FreMo - Rent bikes arcoss the city

FreMo is like ZipCar, only instead of cars, they rent bicycles and instead of cities in the US, they operate in Mumbai, India.

If I had the money, I would invest in this company. There is a clear customer proposition, the business is easy to explain and the service becomes exponentially more valuable as it grows.

First, I would make them hire a designer/editor and have them re-do the website and THEN I would invest in them. I would also have a re-look into their pricing strategy.

:: FreMo - An Ecomove Solutions Initiative ::: "FreMo intends to launch rental station network that allows you to hire and return a bicycle. It is proposed to provide eco friendly and economical alternative travel solutions to the members of FreMo. To start with, we are looking at providing bicycle rental services to all the members at various locations in Mumbai and its surrounding suburbs like Thane, New Mumbai, etc. We will also move to other cities soon."

VC funding's overrated

Most ventures are started on entrepreneur's personal savings and credit card debt. VC funding comes in only after there are revenue numbers to show.

Ditch the Biz Plan, Buy a Lottery Ticket: "Where did successful companies’ founders get their financing from? Seventy percent used personal savings, 15% took bank loans (probably on their credit cards), and 14% relied on friends and family. (Note: they typically use more than one source for financing.)

The way the system works is that if you build something of value, the money will find you. Yes, there is a catch-22: you need seed financing, but no one will give you a cent until you have a marketable product and your company is producing revenue—which means that you don’t really need the money. But that’s the way it goes. Ironically, raising millions of dollars is usually easier than raising thousands."

How to Pay for IIMA or Harvard?

All banks in India are *required* to offer education loans. The process applying for is still so opaque, cumbersome, costly and time consuming that most student cannot rely on loans as their only source of funding.
I can go to yatra.com and book the cheapest flight from Mumbai to Delhi, sitting in my village and choose an airline with its hub in Bangalore. Why cant I get my student loan online?


How to Pay for IIMA or Harvard - WSJ.com: "In a few days, students will know whether they have made it or not. If you are chosen, you may not get too much time to celebrate – you have to figure out how to pay for that expensive education.

Several IIMs recently increased their fees by 100,000 rupees or more. A two-year management of business administration program at the coveted IIM Ahmedabad now costs around 1.4 million rupees ($31,500), while the fees are 1.35 million at IIM Calcutta and 1.3 million rupees at IIM Bangalore. Only a small percentage of students qualify for breaks in fees at these schools.

Luckily, there's help at hand.

India's banks have been increasingly boosting their education loan portfolios and new players are entering the market. In December, home loan giant HDFC Ltd. bought a 41% stake in non-banking financial company Credila Financial Services, which specializes in giving education loans. HDFC hopes to eventually buy out the entire company."

All About Education Loan Schemes

Education Loan Task Force (ELTF) blog has some good information on education loan schemes that all banks in India must adhere to.


Education Loan Task Force (ELTF): All About Education Loan Schemes: "All About Education Loan Schemes
To know more about education loan schemes in India, please download the ezine on Education Loan from the following link:
http://www.prpoint.com/ezine/presense0110.pdf (pdf file 560 k)

Indian Banks' Association has evolved a Model Scheme which has been adopted by all the Banks. The Model Scheme can be downloaded from the following link (pdf 120k).
http://www.prpoint.com/ezine/eduloan-IBA.pdf"

Capitalism Fail: Fuinding for Education

People who will benefit the most are least likely to attend college.
The problem is lack of tuition funding options make education prohibitively expensive for people who most likely to benefit from it. Isn't capitalism supposed ensure that that more profitable ideas get funded over less profitable ones?


Who Gains the Most From a College Education? - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com: "Who Gains the Most From a College Education?
By FREAKONOMICS

A new study finds that the students who are least likely to go to college (based on family background, abilities, and friend group) are the ones with the most to gain from a degree. Jennie E. Brand and Yu Xie find that the unlikeliest male college graduates earned 30% more over their lifetimes than comparable men who earned only a high school degree. In contrast, male college graduates most likely to go to college earned only 10% more than their non-college-educated counterparts. Brand and Xie observed a similar trend for women. The authors believe that the tough labor market faced by non-college-educated, disadvantaged students partly explains the results, but they point to an additional factor: economic motivation. “For students from disadvantaged groups, college is a novelty that demands economic justification,” Brand said. “By contrast, for students from advantaged backgrounds, college is a culturally expected norm. Economic gain is less of a motivation.”"

If

'If', by Rudyard Kipling: "Rudyard Kipling
If

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on';

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!"

Tendulkar Hits Double-Hundred Mark - TIME

Time's Bobby Ghosh dumbs it down to help cricket illiterate readers appreciate what Sachin Tendulkar just accomplished.


Cricket Batsman Tendulkar Hits Double-Hundred Mark - TIME: "To understand why the mark was long thought impossible, consider the odds against it happening. In a one-day game, each side gets to bat 50 six-ball overs — that's 300 balls or, in American baseball terms, 'pitches.' It's rare that a single batsman gets more than 150 pitches, so the batsman would need a hit rate higher than 100% to get to 200 runs. Tendulkar got his 200 runs in 147 pitches, a hitting rate of 136.5. Very few players have scored at a faster rate, and none had the combination of patience and skill to score fast and stay on the pitch long enough to get to 200. Only one other time in the past 10 years has a batsman gotten to 190. In a career spanning 21 years, Tendulkar himself had just three scores in excess of 150 before today's feat. The closest he had scored was 186, against New Zealand in 1999."

HDFC Announces Loan approval before adimission

HDFC will now issue loan guargntee which can then be used as proof of funding to obtain I-20.

First Time in India: Education Loan Approval before admission for students going to the USA: "Credila Financial Services, an HDFC Ltd. Venture, is a specialized education loan lender. Credila announces a special benefit to the students who plans to pursue higher studies in the USA. Credila will, underwrite the education loan application file and issue education loan Approval letters to the credit- worthy students even before their admission to the US Universities."

This addresses the Chicken and Egg situation that several Indian applicants with limited financial means face every year

Indian Students that plan on obtaining an education loan to fund their US studies face a typical “Chicken-Egg” syndrome every year: The US University requires proof of assured funds to confirm the admission and release the I20; Indian banks do not Approval or authorize education loans until the student has confirmed admission and received the I20. So what comes first—the I20 or the bank loan authorization? Chicken or Egg?

Statistics made funny

There are three reasons why I read Cricket (more than I watch or play it these days)

#1. to find reasons to feel good about India, Mumbai and Sachin Tendulkar (in that order)
#2. Stats Stats Stats
#3. Peculiar ways that people find to report on this otherwise boring sport.

No one combines #2 and #3 on a regular basis like Andy Zaltman.

Every now and then he writes about one of my favorite cricketers like this article s like 'Sehwag eats man-eating lions' to check all three boxes.

Here's Andy on why, for England's sake, its good for their captain to lose tosses.

Cold calling leaves England in a puddle:

"All this suggests that the England captain, for all his undoubtedly virtues and successes as a leader, should start calling something other than ‘heads’ or ‘tails’, in an effort to leave the toss-winning ball in the opposing captain’s court. Perhaps ‘helicopters’, or ‘chainsaws’ (assuming a regulation coin is being used). After all, as all attentive schoolchildren will tell you, in 813 Tests since 1990, the toss-winning captain has guzzled the sweet champagne of victory 286 times, and glugged down the rancid rat juice of defeat on 288 occasions. And had a non-committal cup of tea after the other 239 matches."

Born Free?

I have long argued that my generation is the one that will transform India because the leaders from my generation are the first to be born to parents who'd lived majority of their life as citizens of a free country.

We are the in charge of our own destiny and we are fully aware of it.

This story on Amit Varma's blog made me have a re-think.


India Uncut - published by Amit Varma: "Imagine a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb toward the banana. As soon as he touches the stair, spray all the monkeys with ice-cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result - all the monkeys are sprayed with ice-cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, turn off the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and will want to climb the stairs. To his surprise, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.

Again, replace a third monkey with new one. The new one goes to the stairs and is attacked. Two of the four monkeys that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing the fourth and fifth monkeys with new ones, all the monkeys that have been sprayed with ice-cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs. Why not? Because as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been around here."

Reporting on a 5 day game

...that ends in a draw, one has to let the imagination run wild.

'What Test cricket needs is more draws' | Andy Zaltzman's World Cricket Podcast : "Is it logistically possible for Graeme Smith to play an elegant shot? Physics suggests not. Smith is without question, a very good batsman. He's skilful, powerful, and cussed and he delivers when it matters as often as a top-grade midwife. But he does all that, while looking like he's trying to open a can of tomatoes with a sledgehammer."

Zaltman is more of a comedian than a journalist, and only good thing that came out of cricinfo's "Page 2" initiative.

Colly is a lid on a jar of pickles

I have always hated the analogies and metaphors used by cricket writers like one would feel about using stuffed porcupines for cushions but this one seems completely apt.

Page 2 | The Long Handle | Cricinfo.com: "...Colly is a lid on a jar of pickles. Not as awe-inspiring as rock face, I’ll grant you, but just as capable of defeating even the boldest opponent. No matter how hard you wrench, or pull or hit it with the blunt end of a screwdriver, the Collylid cannot be popped. You grunt and groan and roar with exasperation until in the end, your arms are tired, your hands are red raw and you drop the jar on the sideboard absent-mindedly, whereupon the lid pops off with a sigh. But it’s too late. You don’t care about pickles any more. In fact, you can’t bear the sight of them, and so you stomp off muttering something about lid-tampering."


(The context is England's miraculous escape act in Cape town, when they played out the 5th day of the third test on their South Africa tour with the last wicket standing. The third time they have done it this season. Paul Collingwood showing amazing strength of character on each occasion)

Squashing BoP Myth no.7

The Payoff for Investing in Poor Countries : HBS Working Knowledge: "Conventional wisdom says that people in BOP markets cannot use such advanced technologies, but that's just another misconception."

How Anil Ambani plans to woo rural India: "If you thought customers in semi-urban and rural markets were using mobile phones only to make calls, think again. If Reliance Communications Ventures Ltd is to be believed, this is a myth, which has been broken.

Much to its surprise, the company realised that a sizeable portion of its customers in the towns and villages of the Bimaru (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) states were using cellphones to log on to the Net, stream video clippings and for infotainment.

GSM companies might be concentrating only on voice revenues in their quest to address the rural markets. Reliance, however, is banking on data and video to do the magic. Not that it is giving up on voice. It only means that the company is increasingly expecting a large part of the revenue to come from data. This is the key plank of Reliance's big new push into the hinterland of the country.

The company means serious business. It currently has its network available in over 240,000 towns and villages across the country constituting for 42 per cent of the rural population. But by the end of the year, it wants to nearly double the rural coverage to 400,000 villages - about 50 per cent of the rural population."

More on Bottom of Pyramid here and here

Amusing

Clear Admit: MBA Admissions Consulting and Counseling Blog:
"Now, the big U.S. tech companies, investment banks, consulting firms, and consumer-goods companies are trying to find people who can function globally. An MBA with overseas work experience, or familiarity with one or more foreign markets, has a real advantage. That person can probably choose among several great job opportunities.

If I had a college-age or graduate-school-age child right now, I'd try to encourage him or her to spend a year or a semester in China, or in India."

The ring!

My roommate (who in his previous job has test driven these) says my bike's clutch lever's too hard.
That's one complaint with my bike almost everyone makes first time they ride it.
Every time I go on a long ride, I lose some skin on my ring finger and the little one on my left hand.
"You continue riding that thing and you will have a hard time wearing a ring" they say.
Someting me mom says too, but that has nothing to do with the clutch, I guess.

Empathy: The religion of Globalization

In a world where every action has an impact on everyone else in the world.
When walls cannot keep "your" people together and "them" away, rules and rituals stand no legitimacy in boundaries of geographical areas or epochs of time.
Anything that puts your mind into a category is evil
For the first time "Capitalism" and "Communism" are both bad words, everywhere and always.
Fanaticism, the greatest evil of them all.
Inclusion, greatest virtue.

I declare Empathy my religion.

Swami Vivekananda started his address at the1893 World Parliament of Religions with the words
"Sisters and brothers of America."
This was followed by a wild applause that lasted a few minuets they say.

These words were never more relevant than they are today.

"As the different streams having their sources in different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee."

"Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me."

"Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal."

And he concluded with

"If the Parliament of Religions has shown anything to the world, it is this: It has proved to the world that holiness, purity and charity are not the exclusive possessions of any church in the world, and that every system has produced men and women of the most exalted character. In the face of this evidence, if anybody dreams of the exclusive survival of his own religion and the destruction of the others, I pity him from the bottom of my heart, and point out to him that upon the banner of every religion will soon be written in spite of resistance: "Help and not fight," "Assimilation and not Destruction," "Harmony and Peace and not Dissension."

One Child One Laptop!

News from PC Magazine: $100 Laptop Effort Gains Momentum: "The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's plan to deliver low-cost laptop computers to children in developing nations and impoverished American students is moving forward, according to Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and co-founder of the school's Media Lab."

Honesty!

A mobile phone rings in the parliament, the speaker asks the "culprit" to hand it over to the marshals and no one does.

This, a day after they discussed witnesses turning hostile in Jessica Lal murder and Best Bakery trials.

A friend asks me what I intend to do after my MBA, I tell him I want to work in the social sector. He says "So that’s what you wrote in your essays. What do you REALLY want to do?"

My roomie is hit from behind at a signal. Falls. Few bruises. Before he is up on his feet and lifts his bike, the car's gone.

Someone puts a spoon in the office microwave. The thing just blew up. Charred black. No one admits to it.

And no one's surprised.

No one's surprised because we are culturally dishonest.

Google Buys Writely

Writely Blog: "Here are our 'top 10' reasons why being part of Google is fantastic for Writely and the Writely team:

10. Writely is like a caterpillar that we hope to make into a beautiful butterfly at Google!
9. We love Google's philosophy and values -- especially 'Focus on the user.'
8. We're as passionate as Google is about respecting users' privacy.
7. Many of our users are already Google fans using other Google services.
6. Being at Google will help us do more great things faster.
5. Some people didn't feel comfortable trusting a tiny startup with their documents...and we're no longer a tiny startup.
4. We like lava lamps and they're pretty much standard decor at Google.
3. Three words: Free Googleplex lunches ;)
2. As fun as it's been to launch a popular, global, 24x7 Web service, it'll be nice to take a vacation once in a while!
...and the number one reason???
1. We'll be able to bring Writely to not just thousands but millions of users -- the more, the merrier :-)"

The Great Indian Dream

Read it. Read it NOW!

India: Asia's Other Superpower Breaks Out - Newsweek World News - MSNBC.com: "In the decade that I've been going to Davos, no country has captured the imagination of the conference and dominated the conversation as India in 2006."