Happy Birthday Dineshbhai

Dinesh Patel

Clad in a simple attire with half sleeve’s shirt and a kadhims chappals. All the time barefooted. Walking up and down the factory with a cheer on his face. Always eager to learn, ever ready to grab knowledge. His diary would be full of notes.  Never fails to record information that comes his way. Even if it be from the smallest of the person in human standards. Whatever topic you open up he always has a lot of information and insights to share, be it of politics of any state or that of the central.  It can be on a recent budget or can be of any other disruption or any happenings in the county. Sometimes the discussion is on India’s economy, or the economy of any other country, or even the world’s economy.  He predicts and contemplates as he has so much assimilated information.  I never know that he is a walking university.

Yes, I’m referring to Dinesh S. Patel, the Managing Director of SFP Sons India Pvt., His father was a visionary and a great guide who continually inspired Dineshbhai to remain focused on his education. Dinesh Patel received his Master’s degree in Science in the late 70s from Sardar Patel University.

In the early 90s, having gained considerable working experience, he took his family into confidence and ventured into setting up his own export-oriented unit in the Madras Export Processing Zone and later one more manufacturing unit in Vadodara, Gujarat.

His unique trait is he keeps thinking and thinking in all aspects and keep tinkering around the project he has set his mind to launch.  His insane number of working hours just to solve the problem of bringing the luxury product the perfume to the common man’s household with the brand name JASS Perfume Spray.  This unshakable sense of purpose made him stand unshaken by all adversity.  He is very liberal in showering the credits to people around him while absorbing the negative impact of any trials. He always stands strong bearing the responsibility of all the families working in the organisation.

Another trait is his resilience once sir Winston Churchill said “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm”  I have seen this in him and have looked up with much awe.  Any challenge which would have been drastic for a common person will be faced with such calmness. He would get up and just dust himself with the full assurance that he will come out successfully the next time. The old failures have never deterred him nor he would requit it from the people around him or working for him

He has a strong sense of self, if he could conclude what he is doing is right he will abide by it come what may.  He is always self-motivated enough to motivate the team that it’s a good idea and worth the time and money to go forward with. He Stays focused on the reward even if it’s beneath the ruthless risk. He has unique grit and the wits to do it

Then he was always flexible to adapt to changes. Of course, challenges are crucial for any businesses.  Some time I have found the idea could not stay concrete but would evolve. Dineshbai had the  flexibility  to make adjustments and make the idea feasible to relate to the volatile market

Dineshbhai a visionary who could see opportunity in everything.  An innovator and always on the lookout for development ideas. He has the rare knack for convincing people.  A person who is opposed to his idea while walking into his cabin with counter-opinion will come out as an advocator of his idea.  That is his magic.

A visionary who envisions things before they could happen.  His dreams are far beyond boundaries. Today, SFP Sons India Pvt. Ltd has grown into a full-fledged fragrance manufacturing factory and export centre that attracts customers from the world over. His continued dedication has led a small enterprise to grow into a global company that not only provides world-class products like in worldofjass but also provides employment to thousands of employees.

Happy Birthday, Dineshbhai we wish you all the very best for all the future expansions.

SYLVIA CHARLES

Invest in E-commerce Post pandemic

Booming Ecommerce post pandemic

I think long after Christ Jesus, whose life divided human history by BC and AD; now it’s Covid-19’s turn to mark the history by pre-and post-pandemic generation. A new normal has set in. This pandemic has rapidly changed the behaviour of the people. The Covid-19 crisis has no precedence that the world has ever seen.  Every business owner is facing a big blockage in their business roll out. This crisis has shaped societies and economic order. Changes that have happened can be even permanent therefore invest in E-commerce post-pandemic before it’s too late.

Many small companies have died. Some of them are struggling to survive this crisis and stay afloat. There are a handful of companies that have not only invested boldly but have sustained too. The early adopters thoughtfully geared their business towards this behavioural change and captured the market share to emerge as a leader in this post-pandemic era.

Invest in E-Commerce post-pandemic as the time is right to equip digitally. Most important is to acquire new digital talent so businesses are amply equipped to sustain. This phase is critical for any business to fight post-pandemic challenges. This is relevant to business conditions for both B2B and B2C businesses.

Reinvent the business with a digital model: The core concept of business still remains the same for sales channels, revenue models, customer satisfaction and the likes.  Only that the business has to be digitally acclimatised.

Spend on Technology: Invest in e-commerce site so that the digital spends are properly funnelled. Keep the site in good condition well-oiled technically by SEO. Thoroughly monitor the paid and organic marketing activity.  Above all consistently give out market appropriate messages to keep your potential customers well informed about your products, services and capabilities.

Customer experience rules the roost : Guide them smoothly through the obvious path of purchase for online sale and give them the hassle free human centred UX  design to give a satisfactory shopping experience across devises with technological compatibility.  Nevetheless let the physical store purchases too seamlessly sync to the e-commerce site.

Supply chain viability:   Making the product available to the end customer ensuring that even the last mile connectivity is in place which is the key to success.  Model to replenish goods with proper warehousing is a hygiene issue.

Measurable technology: The success of e-commerce will depend on measurability. This will steer the business towards the meandering path of success. Focused marketing activity to guide potential customers into a purchase and analytical capabilities to ensure timely and automated customer interaction for guided purchases.

Invest right in talents: The new age digital talent will be the need of the hour. As most of the existing employees will not invariably be able to adapt. Let the digital culture be the future way forward

Management Interventions: Let e-commerce have adequate attention. Let the marketing communication be clear and sharp to adhere to the gravity of change to align with the company’s objective to emerge stronger after the pandemic

Post Covid-19 era will strongly and positively impact e-commerce capability. This will glean the winners from the rest. It will definitely bring to light the people with the winning streak.

For free guidance call: 994003096

Impact on India Media Industry over Google’s payment deal with Australia for News

Google facebook to pay for news

Does this mean Australia has belled the cat…. In a way yes.  Though Google has come into an understanding with France.  It was Australia’s deal that has remained as an eye-opener or indeed a groundbreaker of legislation. Australia’s Seven West Media is supposed to have signed a deal with Google under which Google has to pay for the inclusion of news in its search pages. It’s all started with the Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) of Australia, stressing upon media companies to bargain monitory benefits for their news feed featuring on tech giants’ spaces. A large number of internet user get their daily dose of news from these tech giants feeds instead of visiting the media companies’ websites.

Media companies were under burden the world over and have been complaining for years that they were not fairly remunerated for their content that generated ad revenue for platforms like Google and Facebook; but the tech companies kept largely ignored.  But Google’s rush to pay up in Australia only exposed how a little threat could sharply alter the behaviour of the global tech. The question largely remains how far governments can go to compel the tech platforms to pay for news.

In the wake of the situation Indian Newspaper society has urged to pass on 85 per cent of the advertising revenue and that the technology giant to ensure more transparency in revenue reports provided to the publishers. The amount the Google or Facebook has to pay will depend on individual companies deal; either it could be pay per click or a fee per month.

This move is absolutely necessary not just to protect traditional media companies from dying due to technological disruption but to give a level playing ground as the content generated and published by newspapers come up with a considerable expense. As it employs thousands of journalists on the ground at considerable expense for gathering and verifying information. 

With the diminishing share of advertising pie with every passing day will this effort bring the needed respite for the fund starved parched newspaper industry. Let’s wait and watch.

 May this be the beginning of a broader reckoning….

More traffic to your website can impact you negatively for the following reasons

SEO

Getting more traffic to the website organically is one of the fundamental goals of Search Engine Optimization. This is the major metric that reflects in the SEO report as a key indicator to evaluate the performance of the optimized website.

Driving users into the site using keywords

Once the user gets into the site the user finds the content very shallow or the content shown is not the actual answer for the result of the search. This will lead to increased bounce rate and lower the time on site metrics.  Google in its best effort to give every user the best result for every possible search within the stipulated time tends to take this as a negative signal indicating that the site is not the correct result for the search query.

Content Strategy

Content strategy is poorly executed or there is no strategy at all. The visitors driven into the site find the content poorly written; will negatively impact the intent of the visitor

The sites take too longer time to load

The site’s speed is too poor and the if the relevant images take too long to open up then the site is not user friendly to navigate.  This will be a pitiful experience for the user

Conversion Goal

Quality traffic is more important than quantity traffic.  The objective of SEO should not be to bring in more traffic.  It’s the Return of Investment that has to be focused upon. Converting 50% of 1000 visitors is better than to convert 25% of 2000 visitors. Fine tuning the  goal will save up on resources and achieving best organic results.  More traffic without proper purpose will not contribute to the health of the site.

Backfiring traffic

Paid traffic from other portals to a site that is not optimized technically, without proper infra structure,  funneling or even user experience can back fire. It will have a negatively impact on the cost to be paid for PPC – Pay per click and CPA – Cost per acquisition

Driving useful traffic is more important than just traffic

All the traffic is not the same and more traffic is always not commendable.

Elon Reeve Musk is no longer the richest person in the world

Elon Musk

Tesla share price declined after Elon Musk announced that he spent $1.5 Billion of shareholder’s money buying Bitcoin. Tesla stock immediately plunged by 20%. As per Bloomberg Billionaires Index Musk was replaced by Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world after Tesla shares fell by denting $1.5 billion from Musk’s net wealth.

Who is Elon Musk?

Elon Musk is a serial entrepreneur who continuously comes up with new ideas and starts new businesses. Initially his ideas were termed as just dreams by many.

Musk was born in South Africa to an engineer father and a model mother.  He was always buried in his books and computers during his growing up period.  Musk was never a social being.  He was physically weak which made him an easy target for bullies. Once he was thrown down from a staircase and was beaten black and blue that he even passed out and hospitalised.

His Career

Musk applied for a job in Netscape but he did not receive any reply as he did not have a computer science degree.  He has actually graduated in  economics and physics.  He even went to Netscape office but returned as he was too shy to talk to anyone. So, he decided to pursue his own idea and started Zip2. Something like a yellow pages. Zip2 was cofounded by Musk and his brother.  The board of Directors removed Musk as the CEO of his company as he did not have the necessary operational responsibilities.  When the company was sold to Compaq he received $22 million from it.

There after he founded X.com an online payment company which later became Paypal.  Again, he was ousted while he was on his honeymoon. 

Trials

While on his vacation Musk contacted Cerebral Malaria which had 20 percent mortality rate and it took him six months to recover and he lost 4 lbs in the process.

Musk’s son Nevada Alexander with his long time girl friend and first wife Justine Wilson died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) at the age of 10 weeks in May 2002.  Having to witness his  own child dying is a horrible experience but Musk never made a mention about this.

Ventures

Musk envisaged “Mars Oasis’ a project to grow plant on Mars soil. He met couple of companies in Russia who rejected his proposal. After six month he again visited Russia and this time he was offered a deal for $8 million for a rocket, which Musk though was too expensive.  Therefore, Musk created his own company to make affordable rockets and SpaceX came into existence.

His next project was Tesla Motors a company aimed to produce cost efficient electric cars and after initial failure his car received great review for its performance.

His style

Musk in his own words has once said that if things are not failing you are not innovating enough. He learnt the trick of the trade to fail successfully the hard way.  He manages three companies and five children. At this juncture, we might not know what is still left within him to evolve and develop

On the flip side… Oh! Sorry. The Personal side of Kiran Bedi – PART 1

Personal side of Kiran Bedi - Part 1

Childhood and Education

Kiran Bedi was born on 9th June 1949 in Amristar into a Punjabi business family.  She was the second child of Prakash Lal and Prem Latha. She has three sisters Shashi, Reeta and Anu.  Bedi’s upbringing was not religious she was brought up in both Hindu and Sikh traditions.  Her father helped with the family’s textile business and also played tennis. Bedi’s grandfather Muni Lal controlled the family business and gave an allowance to Bedi’s father.  But when he enrolled his elder daughter Shashi in Sacred Heart Convent School, Amristar; Muni Lal opposed his granddaughter being educated in a Christian school.  However, Prakash Lal declared financial independence and went ahead and enrolled all his daughters in the same school including Kiran Bedi. Kiran graduated in 1968 with BA (honours) in English.  The same year she won the NCC Cadet Officer Award.  Later she obtained mater’s degree in political science.  After that, she earned a law degree and a PhD from IIT Delhi.

Table Tennis Career

Influenced by her father kiran played tennis from the tender age of Nine.  As a teenager she cut her hair short as it interfered with her game. She has won many awards including national championship.  She was eligible for entry to the Wimbledon Junior championship but was not nominated by the Indian administration

Twitter vs Koo

Twitter vs Koo

Whether people like it or hate it ….. The talk of the town is about ‘KOO’. The micro blogging site is gaining momentum. It’s a version of Twitter or to say an answer to Twitter has got  some prominent followers like Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Piyush Goyal, Isha Foundation’s Jaggi Vasudev , Anil Kumble etc etc. Koo got it’s lime light after Twitter got engaged with scuffle with Indian Government over the blocking of accounts linked to the farmer’s protest.

Koo is available as a website and the app can be downloaded from IOS and Google play store. It works just like twitter and it gives option to link it facebook and linkedin. Launched 10 months ago as part of India’s Aatma Nirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge. PM Narendra Modi also encouraged Indians to use the Koo app in ‘Mann Ki Baat”.

The mind behind the app is Koo’s co-founder CEO Aprameya Radhakrishna.  He previously founded ride-hailing firm ‘TaxiForSure and later sold it to Ola for $200 million in 2016

Companies and individuals will be fined for using the cryptocurrency – DRAFT LAW

cryptocurrency bitcoin

Bill to set the ground for Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to come out with it’s own digital currency.

Corporates and individuals are unlikely to be allowed to buy Tesla and part with unaccounted cash in cryptocurrencies.  If the proposed new bill by the government is cleared by parliament. The draft bill will propose a complete ban on all private cryptocurrencies that is valued for being untraceable. The bill also will make way for the official digital currency which will be regulated by Reserve Bank of India.

Nearly 7 million Indian hold cryptocurrencies worth over $1 billion and there has been over 700 per cent increase in the last year, according to official estimates.

Here is Good News…. Israel’s COVID DRUG on the anvil

COVIDDRUG ISREAL

Israeli’s Coronavirus medicine has got the prime minister’s consent to go ahead with testing as the drug would come a long way for the poor countries who don’t have access to vaccines.  Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Medical Center calls this a major stand point, saying that Prof. Nadir Arber’s EXO-CD24 inhaled medicine had been administered to 30 patients whose conditions were moderate or worse, and all 30 recovered — 29 of them within three to five days.

This medicine fights the cytokine storm — a potentially lethal immune overreaction to the coronavirus infection that is believed to be responsible for much of the deaths associated with this disease.

The Note from Musk has set the Base of Bitcoin parFuming

bitcoin tesla

Cryptocurrency is spiralling up since March 2020 low and it has gained 1150 per cent subsequently.  Bitcoin’s price jumped sharply to an all-time high after Musk let Tesla revealed a big stake in the cryptocurrency and said it would start accepting payments in the digital coin for its products …. Tesla’s stake in bitcoin “will have a ripple effect across corporation around the global” Five years back the currency was trading only for a few hundred dollars but now it’s inching towards $50,000.

VK Sasikala – Once a kingmaker. Will she be a Maker or a Breaker?

VK SASIKALA AIADMK

The disruption over her homecoming marked with so much of speculations. Clad in her green colour saree like the late CM Jayalalitha may be to reiterate that the mantle is still on her. This goes without saying as she is also flying the party’s flag on her car. After being expelled from the position of party chief by the present CM E Palaniswami, the man she handpicked as Chief Minister as part of the reward to comply with her vision and to overturn O Paneersalvam the present Deputy CM.  It’s perceived that she may claim her grounds.  But her modus operandi people keep contemplating.

Tamilnadu is awaiting a great shakening.  Let’s wait and watch what’s getting withered and what is going to stand firm at the wake of this shakening. The acid test is here to pass.

The toxin of Alzheimer’s spreads like ‘Trojan Horse’

Alzheimer's trojan horse

Protein connected with Alzheimer’s disease use the brain’s cells as a “Trojan Horse” to intensify the disease.  The protein ‘tau’ which is present in the healthy brain cells is used by our brain for normal function to connect the neuron ‘tangles’, which is the core area of Alzheimer’s and other dementias.

The team from the Queensland Brain Institute at UQ have been trying to find how the protein spreads through the brain after an initial build-up, eventually causing these tangles.

Dementia expert Professor Jürgen Götz said their research revealed that the protein is carried by small sacs of material produced by brain cells called exosomes, which function like mails/letters – physical packets sent between two points which contains information. The brain unfortunately punches holes in these sacs, allowing the tau protein to spill out.

“This is all a natural mechanism of the cells in the brain, it’s almost like these cells are acting like Trojan horses, they contain these proteins that spill out and cause this damaging effect”.  Professor Götz says that now they have an understanding of how the protein is spreading through the brain, they can work on ways to halt its spread before it affects large areas of a sufferer’s neural network.

Currently, there is no treatment to either prevent or stop the effect of Alzheimer’s, with the only treatment currently available focusing on reducing the worst of the symptoms.

High ALERT – ‘KOBALOS’ A Malware with Linux stain is attacking Supercomputers worldwide

Kabalos

This malware is versatile and is equipped with infrastructure mainly Command and Control structure.  Kabalos are targeting high performance computing clusters and super computers running multiple operating systems.  This new stain of Malware is named ‘Kabalos’ because it mimic ancient sprite from Greek mythology, known to be as a mischievous creature fond of tricking and frightening mortals.

Kabalos functions as a backdoor and is designed to steal SSH credentials / Secure Shell or Secure Socket Shell – a cryptographic network protocol for providing secure remote login, even over unsecured networks

.

CANCER IS LIFE ALTERING BUT NOT LIFE DEFINING

Dr V Shanta - Cancer Day

The second leading cause of death globally is cancer. The World Cancer Day cannot be ignored as it reiterates its message through out the world that ‘I Am and I Will’.  This campaign has an empowering message to induce commitment on people at various level there by raising awareness concerning cancer prevention. 

The day cannot be complete without remembering Dr.V.Shanta, who was the  Chair Person of the Cancer Institute, Adyar.  Dedicated her life to the prevention, treatment of Cancer and her contribution to the field of oncology through her commitment to research during her medical career of 65 years.  Which is humungous at all measures.  She remained a workaholic and accessible to patients till her very end.  The fight is not over.  Let the mantle of her legacy and responsibility fall on each one of us to carry forward what we could do best in our given capacity.

Here is a quick snippet of promising development in treatment and prevention of cancer

Immunotherapy breakthroughs – the drugs recognise and destroys cancerous cells. A big break through against previously untreatable cancers

Another technique is checkpoint inhibitor therapy – where proteins contained within cancer cells bind with immune cells, sends ‘off’ signals to the rest of the immune system there by disabling the body’s natural defences.  This checkpoint inhibitor therapy blocks this binding and allows killer immune T cells to seek and destroy the pathogen.  This therapy is still under trial.

While ‘vaccine’ for tumours is still underway predicting and giving precise elective treatment has come a long way

Nanotechnology – is yet another area of growing interest. By using nano capsules, it directly addresses the tumour cells without damaging the normal cells.

 

It’s time to act therefore we could live without the fear of cancer. Let’s create awareness and understanding about Cancer while breaking the myths and misinformation. As more than one third of the cancers are preventable. 

YouTube ‘clip feature’…..?

YouTube cut feature

To contend with streaming platforms such as Twitch, YouTube has come out
with a feature to capture short segments of content and share moments from
videos or streams. Right now, Youtube has announced that they are testing on
the clipping feature starting from today.

Clips on YouTube allows a person to select a 5-60 second segment of the content (video uploads and streams) to be shared on other platforms. If anyone is viewing content from one of the channels in this experiment, then the person may see a clip icon  ‘scissors’ der the video that will allow him to select a portion of the video that he may want to clip. The clip will be played on the original video and loop repeatedly.

Potato is the secret of weight loss…..?

Potato diet

When we are on a weight loss the first thing that goes out of our diet is the potato. But the new fad diet is the extreme way of consuming nothing but only the cooked potatoes for a set period of time with the goal of achieving rapid weight loss. Many have claimed to have had a significant weight loss.  Of Couse, there are no scientific studies that have been done so far to support these claims.  But the thumb rule is to stay away from the deep-fried cooking.

But what is the Potato diet?

It’s committed to eating plain cooked white potatoes for three to five days to lose up to half a kg per day. No toppings recommended except for salt.  Another long term version of the potato diet which has cropped up in the recent times is the Spud fit challenge created by Aussie dieter Andrew Taylor, who ate nothing but potatoes for an entire year to shed around 50 kgs of weight.  In this version sweet potatoes, herbs, spices and even certain fat-free condiments are allowed like tomato sauce or barbecue sauce.

‘There’s nothing special about the potato in terms of weight loss,’ says an enthusiast. ‘It simply does whatever any diet tries to do: limits foods in order to limit total energy consumption. Most likely someone would get bored of eating nothing but potatoes pretty quickly and therefore end up eating less food overall compared to usual.’

The Parade and the Tractor Rally… Where will the eyeballs be?

REpublic day and Famers rally

Republic day parade will be unique this year as there will be no chief guest.  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has cancelled his visit due to the rise of Covid cases in UK.  Government has downsized the spectators to 25000, parade route shortened,  tableaux reduced save the replica of the Ram Temple of Ayodhya alone and ofcourse no child below 15 will partake in the parade. Jawans to wear masks and social distancing for the onlookers

Farmers’ from all across the country are marching towards Delhi in order to take part in the scheduled rally. Tractors from Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan have reached on Tikri border as the farmers sit in for protest for nearly two months. Farmers’ leaders have said the tractor parade will remain peaceful and not affect the official Republic Day parade.

The farmers protesting against the Central government’s new farm laws have been given permission by the Delhi Police to hold a tractor rally on Republic Day. However, the protesters are not happy with the restrictions put on the rally by the police. Kisan unions say they wanted to go to the old Ring Road but have been given permission to hold a rally at a place which largely comes under Haryana.

Rupees 5, 10 and 100 notes to go out of circulation after March – RBI

RBI demonetisation old notes

RBI is yet to send an official statement on halting the old currency notes. But many media reports that an RBI official has stated that these notes will not be in circulation as per the apex bank plan.

It’s also stated that new notes of Rupees 100, 10 and 5 have already come into circulation to help smoothen demands at the time of pulling off the old notes. Just being conscious to streamline demand by ensuring the circulation of the notes of the specific denomination to end the circulation of old currency notes without chaos.

Will Google and Facebook pay?

The US has asked Australia to scrap the proposal to make Facebook  and  Google to pay for news sourced from local media outlets. Further it has asked Australia to study the markets further to develop a voluntary code if it’s appropriate.

But the proposed law formulated in Australia has the political support to make Google and Facebook get into price arbitration if the commercial agreement with Australian media has not arrived. Though the US has raised its concerns on the harmful outcome if the consensus was not reached. Australia seems not to be thwarted in spite of lobbying efforts.

The Australian government upped their antenna post the conclusion of their investigations that the tech giants market power in the media industry will lead to the situation that may pose threat to the country’s democracy. The progression of events pointing toward proceeding with mandatory code.

Nevertheless, Google and Facebook may be limiting their offering to Australia.  As of now for every A$100 of online advertising spend, A$53 goes to Google, A$28 to Facebook and A$19 to other media companies in Australia.