By the way, the number of stray dogs in Bangalore should easily outnumber stray dogs of mumbai or delhi, I am surprised why nothing has been done to stop them. The less we say about the cows, the better it is.

It is just disappointing that such a wonderful city with so many intelligent people and money around, a very big part of it still looks like some tier II city of India.

Here is a quick look at where bangalore scores over other cities

1. Mumbai – too costly, too crowded, too mechanical. It is not easy to start your life in mumbai and it will certainly take lot of effort to get adjusted there. Office space and getting a room can cost you a fortune. Though by weather wise, it seems to be alright.

2. Delhi – NCR/Gurgaon is the most happening place right now in India, and even if it is not, builders will make sure to convince you it is. Every third guy in delhi seems to be a property broker, and though the city is not that costly (you can find cheap places to stay and food is alright too), It has extreme temperature in summer and winter, I mean in January when I had went there, it was 4 C and in march it was touching 40 C.

I also feels the bangalore culture is better as compared to delhi as at every moment, someone in delhi was trying to rip me off, I guess people in delhi are too business minded.

3. Kolkata – too laid back, not a good place for IT crowd really, some parts are certainly developed (like salt lake) but the rest hasn’t gone anywhere.

As compared to all the three, bangalore has awesome weather, not too costly, little crowded but not discomforting, people are not trying to rip you off and a great culture and people, so guys, I am sold.

I know IRCTC gets lot of traffic but then there are hundreds of other sites too which get more traffic then it and they work fine without breaking in every 10 minutes. So wouldn’t it be nice if they spend their “resources” on fixing the main site which is used by millions of people rather then building another mediocre site for air ticket booking which will be used by thousands at most!

So basically IRCTC is offering a poor version of something whose better version already exist in hope of people using it because they have the traffic. Well Good Luck to them.

By the way, IRCTC seriously need a forum where people can write there complaints online. A forum can be a great place to bring transparency in the way Indian Railways works and people can also share information with each other much faster.

The event though was supposed to be started at 10:30 started at 11:10 because few guys came late which also meant less time for people like me to spend on other sessions, anyway

Things which I loved about the eSummit 2010
1. It was fairly well organized, though many (including me) failed to find the rooms where the seminars were taking place initially
2. Lunch was great.
3. I think such events are really good for college students as they see fellow students and people of their age launching their own companies and Entrepneurship is Infectious
4. They provided networking option too using which any attendee could talk to anyone, I am not sure if other such summits are following this but if they are not, they should.

There is similar eSummit which is taking place at IIT Delhi on 17th of Feb (it is 3 day even I think), you can check it and see if it works for you. There is another startup event being organized in Bangalore unplugged, which I will be attending as it looks promising.

For me, 2009 started on really bad note, for some reason I wasn’t feeling well mentally, was down and out, was visiting doctors regularly for first month but yesterday when I sat and looked at the whole year, it was probably the best year of my life. in terms of learning, growth and financially.

The more I think about life, the more I feels, it is all about solving problems and cracking codes, once you are able to solve it, you get a reward. Now some people are way too quick in solving them, going higher and higher in life in terms of success where as some just sit and stuck in the the very basic problems of life.

Anyway so today on 1st of jan 2010, I have sat some goals (I am not a great believer in making goals public so won’t do it) for the year even though I know that other then financial goals, I won’t be achieving most of them as more likely I will be getting/achieving something unknown (yearly goals are flawed, you should always set weekly goals), I think this is what keeps me going though, the thrill, the excitement of something unknown.

In 2009, My primary focus was on money but now I want to focus on the overall growth of my assets and networking. I also want to grow with others, means, I want to build partnership where I can help others to achieve their dreams and goals with my experience and knowledge. And ofcourse, I do want a better health!

Best Wishes to everyone, Have a Great year and try to enjoy each and every moment of life.

Here is a question to anyone who is reading this post, if you have Rs 50,000, where will you invest it to get the highest ROI ?

1. Fixed Deposit – Banks are giving 6.5% yearly fixed deposit interest Rate so that is not exciting, infact if we consider inflation rates you may lose money in long run.

2. Buy Gold – Gold has doubled up (its around Rs 18k per 10 gms) since last year but than I don’t think it will go very high, may be 25k at max so you already missed the opportunity. Also gold prices sometimes just stuck for years at same rate, so again not ideal investment.

3. Mutual Funds and stocks – You can certainly get good returns specially from stocks if you do it full time though personally I feels daily trading is a flawed business model and it doesn’t excite me personally, but considering you just have Rs 50k which you may break it into multiple parts and make diversified investment, you won’t be getting high return unless you are willing to make very high risk investment, sort of double or nothing, something which I will never do since one day (most likely today), you will lose everything.

4. ULIP, SIP and Insurance – well they are not bad option though you won’t get much return from them unless you are willing to invest for 5 years minimum.

So where can you invest your Rs 50,000 to get the highest return ?

Here is my answer, and amazingly I was able to realize this back in college days (where my mind was only working at 30% efficiency), if you have Rs 50,000 you want to invest it onto yourself. Don’t buy a bike, Don’t buy costly watches or shoes, Don’t to go to costly multiplexes watching bollywood trash and eating at overprices restaurents, Don’t put the money in banks or invest in Mutual funds or stocks, Spend the Money on yourself learning new things, getting more knowledge and make yourself better.

You will be amazed with the kind of ROI you will get and this Return over Investment will be life long. In November, I ordered ebooks of Rs 9000, I had made a list and I always wanted to buy those books so I did, Rs 9000 is not a big deal for me now, but even in college days, I would had done the same, even if I had to borrow some money from someone (something which I always hated and will never do it again in my life)

Its not only about books, go and attend seminars in your areas of interests and don’t hesitate to pay even if it costs money, there are tons of great audio/video material available on the web, even if it is paid, buy it. many business schools and similar colleges offer shot duration (few weeks) programs, join them.

You can always invest 50k later, say after 3 months in stocks, Mutual funds, fixed deposit or to buy gold and it will make little difference in return so why do it now, when you can put your money on yourself to get much higher returns and that too, life long.

1. Systems not working and Virus attacks (seriously, virus attack?)
2. Questions and pattern getting repeated giving unfair advantage to others, specially in colleges where students can discuss the papers.
3. some people getting extra time to solve the problems due to reboots of systems.
4. Students still haven’t got any rescheduled dates and times.

Why CAT 2009 Should be scrapped

I feels CAT 2009 should be scrapped and this has nothing to do with me being sympathetic to the students (though I always be as I always felt in India, atleast 3 deserving candidates fight for 1 seat in almost all exams) but due to the fact that a mistake was made. There is nothing wrong in admitting that things went wrong which can happen with anyone and anywhere. Relying fully on computer hardware and probably not doing due diligence was a mistake from IIMs but may be due to ego problems and due to prestige on stake, they are taking time to admit it and ofcourse there is no going back once you admit that things went wrong.

Now IIMs are saying that very few people (say 500, I don’t know the exact numbers) are affected by these problems out of 2 lakh but then this is not a small number, not to mention the other problems of questions getting repeated and students discussing during exam or few getting more time than others.

I don’t think people can share the answers in quick discussion (they probably must have discussed “what the hell is going on”) and I don’t think some 70 percentile guy will score 99 percentile because he got few more minutes, and I also feels there is more smoke and noise than what actually is but still there has been problem and IIM need to make sure they correct it, as CAT is about Students, not about IIMs, also I don’t think anyone specially IIM wants to hear “2009 CAT exam was a joke” for the next 10 years.

You can not correct a mistake by just ignoring it (something which Indians has mastered) as that is another mistake. Failures always has a price, and someone has to pay it, but lets not make students pay for it specially if the mistake is from IIM and Prometrics Side.

If students feels they are cheated, they should go to court, and I am glad few are already doing this (as read from a CAT forum)

I wonders how relevant this Video is now …

From the movie Network

So I am about to leave kolkata in next couple of days and its been an interesting journey both from business point off view and learning point of view, and though I did burned lot of money, it was worth it.

Kolkata seems to be strange city, I have been to all the metros + Hyderabad and kolkata is so not like them. it seems to be stuck in 60s and 70s even in 2009, there are still rickety rickshaws pulled by humans, narrow dirty dusty roads filled with all kind of litter, stray dogs roaming even on main roads and flags of political parties waiving at various corners.

Some parts of India seems to be growing way too rapidly whereas the 8 states UP, Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhatisgarh, MP and Rajasthan seems to be moving way too slowly, and the worst thing is, half of India’s Population lives in these 8 states which brings down the whole nation.

It is useless to complaint about politicians and bad politics when the people themselves don’t want to improve things