2 hours of excercise, 2 lakh as bribe and a question

An hour of run followed by long jump, high jump and some more physical exercise is the routine for many in rural west Bengal (and may be in other states also). The practice is to get a job in force mainly in various opening in police and army. It is common that almost all houses have an aspirant who wants to join the force. It is not that they dream for that kind of job (as we see in Hindi movies) but is the only option for decent job. Due to various reasons like financial problem, absence of infrastructure for higher education and need to start earning to support family most of the young students from that area drop out from the education before or after 12th and start preparing for police and army selection. Most of the families’ hopes rely on the chance of him getting the job. However this is one part of the story. Like any other part of India, job mafia is rampant for the selection here as well. So clearing the physical tests is not enough, one need to pay anything between rupees 1 to 3 lakh to get the job. Still the job is the best available option and families do not have any other choice than arranging the money (some time by selling their lands). Still only 5-10% among them manages to succeed.

There is a war going on. I don’t know if it is for some ones right, or for politics or for something else. But who is fighting? The state? Or the rebels? However it does not matter. But who is losing? Obviously the common men in the affected area. We have seen many stories and coverage for that. And it is indeed true. However there is another set of people who are always in the losing side. They do not control the government policies, they do not hinder development in the under developed area and they do not take part in jangal mahal (the name is popular recently so used it) politics but they are doing their jobs as we do at our offices. I am talking about the jawans in special forces (24 of them got killed in shilda recently). Off course they suppose to know the risk of the job but they do not have other option than joining the army. But what kind of situation they were put in? They were staying at a temporary camp, in a publicly accessible place, they did not have any information, nobody bothered to inform then about a possible attack (though they had information) and the news is that the camp was strategically set up like that to protect a local politician! And remember Shilda is only one incident. We as nation fighting the internal terror! But how? With some long speeches, long meetings, in media debates and off course with some pawns (I am sorry for an outrageous word but don’t you think their situation is like that?) like then ones at Shilda. Off course we need forces to maintain law and order. But will the brutal force can win this war? I am sure the experts will fight it out in debate in television. But what about the families, whose dear ones, sole bread earners have demised?

All is well at Make My Trip (makemytrip.com)?

If we look at the financial results or user acquisition of MMT then from the surface it looks like the company is doing extremely well. But is there an undercurrent against the company? Did they fail to judge the pulse of the customers recently? There is no indication in results yet but if we dive deep then we can see some alarming trends.

User Demographics

Though MMT was started in US but looks like they could not penetrate much in the market and only 2.5% visitors come from US. Looks like MMT service is popular among 25-34 year old male customers as they constitute the biggest customer base of the company. It is expected that that group tends to travel more by air and buy holiday packages. But absence of female buyers from the same age group and buyers from the group 35-44 is striking.

User satisfaction and word of mouth

There was time when MMT used to draw favourable review from the users. But looks like the honeymoon period is over and the service has deteriorated. Only 29% of the users have recommended MMT in a forum at mouthshut.com and average rating in most of the parameters is 2 out of 5. The data for last one year is even more shattering as only 6% of the users recommended MMT and ratings came down to the lowest point of 1 out of 5. Though other online travel agents (OTA) also got similar ratings but some OTAs like ezeego1 managed to draw better reviews and recommendations.

Online traffic at Make My Trip

MMT is equally positioned with competitors like Yatra.com as far as searching of the site in internet is concern however interesting point to note is that MMT is popular in western and southern cities like Mumbai, Pune or Bangalore. However it cannot be said for cities like Delhi, Kolkata where competitors are ahead of MMT. In the traffic ranking the company is on par with top competitors, thanks to new rail and bus service introduced by the company, but page views in the site is lesser than the competitors. One alarming statistics is that around 40% of the visitors at MMT bounce back from the first page and does not explore the website at all. Competitors are positioned far better at around 20% of the users bouncing back. Similarly users spend lesser time in average at MMT than competitors. Average time at MMT is 4 minute but at competitors site it is around 6 minute. Around 20% of the visit at MMT comes from search engine as compare to 15% of the visit at competitors’ website. It is an indication that MMT is getting lesser number of repeat buyers than its competitors.

The statistics discussed above is not encouraging for MMT and the company should proactively work to seek solutions otherwise it can bring bigger threat to the company in future.

Source: mouthshut.com, Google Trend, Alexa

Finally one trophy for the Spain team ...

Finally.....
Finally Spain has done it! It is a long deserving trophy for Spaniards. In recent years they are playing excellent football but could not win a major trophy. If we look back for their world cup or Euro records then we can find that their "one match blunder" spoilt their prominent presence several times.

Coming back to Euro 2008. To be honest I was supporting Portugal, another unlucky team, initially. All because of Ronaldo this time. I am not like few other football fans who runs behind recent success. You can count me as true fan of his as I liked him from Euro 2000 when he was a thin 17 year old player. I liked his attitude more than his skills. You can find him in each corner of the field and he tries his best always.

However once again they failed. Infact 3 best teams of this Euro (according to me off course) has one thing in common "one match blunder". As Nederland and Portugal are already out, I was supporting Spain in full. And they did not disappointed me.

The score line looks like 1-0 but in reality it could have been 10-0. Such dominating and creative the Spain team was. They could not finished a number of brilliant moves. But Alonso, Torres, Ramos and team finally managed to win a deserving match. We knew Alonso and Torres for their attacking ability. But Ramos was excellent through out the tournament. Probably after Roberto Carlos we got another versatile defender who got brilliant defensive technique along with excellent attacking skills.

Congratulation Spain team.....

Web Hosting in india. A growing trend

Finally Web Hosting in India gained momentum! Domain registration in India is increasing day by day. Starting from personal home page or family page to glittering E commerce sites, Web hosting in India is now diversified enough. Number of Internet users increased significantly in India, along with increased the number of people searching Internet for information. Want to know how to get cheap laptops in India or where to host reseller websites in India? Internet can help you in every step.

Indian websites are popular and helpful for NRI’s also. As they are not in Indian it is not possible for them to know common facilities available in Indian. Now how to transfer money to India back home? How to find cheapest or at least cheap flight to India while traveling back? How to get best deal on prepaid phone cards or calling cards to India? Now days there are several organization offering services and Internet enable user to know, analyze and avail those services.

Domestic Internet user also found Internet very helpful. Starting form banking to travel to food recipe! Internet enables user all facilities one click away starting from railway or air ticket booking to buying laptops or registering a domain name!! As a consequent we are getting bigger players coming into the business.

Some of the hottest fields now days include travel, real estate, retail, banking, entertainment etc. In last 1 or 2 years India saw the increasing number of website offering complete travel solution or reality check. Starting from renting a house to buying movie ticket in every field Internet has penetrated

One can earn some handy bucks as well through Internet! Some companies like Google offers revenue sharing for online advertisements. They put advertisement on a website and share revenue earned from the advertisements. Google AdSense is an example. Through AdSense Google put advertisements of its client in a website and share the per click cost with the person(s) hosting the website

Fat tummy on thin legs

Last weekend I was visiting my friend’s place at Noida. There was days when I used to visit Noida frequently but these days it is not so frequent visit. One of the highlights of my trip was “Great India place” (hope I spelled the correct name). I was hearing the name for past few moths on FM radio though. I was not very keen but my ecstatic friend convinced me. Apart from that I enjoyed the thrill of 4D movie at Spice one day before. There are few grand malls in pipeline in NCR like Mall of India and Metropolis at Gurgaon. These are the few examples of mushrooming retail business points, enhancement of spending power and new definition of entertainment. In the era of globalization, growing economy like India has produced urban spending power mainly through handfuls of jobs for IT/ITES professional, some MBA and service industries.

Few days back few Reliance fresh outlets was at public rage as they are selling vegetables at much lower price. There might be a debate if it was poised by something else. Some might curl their eyebrow for this so called ridiculer activity. Don’t take me wrong, this topic is not to support the incident. But it is fact that the truth is something else under the glitter. Growing Indian economics produces more Mercedes on road and more stoppage time at red lights, more high rises, flyovers and malls. But actually it is like a fat body on thinner and weaker legs. The ripple of economical growth did not reach the rural area not even lower class of urban area. Whatever growth we are shouting is mostly from urban area. When we (2-5% Indian) are biting ham burger at fully air-conditioned restaurant then 30% of Indians are starving for once a day food and another 30% with “Roti”, “Litti” or “Basi bhat”.

So is there no growth at all in rural area? Not really! There are few drops of developments there also. But the discrepancy is large enough to make it unnoticed. Large players are eating up other’s dream and growing frustration is simmering among the people we left behind. There might be a debate that one can spend his/her money as he or she wants. No one can stop that but as I told, fat tummy and thin body is not a sign of good health. And it is the responsibility of the brain to distribute or at least produce some chance or hope for legs as well.

Stock Market: Infosys is very good for long term

There are few gems at stock market on which one can blindly rely. Infosys is one of those. With an EPS of 64 and PE 32 it is in very good position for investors. Its technical figure is better than another gem TCS!

Support: 1950-1960
Resistance: 2170-2180

Targets
3 months 2350
6 months 2600
1 year 3000

This is very good opportunity for long term investors to buy some quality stock in a reasonable price. The price is still low and now started to go upward. Price was hit by the sentiment that the strong rupee price will impact its revenue. But as always it outperformed all speculations.
At 2000 – 2050 level there was plenty profit booking and range bound trading and the movement was not as expected but now it is showing acclivity. Once dollar price stabilized it will be stronger.

Be invested in infosys if you want safe investments. Infosys never surprises for a large movement a day. Its almost rare to see that infy gained/loose 5-6% in a day. So be patients and invest for long term

Stock Market. Todays outlook

Everybody wants to make money and so do I. Stock market is a dangerously exciting place to do so! If you are careful then you can earn quick bucks but if not then probably only god can save you.
I do analyse scripts and invest. I created this blog for basically expressing my thoughts and connecting people. Initially i had no intention to discuss a sensitive and dangerous topic like stock market but then thought why not to discuss with interested people and exchange ideas!

The sensex and nifty is roaring but in my view investors should be cautious at this stage though the acclivity of the market is lucrative. I have analyse some stocks which has very good prospect in short and medium term. You can analyze those and think to invest

IFCI

Already had a tremendous run. It was at Rs 44.8 when i was preparing for this post. target is 55-57

BAG Films

Extraordinary run so far. try to catchup some stock if you can as almost everyday there are buyers but no sellers it is at Rs 47.05. It gained from Rs 9 to 47 with in 4 months!

Orbit corporation

This new stock is looking good it is at 198 buy it for 3-6 months the target is 400