Thank you 2011 and Welcome 2012

It is time to usher in a new year. It is also time to look back and take stock of things that happened in the year that went by. 2011 had been a tremendous year for us, it was a year that tested us with a lot of challenges and also the year which encouraged us with sweet successes. For both we are thankful, the challenges made us stronger and the success made us grateful.

Optimising investment: The importance of diversification

Author: John Hughes
Author Bio: John Hughes is the resident blogger at http://www.bestbonds.co.uk/, a UK based site that provides access to market-leading investment and savings bonds

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” is a well-known idiom that perfectly captures the ideas behind investment diversification. 

Part of the thrill of investment involves the introduction of risk to your capital in pursuit of better rewards, but no-one wants to risk their hard earned cash unnecessarily. Some investment opportunities will inevitably come with a higher element of risk than others, but diversification can help you keep risk levels at a minimum. 

What Akash Tablet means to India?

What a day for the emerging new India. The prestigious Indian government project to take the digital technology to poor, Aakash Tablet, received an overwhelming response on the very first day of its online booking. We saw many moments where the website http://www.akashtablet.com becoming unavailable due to heavy traffic. The device is now available for purchase online for everyone including students if you are willing to fork out Rs. 2,500. One of my friends joked that this is even cheaper than some medical tablets.

The Canadian company DataWind, who manufactured the Akash tablet, said that the online booking is available for students version and the pre-booking is for UbiSlate 7, the upgraded version for all.

To Buy or Not to Buy A Mahindra Reva.

There was a big discussion amongst ourselves about petrol prices and the cost of using a car on a daily basis. The way things are going it seems petrol prices are only going to increase in the long run and we need to come up with a viable alternative to petrol.  This obviously led to Mahindra Reva, the only electric car available in India.
There were opinions for and against Reva, for many the Reva was too costly when compared to a Maruti 800 or a Tata Nano but the others held the view that the high initial cost will be offset by the low running cost of the Reva. With both sides not relenting, we thought of doing an analysis of the cost of owning a Maruti 800 and Reva. In this blog we share what we found out, hope it will be useful to you as well.

The Hype and Reality of Indian Social Media

In our meeting with some of our clients we have come across the idea that Indian social media is more hype than substance. In this blog I intend to take a closer look at the matter.

The Hype
The ability of social media to influence people has been the key factor in its massive adoption by the marketing industry. Marketers job is to influence people so that his/her product is seen as desirable or essential by the target audience. It was the Midas touch that every marketer dreamed to have.

How to Create a Trading Strategy for Average Online Traders

Author: Janice Wilson
Author Bio: Janice Wilson is a financial expert who enjoys trying to find the best ways to use technology to help her financial life. When she is not trading stocks online, she spends her time trying to find lower car insurance rates online.

Over the past several years, a revolution has been taking place in online stock trading. With the continued advancement of computing power and internet speed, high-frequency and algorithmic trading have become very popular methods by which to profit from online trading. Although high-frequency and algorithmic trading are not precisely the same thing, they are generally thought of as two sides of the same coin. High-frequency trading describes the use of computers to make split-second trading decision, often employing strategies that require a position for only minutes or even seconds. Alternatively, algorithmic trading employs the use of sophisticated programming models to profit from market inefficiencies. Both institutions and individual traders have embraced such trading strategies to such an extent that high-frequency trading is now believed to account for three-quarters of all stock trades on the various exchanges. As such, it is very difficult to develop a profitable trading method without the use of high-powered computers with sophisticated programs. Of course, a computer is only a tool; in order to profit from online trading, a trader must develop a strategy in order to exploit profitable opportunities that exist in the market. There are many such possibilities of such strategies. However, two of the most popular strategies are the following:

1. Technical Analysis
2. Arbitrage

From Stranger to Kinship: Transform your customer relations

Don't Talk to Strangers
When we say the word "corporate" what is the picture that comes to our mind, usually it is either a building or a stranger with a confident but somehow plastic smile. There is nothing personal or warm about those images. Corporates/Business are viewed as cold, money making machinery that interface and interact with people out of the need to make a profit rather than by choice. Successful business houses are well aware of this and they spend huge chunks of money to build brand images that their customers can identify with. Usual ploy is to have a brand ambassador who has a good fan following in the target audience and then push advertisements to support the image that the business wants to build. What this does is that, to the customer, the business house is not a faceless cold entity anymore instead it is identified by a person who is loved and revered. The brand expects to rub off some of the goodwill that is enjoyed by the brand ambassador. Brand ambassador might be very famous personalities but they are still strangers to the customers. This means there is not much of an emotional strength in the relation that the brand is trying to build with its customer.