APORV means UNIQUE

Aporv.com Launch

05-06-2010 – World Environment Day.

Aporv.com brings to you an eclectic collection of unique handcrafted expressions from India. Aporv, which means “unique “in Sanskrit, is a spirit to retain traditional Indian art form and at the same time make a Social Impact. Aporv’s mantra is to ensure that correct choices are made. Artisans choice to sell the products at a fair value and your choice to make an educated buy.

Art in its various forms has always stirred human emotions. India is globally known for its rich heritage of arts & crafts. There are 23+ million craftspeople in India today, however due to adverse economic conditions these craftsmen indulge in secondary occupations and the age old art is gradually fading away. Thus the current much used term – “Exclusive “ and “ethnic” are singularly limiting and inappropriate. The change in consumer buying trends and the entry of various new, aggressively promoted factory produced commodities into the rural and urban market, has meant that craft producers need more support than ever if they are to become viable and competitive.

Aporv.com draws its conception from these needs and wants . It realizes the growing need for utilitarian yet aesthetic handcraftedproducts and bridges the gap between the creator & the appreciator.  It makes buying a pleasurable experience  by educating its customers  of the various art forms. It empowers  artisans by practicing fair trade and assists in preserving rare Indian art forms . Read more about our uniqueness and social initiatives at www.aporv.com/about-us.

The team at Aporv are an enthusiastic bunch of individuals working to bring about a social change, at the same time working to make sure that the products we sell are as unique as you are. Our varied experience ranges from the Indian craft sector to Information Technology, from Hospitality to Luxury Management and Management Consulting. Our team members also have prior associations with corporations like Bain & Company, Infosys, Trident-Hilton and Oberoi Hotels. We have a wide educational background that covers premier design institution, BITS-Pilani, Stanford, Wharton Business School, INSEAD.

We believe that there is a better way to buy handmade products.  At Aporv.com, we want to provide the best possible buying experience by offering a wide range of products, sharing knowledge  and  providing superior customer service.  We hope to become that missing link between the talented and untapped world of Indian craftsmanship and its admirers and keepers across the globe. Our goal is to make Aporv.com your primary destination for handmade products, services, and information.

We hope you enjoy the Aporv experience as much as we enjoyed putting it together for you. Please send your queries, feedback or suggestions to info@aporv.com. Join us and support the ‘UNIQUE’ movement, a path taken by people like YOU.

Do visit us at : www.aporv.com.

Join us on facebook : http://www.facebook.com/aporv

Follow us on twitter: http://twitter.com/aporv_

Faith on quality

How are brands created and destroyed.

1. Can a poor quality product destroy a brand?
2. What does it take take a brand to its death bed?

4 largest car companies failed the quality tests and had to recall their vehicles. These include brands like

1. Toyota (JAP) – related news
2. Honda (JAP) – related news
3. Tata (IND) – related news
4. Porsche (GER) – related news

Let’s take Toyota as an example, The problems are not just restricted to new car sales for Toyota or Lexus, it affects the complete economy as well because it’s such a huge organization. Its estimated that each vehicle has a $310 impact on local economy. You do the math. Toyota has recalled more than 8million cars since Nov 2009.

1. The port where the new cars arrive is getting affected as the workers in these ports are out of job.
2. New car sales is one part of the problem, the sales of used cars is also a big market that is getting affected.

Toyota brand will surely not die, just because they recalled millions of vehicles. But what about the consumers, the products that sold purely because of the quality that they promised, will the customers return back to buy these products or the marketing and PR divisions of these organizations will “buy out” people and their faith back to these products? What I am trying to address here is, all these companies spent decades building their brands and then all of a sudden the ONLY thing they were proud of let them down. What went wrong with a company that has been the front runner on quality!

In Toyota’s support: Has Toyota lost it’s edge.

Show you an India like never before

Well that’s the tag line for the new train launched by the Indian Railway minster, Mamata Banarjee. Well it’s not new to launch a new train or market it, but the reason why it is in the headlines is it shows the capital of India, New Delhi in Pakistan! and Kolkata in the Bay of Bengal. Well this could be very well be a one off mistake but it’s not so.

Both Indian and Pakistan governments have been red faced in the last couple of months for errors in ad posted in the print media. Another such goof up happened yesterday when Pakistan Police put up an ad in the newspapers with the Indian Panjab Police logo on it.

Again, not so long back  India had another goof up with Pakistan Air Force chief along side Indian leaders like the Prime Minister.

Thing to note here is that all these ads have been by the government of respective countries and were for the public viewing. 3 such ads by the respective governments in the last 2 months! Guess both these countries need a new centralized PR and Marketing team to make sure these are not repeated.

Battle for top level domains – ‘.com’ v/s ‘.ws’ v/s ‘.co’

With almost every person getting on to the net, people and organizations are looking for their own identity. What does this lead to? Domain registrars making huge money and most of the common dictionary works taken for the “.com” top domain. Currently there are 20m dot com domains and this will grow to 500m in the next 10 years. So with 20m names already taken and people finding it difficult to find the right name, what are the options? With the top domain “.com” almost not available and people trying out different permutations and combinations. People did sense the opportunity here.

The new domain names with “.ws” extensions are on sale at a premium. ws actually stands for Western Somoa, but the promoters Michael and Alan are marketing it as “ws=WebSite”. Western Somoa which has a population of less than 200,000 people is a perfect “country” specific extension and a new top level domain for organizations. Same with “.co” extension. “.co” has been assigned for Colombia specific business but is now being marketed similar to “.com” and now the new on the block “.ws”. Same with .”co.cc”. Nice way to promote it, but then there are a few questions that come up.

The problems with these new top level extensions would be identity. With the companies that have already built a brand, the likes of Google/ Apple/ Microsoft and Indian companies like, Infosys/ TCS/ Wipro, they will have to be on their toes to get these domain names for the same of brand identity and web presence. They would have already spent enough to buy out the .com domains and now if they don’t buy these new extensions they run the risk of losing their identity. e.g. The US entities seem to be active as on last check the likes of Google/ Apple/ Microsoft/ IBM were not available for “.co” extension but Infosys/ Wipro/ TCS is AVAILABLE!

Secondly, the new companies/ consortium’s that are coming up promoting these now extensions (which by the way are country specify and they have to pay a premium to that government or get into an exclusive deal with the government) are charging HUGE amount for the established domains. Isn’t that cheating, I think again. Why pay more to get my own identity.

Thirdly, how can the established companies or the new ones that are trying to build their brand keep on top of the new extensions coming up, at the rate of 2 per month.

Fourth, what happens to the domestic business. Many multinationals would like to buy the country specific domains for their use and what happens if these domains are bought by someone else!

Thinking Again.

India, China v/s US: The “new” Internet wave

The recent McKinsey report talks about how the internet users have grown in China along with the web usage on cell phones. According to McKinsey “People in the country’s 60 largest cities spend 70 percent of their leisure time online. Seismic changes in the consumer market are likely as a result.” With this the internet users touched a whooping 384 million, much more than the entire US population.

Compare the graph to the McKinsey report and you see the China users growing by more than 50% compared to 2008.

What does it mean for the giants like Google/ Microsoft/ Yahoo. This is the reason why are they bending their backs to be a significant player in the region. Driving the new usage and bringing in business back to the US.

What does this mean for India? With the internet penetration much lower than its neighbor, India is way behind but does have a huge potential. With the 3G network opening up this year there will be a surge in the users using the same on their hand help devices. Huge potential for the mobile operators/ mobile phone manufactures and all the companies concentrating on this space, with the exception of the stock market. Telecom stocks have plummeted over the last few quarters because of the immense competition. Thats good for the consumer but how good is that as a competition as even the BIG players like Bharti have had huge cuts in their margins. The airtime is one of the lowest in the world!

Compare this:

With a big growth potential and low cost India is all set to become a big player in global market and also help surge the internet usage.

The question is what makes the Indians go to the net? The most popular site as per alexa are the

Few more that should have been there from India e-commerce perspective are: Travel, Matrimony sites. With the “youth” factor coming in and more people using the internet, India is all set to become a big player in the e-commerce in the not too far future.

Starting a company in India

This post is all about my personal experience with starting a new company in India. I’ll take you through all that I went through in the last couple of months and will keep updating this post with the like of Online Payment Gateway and other ancillary details that you might be interested in.

What you need to start:

1. DIN – Director Identification Number
2. Digital Signature
3. Apply for name availability
4. MoA – Memorandum of Association
5. AoA – Article Of Association
6. Form 1
7. Form 18
8. Form 23
9. Company Seal – You need this to file your PAN
10. PAN

To get the registration process right unless you know what you are doing it’s good to have good support. I took help of a Chartered Accounting firm to take me through the initial steps. Their charges vary from INR 20,000 – INR 40,000; all other registration charges, stamp duties are at actual.

DIN Application – This is a simple process and got the same approved within 3 days. Guess that’s fast compared to what it took when the process was offline. You would need a passport photograph/ valid address proof and identity proof. While applying for DIN you would get a provisional DIN. Application fees INR 500.

Digital Signature – This too was quick. You don’t need to wait for your DIN to apply for your Digital Signature. You can apply for both together. I got my digital signature in 10 days. You have options of going ahead with couple of organizations. It will mostly be what your CA firm prefers. It would cost you anywhere between INR 1500 – INR 3900.

Apply for name availability – This is a big task, 3 names in the order of preference with the objectives of the company is needed to apply for name availability. If yours is an eCommerce platform it makes a life a little more difficult as you need to make sure you get the right domain name and then make sure you get the name that you have applied for with the name registrar.  Getting the objectives right and getting the right names took some time. There after a couple discussions with the name approving authority and changing the name 3 times it finally got approved. Application fees INR 500.

Registration of DIN – You need to register your digital signature on the MCA21 (Ministry of Corporate Affairs) site. This is important as you would later realize (As I did) that you won’t be allowed to upload your MoA/ AoA without the same. Secondly you need to make sure that you have a 5 year old laptop / desktop (literally) to upload the digital signature. MCA21 site only allows OS Windows 2000 or XP and IE combination to upload digital signature. This is true of Feb 2010, as I write this article. Luckily for me my CA firm actually had two computers dedicated for RoC work which they haven’t ‘upgraded’ because of this issue. I have 4 computers at home and the oldest one has Vista! Lucky me depends on how you look at it.

MoA – You need to work on your MoA very diligently. MoA is like the bible of your company, as to what you will be doing. Went through a couple of rounds with my CA to make sure all the details were right. As the director of the company you need to be on top of this as the CA you may be working with may not be completely aware of your whole business. Nothing wrong with that, actually that’s for good because they might question you if a particular clause is necessary. When a MoA is drafted you would like to get the whole universe into it, but that’s a sure shot to get rejected with the RoC (Registrar of Companies). So make sure you have only the details pertaining to your business.

In my case I had to resubmit once because the stamp duty charges starting January 2010 has been moved to estamps while mine papers were on normal stamp paper. But then after some to and from RoC was made to take note of their notice which stated that the companies can submit their MoA on regular stamp papers till 31st March 2010.  Once that was done we submitted the MoA online.

AoA – This is more in line with how the company will operate, shareholders, how will the shares be allocated, who would chair the meetings, etc.

Form 1/ 18/ 32 – You will have to upload these forms with MoA/ AoA to register your company.

Payment on MCA21 – This is the payment for your company registration and will depend upon the actual allocated capital for the company.

Once the payment has been made you will get a confirmation from RoC regarding the form received. If all paper work is in place it hardly takes a day or two to get approved and Voila, you have the registration certificate in your inbox. The actual certificate comes through post at your registered office.

So overall the above process took close to 7 weeks. This process could have been reduced by close to2-3 weeks but getting the MoA/ Objectives and AoA took that time. Thus if have this ready you can reduce your time by couple of weeks depending upon holiday season/ all paperwork perfect.

National Game or a joke?

What happened to the Indian national game, hockey. Last we won any award was way way back, this generation doesn’t even consider hockey as a national game with cricket gaining so much significance in India over the past few decades. The question is, is it because cricket gaining significance or is it because the hockey team is not making any progress. My take is the latter. Who is to blame, the erstwhile Indian Hockey Federation (IHF)or the newly formed Hockey India (HI) or the players. With the news floating that the players have not been paid for the last few quarters and dues running for approx INR 5 L per player that is less than INR 1 Cr. On top of that HI is audacious enough to say that “I’m confident that India would be able to put up a better team for the World Cup”. If the HI chief is so confident that there are better players outside the current team then what are they doing?

It’s the management that is putting the national game to shame. With enough money floating with the sponsorship why would you not pay the players!

Plastic Funda

If you have just bought a new car, or seen a new car delivered lately you must have seen how it the seats and various other interior parts come covered in the transparent plastic. Now that is mainly to protect the parts from dust during transportation. I have seen cars as old as 6 years with those plastics still intact and collecting dust, actually they change their color from white to pale yellow but they are still on the car.

Secondly I have noticed people not removing these plastic covers from the seat covers. Note that these are the seat covers put on the seats and the plastic covers on top of that. So you actually have these plastic covers protecting the seat covers which is protecting the seat! How can a person be comfortable sitting on a thin sheet of plastic and the noise it makes while you shift in the seat?

The owners of these cars are more worried about that particular car part than their own health! Are they more concerned about selling the car rather than enjoying it in the way it’s supposed to be… Thinking again.

Bing … bank … Google

Well it’s better than it sounds. Bing or rather Microsft will be paying companies to de-link their content from Google. Check out the FT news feed.

What does it mean. Well it still means free news for all, but a little closer look shows how Microsoft and the news sites can actually make money … yes it’s the same old ads. Currently Google doesn’t pay the news sites for the adds that come up when readers search for a news article and thats revenue for Google. This is what Microsoft is banking on, sharing this revenue with the news sites. So its a win-win for Microsoft as well as the news sites who are still figuring out how to make money from the online news model. This might well be a way they have been looking for.

If this is successful which might be a gain for Microsoft which has 10% share compared to Google’s 65%, but this might increase its share by a little but in this bitter fight even a small gain is a big advantage. Moreover the industry to gain out of this is the online news. If couple of them join the Bing’s wagon there is sure to start a big fight for the news content between the two majors.

CAT goes online …

So was the headlines in some of the newspapers in India. The Common Admission test aka CAT which is the gateway to the admission to the IIMs went online today.

Is the IT infrastructure for these tests capable of handling the loads? Why spread the tests over 10 days and make it a mandate that students can’t discuss the tests till Dec 7th when the final batch takes the test. My take is that CAT decided to spread it over 10 days not because it wanted to make life easier for the students but because it realized that the IT infrastructure that they have is not capable of handling the load. Else why would they penalize the students who share the test details to the tune of 3 years imprisonment and 2 lakh fine ONLY if you share the details before 7th Dec and not after that!

Why did the CAT servers crashed at the very first instance? Why did the IGNOU servers crashed at the first instance? Online is the way to go to bring in more transparency in the system and get the results out faster, like GMAT/ GRE/ TOEFL but is India ready for this? If not then why aren’t we investing enough to make India ready for this?