Appesha's Web + Log = Blog

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LOOKING BACK, INFORMING THE FUTURE : THE 1947 PARTITION OF BRITISH INDIA Political tendencies not only distort and ‘present the past’ to suit their political agenda; they can go to any extent to even lie about the events and their interpretation. ‘Facts are sacred; opinions are free’ should have been the dictum for all those commenting on them, but as they say for the likes of Modi, ‘all is fair in love and war’. To promote his personal ambitions and to enhance the impact of his political agenda, he has been crossing all limits. At one level in order to glorify Sardar Patel; he is undermining Jawaharlal Nehru, and is trying to create a binary between them. For him this serves two purposes. One, as ‘Modi parivar’ never participated in freedom movement they do look for an icon who was a part of freedom moment, and so have picked up Patel and are trying...

Opps!! 🔋⤵ Poor health and bad lifestyle habits are costing India’s Silicon Valley billions of dollars each year. Bengaluru’s IT sector loses Rs24,000 crore ($3.5 billion) annually on account of its employees’ physical inactivity, lack of emotional and mental health, poor physical health, poor diet, and substance abuse, according to the research and advisory firm RedSeer Consulting. The study was based on interviews with over 500 employees across 10 leading IT companies in the city, besides secondary research. The southern Indian city of Bengaluru is the global headquarters of some of India’s largest IT outsourcing firms such as Infosys, Wipro, and Mindtree. The city also houses the India headquarters of global tech firms like IBM and Microsoft. Bengaluru accounts for almost $50 billion of India’s $165 billion IT industry, the report says. So, losses due to poor health and lifestyle habits amount to nearly 7% of the to...

The months leading up to a general election in India are almost always marked by competitive populism. As the country prepares to elect a new government in 2019, political parties are in a race to woo anguished farmers reeling from widespread agrarian distress. And their favourite card is also an old one: large-scale loan waivers.  In the past week alone, newly elected state governments led by the Indian National Congress in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh have announced massive relief on the farm-loan front, fulfilling one of the party’s key poll promises. While in Rajasthan the cap on the loan amount is fixed at Rs2 lakh ($2,860), in Chhattisgarh, the government is letting go of a cumulative Rs6,100 crore from 16 lakh farmers. In Madhya Pradesh, the total amount of loans being waived is nearly Rs35,000 crore. Prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has made similar moves in th...

 ------------------------------------------- Why Everybody Hates Salespeople Though that headline is slightly misleading, I think you know what I am saying. What everybody hates is that feeling that comes a few hours after purchasing something they never intended on buying, especially when it is due to a witty salesperson’s influence. This feeling is known as buyer’s remorse. It’s when you buy something that does not hold the value you led yourself to believe it had. I recently bought two Toms shoes a California brand, for a great price. However, I already had around four of same pattern. So I regretted that purchase the next morning. Salespeople have often led people into feelings of buyer’s remorse, and contrary to popular opinion it is usually the buyer’s fault. We as consumers let our minds be manipulated by deals, sales, and witty salespeople.But this line continually reminds me , “Deals are Debt Enhancing Acts of Lunacy”. Salespeople across the globe ...

Strategy Made Simple: Explore + Exploit  ------------------------------------------------------------- Where, oh Where, did Blackberry go?  If you are like me, someone born in the 90's, you know how far too well the mystery of BlackBerry’s (RIM) descent from stardom. Most people to own a cell phone in the mid-2000's had a BlackBerry, for during its reigning time it was a magnificent piece of technology.  Seriously, it had the best game installed on it,  Brick Breaker , Tetris  . If you know, you know (sorry 2000’s kids, you don’t even know what a great phone game was that). Come 2008, RIM had accumulated a peak share value of $150 CAD, meaning that if you invested in 100 shares Jan 2, 2003, at a price of $3.57 a piece you would be able to cash out with a healthy $15,000. That’s huge! Since 2008, RIM has tanked to around $12.65 per share. And the question we should all be asking, is why? How was a Goliath of a company able to fall so...

The scope and speed of evolution in regulation, customer behavior and technology – coupled with the emergence of new competitors – mean that the future of banking will not be a continuation of the past. New technologies will transform banking as we know it, providing both opportunities and challenges for financial institutions. A decade after the financial crisis, the near-collapse of the economic system is fading from memory. But, while the banking industry has largely recovered from a financial perspective, there are storm clouds on the horizon. While capitalization has improved significantly, revenue growth has become more challenging with the strategy of cutting costs having run its course. At the same time, banks and credit unions are playing catch up from a technology perspective at a time when consumer expectations are increasing exponentially.   Making the banking business even more difficult, smaller fin-tech and large  tech-fin companies are deve...