flights with their prices are displayed in a calendar format while the hotels can be rearranged by their tariffs and traveler rating using sliders. The Google Map widget also has markers for Sites, Restaurants, shopping destinations and entertainment hot spots. The fun part is that Cleartrip has partnered with Yahoo / Flickr and Lonely Planet - the slideshows showcasing are made using photos from flic...

This blog was started on the same day 6 years ago - much has transcended over the internet and in my life since then. Blogging came, became a rage and slowly stabilized. The less serious bloggers moved to Facebook and Twitter while the serious (aka professional) blogs have morphed into full fledged content portals. For me sitting at neither end of the spectrum- 7 years and 515 posts later - this place continues to live with increased enthusiasm. Nevertheless over the years, this blog has (I hope!) improved in content - less personal updates and more meaningful posts whether on Socio-Political matters, Technology , Entrepreneurship , Education , Management etc or literary experiments such as Stories and Poems or occasional Philosophical Musings . In fact I have skinned the blog in the new template with an intent to make the site easily surfable and better presented in terms of the variety of content it offers. The blog is also reachable now from a new URL www.nikhilkulkarni.in - ...

More than an year ago during an internal Training, my friend (also colleague @ KPMG) Glyn demonstrated a very simple example for 'books of accounts' namely the balance sheet, P/L statement, Daily Cash book etc. I found it the most effective way to teach accounts to someone new. The sheet has remained on my desktop since then. I am putting this sheet on my blog for other's to view. The sheet is publicly shared on Google Docs - many Thanks to Glyn for this sheet ...

The previous two posts [ 1 ] [ 2 ] which detail my analysis of slow and fast money clearly define that services which form the firmware of our society – infrastructure and utilities – those which are used as a public resource are targets for investment of slow money. Also, such investment is secure, usually subject to several controls and needs to be reliable and long term. As a corollary such investments are also conservative in terms of the return, and hence not suitable for profit booking. As a result we often find government or quasi government agencies (such as NGO’s) investing in such services. On the other hand, individual wealth – whether in form of PE / VC funds or in form in direct equity – which is aimed at booking high profits is never invested in such fundamental services. Hence, Banks and Insurance companies - because they form the basic fabric of public financial infrastructure - are also targets of slow money investments. It is for this very reason that Non-Banking Fina...

Continued from here It is important that both the country and its citizen grow at reasonably matched pace and growth of one does not outpace the other. If a citizen's standard of living increases faster than that of the economy - s/he would be tempted to migrate to an economy/country which matches his/her standard of living creating a drain (brain drain being one of the manifestations). On the other hand, if the economy outpaces the citizen's personal growth, it may often lead to rise in economic disparities leading to social problems. Since, slow money contributes towards increase in the standard of the economy/country while fast money impacts the standard of individuals, it is imperative that both slow and fast money should coexist in the economy and in the right proportions. Also, fast and slow money should not be interchanged - otherwise it may produce bizzare results. For example: under communism the state insisted on investing slow money into business leading to setting u...

I am no economist, so I find the concepts of M1, M2 ... M4 a little tough to understand. However, based on my own thoughts, I have come up with a new kind of money supply classification - that of fast money and slow money (which overlap but are the same as private and public money). Slow Money can be defined as money kept in form of long term reserves and used for projects with long gestation periods having assured but low rate of return. Typically, this is money kept in Fixed Deposits, Savings Bonds or other forms of Government borrowings. Such money is often used by the Government or its agents to build infrastructure or institutional framework for the country. Fast money is typically investor money - invested in ventures with potentially high returns but as much higher risk and with short to medium term return cycle. Such money - as is obvious from its definition - is typically invested in equity or other risky assets like venture capital funds, usually used for ventures whose sust...

No! This is not a rant! Its just an update on this blog about my life in the past 4 months after my marriage. As expected, life after marriage has been busy marked by weekends spent either traveling to some place or playing host to parents / friends at our newly set up home. Gudi Padwa at Home Travel with my Mom-Dad to Sardar Sarovar Dam In the backdrop - Sardar Sarovar Dam Dad, Divya, Mom In the Valley near Sardar Sarovar My Brother (Abhishek), cousin (Manasi), wife(Divya) and me(Nikhil)! My In-Laws: Mom, Dad, Wife and Sis-in-law (Neha, sitting) Visit to Hanging Gardens Mumbai Visit to Nariman Point Me and Bro - Riding uphill in the trolley at Champaran / Pawagarh near Vadodara Climbing up the last few steps My Brother: While Climbing Down For more photos goto: http://picasaweb.google.com/kulkarni.nikhil/56Home?authkey=Gv1sRgCKTai57x8PT73gE#

When Google Knol first came, it was considered a competitor to Wikipedia - but looking at it now, Knol has evolved into its own type. With facilities like Citation and 'Collect this Knol', Knol has become a tool for people to write articles similar to research papers. Knols may as well be called 'informal' research papers or research papers in draft. I wrote my first Knol a couple of days back on the subject of ' Classification of tweets '. An excerpt below: It should be practically possible to build a web application / extension to twitter which will tentatively classify tweets and display them to users in say a newspaper like layout. Thereafter it should also allow users to suggest changes to the classification if they think this is not a correct classification. Read More

Well, not exactly an acquisition, but Reliance Big Entertainment (part of ADAG group and owner of Zapak Games) has acquired a 50% stake in Codemasters a leading British Gaming company. Codemasters is a big player in European gaming circuit - in the US its content is distributed by none other than Warner Brothers. Codemasters creates games for a plethora of platforms including the leaders XBox, PSP and handheld leader Wii. According to Zapak.com press release, Zapak will oversee the investment on behalf of Reliance. This is a great news for Zapak which is reaping the benefit of being a part of a larger group company. The development will have far reaching implications for the Indian gaming ecosystem. Other gaming bigwigs such as IndiaGames too may now need to seek international investment and collaboration to stay afloat We may see more international games of the PSP/X-Box/Wii family. Prices may also drop. However, the Indian gaming scene is expected to see more action on the mobile pho...

Whether the topic is technology , entrepreneurship or corporate leadership - Steve Jobs is definitely a case study worth researching. His iconic leadership style , his resounding success with technology lifestyle products as well as animation movie world and his valiant turnaround of Apple - a company which he co-founded but was kicked out from. However, Steve is also a case study for those of us interested in philosophy, self help, and spirituality. Jobs started as an arrogant, over-the-top young prodigy CEO. Everything about him was perfect from his cute boy looks to the elegant ideas he had. In those days, he looked no less than Tom Cruise. But he soon found trouble at his doors when both his personal and professional life tanked. He was officially ousted from working on his pet project - the Mac, and was later relieved of his position as the chairman of Apple forcing him to quit Apple altogether. In personal life, his history of of LSD and hippy lifestyle, his failure to acknowle...