I have briefly described the concept of 'remittance economy' in a previous post . At its basic the concept of Remittance Economy means that remittances by workers abroad becoming a significant source of economic activity in the country; I am extending the definition to remittance money being spent creates growth in large cities, which in turn results in workers in large cities remitting money to their families smaller cities, towns and villages - thus creating a growth chain reaction. Consider this - Syam Sundar lives in San Francisco and remits money regularly to his family staying in Bangalore. Syam's family employs a maid, shops lavishly in the city's malls and employs a driver. The maid, the workers at the mall - from shop salesmen to cleaners all send money to their families in tier 2 cities, towns and villages in India. The family's driver Sreejeeth hails from a small nondescript town in Karnataka called Madhugiri. Sreejeeth sends money to his wife every mon...

Web2.0 - the term coined by Tim O'Reilly gained a 100% acceptance in the 2008-2010 period; however the term Web3.0 never found a similar acceptance in Industry or Blogging circles. Of late the term -The Cloud - also referred to as Cloud Computing has gained a lot of popularity. With big and small names calling themselves Cloud Providers - it is the new buzzword for the internet economy. Web2.0 was the name given to the new breed of 'websites' which came about post the dot com bubble which converted websites from mere information portals into interactive 'services' which could be availed online. Web2.0 websites had interactive (Ajax enabled) user interfaces and provided collaborative platforms. As explained in detail by O'Reilly in this article [ http://oreilly.com/lpt/a/6228 ] - while Web2.0 is a combination of  lot of factors; the key is to harness collective wisdom through use of interactive interfaces and by providing features as services to users. The Cl...

I have previously mentioned Prof Prasad on my blog - last time he had thrown open a question on Entrepreneurship education - this time he referred to the famous Stanford Commencement address by Steve Jobs [ text link ] [ video link ]- and asked questions regarding whether students need to follow Steve and drop out of their courses - here are my answers to his questions: 1. How many students despite agreeing to Steve Jobs follow him and drop out of the colleges? Is it a full proof method ? If it is, why not at least hundreds of Steve admirers not toeing to this? Is Steve approach is BEST for everybody and anybody? It's a question of Eco-system; we have to recognize that a successful entrepreneur is one out of several failed entrepreneurs. The probability of an aspiring entrepreneur succeeding depends on the ecosystem in which s/he comes out of. The Stanford of Steve Jobs years was built to generate professionals and academics - it was never designed to generate entrepreneurs - ...

Black money is ubiquitous in the Indian economy - and the real estate sector is probably the hot bed of black money deals. But I had never imagined that people will be so brazen to quote a black money deal openly on a website - check out the screenshot below: For the uninitiated, 'cash' refers to money paid in cash but not accounted for as a part of the deal in a written contract - in effect this is black money. However, I should applaud the seller here for his/her open mindedness - s/he is giving a clear option for you NOT to pay him any cash, in which case the property will cost you 61 lakhs (INR 6 million 1 hundred thousands). S/he is also giving a clear conversion factor - each lakh (hundred thousand)  of black money gives you a reduction of 25k in the package. The quote price 57 lakhs should as per the above be 41 lakhs agreement value and 16 lakhs in cash.

One of the best documentaries I have ever seen which analyses the Enron debacle from the the inception of Enron to its rise, eminent fall and ultimate crash. It outlines the role played by different characters such as Jeff Skilling, Andy Fastow and Ken Lay but more importantly it brings to light how common employees were led into doing the most unethical actions while making them believe that their actions were completely legitimate. The documentary highlights how the actions of traders in Enron illustrates the inferences of Milgram Experiments , the only other live case study of them being the war crimes conducted by Nazi / German army officers during the WWII on Hitler's orders. The documentary raised a lot of questions in my mind ... Many times our actions look quite legitimate at the time when several contextual pieces of information are in our mind. For example, under a deregulated power rate policy in California, the actions of traders would have looked legitimate...

On June 7th, 2010 Arijit Ghosal - a close friend wrote this email commemorating 1 year of moving into his new apartment. It covers me as well, so I had planned to post it on my blog. Got time today to format and publish. Yesterday was June 7th. So what you ask. Looks like a pretty mundane ‘at least once a year’ date. More often than not, in the rigmarole of sustaining livelihood and keeping the EMIs on, we generally forget to keep track and celebrate that very thing which we all are chasing in some way or the other…happiness. It suddenly struck me and couldn’t resist myself sharing with those who were together in those moments and those who will appreciate it. It’s been a year now - June 7th 2009 and the few days prior to that are very special to me, and to Nikhil & Anoop as well, I would assume. June 7, 2009: I kicked my landlord and broker and moved in as the final addition to the list of the tenants at the legendary E 703, Bluefields, Powai. It was a Sunday evening. ...

Another report claiming that "dominance of China and India [would] return to the historic norm prior to the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and 19th centuries" came through today. Its become so boring to read that India and China will re-emerge as dominant economies unless they goof up on their fiscal policies, urban development, educational growth, demographics .. the list is long! I find most news reports and analyses engaged either in extrapolating the economic trends of the past decade or speculating by generalizing trends from certain sectors like manufacturing (China) and software services (India). The point is - has anyone been able to spot the root cause behind the rise of China and India? And is there any theory which can justify why China and India will rise to become economic super powers - without putting riders to the claim. The reasons for rise of India and China have been different sectors, but the source of both their strengths is the same - cheap...

Continued from here . I did whirlwind tours of Bangalore and Chennai in December, went to Singapore to celebrate our first wedding anniversary and then to Ratlam to attend a wedding. Singapore deserves a separate post, but here are my thoughts on Bangalore, Chennai and sleepy Ratlam. Bangalore Bangalore is fast changing, my last lengthy visit to the city was in 2006 - in 4 years Bangalore has changed - the metro track running all along MG Road has changed the way the city center looks now. I could not recognize the square which I so often roamed around last time, until I noticed that the mall on the corner had 'Forum' written on it. Nice to see that the Bangalore metro quietly seems to be moving faster than its much publicised contemporary the Mumbai Metro.  And the 9km flyover that connects Electronic City to the city is an absolute charm - travel which used to take 2 hours can now be zipped in a cool 25 minutes! There are some things that still haven't cha...

I have been busy off late and here's why - for Diwali we (me & my wife) went to Vadodara and drove to Bhopal with my parents and brother, the last 2 days of Diwali were spent at Indore; on my return to Mumbai I made a trip to Shirdi and office work made me travel to Bangalore - Chennai lined up next. Posted below are my thoughts from my sojourns: I have posted similar thoughts earlier under the same title. You can read them here . This time, I plan to restrict my post to a reality-check and not suggest any solutions. Gujarat Narendra Modi has been hailed for his development model across the country and rightly so - Gujarat boasts of fantastic infrastructure - urban or rural. From Expresshighways between major cities to BRT in Ahmedabad or roads in smallest of villages - Gujarat's prosperity is quite evident. This also manifests from the habits of Gujarat's rural folk who prefer commuting to cities on a daily basis than emigrating to them. What I am not sure is that i...

Blackberry is headed for a decline – so says this analysis  which was endorsed by Fred Wilson (a well known Silicon Valley VC). Indeed the analysis is quite convincing the graph does show that BB may be at its peak and on its way to decline as a platform. But I have 3 reservations for this analysis: Its too early to comment – the subscriber growth drop is only 1 quarter old trend, not something to base a future scenario on It ignores the power of network effect – while apple and android are growing faster than BB, we must acknowledge that blackberry already has a large installed user base and hence it’s not so easy for the whole platform to wipe out instantaneously. More importantly, BB users are primarily corporate users and it’s quite difficult for them to migrate away from the platform based on individual will and whims. The corporation must decide to change before the end subscriber moves. The opinion is based on sample surveys – this objection especially applies to the ...