Category: Business


May Day! Confused comparing job offers?

Filed Under: Human Capital by Prasad
05 May, 12

Mangoes. Yippie!

Today my dad bought the first set of mangoes this season. If asked to relate a couple of things to May, my answer would be mangoes, and ever since I started working: appraisals & attrition. While material - screenshot showing the baseline version on tissue – dates back to 2009, this post has remained queued for several months. Just like mangoes taste best in May, a post on choosing jobs has to wait for its own season to deliver maximum value. With appraisals around the corner and attrition already kicking-in, I thought this could help those switching to resolve their dilemma between their current job and offers in hand!

Baseline version on tissue

Just to set the expectations right, this is a simple decision matrix that allows you to weigh options against a few well-defined criteria.

Download Now! (Free)

I know huge links like that could seem fishy, but this one is clean. It might just make more sense to those employed in India. HR folks, if you’re downloading – this is how we look at an offer!

Here a couple of other things that could help you take the right decision View full article »

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Jargon: Consumer P&L

Filed Under: Finance & Accounting by Prasad
27 Jan, 12

Consumer P&L is an analysis of the profit and loss from individual consumers/customers or a segment, for products & services they avail. This is extremely important, at least in the software business, because when you sell an additional CD or host another tenant, it does not affect your input cost, but it definitely adds to overheads such like the billing & support functions. So when undercutting prices and compromising on margins, one should note that these costs will continue to add up, even though infrastructure, RnD & production costs hold level. This is still possible if the business model & product packaging is well thought of – that is if you have something special for the  super consumers.

I first bumped into this idea when reading Eddie Yoon’s article title Why Verizon’s iPhone Could Be Good for AT&T where he highlighted the need to focus on loyal, super consumers who make a considerable impact on your bottom line rather the divas & deal chasers.

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Mumbai traffic, the continuity equation & polictical will

Filed Under: Economy, In the News by Prasad
11 Sep, 11

Mumbai has given me my friends, education, bread, happiness & sorrow – I love it. But with that it has given us traffic & pollution – 2 things unavoidable in this city. Despite of the patient Gaurav Samant driving me to work on that crazy JVLR, both of those rankle me everyday. But over the last couple of months, I’ve come to conclude that the traffic problem in Mumbai is a mere flow-rate issue. I might have lost touch with the intricacies of fluid dynamics, but the flow rate concept is simple enough to recollect & apply here. Wider roads have more cars flowing per second (wider area allows high velocity, hence higher flow rate). And its exactly the opposite on narrower roads. When 2 roads come together to form a road narrower than the sum of their widths, theoretically cars would have to go faster to keep the flow-rate constant. But I wish Mumbai roads allowed this. Such joints are usually where traffic clogs due to damaged roads & lack of driving sense.

The first problem is that these devastated intersections are “No Contractor’s Land”. View full article »

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Do we kill our assets?

Filed Under: Finance & Accounting, Life & People by Prasad
30 Jul, 11

Yeah, I know its been quite some time since I wrote. Difficult time that made me look 20 years older. Naah, don’t get at my hair. Never mind. Things are better now. But some things haven’t changed. Traffic sucks with an average car buyer spending 7.5 lakhs (39% up since ’06), while we’re speculating the ill-effects of the Nano. Markets are volatile, gold is more valuable than ever. While the house buyer is speculative in the pretense of builders, BMC & the government fighting each other, property rates are only going north. Terrorism is testing our patience & resilience, while Kasab celebrates his birthday in a country that’s at the behest of robbers & killers. What are we doing? Creating circles on Google Plus, letting potholes break our spine, and gathering papers to file IT returns (btw, filling thru Sahaj takes less than 15 minutes & rupees) So here we are justifying while our assets are being killed & burnt in the name of tax.

But what are assets? Things that can make us happy & sad. Things in which we invest time, money & energy for a better future. Things we won’t let go easily. Gold, stock, property for example. But don’t you think assets cover people, promises? And as someone rightly argued, your own body (as a plant)? People & promises that have the power to make you smile, and reinforce confidence to audaciously embrace challenges. And so is your body, View full article »

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Why ignorance is bliss today & 5 ways to ignore online junk

Filed Under: Data & Information, Life & People, Product Marketing, Sales & Marketing, Tips & Tricks by Prasad
30 Apr, 11

I’m a cleanliness freak – to the extent of cleaning up my Facebook wall. Over the last week, there’s been a lot of spam with wall messages that read: “Hahaha! Mine is hilarious. Check out yours”? Familiar? Yes, that silly app which tells you how you would look in the future. I never tried it, but tired of the requests, I urged friends to avoid it via a FB update. 13 people liked it, but I only hope its the latter of these 2 messages it conveys: how awful I look, and how useless that app is. (I take everybody’s privacy too seriously, hence some masking)

My Status Update

Still wondering what 13 people really liked?

Publicity fail

That application – whatever its name is – is a complete fail in terms of its messaging. Understand the scenario: that app is sending me a persuading message to try it on a friend’s recommendation. The least I expect is View full article »

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To be credible or not to be

Filed Under: Human Capital by Prasad
27 Mar, 11

Spam is unavoidable, but sometimes its interesting. One such mailer I bumped into was a site called mumbex.com that provides fake experience letters. I’m not linking because I don’t want to send traffic to something illegitimate, but I’m sure most of you will still take the pains to key it in & have a look.  For such people I have embedded a tracker that will report your details to NASSCOM. For other obedient ones, here are some highlights from their website:

  • ‘Our expertise‘ .. ‘Till date we gave certificates to 5000 candidates’ .. ‘Most of them are in middle management level in India and overseas’ .. ‘No Background verification failed till date’.. ‘Most of our customers came through referrals of our satisfied customers’
  • ‘We are here to provide you the total certificates, id cards and everything’.. ‘Just have a bit confidence in the technology you are keeping the experience’..
  • ‘Companies know this Fact‘ .. ‘Almost all the companies know that 50 to 60 % of the staff kept fake experience in their resume’ .. ‘But they never think of this during the boom time, because they are in deadly need of employees who at least have confidence in their technology’..

The business idea seems strong from a monetization perspective, but its an epic ethical fail when offered as a service. They have loudly spoken about how companies compromise credibility in view of the demand and how resumes are shared with clients. This service helps whoever it does, but it destroys the  credibility of every Indian IT company & employee. And I’m writing because I feel affected.

This is the age of startups, View full article »

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Jargon: Wedding test

Filed Under: Sales & Marketing by Prasad
15 Mar, 11

In my reading I came across this funny thing called the wedding test. It involves checking for the male customer’s wedding ring when he’s shopping. The ring signals a very high likelihood that purchased goods will be returned on account of being dejected by the female partner. I’m not being a chauvinist or hinting how complicated & choosy women are, but its funny if this is now part of the sales curriculum. Sure that this makes Inside Sales far more challenging!

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5 reasons to Spend.. err.. Save smart with the top Indian deal websites

Filed Under: eCommerce, Reviews, Sales & Marketing by Prasad
06 Mar, 11
Were excited about our 100th post!

This is our 100th post!

It’s the 100th post on prasadgupte.com and it’s time to celebrate! For long, I envied the Americans for having Groupon until I realized that there are several deal of the day websites – in fact, with better business models – to serve us. I have been a regular user of these websites, having bought at least 15 deals totaling over INR 15,000 with overall savings of 69%.

5 reasons to save your riches with these shops

1. It saves money: What’s more important that saving some money?
2. It’s easy: There is no upfront payment to receive these deals – they’re delivered to your phone & mailbox for free.
3. It’s safe, either ways: I have always (knock on wood) had a good experience transacting on the internet, and these sites are safe to use as they transact over a trusted gateway. If you fear spending online, you can always have the coupons delivered to your doorstep – free of cost!* So its safe either ways.
4. Keeps you aware: One huge benefit I found out of following these deals (even if you don’t want to buy) is that it keeps you aware of the new places in town and the margins that you can possibly cut in when striking a deal.
5. It’s cool: There’s no reason to be shy – like my dad likes to make me feel. It’s any day cool to be spending smart!

I’ve put together a list of the creme-de-la-creme in the order of *my* choice:

1. DealsAndYou

DealsAndYou

DealsAndYou

I purchased deals worth Rs. 9100 for Rs. 2593. This is one of my favorites! The website is neat, and the deals are fabulous. They take the entire payment upfront – so its a deal in the real sense as against a discount coupon. It covers for roughly 60% of my deal spend and growing, ever my trust in the brand was bolstered by their quick justification email. View full article »

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Forget PDCA: See, Feel, Change

Filed Under: Operations & Management by Prasad
18 Feb, 11

After reading this post by John Kotter at HBR, I really liked the See, Feel, Change approach suggested by him, compared to traditional approaches such as Plan-Do-Check-Act or Analyze-Think-Change.

Kotter argues that the traditional approaches are “all head, no heart, and often fail to motivate people to recognize the importance of a given problem. It’s too easily forgotten or ignored if it doesn’t feel real.”

What makes me a believer of the approach? Decision making will be far realistic when evidence pertaining to the problem is available. And how to get the evidence? Go into the field, get your hands dirty!  Take samples, float surveys or just talk to people. After all, empathy is  so critical to getting to the root of a problem and delivering a solution that makes people happy :D

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The pursuit of happiness in developing nations

Filed Under: Economy, Life & People by Prasad
05 Feb, 11

This week I read about Brazil wanting to amend its constitution to make happiness a right for its citizens. Having worked its way up to achieve a GDP of over $2 trillion, Brazil is now working towards having happiness on the nation’s to-do. However, it is currently struck with threatening issues such as health, education, poverty & an alarming crime rate. To ensure happiness of citizens means to work around these issues, deliver world class education & wipe out crime on their streets. In-house resources  and independence in science & technology that is already existant,  accompanied by a loyal travail from the government can pretty much add up to the happiness they seek.

Whenever a discussion around happiness comes up, Bhutan is what comes to my mind first. Ever since I’ve been there, I haven’t been able to neglect its focus on ‘Gross National Happiness‘ that they made part of the national propaganda in the ’70s. And the rest on GNH here is purely my opinion, based on what I heard & understood from locals. The government, backed by the monarchy, is extremely responsible when it comes to delivering quality education, health care services & dealing with crime. Almost everything they need is transported from India and we are in a way responsible for their defense. Despite of the transport costs involved in every commodity, the government subsidizes everything from fuel to cars. Perhaps, that’s the reason why everyone from commoners to monks have SUVs. Bhutan is extremely beautiful and rich in culture. Tourism is already  a top 5 contributor to its $2 billion economy, but View full article »

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