November 12, 2012 – 3:33 pm
Many big companies interested in hiring a small business owner, are obsessed with teams. Often, the business owner is the only person who knows how the business actually works. However, when well connected people find out that a particular business is to be taken over by a big company, they start asking the business owner for work, so that they may be paid off when the business is taken over for doing almost nothing as part of the “team”. The quest to find the (sometimes non-existent) team members often has hilarious consequences.
The problem is worse online, as there is very little direct interaction. The big companies, which usually have offices where team members interact directly with each other, do not realise that unlike offline interactions , online interactions are very impersonal, and the buyer is only interested in getting work done from the seller. It is easy to find out the real attitude of the person towards you, even a single sentence/word can uncover the truth. Some other problems are identity theft, and judging a person based on his or her looks. They should not forget that most first generation business owners risk everything when they start a business, and treat them with the respect they deserve.
October 20, 2012 – 3:44 am
India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. With the growth there are a lot of new industries that gain steam. One such industry in India is the e-commerce industry.
All growing industries have their own share of problems and e-commerce industry is no different. With very low entry barrier there are a lot of new companies that have entered this market. This has already started to push margins and many companies have started to struggle. The bigger companies with deeper pockets are luring online shoppers with wafer thin margins sometimes even loss on sale.
A lot of companies thus have started exploring categories with higher margins. Khojguru.com promotes all the major ecommerce companies in India through coupon codes and deals. From its understanding of the industry over the last 5 years we sort various categories basis the margin on each category:
Apparels : (30 to 40% margin) Mayntra, Yebhi, Inkfruit
Accessories : (20% margins) Zovi, Rock.in, Jabong
Gifts : (25 to 40% margins) Ferns n Petals
Home : (20 to 30% margins) Homeshop18, Pepperfry
Jewellery: (40 to 50% margins) Bluestone, SuratDiamonds
Personal care : (20 to 30% margins) Goodlife, Violetbag, MedPlusBeauty
October 6, 2012 – 1:21 pm
Though a lot is written in the mainstream media about India’s strength in IT, it is very difficult to find competent computer / laptop tech support. When the computer is under warranty (usually for 1 year), at least the better companies offer at home tech support. However, after one year, it is very difficult to find tech support who will actually repair the laptop / computer and not further aggravate the problem.
Many times the laptop contains a lot of confidential information as a result of which the laptop owner will not want to leave the computer/laptop with a computer repair company overnight. The customer is also concerned that the working computer/laptop parts may be vandalized and replaced by inferior quality parts. Most laptop owners are willing to pay a premium to have it checked and repaired in front of them. Also some laptop technicians mistake a software problem for a hardware problem, resulting in unecessary additional expenses. Etechies.in provides laptop / computer support but at present their offline support is available in only 4 or 5 major cities, and a computer/laptop user living in a smaller town /city has to search for/find local support.
The quality of laptops/netbooks available in the market also seems to have worsened. Till 3 years ago, a buyer could purchase a branded desktop /laptop and use it without any major problem for at least one year. Today, even a branded laptop starts malfunctioning in less than 3 months and both the online seller and the laptop manufacturer do not provide adequate support, despite making numerous phone calls, sending emails and even visiting their service centre.
September 9, 2012 – 4:33 am
KA ( name abbreviated) may be loss making , and offering attractive fares, but other than cancelled flights, there are other risks involved in flying using KA. A lady passenger flying by the airlines found out this the hard way.
Aircrafts/planes are highly sophisticated machines, where the engine pressure can be varied /controlled to a very great extent, especially along different points in the aircraft cabin, using the sophisticated controls in the pilots cockpit. It is also well known that increasing the pressure on an infected tooth or a tooth with a air bubble causes a toothache. This is the reason why most toothaches occur at night while sleeping, when the pressure on the tooth is more. Travelling by air is also known to increase the the tooth pain or even cause pain in an otherwise healthy tooth.
(source :
http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Dental-Health/Excrutiating-gum-pain-during-flight/show/456338
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-p-connelly-dds/tootaches-on-airplanes_b_873780.html
)
The aircraft was nearly empty and KA took advantage of the trust reposed by their customers to torture a particular flier. The dental records were probably known, and the the staff probably varied the cabin pressure to the extent possible so as to cause her unbearable pain in her teeth. Details of the flight can be provided on request for verification. It appears that this cabin pressure increase experiment was planned because the passenger seated just behind her was warned to evacuate his seat just before this “experiment” began.
Moral of the story: If you have even a mild toothache or dental problem , avoid travelling by KA at all cost, especially if the flight is empty.
August 12, 2012 – 4:02 am
One of the undocumented aspects of working online is the total lack of morals or ethics of certain companies , forums and their moderators, how character assasination of an innocent person is widely supported. If a person makes defamatory statements by claiming payment by bank transfer to an HDFC bank account ( when he has not paid a single paisa) , the forum moderator and members go out of their way to defend and protect him. Why is a blatant liar accorded so much respect?
Why is it right to falsely accuse a person who you have never interacted with or met , just to extort money? Why is it right to hack a person’s computer, control it remotely and then blame the person for something he or she has never done? Why is it right to make assumptions based on gossip and rumours, not contact a person directly?
When an online business is destroyed because of lies, the biggest loser is the internet community not the individual.
If the turnover is reduced, a business cuts costs, expenses are reduced, only products/services which are essential are purchased.
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The latest issue of the Week carried an article on how a significant number of engineering graduates from colleges are considered unemployable. The major reason for this is the total disconnect between industry needs , the courses taught in colleges and attitude towards entrepreneurs. A teachers knowledge may be purely academic and have no relevance to what is in demand, but they are paid by the UGC and get to keep their entire salary. They are “very respectable” as they hold a job. A computer science teacher may not know what a blog is , she has to be taught .
On the other hand, an entrepreneur who earns money from exports, can create jobs and can teach the computer science teacher what is in demand internationally is put under surveillance for years. Confidential personal financial information is revealed to a large number of unscrupulous people who then proceed to extort money from the entrepreneur. The surveillance footage is leaked/widely circulated without the person’s knowledge, making him/her even more vulnerable to blackmail. The people monitoring have zero ethics, they misuse their powers to modify and delete files on the entrepreneur’s hard disk, load malware. Entrepreneurs put in a lot of effort to build their business, far more than any employee.Then why are they subject to so much harassment and persecution?
allinall2007
Most wanted Inforum.in member allinall2007 , this individual/ company has been making blatantly false and malicious allegations against us, for blackmailing and extorting money since 2009.
We are willing to pay anyone who can provide any details about the real identity of this individual, with proof, a reward of up to Rs 10,000.
For more details leave a comment below.
An undocumented aspect of working in certain industries is how much effort and time is spent by certain individuals and companies in destroying a person’s reputation, spreading false rumours , accusing an innocent person of cheating.
They have no sense of fairplay,shame or conscience, they will repeatedly falsely accuse an innocent person of non payment, and then again go begging for work. A person with many years of experience and knowledge is repeatedly harassed, put under surveillance and framed in the hope that
1.he or she will like the relative or friend of a well connected person and partner/teach them for free.
2.sell his or her website(s) cheap.
The person with knowledge and experience will never get a fair deal in such cases, because some criminal has succeeded in his nefarious plans.
It is advisable to reduce your exposure, work elsewhere, if only individual’s who have powerful backers have a chance to prosper, merit and hardwork has no value.
Today, most newspapers in metro cities like Times of India, DNA, Hindustan Times have schemes whereby a reader can subscribe to a newspaper by paying the annual or six monthly charges in advance. The subscription price is sometimes significantly lower than the newstand price of the newspaper. After making the payment, the subscriber gets monthly coupons which are to be given to the newspaper delivery person. The newspaper benefits as they get paid in advance and there is less wastage due to unsold copies. The disadvantage of this option is that, at times, the delivery person may not deliver the newspaper or deliver a different newspaper.
In smaller cities too, regional / local newspapers have started offering these prepaid subscription schemes. For example in Goa , the newstand price of Herald Newspaper is Rs 3, but with the annual subscription option, where the reader prepays for a year, the charges are Rs 500. However, in Panaji, the delivery charges of Rs 30 have to be paid separately by the subscriber as the newspapers do not pay the delivery person anything extra for delivering the newspaper.
Unfortunately, collecting even this small amount can be a problem for the newspaper delivery person . Today the newspaper delivery person (a migrant from Orissa, holding another full time job) asked me, “there are at least 30 households here who have not paid me the due amount, what do I do? In at least 6-7 houses, they are asking for a discount on the Rs 30 due. We start delivering the newspapers at 4.30 – 5 am, how do you make them pay, the only thing we can do is stop the newspaper delivery.”
For most people, Rs 30 a month is a very small amount, yet why do they find it difficult to give credit and pay where it is due?
