Book Review: The Business School by Robert Kiyosaki

The book revolves around the Network Marketing Business but does provide some good thoughts and insights of what it takes to be successfully rich. I will share some of the best views put forward by the author (of course from my perspective!).

Traditional education is a good thing to posses but its too little to make you successful. It trains you to be very good employees, but doesn't do much to help you become an entrepreneur. Along with Mental (which the traditional education targets); physical, emotional and spiritual dimensions need to be nurtured. This is where the value of a Network Marketing business kicks in. It helps where the traditional education fails. Why do most of 'A' students end up working for a few 'C' students?

The author categorises people into 4 quadrants: Employees (who are too timid to take risk),  Self-employed (who are too smart to trust anyone and end up doing everything themselves), Investors (whose income come from their investments) and Business-owners (who have people running their businesses and are the 'Elite'). The former two categories generally are poor, Investors tend to be rich but the super-rich are the Business-owners. At last, Leadership skill is not an Option for B-category unlike any of the other 3 categories. And remember, Money follows the leader. As the poor work for money, the rich have the money working for them.

Winning is a habit and so is loosing. Winning starts with a dream.Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon, must inevitably come to pass! (these are not my words but of PJ Meyer). There are dreamers who dream in the past (completely futile!), some who dream too small (afraid of taking risk and want security!), some dream and have achieved it but didn't dream bigger (complacent!), some dream big but don't have a plan (too lazy to help themselves!). Only a handful of dreamers dream big, achieve those and go on dreaming bigger dreams.   

Never fear failure. Its an opportunity and nature's way of learning. Rebuilding oneself is the only way to make money. Failures help us identify the areas needed to be rebuilt. Everyone wants to shift from the left quadrant (E/S) to the right quadrants (B/I). The key to this is setting the right priority. People prefer making quick money to changing quadrant i.e. honing new skills and hence end up quitting. 95% of people fail in first 5 years when trying to move across the quadrants. But the real bright side is that the remaining 5% do get the chance of being ultra-rich.    

Losers are people who are afraid of loosing.

Valuation of OLA's Cab Aggregator business

Dear readers,

Here in the presentation format I am sharing a simple way to evaluate OLA cabs's car aggregator business in India using the DCF (Discounted Cash Flow) approach.

A two phase growth model has been considered in which Ola is expected to grow at an decelerating rate for first 10 years and then expected to reach a steady state phase.

Although equity valuation is an art, a market share based approach with the expected futuristic market condition (in terms of monopoly to perfect competition scenarios) simplify the problem. Although I am more into quantitative finance, I find it a good problem to ponder upon! :)

VENI VIDI VICI.....: WHEN DO YOU THINK YOU ARE AN ENTREPRENEUR ??

VENI VIDI VICI.....: WHEN DO YOU THINK YOU ARE AN ENTREPRENEUR ??: "You are undoubtedly destined to be an Entrepreneur ...When you get fired and you decide to be self employed... or ...When you are frustr..."

WHEN DO YOU THINK YOU ARE AN ENTREPRENEUR ??

You are undoubtedly destined to be an Entrepreneur

...When you get fired and you decide to be self employed...

or

...When you are frustrated by your boss and want to induce the same on the other tyros....

or

...When you just want to conceal being called a shrewd “businessman”, and veil it by a reputed terminology instead...

or

...When you are not able to sleep (thinking that your friend is earning three folds of what you are!)

or

...When your forefathers have massed up a lot of money, and you just wanna justify your share in it...

or

...When you are a carefree lazy-bone and just wanna hear from your kids that “My dad is so assiduous, remains busy in his work throughout the day!”

or

...When you are desperate to prove that “Afterall, money can’t buy you happiness ...”

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THE CRY OF THE NEEDY

My unfulfilled wishes, shattered dreams
Have the right to know
Why didn’t they materialize?
Why still craving for jobs, even if
Nation progressive in leaps and bounds!

Why my hunger, my thirst
Not yet quenched? Even if
Putrescent grains in stocks prevalent,
Even though countless dams built,
Why my crops still lifeless?


We have the right to know
Why are there no roads?
Neither power nor post-offices, why
Need to adhere to our legs and stamina?
As though we’ve no rights!

Why alone we face the nature’s fury
While, nation watching dumbstruck!
Our kids do wish to be literate
Why my ailing mother’s wailing
And no trace of hospitals!

My vote, my breath, my pulse
Have the right to know
In spite of such big promises
Why aren’t we even thought about
Aren’t we humans or if don’t exist!

CWG 2010: ARE WE REALLY SHINING?

The XIX^th Commonwealth Games has been recently concluded in our capital city of Delhi, leaving behind a bunch of ulterior issues to ponder upon. Overcoming the terrible uncertainty, security hiccups, infra-failure and management glitches that shrouded the mega-event a week before its commencement, the Indian Govt. along with its concerned CWG authorities did a great job in somehow Jugaading the whole event. Kudos to our national sportsmen who placed us ahead of England grabbing the second position in the table (other than shooting, boxing and wrestling we had gold in Discuss, badminton and TT proving that we are improving in other arenas too!)

But at the end if you try to quest for the fact that who have gained the most from the event- is it the Delhites (who have endured the heavy pollution, traffic snags, the falling pillars and caving roads but got a break from their hectic schedules!), the National sports system (who have at least got a couple of stadiums for nurturing the athletes, though not the durable ones!) or the bureaucrats and builders (who made mad budgets and false promises and have siphoned the national money to swell up their personal bank accounts)? The answer is before you!

Counting on India as a brand, we have failed to a great extent. For a poor country to overhear the cries and necessities of its citizens and blow away a whopping `70,000 crores just to augment itself as a brand on the international platform, the act is undoubtedly not justified! Furthermore, we first tainted ourselves by the outburst of widespread corruption charges, nepotism, bureaucratic delays and mis-management both in the national as well as international media. And in the post-games scenario we have been just able to replenish or in better words “cover-up” the derogation caused before! We must have improved ourselves on the corruption charts but not at least as a brand.

If we really want to show the world that we are a transformed country and a neo-dynamic “India”- we need a serious self-introspection and need to penalize the bureaucrats and the organizers ( humare paise bhi kha liye aur dakkar tak na liya!). If we have the highest corruption rates in the world, we are going to root it out of our system in lieu of getting used to it! Possessing a shortcoming is not a problem, but not rectifying it once you are aware of it is a vice.

Let us hope for the best, Jai Hind!!!

JUGAAD : THE VERY ESSENCE OF OUR LIVES

“Jugaad”, though unnoticed, this six-letter word has become the integral entity of our modus- operandi, and to be more precise has been vividly dictating our lives. Jugaad has become the order of the day! In context to our IITD lives, it is all what we do to get a bewitching “B.TECH” degree (obviously not for all those who find the ACADS interesting!) when we would conclusively and proudly proclaim IITD as our “alma-mater”.

Be it fetching the hard-to-find class notes the night before the brain-killing exams and staring at them till the dawn breaks, or be it Jugaading assignments just a few seconds before the submission ultimatum, or be it convincing the caretaker (for getting your favourite room) or the fuming profs on your delinquency (and in the worst of the cases when you are eligible for a DISCO!) or be it arranging certis for your so called ultra-important “RESUME”. You can’t negate the fact that ““Jugaad” is prevalent everywhere!”

A lot depends on your individual perspective of Jugaad. For you it might be a veneer to pass through the loopholes of the system or in more exaggerated words “DEFYING THE ADVERSITIES”. It is a neo-innovation of accomplishing a task under the harshest of constraints. It is what the popular technocrats called “FRUGAL ENGINEERING” i.e. developing something viable even from scraps. Do you know why India maintains the staggering figures of about 8% GDP growth rate in spite of its poor and under-developed R&D base? The answer is quite simple! Our corporate leaders are exceptionally good at Jugaad. Jugaad is an amalgam of creativity, master manipulations and might even comprise of unethical steps. Had Guru bhai not Jugaaded cloth-mills in the name of spare parts, he had not been able to transform his enterprise into an MNC even in his four generations (you would get my point well if you have watched the movie “Guru” or if you are a fair fan of Dhiru Bhai Ambani!). It’s a remedy to kleptocracy!

Jugaad is not preponderant just in our nocturnal-style of fetching marks (though most efficient if you see it as percentage of marks achieved per minute allocated to studies..lol!) but also in every other spheres of life. That is how 26% of Indian population feed their families! Jugaad is ubiquitous and undoubtedly unavoidable if you want to be at par with the pace of the world or even try to be a little bit more optimistic. We all are intimate with the grim scenario of the Common Wealth Games 2010, even then we tenaciously believe that our reposing and inefficacious bureaucracy would Somehow JUGAAD this upcoming mega event!

Conclusively, Jugaad is the very essence of our lives (in the language of the programmers the CODE of our life function) and an one-word answer to a lot of our successes. Jai Jugaad!!

http://www.sulekha.com/mstore/anandolan/albums/DSCF0021.JPG

ODE TO OUR FRIENDSHIP

Times roll by and
Bequeath me with reminiscences,
Of a trail of events
To be cherished always.

Nostalgia envelopes me

As I recall the day,

From where together we

Began our journey of friendship from.

Time and again I have relished
Your support and cosy company,
And at times, I felt low and lonely
You were always there for me.

My times of elation had always been
The moments I shared with you,
You have adorned my life just like
The Moon does to the stellar sky.

I conceive myself as “the luckiest one!”

To have a friend like you,
A friend to confide in, to count on
And savour the whole lifetime through.

IS GOOGLE=GOD ??

I am ubiquitous! I am omniscient! I posses everything you need! I am ever-growing! I am not GOD. Then guess who I am?
The answer quiet candidly is “GOOGLE”.
Be it college students, professionals, journalists, engineers or the scientists; the first and the foremost thing that comes in their mind when they encounter the need of any sort of information is “GOOGLE”. Whether we accept or not we have become inseparable and extremely dependent on it.
Today we thrive in such a feeling devoid world where the frontiers between the internet and human relationships have become murky, the “i-factor” has become gravely associated with our lives and as a result, the GOOGLism has emerged as a vital and prominent aspect of our lives. In the age of the Internet nothing seems impossible and everything is effortlessly fetched.
Wanna make friends? Facebook is there. Wanna travel? Make my trip is there. Wanna interact? Switch on to Google Talk. Thinking of getting married? Shaadi.com is there. Wanna complete assignments? Wikipedia is there. I think that’s enough......
A large section of people have even started to believe that Google should rightfully be given the title of “GOD”. The Church Of Google is an organization formed by such a section of people and they even produce nine proofs to prove their point. They boast of its omniscience, omnipresence, infiniteness, immortality, omni-benevolence, magnanimity, omni-reminiscence, envision-ability and also answers our queries. But the idiosyncrasy between the God and the Google can be indubitably stated . The veteran search engine is devoid of any feelings and bestows us with information and not knowledge, of which God is the only source. Information is just a transient data which might be altered in the very next minute! Knowledge on contrary is permanent, universal, beneficial and something abstract which connects the works with our soul. God is the creator and the Google is human-created. The Google had got such an importance in our lives due to our own tendency to make relationships, our very innate nature. The Googlists themselves claim Facebook, Twitter and their respective Spanish and Turkish counterparts to be among top five searches on Google in 2009, this very fact proves the point.
“God is subtle, but he is not malicious.” Albert Einstein once said. But Google is a versatile tool for hackers, an active cause of teen related cyber crimes, piracy, phishing and a platform for illicit sharing of contents etc.
In Economics, it’s believed that there is nothing so called a Free-Lunch. Everything has got its virtues as well as vices. It is us who are free to decide and of what we want to be a part of!

ATTITUDE TOWARDS LIFE

Attitude of optimism must adorn

The gift of the One –‘your life’ ,

The destiny with happiness would ensue

If with full faith and exertion you strive.

The need is to cultivate one’s mind

Unperturbed, you’ll blossom beyond expectations;

Discover, realize, admire your potentials

Enrich, enlighten and thou shall achieve new dimensions.

Time awaits none, it flows from

Our hands, like the grains of sand,

Wage war against vices, augment the virtues

And tread with the needy, hand in hand.

Respect the parents whose efforts and tutelage

Developed, nourished, gave you an identity

Shower them with gratitude for the piece of eternity.

Life is an opportunity, savor each day

‘It was him who…..’ let the world say,

Future beckons you for a miracle

Earth will remember thy deeds till it finishes it cycle.