July 2011
The Entrepreneurs’ Express Newsletter of the Entrepreneurship Cell, VNIT, Nagpur
The Editorial: Athena thy Soul’s flight…
The giver of the word: A statue of Goddess Athena in Georgia, USA
©All Copyright Reserved. Reproduction of any part of this copy without the permission of the Editor is legally prohibited.
Inside this issue: The Editorial
1
The Stock Souq
1
You Know What?
2
The Great Greece… Juggling Jargons
2 2
The Inside Story-IBM 3 The Unbiased Truth
3
Well, Athena could have been Saraswati. Or for politicians like Dig Vijay Singh, who prefer male dancers (not Sushma Swaraj), Kartikeya! Any cosmic figure symbolizing education actually! So as the admission season 2011 kicks – off and students miraculously transformed into headless chickens yet again, it’s time to introspect on whether the rebelliously revised curricula are imparting education or pouring numbers? And as a popular newspaper categorically blamed parents for birthing mark-sheets and not kids, where do our moralities lie? So this time, it’s the business of education. With ever increasing fees – and this time it’s the ‘overhead’ given ‘under-the-table’ that’s causing headaches. Anywhere between two lakh to five lakh rupees for a seat into the most oblivious
of engineering colleges is merely the tip of the iceberg. Scratch further and the murky marshes of scandals, cash-forseat scams that could make any ‘Raja’ a fakir will blow your senses. Recently, a professor from a reputed college in Mumbai was remanded for sending lewd messages to one of her female students. Expletives abound – exactly like the population that causes them.
Some of the more philosophical ones must be squirming in their seats. But that’s just a withdrawal symptom – a departure from their usual style of understanding. But this is the norm now! In the meanwhile, they can take consolation in a parody from Macbeth (III, 1), “It is concluded. Athena, thy soul’s aflight;
Hermes’ is knowledge now With a market of over $350bn and that is only right.” (that’s 9 more zeroes!) and an expansion rate of over 13.5%, it is definitely a lucrative business for anyone. But, in the scintillating aura of a world of shining books, the darkness of this ludicrousness dissolves and we end up less knowledgeable than we ought to. But all is not lost, someone get’s the money, right? And that’s what this business bug Lecture, Project, Submissions, etc.: Who’s Line Is It Anyway? is about, liquidity!
The Stock Souq : June 2011
Top Gainers
%Change
Pantaloon Retail
+16.95
Dish TV India Ltd
+16.49
Indraprasth Gas Ltd
+12.90
Top Losers
%Change
Titan India Ltd
-95.04
Mannappuram Finance
-50.74
Lanco INfratech Ltd
-27.65
-Sanchit Agrawal
Page 2 July 2011
The Entrepreneurs’ Express
You Know What?
Plastic money, what money?
1.
Nokia is currently the world's largest digital camera manufacturer, thanks to their phones!
2.
The Special tone available to users of Nokia phones when receiving a text is actually the Morse code for ‘S-M-S’. Similarly, the Ascending alert tone is the Morse code for "Connecting People," Nokia's slogan. The Standard SMS tone is Morse code for ‘M’ for Message.
3.
The name of the town of Nokia originated from the river which flowed through the town. The river itself, Nokianvirta, was named after the old Finnish word originally meaning sable, later pine marten. A species of this small, black-furred predatory animal was once found in the region, but it is now extinct!
4.
The Expiry Date on a credit card is fake! You can still use the card after its expiry date because the card number on your replacement will be the same! Yet, they do expire mostly because the credit cards take a lot of abuse and just need replacing. (They estimate the magnetic strip is good for only about 3 to 4 years of swiping).
5.
The most popular day for ATM usage is Friday.
6.
The creator of the Nike Swoosh was only paid $35 for the design.
7.
In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to well, speak!
Still need explanation? Still need explanation?
-Sanchit Agrawal
The Great Greek Gamble Game
On the streets: Protests in Marathon, Athens, etc.
The Domino Effect: The Greek Crisis
It was Iceland a few years ago and then it was Greece, followed by Portugal and the chalice has returned—only this time, not to the one who started it, but the second in line. Still confused? We are talking about the Great Greek Economic Crisis and more so, about the sheer helplessness of bloated Institutions like the IMF and the EU to well, help it.
Now, George Papandreou, the 182nd Prime Minister, knows it just as much as anyone that strict austerity measures are the only way to save Greece from defaulting from its mounting debt and reduce the Fiscal deficit which is a staggering 15.4% of GDP. And with economic parameters in the red, the only way is to ask for help.
It all started with the reckless loans, without guarantee amounting to several times their National income and the failure of several indebted to pay back.
So, while the IMF, Deutsche Bank, the ECB might cringe, they have a Hobson’s choice. And Greece is well, spoilt for choice. The problems are compounded by the unrelenting
Greek public which is continuing protests, further plummeting any chance of economic revival. The story is similar and the end—another recession. Greece, Iceland and Portugal may be small, but their fiscal humdrum is anything but. Au contraire, India’s 1991 Crisis was more domestic—despite we being larger than them all combined! Sometimes, one may wonder, what is it with these European nations that they can churn the global economy? We’ll have to wait and find out. -Ankur Mathur
Juggling Jargons: Diversification
The variety of life…
So, last time we discussed about risks and that the way to reduce risk is by ‘diversifying’. In plane and simple terms, it may understood like this: A storekeeper does not only sell one item viz. only books, only spinach, only pens, etc. And even if he were to, he would stock some quantities of different brands. This is because he knows that if the demand for one thing reduces, there would
certainly be demand for the other, or if a particular brand fails, there would be many others which would run. So his business does not suffer a complete collapse at any time. Likewise, when a large sum is invested it is best to maintain a ’diversified portfolio’ which tells you about the cumulative risk of all your investments. Of course, all investments work on some proportion of risk.
Such risks are reduced when you invest in assets like gold, government bonds, etc. but reduces when you allocate funds to the stock market, etc. The more diversifies you are, the lesser are expected losses. A pertinent question is, how do you decide the amount of fund to allocate? That is done by the Net Present Value. That’s in the next edition. Keep reading!
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The Entrepreneurs’ Express
The Inside Story - ‘Big Blue’s’ Maiden Century ! In 1911, Charles Flint came up with the idea of amalgamating the works of four brilliant minds and forming the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation. Little did he know that 100 years later, his company would be numero uno in the world for leadership, with podium finishes elsewhere (and trust me, there are lots!). Now, if you’re among the dim who are of the credence that IBM is just another brand….then you are undeniably dense. They are habitually argued to be the brand. Almost everything we use in our cyber fanatic world today is part of IBM’s toil. Be it the ATM, magnetic strip cards, floppy disks, hard disks, even the tiny USBs, IBM has been the Midas to the world’s development. After CTR was incorporated, Flint hired Thomas Watson to run the company. 13 years later, IBM happened . Under his leadership, the big blues made and sold industrial time recorders, meat and cheeseslicers (no kidding!), tabulators etc. In 1937, IBM's tabulating equipment enabled organizations to process unprecedented amounts of data. In 1938, the IBM World Headquarters Building was dedicated in New York. After 40 years, IBM came up with a programmed game of checkers—the first authentic sign of Artificial Intelligence.
Leaders changed, visuals did too, as with the passage of time they invented FORTRAN, SABRE and also made the world’s first computer family, the IBM System 360 in 1964. Also, 1973 saw the invention of the world’s first Universal Product Code (the barcode, for you and me!). Later in 2009, IBM's Blue Gene super computing program was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Barack Obama. In 2011, IBM was in the lime light for its Watson program. IBM entered the Indian market scene in the early 1930’s and was quite full of zip till the 70’s when the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act was passed. With reduced equity ownership and no takers, they called it quits on our soil. They operated only as an off-shore business through a small liaison office. Post liberalization and with the relaxation of FDI norms, IBM re-entered the Indian shores in 1992 as Tata Information Systems Ltd. through a joint venture with the company. Its business interest was still focused on product sales. In 1997, IBM Global Services was set up. India Research Lab was set up in the IITDelhi campus in 1998. In 1999, IBM bought out Tata's
stake and IBM India became a fully owned subsidiary of IBM Corporation headquartered in Bengaluru. IBM India has now grown to an extent where it poses a stiff challenge to domestic Software companies. Between 2003 and 2007, IBM’s head count in India has grown by 800% from 5000 Indian employees in 2002 to a whopping 131,000 today. Over 25% of IBM’s employees are Indians. Given the statistics, IBM's Indian employees would’ve generated $35billion of IBM's revenues in 2010. IBM in 2006 stated that it was committed to invest $6billion in India and that its plans were long term. In this, it trebled its previous investments. Globally IBM expected revenues of around $120billion by 2010, of which nearly 68% would come from IBM Global Services alone—the ’Jewel in the Crown’ as the Aberdeen group put it. With half of its IBM-GS workforce in India, IBM India's importance can be easily fathomed. Let’s just say we’re proud of Shankar Annaswamy (IBM India Head) and his entire team for making life so much easier. Who knows, you might just be reading this on an IBM machine? Happy birthday IBM! -Sreejith Menon
The IBM Legacy: A Hundred Years of Computing
The Unbiased Truth forming the main duties of the house alongside men and had the same respect.
Looking out for visions...
History Repeats Itself—and this is now vindicated. For all those who do not recollect their Ancient Indian History lessons, the Aryan era had women per-
Yet somewhere down the line, as the man began to fear for his survival, the animal instincts in him made him ‘acquire’ the business world and thus began the race to the top. With beg-borrow-steal as the aim now, the entire dynamics of money and its transfer went topsy-turvy. Thankfully now, women can be
found in almost all realms of the Indian business spectrum. From Biocon head, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw to Pepsi Co.’s Indra Nooyi, Indian women have made their presence felt. While all this is definitely a result of enhanced education, it is equally about their grit and determination that has led them to the top. To add to that, the Indian Institute of Management— Kozhikode (IIM-K), recently
declared that out of its new entrants, 35% are femalesthat’s more than 1 in 3! It is also heartwarming to note that this is a whopping 5% increase from their previous batch. Yet we have lots of catching up to do to maintain this momentum. With gender ratios diminishing to a mere 951/1000, its time we amend our ways, and our thoughts too. Its what you do that matters, not who you are! Well done, girls!
Entrepreneurship Cell VNIT Nagpur
The Entrepreneurship Cell VNIT is an initiative of some visionary students of India. It was established with a noble aim of reducing the industry-institution divide by making the rift, seem that lesser. Thus would be done by making the interaction between the two parties for viable through increased frequency and taking effective measures to continue to foster a healthy relationship between them.
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Articles, News pieces, etc. The Entrepreneurs’ Express Post them on: ee@consortiumvnit.com On or before 1st August, 2011
Editorial, Design & Information Desk 1. 2. 3.
Ankur Mathur Pratik Das Sanchit Agrawal
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