My Take on Tata Nano

No No, this isn’t another post to talk about the launch of Tata’s 1 lakh car or about its features or Specs. Theres load of information over the internet regarding this. This post is about why or who should buy a Nano? Or should one buy Nano ? Lets compare Nano with Maruti 800 to see where it stands. Maruti has higher engine capacity at 796cc compared to Nano’s 673cc.But Nano is smaller compared to Maruti 800 yet has larger space inside comparatively. Thats a great achievement. Thats because the engine in Nano is fitted at the back similar to an auto. Parking should be much easier now and so should be finding spaces to park.In terms of fuel mileage there is not much difference. Tata’s claim that Nano will give 20 km per litre and maruti gives around 21 Km per litre. But a lot of difference lies in the price. Maruti 800’s base model is priced at 1.94 lakhs + taxes and Nano’s base model is priced at 1 lakh. That means people can buy 2 Nano instead of 1 Maruti And thats exactly what has happened. Lot of them have postponed their decision to buy a car waiting for Nano. And most of them are planning to buy more than one car. Tatas have created a revolution by launching such a low cost car. This has posed a tough competition for others in the industry. Given the traffic condition in each metro, people find there is no use of buying high-end vehicles and SUV’s. You will never get to drive at such fast speeds because of traffic and a signal placed at every arm’s length. My manager is planning to sell his Ford Fusion and get a Nano if its a hit. And why not? given that his family comprises of just 4 people Nano will serve that purpose. My point is this car is a steal especially for those married coupled who have a baby. We know that driving bike with baby in hand is risky. Such couples get stranded in their houses as they hesitate to take the baby along in the bike. They will be yearning for Nano. A typical family in a metro comprises of 2 adults and a child. Given they stay in metro, Nano should be very much affordable. A typical family living in a tier-2 cities say (ex:coimbatore) will comprises of 4 adults and a child. Nano too can fit them all. Working women too would go for Nano. Those who use public transport will find this affordable provided they have been given attractive EMIs to pay off auto loans. And those who use scooty/honda/pleasure will go for Nano as it is much safer to ride a 4-wheeler than a 2-wheeler (for themselves ofcourse). And not to forget the Cab Drivers. These where the people who waited for tata nano much more than any other. To ferry employees of MNCs from office to home and home to office,Nano would be the best-fit. But there is a small problem. When Nano starts be used as a cab, people will hesitate to buy it. Remember what happened to Tata Indica. Tata would be better off if it has different color variants so that cabies go for white color and other buyers go for colors like metallic-grey. I mean any color that signifies great style and finishing. They might come with a pink variant to attract women buyers too.
What could jeopardize their plans ? Frequent maintenance needed for the vehicle and poor after sale service. Maruti is just so good at this. The Traffic. Just imagine if so many cars get on roads in cities like bangalore and hyderabad. Driving would become a nightmare. Car’s engine is good enough to pull load of 4 Adults. Given the roads in hyderabad where there are very hilly, there remains concerns whether Nano can climb such hilly roads with 4 people in it and say AC is on ? How much is the ground clearance ? safety concerns for the driver incase the car crashes headon. Is there a diesel variant ?
If Nano fares well in each of this parameter then they have revolutionized the auto industry. But that said, Tatas have done an excellent job. Making a promise of launching a 1-lakh car inspite of none in the industry believing in it and keeping up the promise is no mean feat.Kudos to Tata and their team behind this project.

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Top Ten Firefox Add ons

Well you would have come across most of the content posted here. Moreover some of the addons that i have bumped upon are from the tech blogs i visited. I have compiled all of them and listed my favourites here. Most of the addons mentioned would be of help to developers who surf a lot . So without much ado here they are:

1. Stumbleupon – Gateway to surf the best of the internet. It also provides features to bookmark the visited sites and share it with friends and build communities based on your interests. A must for an avid surfer

2. SessionManager – Nice to have addon that helps you to save all the links and restore them when needed. Generally i open a lot of links in my browser and when i need to take a break, i save the entire session using session manager so the next time i restart my laptop i can get to where i left by restoring the entire session.Quite helpful.

3. Send Tab Urls – Another helpful addon i use when i browse at office. It so happens that i cant continue browsing web pages at office and intend to browse them at home at my convenience. But i would need to start it all over from scratch had it not been for this addon. This addon helps me in saving all the links into a mail and send it to a mail address. So when i reach home all i do is open all the links and recontinue my work from where i left at the office. Alternatively the same can be done by saving the session using session manager and sending the .session file created to your email. At your home you just need to save the file at %LOCAL_USER%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\1hju3cck.default\sessions

4. Roboform- The needed info is already available in the preceding post.

5. Firebug – A must addon for any web developer who deals with CSS and Java script. Noteworthy feature is that it allows you to edit javascript/CSS and execute it on the fly and see the results.

6. Imacros – Hmm, we have roboform which automates authentication to websites like gmail,yahoo,wordpress,etc. Infact these are the sites that i initially visit. What if there is a means to automate launching all these sites so that in one click all these sites open and i m logged with my account. Thats where Imacro is of use to me. Just as their website say you can automate anything that firefox does.

7. AutoCopy – A software developer survives on the basic skill needed in IT industry: Ctrl+C..Ctrl+V. This addon typically increases productivity of the developer by copying any selected text to the clipboard.

8. Fox Marks Sychroniser – A addon for managing your bookmarks across your computers. I browse a lot at office and any worthy link i add it to my bookmark. I use this tool to create a repository of them at a server and at home i come and syncronise my local bookmarks with that on my server. By doing this i dont stand to lose any of my bookmarks incase my PC crashes.

9. Downthemall – Useful when you are downloading and saving pages on your computer.

10. FireScribe – This is just a fill in. Just to bring the number to 10. Neverthless useful to bloggers who intend to publish their posts in various blogging sites like wordpres, blogger etc.

Hope you found these addons as useful as i did.

~ Maverik

Some internet utilities part – II

As promised, here is my next quota of utilities that i found useful on internet. Top on my list is roboform . Well this is a browser addon that can manage passwords for all your sites. Whenever you enter your username and password for any website, roboform stores them so the next time you visit those sites you just need to select the website name in roboform toolbar and it will fill the username and passwords and automatically log you in. There are host of other useful features. You can check them out here . I like the auto fill feature wherein you can create an identity for yourself and then wherever you need to register just click on the identity and select fill forms and roboform fills common details like first name, last name, email id etc.

Other utility i found useful is crossloop. This software is really useful when you want to remote desktop to any machine over internet. Helps when your troubleshooting your brother’s or your family’s PC. You can right away download and use it. There is a nice article on this available here.When i tried to connect to my friend’s laptop over internet it was very slow. it takes a lot of time to render. Instead i would suggest him to put his laptop over internet so that i can remote desktop. That would be a little faster. Yet this tool is very handy when the other party is naive at using computers.

Hmm..well someday i ll also write some must have firefox add-ons that increase your productivity and ease certain manual tasks.

Till then,Its good bye from your host.

~ Maverik

Some internet utilities part – I

This post is to share with you some tools and utilities that i have bumped upon while i keep surfing the internet. A few of them are freewares and a few of them are commercially sold. These tools have helped me increase my efficiency and provide accesability and i hope you find them as useful as i did.

So first to start with is Purplenova web server. This easy to install and configure software is useful when you want to host your files and access the same from internet (that means from anywhere). I have run this ftp software from my home laptop so that i can access certain files from my office. Apart from providing plain ftp access, this software provides a host of other features like hosting web sites, exposing web services, etc. Although these features come with the commercial version . A cool feature is that you can subscribe to RSS feeds so whenever i upload a file you can get a notification. Another one is you can categorise your files for public or private access. The file that is only privately shared has to be accessed by hitting the url. I have created my internet share at http://maverikpro.purplenova.net/ .

Next on my list is Terminals.A remote desktop client which you can use to store and configure different RDP connections. Earlier I used to save each RDP connection on desktop and double click them when i needed to connect. Managing all the saved connections was cumbersome and the desktop looked ugly . This utility manages all the connections without making your desktop look ugly. Since it shows each connections in a tabbed pane, switching between connection is easy. A must download for anyone who remote connects to different hosts for file upload, deploy, troubleshoot etc.

Well will end the Part one of this post here. Stay tuned to for more updates on this topic

And Wish you a very happy and a prosperous new year 2008

-Maverik

Updates about my blog

A few updates about my blog. I have added a podcast feed from odiogo. So anybody interested to listen rather than read my post can download the podcast. Thats just another feature of this blog. Also i have included links from other blogs that i constantly read.These blogs cover lot of areas from business, technology, real estate and self-improvement. Just check them out. You might like a few of them.

Power of web will democratise the system

This post is just to make you realize the power of web. How can one leverage web to communicate his thoughts and thereby fight effectively against the system. The system could be any entity: political, non-political, business organizations or any individual. This post is all about how we can take better decisions and learn from each other mistakes. Web as a medium fosters faster communication at a wider audience with less transmission loss. For Example, the rating of a new movie is known instantly . People have the liberty to judge a movie without needing to visit the theatre. IMDB – Internet Movie Database has the ratings for all the movies. It also includes reviews written by movie-goers. Thanks to the evolution of web from 1.0 to 2.0 . Web 1.0 was all about displaying static content. Web 2.0 is all about of social networking. It defines how group of people communicate to take informed decision and share information for each other’s benefit

I will quote few instances where i used social networking to make informed decision. The objective of this post is to make you embrace the power of web2.0 for the betterment of society. In March 2006 I had planned to buy a bike. In this age you are spoiled for choices. To choose one that best fits you is a tough proposition. I bumped on a website called mouthshut.com . This site has rating of all the products on earth – you name and it is there. You can find the reviews posted by users of the product. And you can also rate the reviews posted by other users. You can build a network of trusted users and set aside the untrusty ones. You can add products to your wishlist and can receive notifications whenever any user adds a review of that product. And now that is really cool. By the way you can find my review of indiaplaza.in at here . When it comes to rating restaurants, i look upto burrp.com – A social networking site built to specifically rate restaurants, hotels in your city. Such sites makes business organizations to be on their toes. They are aware that any mistake they make has a lot of repercussions. Corporates are infact using the same medium to attract customers too. Mouthshut has introduced a new feature called Corporate blog through which corporates can get first hand info about how customers feel about their product. Social networking is going to redefine how we buy and how companies sell their products. I ll definitely encourage you to be a part of this redefinning process.

Another such instance of my brushes with web2.0 is the creation of this blog. One of the reason why i decided to blog was to share information to a wider audience who can benefit from it. And with this post i have started my initial albeit small baby steps towards that goal [:)]

Time for Tax planning

In the past few days, i have been thinking about my tax planning for this year. I generally invest my money in ELSS apart from PF (which is mandatory for everybody to invest money in). The other investment options like PPF, NSC, Govt Bonds don’t generate good returns although they are less risky. ELSS are basically mutual funds that invest money in Stock markets. The catch here is they have a minimum lock-in period of 3 years. On an average they have generated 30% profit, which is commendable compared to what other tax saving investments offer (max 8.5%). Few Funds have given 1-year close to 80% . ELSS are a must to invest in for any investor in his 20s since the long-term benefits outweigh the risks involved. So my next step was to analyse all ELSS funds available in the market and decide on 3-4. I spread my investments over 3-4 mutual funds as diversifying has its own advantage. Some of the websites that i surf include moneycontrol.com and valueresearchonline.com . Both the sites have different ways to grade MFs and hence present a problem of their own. MFs selects those MFs whose recent run in stock markets has been phenomenal whereas Valueresearchonline selects those MFs who have a long standing record (say for min 3 yrs) in investing in stock markets. So that boils down to betting on funds that are new kids on the block or Funds that are old horses. Any risk averse investor should prefer betting on track-proven funds and any investor capable of taking risks can bet on the risky ones. Given my risk profile i would choose 3 risky funds and 1 track proven fund. Moreover based on my experience, those funds who have given very good 1-yr return had fallen down as time passed. Hence it takes a lot of time to optimise the right mix of funds.

I went through the reports of both the sites and at last narrowed on 4 ELSS. I have chosen one proven fund in ELSS – SBI Magnum Tax gain. One other fund is of a risky nature – Principal Tax Savings. The rest two have been around for quite some time. They are Birla sun life and Sundaram PNB tax saver. SBI magnum Tax gain has been given 5 star rating and the rest of them have been given a 4-star rating (Source:Valueresearchonline.com ). The mix of their portfolios rightly suits my profile too. SBI Magnum invests primarily on Large cap stocks that provide both value and growth. Prinicipal Tax savings invests in midcap stocks that are growth oriented. hence risky in nature The rest two are safe bets – they invest primarily on large cap stocks that are growth oriented. While investing in ELSS, one can choose 3 options namely growth, dividen-payout and dividend-reinvest. i wouldnt suggest anyone to choose dividend-reinvest as the units bought at the time dividend was announced can be sold only after 3- years .Just check this blog site for more info. Now that i have decided which ELSS to inves, i need to decide the time frame when i ll buy these units. The Stock markets have been hitting new highs everyday. I m planning to invest when the markets undergo correction. Now when will the markets correct is a million dollar question ? Do you have the answer ?

Let me know incase you do

Till then,

Happy tax saving,

Maverik

Remote Debug a web application using eclipse

Eclipse has become the defacto IDE to develop enterprise applications in java. The architecture provides capabilities to support new features by adding plugins for the same. And there are host lot of plugins available for eclipse. For more info click here . Inspite of providing lot of features, developers are not aware of them and hence dont use them to simplify tasks. One of the important aspects of enteprise web applications is debugging. This post will tell you on how to debug web applications using eclipse. The Application server used for this example is JBOSS 4.0.2. I hope the steps specified here would be similar when used with other applications servers.

First specify a breakpoint at which you want the run time execution to stop. You can do this in eclipse by double clicking on the left pane of java editor. Next go to JBOSS_HOME\bin. Open the run.bat file in notepad and search for “8787″ . You would hit at a line like this

Delete the REM statement at the start of the line. By doing this you are enabling JBOSS to run in remote debug mode. Build your war file using MAven/Ant and deploy it in JBOSS_HOME\server\default\deploy folder.Save the run.bat file and double click on it to run JBOSS.

Now come back to eclipse. Once you have configured breakpoints in eclipse. Click on Run->Open Debug Dialog. Right Click on Remote Java Application and choose new. A new application based on the class name that contains break point is displayed. Now in Connection properties (right pane) specify the port 8787. A typical configuration for remote debug in eclipse looks like this :

You are done with all the settings. You just have to click on debug to start remote debugging your web application. Open the debug perspective if eclipse prompts you so. You can add break points dynamically, know values of variables at run time by right clicking on that variable and selecting watch. Remote debugging is very useful for a newbie in a project to learn about the flow of web application. Hope you find this post useful for your day-today project work.

TitBit to deploy web applications using maven : Developers need to redeploy their war files to JBOSS\..\deploy folder whenever they make changes to the code. This manual operation is tedious as the developer has to do three operations : Build the war file, copy to JBOSS\..\deploy and start the JBOSS server. The last two operation can be done through maven 2.x plugin for JBOSS. For more info about the plugin visit Maven-JBOSS-Plugin

Rumblings about indian business

Hmm .. Good news . Mukesh Ambani declared as the world’s richest person beating Software Czar Bill gates. Thats a real good news. Thanks to the Indian Stock markets, they have been scaling new heights creating a lot of wealth on their way. But more than this, it also signifies a BRAND NEW INDIA. India traditionally referred as a poor developing country has prouduced the richest person. (Well its still a developing country and so is mexico to which carlos slim – one of top 5 richest person belongs). This is the changing face of india and has made the world to wake up and take note of it. Mukesh Ambani’s three group companies namely Reliance Industries, Reliance Petroleum and Reliance Industrial Infrastructure have businesses that span over petroleum, chemicals, polyester, retail, textile and infrastructure have largely participated in the current bull rally propelling his networth to $63.2 Billion(Courtesy : Economic times ). But this post is not about signifying the fact that an Indian- Mukesh Ambani has become the world’s richest person but about another 1st generation entrepreneur whos been creating waves in the Retail industry. Yep you might have guessed it by now. Its Kishore Biyani – Retail King of india. I believe in calling him the next ambani of india. His Flagship company Pantaloon has been doing pretty well. But thats not it. Hes rightly positioned to capitalise the retail boom thats sweeping indian economy whereas other players like reliance retail, Bharati walmart are yet to make significant presence in the retail industry.

I happen to have a close watch on this man and what he is upto and in the process have become a great fan of him. Reading his book – It happened in india only reinforces my respect and admiration for him. He has been successful in creating retail formats for a whole-lot of General merchandised products. His Big Bazaar is the defacto shop people go to buy any item. It houses all the items a person would need it, at a reasonable price offering (with freebies and discount) and expected quality. He has been successful in scaling up this business by opening number of stores, creating logistics to transport bulk items at low operational costs and maintaing a profit margin albeit selling it at a price less than his competitor.He has replicated the same model in different industries like fashion clothings, Sun glasses, Watches, Furniture, Food, Books, Electronics, Home,Health and jewellary. Pantaloon caters to selling fashionable clothing to people of all ages. Brand factory is targeted to the brand-concious youth. ‘ALL’, a company serving a niche market of fat people (They call it as 40+ size). Top 10 – another company serving a niche market for people who keep up with latest fashion trends. Fashion station – another player selling fashionable clothing to mass market. Note it that all the companies i was talking here are engaged in selling clothing. we will move out to his other business example furniture. Kishore biyani has been successful in creating Furniture mart – a market player attempting to sell furniture to mass market and Collection i – another market player in furniture targeting high end customers who are concious about trendiest furniture designs available in market . i refer to them as class market.

Kishore biyani has struck gold by selling products targetting them for two different markets – Mass and Class. Be it furniture, Fashion. Home or Electronics. The names that he has chosen for his companies have a lot of connotation.Any company targeting the mass market ends with bazaar or mart Ex, Big Bazaar, Furniture Mart etc and any company marketing products has classy names namely Collection i, Top 10, Central etc. I really admire this aspect of him a lot.

I would really suggest you to visit his other line of business here . although i m no expert in finance or MBA nor have i gone through his P&L statements, i can see that his group of companies (Future Group) has been making excellent sales. I myself shop/buy at any one of his group companies – Big Bazaar, Central, Pantaloon, Brand Factory. And I must say i have been satisfied with product quality and price. And no matter what time of day you reach his shop, its always been crowded.I m suprised at the amount of marketing his companies spend. Its huge. His company is on its way to create the wealthiest brand in india. Given his success rate in booting up new ventures i can see this man creating a big name for himself in the retail industry. And thats one of the reason why i believe that he could be the next ambani.

That said some of the richest person alive are not from the IT/Software industry except for Bill gates. Does that mean the software industry is not suited for those whom dream to become the richest person in the world. Time to ponder ????

Back with vengeance

Hi,

I m back to writing my blog. Not the first time that i have created a blog. I did create one, long back at blogspot.com but was so lazy to update it regulary. So here i m trying my second attempt at creating a blog and more importantly promising to update it regularly. What all will i be blogging here ? Hmm….Technology, Open source – Ubuntu, Movies, Music and tips on wealth and career management. This is just a medium to share my insights and experience that i had acquired all these years. Hope it helps few people in shaping themselves for the better.