Business Basics
Company Name
Way2SMS
Way2SMS - Snapshot
Business Basics
Company Name
Way2SMS
Founded in
2006
Headquartered in
Hyderabad
Company website/URL
http://www.way2sms.com
Industry
Telecom/ Mobile
Stage of the company
Scaling up
Source of idea
Systematic search for business opportunity
Awards & honors
-NO-
We believe that meaningful partnerships are the foundation for success. Partnerships enable us to make continuous improvements and offer best of breed solutions to our customers.
We have recently partnered with Phoneytunes, a top player in the telecom VAS segment, for mobile content. Phoneytunes provides us mobile content such as ringtones, wallpapers, videos, games, animations etc.
We have also tied up with Mauj, a telecom solutions company, to strengthen our Bollywood mobile content offerings to our users.
These two partnerships, today, make Way2SMS a one stop shop for any mobile download requirement. Furthermore, through an alliance with US based Gamejump, a leader in mobile gaming and applications, we are able to offer advertisement supported free games to all our users.
This partnership has again proved our commitment towards advertisement funded service to users. Users can download games free of cost from our WAP portal at http://games.way2sms.com.
Business description
Way2SMS.com is India's first portal to offer its users text messaging absolutely free of cost. The text messages are appended with ads which can be geo-targeted. Users get this free text messaging service in exchange for opting in to have targeted ads appended to their message.
Mobile users can register at absolutely no cost with Way2SMS.com, a...> Read more..
Way2SMS.com is India's first portal to offer its users text messaging absolutely free of cost. The text messages are appended with ads which can be geo-targeted. Users get this free text messaging service in exchange for opting in to have targeted ads appended to their message.
Mobile users can register at absolutely no cost with Way2SMS.com, and start sending out text messages to their near and dear ones across the country.
Out of the 160 characters of a standard SMS, Way2SMS offers only 110 characters to the User to send out their personal SMS. The rest of the characters are reserved for geo-targeted advertisement or Mobitisement. The smaller the message that the users send, the larger the ad content that will be pushed with it.
The Way2SMS Dynamic Ad platform allows advertisers to insert ads in 120, 85 and 35 characters depending on the users personal message length.
Although SMS has gained tremendous popularity, its growth has been hampered in countries such as India due to high costs that have to be borne by the mobile user.
Currently India's mobile user base is more than a staggering 29 crores. When it comes to end subscribers, the advertising potential is as huge as the Indian print media. However, Indian advertisers, till recently, did not have the right platform to reach out to this ever growing base of Indian mobile users.
Our pioneering model benefits both users as well as advertisers. Advertisers need not worry about database & spam issues and can reach out to their target audience. Simultaneously, users can communicate more for nothing through ad funded messaging.
This revolutionary effort has already captured the imagination of millions of mobile users across the globe. Currently, Way2SMS has got more than 2 million registered users through word of mouth. Also, it's reaching over 8 million unique mobiles every month.
Our Objective is to reach out to every mobile user at least once in a month, thus creating a strong platform for advertisers for winning mobile advertising proposition.
How does the business make money?
Way2SMS believes that ad supported messaging is the key channel to drive revenues.
Our revenue streams include:
1. Mobitisements (appended advertisements)
2. Online advertising on our portal way2sms.com (CPC/CPM /CPL modes)
3. Banner advertisements on WAP (We work on CPC and CPM basis here)
4. Lead generation through banners/e-mailers
Team information
V. V. Raju, Founder & CEO
Way2SMS was conceptualized by Mr. V. Raju, an MCA from Nagarjuna University, Andhra Pradesh. He founded Way2SMS in 2006, at a time when all computer graduates were making it big in blue chip companies.
Way2SMS, a brainchild of Mr. Raju, has been the huge bridging gap between the mobile user and the marketer, and has revolutionized the concept of 'Mobitisement'.
Team information
V. V. Raju, Founder & CEO
Way2SMS was conceptualized by Mr. V. Raju, an MCA from Nagarjuna University, Andhra Pradesh. He founded Way2SMS in 2006, at a time when all computer graduates were making it big in blue chip companies.
Way2SMS, a brainchild of Mr. Raju, has been the huge bridging gap between the mobile user and the marketer, and has revolutionized the concept of 'Mobitisement'.
Competition
Competitors
160by2.com
How different is your product or service? It has...
No substitutes available
In what way is your product or service different?
In short, we provide the best in class solutions to both mobile users and advertisers.
What differentiates Way2SMS is our Quality and Te...> Read more..
In what way is your product or service different?
In short, we provide the best in class solutions to both mobile users and advertisers.
What differentiates Way2SMS is our Quality and Technology. Our user base is almost twice as compared to our nearest competitor.
We believe that our key differentiators lie in five areas:
1. Young enthusiastic, skilled team: Ours is a young, extremely talented, vibrant team, which is the pillar behind our growth.
2. Leadership in the market: Mobile advertising is still a nascent field all over the world, and advertisers are grappling with various issues, at the same time, trying to figure out that 'winning trend'.
3. Understanding of business & focused approach: We have a clear strategy to focus on our business - both to mobile users and advertisers. Our previous experience in providing enterprise messaging solutions to corporates has enabled us to understand the needs of both these target segments.
4. Technology: We have an excellent product engineering team that has built robust and highly scalable systems to handle huge SMS traffic.
5. Brand Value: We take pride in the fact that we have made our mark in the Indian and global market through our unique and revolutionary offering. Currently, Way2SMS is the only largest platform reaching out to more than 8 million mobiles every month.
6. Viral marketing: Each and every user of Way2SMS acts as a brand ambassador for us. Because of this, we have gained more than 2 million users in 18 months, at a time when companies are investing crores of money to acquire users.
7. Commitment to Quality: The quality of our service and technology practices has catapulted us into the big league in a short span of time.
By The Numbers
2006
2007
No. of employees
6-15
26-50
No. of locations
0-1
0-1
No. of customers
6-15
16-50
Turnover
11-50 lacs
1-5 crore
Profits
losing money
6 to 15 lacs
Primary source of initial funding
Family & friends
Primary source of additional funding
Family & friends
Raised institutional capital?
No
Why is this startup hot?
We have been instrumental in creating a huge market for mobile advertising in India. Our revolutionary concept has made marketers think about mobile users as their target audience. Now, many agencies are setting up dedicated teams to device mobile marketing strategies for their brands.
As the pioneer in the Mobitisement space, we are happy to s...> Read more..
We have been instrumental in creating a huge market for mobile advertising in India. Our revolutionary concept has made marketers think about mobile users as their target audience. Now, many agencies are setting up dedicated teams to device mobile marketing strategies for their brands.
As the pioneer in the Mobitisement space, we are happy to say that we are currently ranked amongst the top 70 most visited portals in India. We are able to generate more than 40 million page views every month. We reach out to more than 8 million unique mobile users every month.
In addition, we have been able to garner more than 2 million registered users in a very short span of 18 months through word of mouth. We are extremely proud to state that our users range across as many as 126 countries.
Currently, Way2SMS has become the largest Mobile advertising platform for Indian marketers.
Per-message carrier fees killing SMS marketing: CTIA panel
By Dan Butcher
April 1, 2009
Time for a new business model for mobile messaging?
LAS VEGAS - The per-message fees that carriers charge mobile marketers are killing the business model for SMS and MMS-based marketing, according to a panel at the CTIA Wireless 2009: Mobile Life conference.
More than 2.6 billion text messages are sent every day in the United States, giving it the largest reach of any mobile channel and making it a powerful enabler to brand recognition and development, with some of the biggest brands in the world having embraced texting as a significant consumer touch point. However, the messaging business model needs serious retooling to make it viable for advertisers and aggregators, according to the panel.
“Messaging is the most ubiquitous form of mobile communication, and there are great new opportunities in the long tail, but the per-message fee obliterates the business model, because that leads to unbounded liability,” said John Styers, panel moderator and president of Moblico LLC. “A new model is required for the industry to take the next step to the new frontier of messaging, and that model cannot include a per-message fee.
“All organizations have to work on flat fees, and the original models were only meant to support the ecosystem for 6 or 9 months,” he said. “The carriers have done little to speed the robust development of the messaging ecosystem in the U.S., and it needs support from the back end.”
Many panelists seconded Mr. Styers’ call for more carrier support—and a different business model.
Limbo delivers more than 20 million messages monthly for clients such as Neste, Purina and P&G
Messaging types include SMS, XHTML, optimized XHTML, iPhone-specific messaging and XMPP. Eric Collins, vice president of Nuance, discussed his company’s voice-to-text and text-to-voice offerings.
Whatever the type, companies have struggled to build a stable business taking advantage of the inventory within the various types of messaging.
“For advertising-supported SMS, the net revenue per message is $0.004, and the carriers dispute this, but that’s the reality of the business,” said David Oberholzer, vice president of Limbo. “The model isn’t completely solid, and it’s unrealistic to think the CPMs we’ll be able to charge will go up dramatically, so it’s unrealistic for carriers trying to impose these types of per-message fees.
HipCricket says it all starts with SMS
“Even relatively small carrier fees will drive out innovation to other platforms, and that’s already happening—look at all the advertising in iPhone apps,” he said. “If carriers raise costs, then that will be exacerbated.”
Panelists seemed eager to reach out to carriers and discuss alternatives to the per-message-fee model.
“We’re having an open dialogue with carriers as to what the model should be,” Mr. Oberholzer said. “We’re looking for a way to grow the pot, such as including demographic and location information so we can charge higher rates and everyone can make more money.
“To grow the platform, everyone involved in the ecosystem has to engage in open dialogue,” he said.
Verizon Wireless has told SMS aggregators it will not impose an additional 3-cent transaction fee for every outbound SMS message sent to its subscriber base.
That charge from the nation's No. 1 wireless carrier would have either doubled or tripled the cost to marketers who send out SMS text messages to opted-in consumers who are subscribers of Verizon Wireless' mobile phone services (see story).
The major media brand on the panel said that it is hard for it to sell SMS advertising because messaging is not plugged into its ad infrastructure, DART.
“SMS advertising is difficult to package and sell if we can’t see what next month’s inventory is,” said Chip Canter, vice president of wireless platform development for NBC Universal. “On the other hand SMS is the easiest to do, everyone’s texting, so it’s a wonderful ways to engage consumers.
“You can say ‘text this to this when you’re out and about’ and have consumers click-to-call, forward messages to friends and family, click to mobile Web, click to download content, but if it’s not part of the infrastructure to sell, and if message fees eat into costs, that’s uncapped liability, meaning we don’t know what the costs are going to be,” he said.
Especially given the state of the economy and the fact that the advertising pie is fixed at the beginning of the year, that is a problem.
NBC has had success building SMS into other campaigns, often encouraging TV viewers to engage with their favorite shows via SMS.
“There are lots of opportunities in messaging, but we’re struggling to find the multimillion dollar way to make messaging in and of itself a business,” Mr. Canter said. “We had to reduce our costs and use text messaging as part of something larger to drive usage of the mobile Web, mobile video and apps.
“There are infrastructure and cost issues, because we don’t want to drive billions of messages and get a billion dollar invoice and $100 in revenue,” he said. “That’s a fundamental issue in terms of investment, because we cannot make that investment if there’s uncapped liability on wholesale pricing.
“The fundamental thing is scale, figuring out how to plug it into our existing mature digital infrastructure, because everything that’s a stand-alone will hang out by itself at the lunch table.”
Other panelists agreed that messaging works best when integrated with other media.
“SMS is great when you weave it in as part of your overall mix, but it’s not incredibly exciting as a stand-alone,” said Eric Harber, president/COO of HipCricket. “The good news is that we are seeing deeper, richer engagements built on the foundation of SMS.”
Mr. Harber said that HipCricket customers from last year, including large brands such as Jameson and Nestle, are increasing their investment this year.
“Mobile is working for them, and there are structural dynamics that need to be worked out, but we’re also getting new customers such as Arby’s, Dr. Pepper and Sunkist, which have moved from the experimentation stage in mobile to make it a part of their overall marketing mix, because they understand the power it can wield for their brand,” Mr. Harber said.
Brands still need to understand how advertising within messaging is purchased, because it is still too hard to buy today. Brands also need to be able to provision short codes quickly and easily, which currently takes months.
Despite these challenges, Mr. Harber believes that mobile will progress faster than the Internet did.
“ROI is super important, and fortunately mobile analytics are able to show and demonstrate ROI—mobile is very measurable,” Mr. Harber said. “If you think of a pyramid, start with a firm foundation, and the bottom foundation layer is SMS, because it has the broadest possible reach and you don’t have to change behavior because they’re already doing it.
“Start with that then layer the mobile Web or WAP on top, which doesn’t have as much reach but has richer engagement, then on the very top rich customized apps,” he said. “It’s important to use all of those together.”
Seeking to tap the potential of the mobile advertising pie, Way2SMS, a Hyderabad-based start up, is increasing its tie-ups with clients to offer services. The company, which offers free SMS to registered users, will also bring ads pertaining to the IPL cricket tournament, said Mr V.V. Raju, CEO. Having invested up to Rs 5 crore in the company launched in 2006-end, Way2SMS has 30 employees and plans to increase it to 60 by the end of 2008. It offers clients new mobile adver tising and branding opportunities, he told newspersons. Quoting industry sources, he said India’s total mobile subscriber base is 237 million. The mobile marketing pie is Rs 25 crore, but growing rapidly. In this encouraging scenario, the company plans to tap the emerging opportunities, Mr Raju said.
The company has been able to register over a million users and sends out over 13 million messages every month. It is working with diversified clients from banking, stock, airline and computer sectors.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
ICWAI Final - Group III
Capital Market Analysis and Corporate Laws
Objective:
· To know application of the various regulations for financial and capital markets
· To understand Companies Act and compliances under the same
· To gain basic knowledge on Corporate Governance Principles and purpose of good corporate governance
A. Capital Market Analysis ( 50 Marks)
1. Introduction of Capital Market & Capital Market Instruments 10%
· Capital Market / Security Market
· Primary Market / New Issues / IPO Market
· Secondary Market / Stock Market / Stock Exchange
· Depositaries
· Private placements of shares / Buy back of shares
· CAPM vs Market Model
· Issue mechanism
· Forward Contract and future contracts
· Clearing mechanism
2. Capital & Financial Market Regulation 10%
· Financial System and Capital Market Instruments,
· SEBI – Regulation of Market and Control,
· Collective Investment Schemes, Depositories, Dematerialization of Securities,
· Regulation of banking & finance companies – role of Reserve Bank of India and Banking Ombudsmen; Regulation of Insurance sector by Insurance Regulation and Development Authority (IRDA),
· Cyber Law and regulation of e-commerce and electronic financial transactions,
· Contemporary issues and Development
3. Capital Market Analysis 30%
· Stock market efficiency;
· Risk and Return;
· Investment Analysis;
· Cost of Finance And Financing Structures;
· Capital Asset Pricing Model;
· Products on Stock Exchanges: Equity / Stock Markets, Basket Trading, Derivatives, Debt Markets- Retail and Wholesale, Interest Rate Futures, Exchange Traded Funds, Mutual Funds (Close Ended).
· Risk Management System: Capital Adequacy Requirements, Intra day Trading limits, Gross Exposure Limit, Margining Procedure.
· Derivatives Markets: Introduction to Options and Futures, Explanation of Market Terminologies, Pay-off Structure, Basic Trading Strategies, Weekly Options.
· Debt Markets: Debt Products traded in Stock Exchanges, Wholesale Debt Markets, and Retail Debt Markets.
· Commodity Market & Trading Corporate Actions: Bonus, Rights, Dividend, Buy Back etc., Regulations to be followed by the Corporates, Impact on the Shareholders.
· Portfolio Management
Ø Basic Principle, Functions and Activities
Ø Factors effecting investment decision in portfolio management
Ø Investment strategy
Ø Portfolio theory
Ø Use of matrix approach in investment decisions
· Mutual Funds
Ø Role of Mutual Fund in financial market
Ø Advantage of investment in mutual fund
Ø Regulations and operations
Ø Investors right and obligation
B. Corporate Law & Corporate Governance ( 50 Marks)
4. Corporate functionalism in the context of Companies Act & Corporate Laws 30%
· Introduction, Incorporation and its Consequences,
· Financial Structure and Membership,
· Management and Control of Companies,
· Inter-corporate loans, Investments, Guarantees and Security,
· Maintenance of Statutory Books/Registers and Filing of Returns,
· Winding-up,
· Joint Ventures,
· Corporate Accountability,
· Competition Act and Competition Commission,
· Information Act and its corporate implication, Emerging Issues and Concepts
· Merger and Acquisition
Ø Reason for merger acquisition
Ø Objective of acquisition
Ø Gain from merger
Ø Problem of merger and acquisition
Ø Issues related to Companies Act 1956, Industrial(Development & Regulation) Act, Sick Industrial
(Special Provision) Act, Income Tax Act, SEBI Regulations
Ø Function of Court
Ø Reconstruction
Ø De-merger or division
5. Corporate Governance 20%
· Genesis, Narasimhan Committee and other Committee Recommendations on Corporate Governance,
· Effective Board of Directors and its role,
· Independent Directors and Audit Committee, Remuneration Committee, Nomination Committee;
· Evaluation of effectiveness of Internal Control-Management Accounting applications and Directors’ Responsibility Statement;
· Going Concern status-financial and other indicators, role of management audit, evaluation of going concern uncertainties;
· Related party transactions and disclosures;
· Project management audit and corporate governance;
· Relevance of Risk Evaluation and Risk management;
· Evaluation of key financial decisions and disclosures;
· Management Audit for investors’ protection in the context of Corporate Governance,
· Corporate Governance Norms as prescribed by SEBI,
Financial Management and International Finance
Objectives:
· Understand the scope, goals and objectives of Financial Management
· To provide expert knowledge on concepts, methods and procedures involved in using Financial Management for managerial decision-making
· To gain knowledge of international monetary and financial system
1. Overview of Financial Management 10 %
· Finance and Related Disciplines
· Scope of Financial Management,
· Planning environment
· Key decisions of Financial Management
· Emerging role of finance managers in India
· Earnings distributions policy
· Compliance of regulatory requirements in formulation of financial strategies
· Sources of finance – long term, short term and international
· Exchange rate – risk agencies involved and procedures followed in international financial operations
2. Financial Management Decisions 15 %
· Capital structure theories and planning
· Cost of capital
· Designing Capital Structure
· Capital budgeting
· Lease financing
· Working capital management
· Financial services
· Dividend and retention policies
· Criteria for selecting sources of finance, including finance for international investments
· Effect of financing decisions on Balance Sheet and Ratios
· Financial management in public sector
· Role of Treasury function in terms of setting corporate objectives, funds management – national and international
· Contemporary developments – WTO, GATT, Corporate Governance, TRIPS, TRIMS, SEBI regulations as amended from time to time
3. Financial analysis & planning 10%
· Funds flow and cash flow analysis
· Financial ratio analysis -Ratios in the areas of performance, profitability, financial adaptability, liquidity, activity, shareholder investment and financing, and their interpretation.
· Limitations of ratio analysis
· Identification of information required to assess financial performance
· Effect of short-term debt on the measurement of gearing.
4. Operating and financial leverages 5%
· Analysis of operating and financial leverages
· Concept and nature of leverages operating risk and financial risk and combined leverage
· Operating leverage and Cost volume Profit analysis – Earning Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) and Earning Per Share (EPS), indifference point.
5. Financial Strategy 15 %
· Financial and Non-Financial objective of different organizations
· Impact on Investment, finance and dividend decisions
· Sources and benefits of international financing
· Alternative Financing strategy in the context of regulatory requirements
· Modeling and forecasting cash flows and financial statements based on expected values for variables – economic and business
· Sensitivity analysis for changes in expected values in the models and forecasts
· Emerging trends in financial reporting
6. Investment Decisions 15 %
· Costs, Benefits and Risks analysis for projects
· Linking investment with customer’s requirements
· Designing Capital Structure
· The impact of taxation, potential changes in economic factors and potential restrictions on remittance on these calculations
· Capital investment real options
· Venture Capital financing
· Hybrid financing / Instruments
7. Project Management 10%
· Project Identification and Formulation
· Identification of Project opportunities
· Project Selection Consideration and Feasibility Studies
· Project appraisal & Cost Benefit analysis
· Source of Project Finance & Foreign Collaboration
8. International Finance 10%
· Minimization of risk,
· Diversification of risk
· Forward and futures,
· Forward rate agreements
· Interest rate swaps
· Caps, floors and collars
· Parity theorems
· FDI
· Money market hedge
· Options.
9. Sources of International Finance 5%
· Rising funds in foreign markets and investments in foreign projects
· Forward rate agreements and interest rate guarantees
· Transaction, translation and economic risk, Interest rate parity, purchasing power parity and the Fisher effects
· Foreign Direct Investment
10. International Monetary and Financial System 5%
· Understanding the International Monetary System
· Export and Import Practices
· International Financial Management: Important issues and features, International Capital Market
· International Financial Services and Insurance: Important issues and features
Management Accounting - Strategic Management
Objective:
· To understand the importance of strategic and risk management and apply tools for strategic analysis appropriately
· To develop the ability to understand the risks both internal and external and build capabilities to mange risks
A. Strategic Management 60%
1. Introduction to Business Strategy 10%
· Meaning and implications of corporate planning, long range planning, business policy planning and strategic planning; strategic management processes; meaning and use of mission, goals, objectives and targets, profit gap, sales gap, risk gap and other strategies;
· SWOT analysis; target selling strategy formulation and implementation, monitoring mechanism, strategies for stagnation versus growth, strategies for growth through expansion versus diversification & diversification vs core competency.
· Acquisition and merger strategy, strategy of joint venture both in India and abroad.
· Marketing strategy as a part of corporate strategy, growth under inflation and protection of shareholder, real capital.
· Financial objectives, non- financial objectives, resources analysis and evaluation.
2. Forecasting and planning for strategy 10%
· Forecast trend and changes – social, political, legal and technological impacts.
· Distribution channels and competitive forces. Government policies, economic growth and government expenditure.
· Public and private sector investments,
· International trade practices and government policies for capacity expansion, new industries, subsidiaries and substitutes
3. Model Building and models 10%
· Strategies in the development of models, Delphi Model, econometric, mathematical programming, budgetary and heuristic model.
· Sensitivity analysis and the characteristics of models.
· Limitations in model building vis- a-vis simulation techniques.
· Life cycles, Porters generic strategic, Ausoj’s model, BCG matrix and other models
4. Marketing strategy 10%
· Production orientation versus market orientation, marketing objectives, framework and management of marketing mix.
· Linkage between strategic planning and marketing strategy-both forward and backward.
· Research and intelligence- source for the techniques for acquiring information necessary for marketing decision-making market shares.
5. Application of management accounting in strategic management 20%
· Marketing strategy: analysis of marketing costs and profitability, product development policy & strategy, pricing policies and strategies, budgetary control in marketing, evaluation and control of sales activities;
· Operations Management Strategy: process, technology and logistic strategies, inventory policies and strategies, Human Resource Management policies and strategies,
· Financial Strategies and Strategic Total Cost Management
B. Risk Management 40%
6. Risk Measurement and Management 15%
· Introduction, Risk and Risk Management,
· Objectives of Risk Management,
· Risk Measurement and Pooling, Total Loss Distribution,
· Pooling and Diversification,
· Ruin Probability
7. Risk insurance: 10%
· Insurability of Risk and Insurance Contracts,
· Insurance Pricing, Analysis Tools, Demand for Risk Management (Utility Theory),
· Legal Liability, Corporate Liability, Liability Issues,
· Insurance case study: Auto Insurance (or such other insurance industry segment as may be notified )
· Commercial Insurance.
8. Corporate risk management: 15%
· Risk Management and Shareholders,
· Risk Retention/Reduction,
· Financial Risk Management,
· Futures and Options,
· Asset / Liability Management,
Project risk management, Enterprise Risk Management
Indirect and Direct Tax Management
Central Excise
Customs
Service Tax
Export Promotion Schemes, Foreign Trade Policy, EOU, SEZ.
Central Sales Tax/ VAT Act
Income Tax including Fringe Benefit Tax.
Wealth Tax
Case Studies under Direct and Indirect Taxes.
Capital Market Analysis and Corporate Laws
Objective:
· To know application of the various regulations for financial and capital markets
· To understand Companies Act and compliances under the same
· To gain basic knowledge on Corporate Governance Principles and purpose of good corporate governance
A. Capital Market Analysis ( 50 Marks)
1. Introduction of Capital Market & Capital Market Instruments 10%
· Capital Market / Security Market
· Primary Market / New Issues / IPO Market
· Secondary Market / Stock Market / Stock Exchange
· Depositaries
· Private placements of shares / Buy back of shares
· CAPM vs Market Model
· Issue mechanism
· Forward Contract and future contracts
· Clearing mechanism
2. Capital & Financial Market Regulation 10%
· Financial System and Capital Market Instruments,
· SEBI – Regulation of Market and Control,
· Collective Investment Schemes, Depositories, Dematerialization of Securities,
· Regulation of banking & finance companies – role of Reserve Bank of India and Banking Ombudsmen; Regulation of Insurance sector by Insurance Regulation and Development Authority (IRDA),
· Cyber Law and regulation of e-commerce and electronic financial transactions,
· Contemporary issues and Development
3. Capital Market Analysis 30%
· Stock market efficiency;
· Risk and Return;
· Investment Analysis;
· Cost of Finance And Financing Structures;
· Capital Asset Pricing Model;
· Products on Stock Exchanges: Equity / Stock Markets, Basket Trading, Derivatives, Debt Markets- Retail and Wholesale, Interest Rate Futures, Exchange Traded Funds, Mutual Funds (Close Ended).
· Risk Management System: Capital Adequacy Requirements, Intra day Trading limits, Gross Exposure Limit, Margining Procedure.
· Derivatives Markets: Introduction to Options and Futures, Explanation of Market Terminologies, Pay-off Structure, Basic Trading Strategies, Weekly Options.
· Debt Markets: Debt Products traded in Stock Exchanges, Wholesale Debt Markets, and Retail Debt Markets.
· Commodity Market & Trading Corporate Actions: Bonus, Rights, Dividend, Buy Back etc., Regulations to be followed by the Corporates, Impact on the Shareholders.
· Portfolio Management
Ø Basic Principle, Functions and Activities
Ø Factors effecting investment decision in portfolio management
Ø Investment strategy
Ø Portfolio theory
Ø Use of matrix approach in investment decisions
· Mutual Funds
Ø Role of Mutual Fund in financial market
Ø Advantage of investment in mutual fund
Ø Regulations and operations
Ø Investors right and obligation
B. Corporate Law & Corporate Governance ( 50 Marks)
4. Corporate functionalism in the context of Companies Act & Corporate Laws 30%
· Introduction, Incorporation and its Consequences,
· Financial Structure and Membership,
· Management and Control of Companies,
· Inter-corporate loans, Investments, Guarantees and Security,
· Maintenance of Statutory Books/Registers and Filing of Returns,
· Winding-up,
· Joint Ventures,
· Corporate Accountability,
· Competition Act and Competition Commission,
· Information Act and its corporate implication, Emerging Issues and Concepts
· Merger and Acquisition
Ø Reason for merger acquisition
Ø Objective of acquisition
Ø Gain from merger
Ø Problem of merger and acquisition
Ø Issues related to Companies Act 1956, Industrial(Development & Regulation) Act, Sick Industrial
(Special Provision) Act, Income Tax Act, SEBI Regulations
Ø Function of Court
Ø Reconstruction
Ø De-merger or division
5. Corporate Governance 20%
· Genesis, Narasimhan Committee and other Committee Recommendations on Corporate Governance,
· Effective Board of Directors and its role,
· Independent Directors and Audit Committee, Remuneration Committee, Nomination Committee;
· Evaluation of effectiveness of Internal Control-Management Accounting applications and Directors’ Responsibility Statement;
· Going Concern status-financial and other indicators, role of management audit, evaluation of going concern uncertainties;
· Related party transactions and disclosures;
· Project management audit and corporate governance;
· Relevance of Risk Evaluation and Risk management;
· Evaluation of key financial decisions and disclosures;
· Management Audit for investors’ protection in the context of Corporate Governance,
· Corporate Governance Norms as prescribed by SEBI,
Financial Management and International Finance
Objectives:
· Understand the scope, goals and objectives of Financial Management
· To provide expert knowledge on concepts, methods and procedures involved in using Financial Management for managerial decision-making
· To gain knowledge of international monetary and financial system
1. Overview of Financial Management 10 %
· Finance and Related Disciplines
· Scope of Financial Management,
· Planning environment
· Key decisions of Financial Management
· Emerging role of finance managers in India
· Earnings distributions policy
· Compliance of regulatory requirements in formulation of financial strategies
· Sources of finance – long term, short term and international
· Exchange rate – risk agencies involved and procedures followed in international financial operations
2. Financial Management Decisions 15 %
· Capital structure theories and planning
· Cost of capital
· Designing Capital Structure
· Capital budgeting
· Lease financing
· Working capital management
· Financial services
· Dividend and retention policies
· Criteria for selecting sources of finance, including finance for international investments
· Effect of financing decisions on Balance Sheet and Ratios
· Financial management in public sector
· Role of Treasury function in terms of setting corporate objectives, funds management – national and international
· Contemporary developments – WTO, GATT, Corporate Governance, TRIPS, TRIMS, SEBI regulations as amended from time to time
3. Financial analysis & planning 10%
· Funds flow and cash flow analysis
· Financial ratio analysis -Ratios in the areas of performance, profitability, financial adaptability, liquidity, activity, shareholder investment and financing, and their interpretation.
· Limitations of ratio analysis
· Identification of information required to assess financial performance
· Effect of short-term debt on the measurement of gearing.
4. Operating and financial leverages 5%
· Analysis of operating and financial leverages
· Concept and nature of leverages operating risk and financial risk and combined leverage
· Operating leverage and Cost volume Profit analysis – Earning Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) and Earning Per Share (EPS), indifference point.
5. Financial Strategy 15 %
· Financial and Non-Financial objective of different organizations
· Impact on Investment, finance and dividend decisions
· Sources and benefits of international financing
· Alternative Financing strategy in the context of regulatory requirements
· Modeling and forecasting cash flows and financial statements based on expected values for variables – economic and business
· Sensitivity analysis for changes in expected values in the models and forecasts
· Emerging trends in financial reporting
6. Investment Decisions 15 %
· Costs, Benefits and Risks analysis for projects
· Linking investment with customer’s requirements
· Designing Capital Structure
· The impact of taxation, potential changes in economic factors and potential restrictions on remittance on these calculations
· Capital investment real options
· Venture Capital financing
· Hybrid financing / Instruments
7. Project Management 10%
· Project Identification and Formulation
· Identification of Project opportunities
· Project Selection Consideration and Feasibility Studies
· Project appraisal & Cost Benefit analysis
· Source of Project Finance & Foreign Collaboration
8. International Finance 10%
· Minimization of risk,
· Diversification of risk
· Forward and futures,
· Forward rate agreements
· Interest rate swaps
· Caps, floors and collars
· Parity theorems
· FDI
· Money market hedge
· Options.
9. Sources of International Finance 5%
· Rising funds in foreign markets and investments in foreign projects
· Forward rate agreements and interest rate guarantees
· Transaction, translation and economic risk, Interest rate parity, purchasing power parity and the Fisher effects
· Foreign Direct Investment
10. International Monetary and Financial System 5%
· Understanding the International Monetary System
· Export and Import Practices
· International Financial Management: Important issues and features, International Capital Market
· International Financial Services and Insurance: Important issues and features
Management Accounting - Strategic Management
Objective:
· To understand the importance of strategic and risk management and apply tools for strategic analysis appropriately
· To develop the ability to understand the risks both internal and external and build capabilities to mange risks
A. Strategic Management 60%
1. Introduction to Business Strategy 10%
· Meaning and implications of corporate planning, long range planning, business policy planning and strategic planning; strategic management processes; meaning and use of mission, goals, objectives and targets, profit gap, sales gap, risk gap and other strategies;
· SWOT analysis; target selling strategy formulation and implementation, monitoring mechanism, strategies for stagnation versus growth, strategies for growth through expansion versus diversification & diversification vs core competency.
· Acquisition and merger strategy, strategy of joint venture both in India and abroad.
· Marketing strategy as a part of corporate strategy, growth under inflation and protection of shareholder, real capital.
· Financial objectives, non- financial objectives, resources analysis and evaluation.
2. Forecasting and planning for strategy 10%
· Forecast trend and changes – social, political, legal and technological impacts.
· Distribution channels and competitive forces. Government policies, economic growth and government expenditure.
· Public and private sector investments,
· International trade practices and government policies for capacity expansion, new industries, subsidiaries and substitutes
3. Model Building and models 10%
· Strategies in the development of models, Delphi Model, econometric, mathematical programming, budgetary and heuristic model.
· Sensitivity analysis and the characteristics of models.
· Limitations in model building vis- a-vis simulation techniques.
· Life cycles, Porters generic strategic, Ausoj’s model, BCG matrix and other models
4. Marketing strategy 10%
· Production orientation versus market orientation, marketing objectives, framework and management of marketing mix.
· Linkage between strategic planning and marketing strategy-both forward and backward.
· Research and intelligence- source for the techniques for acquiring information necessary for marketing decision-making market shares.
5. Application of management accounting in strategic management 20%
· Marketing strategy: analysis of marketing costs and profitability, product development policy & strategy, pricing policies and strategies, budgetary control in marketing, evaluation and control of sales activities;
· Operations Management Strategy: process, technology and logistic strategies, inventory policies and strategies, Human Resource Management policies and strategies,
· Financial Strategies and Strategic Total Cost Management
B. Risk Management 40%
6. Risk Measurement and Management 15%
· Introduction, Risk and Risk Management,
· Objectives of Risk Management,
· Risk Measurement and Pooling, Total Loss Distribution,
· Pooling and Diversification,
· Ruin Probability
7. Risk insurance: 10%
· Insurability of Risk and Insurance Contracts,
· Insurance Pricing, Analysis Tools, Demand for Risk Management (Utility Theory),
· Legal Liability, Corporate Liability, Liability Issues,
· Insurance case study: Auto Insurance (or such other insurance industry segment as may be notified )
· Commercial Insurance.
8. Corporate risk management: 15%
· Risk Management and Shareholders,
· Risk Retention/Reduction,
· Financial Risk Management,
· Futures and Options,
· Asset / Liability Management,
Project risk management, Enterprise Risk Management
Indirect and Direct Tax Management
Central Excise
Customs
Service Tax
Export Promotion Schemes, Foreign Trade Policy, EOU, SEZ.
Central Sales Tax/ VAT Act
Income Tax including Fringe Benefit Tax.
Wealth Tax
Case Studies under Direct and Indirect Taxes.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
How to Create a Successful Web Site For Nothing (or Almost Nothing)
Have you got eight hours and $10? Then you can build a Web site for your business.
Thanks to competition among Web-hosting providers, and the falling costs of Web storage, it's never been easier to get a Web site up and running -- from buying the domain name to building a site to setting up a payment system to tracking traffic.
But many small businesses still seem intimidated by the job. In a survey published last year, JupiterResearch LLC found that just 36% of online small businesses -- that is, businesses with fewer than 100 employees, where managers access the Web at least once a month -- have Web sites.
So, here's a guide for owners looking to make the leap online. We'll lay out all the steps you need to take to build your site, and present some expert opinion about getting it noticed and keeping track of customers -- all with no technical background required.
1. BUY A WEB ADDRESS
First, you have to buy a domain name -- e.g., YourCompany.com -- for about $10 a year. As an example, we'll show how to buy a domain using the registrar Go Daddy Group Inc., but you can shop around at others, such as Tucows Inc. and Register.com Inc.
Type the domain name you want in the search box at GoDaddy.com. If it's taken, try another. When you've settled on one, scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Proceed to Checkout." Ignore the offers for additional products and services, continue to the checkout page, enter your payment information and hit "Checkout Now."
You're now the owner of a Web address.
2. FIND A HOME
For years, companies have charged small businesses a fee to "host" sites -- store the sites' content on their computers. According to a recent survey from Jupiter, about a third of small-business executives say they pay up to $1,000 a year for Web hosting, and about another third pay more than $1,000.
Fortunately, in the past year, a number of companies have begun providing hosting services free of charge. They often make money by charging for premium services or running ads on your Web pages.
All you need to do is visit the Web site for one of these hosting services -- such as Microsoft Corp.'s Office Live Small Business, Weebly Inc. or SynthaSite Inc. -- and enter a user name, a password and some other details. Then visit your domain-name registrar and tweak your settings so that your Web address points to the service you've chosen. The hosting service will give you instructions on how to do this.
3. BUILD YOUR SITE
Once you've got a host, you'll want to design your site. The good news: Most of the free hosting services provide tools that let you build a site quickly, without lots of technical know-how.
Among the things you'll need: a welcoming home page; an "About" page that describes you and your business; and a "Contact" page that tells people where you're located and how to reach you. The rest depends on your business. If you own a restaurant, you might include a "Menu" page. If you're selling a product, you might include a "Store" page where people can buy your wares.
Adding those things can be simple. In Weebly, for instance, click on the "Pages" tab, then choose "New Page." In Office Live, click "Web pages" in the top left-hand corner of the editor and choose "New page." In SynthaSite, click "New Page" at the top of the editor.
In each case, doing so calls up a blank page template, like opening a new document in Microsoft Word. Once you've created a page, you usually can add content simply by typing the text you want into the template and dragging and dropping graphics.
There are some downsides to these free hosting services. Each offers several dozen design templates, but you could still end up with a site that looks pretty generic, unless you have Web-design skills or hire someone who does. What's more, most of these services don't offer an easy, one-click way to add flourishes such as shopping carts or more than two columns on a page; that, too, takes some know-how. Mostly, you just arrange pictures, text and other elements, and that's it. And, sometimes, even doing that can be tricky for nontechies.
There's one more free and easy way to improve the design of your site -- using HTML programming code. Fortunately, you don't need to have programming skills to use HTML. All you need to know is that a block of HTML -- essentially, a bunch of gobbledygook words and symbols -- can add extra features to your site. And numerous third-party sites offer handy HTML blocks you can plug into your site, as easily as copying and pasting text in Microsoft Word.
Ali Shapiro, a health counselor in Philadelphia, recently found one such program -- an appointments calendar -- at Scheduly Ltd.'s site. She copied a snippet of HTML from Scheduly and pasted it into the "Contact" page at her own site, PyourNutrition.com. The result: Visitors to Ms. Shapiro's site can see a calendar with her free time slots and sign up for appointments over the Web.
4. GET PAID
Probably the easiest way to let customers pay you online is to let somebody else handle the technical work. One popular option is PayPal, from eBay Inc. The service lets people pay you by clicking a button on your Web site, which takes them to a PayPal page where they can enter payment information. You don't have to do any work to process the transaction.
The basic service is free, but you have to pay a fee each time someone pays you: 30 cents, plus 1.9% to 2.9% of the transaction. This basic service isn't fancy -- if you want to build a full-blown retail site, you'll probably want to buy special e-commerce software -- but to offer a basic payment option on your site, it's enough.
To set up an account, click on the "Business" tab at PayPal.com and follow the instructions. Once you've done this, click on the "Merchant Services" tab. Then, choose "Website Payments Standard," from the left-hand column.
You'll see three orange buttons you can place on your site: "Buy Now," "Add to Cart" and "Donate." If your customers are likely to purchase one item at a time -- say, a yoga lesson or a day-care session -- click on the link under the "Buy Now" button, which will send them directly to a page where they can pay for the item. If your customers might want to browse around your site for different types of items before paying, choose the "Add to Cart" button, which lets buyers fill a shopping cart with several items before checking out. The "Donate" option is mostly for people who aren't selling anything, like bloggers soliciting donations.
You can then follow the instructions to create a button for each item you want to sell. PayPal will give you some HTML that you can paste into your Web site to add the buttons. You should put these buttons on your "Store" page, next to a picture and description of each item.
The service has been a boon for Graydon Blair of Syracuse, Utah, who sells biodiesel supplies at UtahBiodieselSupply.com. When he started his company, MGBJ Enterprises LLC, he looked for software to add a shopping cart to his site. "All of them wanted me to pay them lots of money, and I thought their stupid shopping carts didn't look nice," he says. So, "I built my little Web site, and threw some PayPal buttons on there."
Visitors to his Web site can use a "Click here to purchase" button to add an item to their shopping cart and buy it via PayPal. Payments get sent directly to Mr. Graydon's PayPal account, minus the PayPal fee. He says he now does 100 to 150 PayPal transactions a week. He brought in $750,000 in revenue last year and is on track for more than $1 million this year.
5. GET SPONSORS
It's easy to add advertisements to your Web site to make extra cash. Every time someone clicks on an ad on your page, you get paid a small amount, which varies depending on the particulars of the ad.
One of the most popular services is Google Inc.'s AdSense. Advertisers pay Google to place ads on Web sites throughout the Internet; site owners, meanwhile, can sign up at Google.com/adsense to host those ads on their pages.
You've probably seen the ads, which often appear as blocks of text along the right-hand column of a Web site. Google scans the content of participating sites to decide which ads would work best on the pages. For instance, an ad for used cars might appear on a site with car reviews.
But you need to ask: Will ads actually improve your site? Showing the wrong ads -- or, sometimes, any ads at all -- could turn off potential customers. If you run a funeral parlor, for instance, ads could come across as distasteful. Also, you'll probably need a lot of traffic to make significant money from the ads, since you typically get just a few cents when someone clicks.
For Tim Carter, ads made a lot of sense. Mr. Carter, a former carpenter, wrote a home-improvement column running in papers across the U.S. The only problem: Publishers were paying him a pittance.
In 2004, Mr. Carter figured out how to make serious money from his work -- by tapping into AdSense. He had been posting his work on his own site, AskTheBuilder.com, for nearly a decade. Google scans his site -- which has separate pages for topics like cabinets, fences and mold -- and places appropriate ads on each page, such as pitches for kitchen cabinets and mold removal.
He has since branched out by selling other types of ads. Taken together, his ads bring in close to $2,000 a day, based on daily traffic of about 40,000 visitors. He has also branched out by hawking his own products, like a stain-removal bleach. In total, his site brought in more than $1 million in revenue last year.
"I'll tell people in my columns, 'Look, this is what you need to do.' But they're still going to need the products to do it -- and that's what they see in those ads," Mr. Carter says.
6. GET KNOWN
So, you've got your site up and running. Next, you'll want to be sure people can find it.
We asked two experts, Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay Inc. and Alan Rabinowitz of SEO Image Inc., to reveal some tricks about search-engine optimization -- moving your site to the top of search-engine results.
Start with your site itself. You should use language on the site that is associated with the business. Let's say you're a florist. Most likely, you'll show up prominently in search results if people search for the exact name of your business. But the trick is to show up when people search for complicated terms related to your business, like "wedding flower arrangements." That's because you want to attract people who might not know about your business but are looking for something that you provide.
Mr. Clay offers two shorthand ways to do this. First, ask your employees to send you a couple of words or phrases that describe what your company does and incorporate that language into your site. Second, do a Web search for terms related to your business and look at the language used in the top search results. For instance, a search for "cowboy boots" turns up several Web sites that also use the phrase "Western wear." The fact that those sites turn up so high in search results means that they're doing something right. So, if you sell cowboy boots, you should also refer to Western wear on your site to draw additional traffic.
You should also make sure to include those phrases in your page titles -- the headings that appear in the blue bar at the top of a browser window -- since search engines pay particular attention to these. (How do you change the title bar? In Weebly, click the "Settings" tab and type in the "Site Title" field. In Office Live, click the "Page Editor" tab, then click "Page Properties" and type in the "Page title" field for each page. In SynthaSite, click the "Properties" tab and type in the "Window Title" field.)
If you primarily do business locally, there are other ways to get noticed. Start by trying this exercise: Type "Seattle spas" in Google and pay attention to the results. At the top of the page, you'll see several spa listings, with phone numbers, reviews and Web-site links, next to a map showing each spa's location.
Below that, you'll see traditional search results, but many of the links won't send you to a specific spa's Web site. Instead, they'll send you to a news or review site, like Citysearch or Yelp, that talks about area spas.
So, it's important to get into the listings at the top of the page, next to the map, as well as into the news and review sites. To do that, first register your business with Google's Local Business Center (Google.com/local/add). By entering some details, like your business's address and phone number, you can automatically be listed in Google's local results at the top of the page.
Next, the news and review sites. Say you're a spa owner in Seattle: Click on the Citysearch page that comes up in a search for "Seattle spas" and find contact information for a Citysearch editor who might want to include your spa in the site's list.
Also click on the links for review sites like Yelp, which solicit reviews from businesses' customers and often give businesses a way to list themselves. Don't review your own business on these sites (it's usually against the rules), but you can encourage your customers to post reviews, as long as you don't bribe them with freebies (also usually against the rules).
7. TRACK YOUR TRAFFIC
A bunch of companies offer free tools to help you track who visits your Web site, how they find it and what they do once they're there. This can help you tweak your Web site to attract more potential customers.
The best-known provider of tools is Google; you can find its offerings at Google Webmaster Central (Google.com/webmasters). We'll focus on one of the programs: Google Webmaster Tools (Google.com/webmasters/tools).
To set this up, follow Google's instructions for uploading a file to your Web site so that Google can track it. Once you've done this, look at a few areas on the Google Webmaster page.
In the "Statistics" area, click on "Top search queries." This shows you two things: the search queries for which your Web site turned up, and the queries from which people actually visited your Web site. If a search term appears in the first list but not in the second, it means your Web site is showing up in search results for that term, but people aren't clicking on it.
To improve your site's performance for that term, you should tailor the language in your Web site. Say your Web site shows up in searches for "experienced Seattle therapists," but nobody is clicking on it; that suggests that you might want to describe your level of experience on your site to improve your performance.
You can find another handy feature of Webmaster Tools in the "Links" area. Click on "Pages with external links" to see a list of other sites that include links to your site. This can give an insight into how others view your site. For instance, if you run a bar and see that a local hotel links to it from its own Web site, you can guess that the hotel is recommending your bar to its customers. So, you might offer special discounts to that hotel's visitors.
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121803326363016929.html
Have you got eight hours and $10? Then you can build a Web site for your business.
Thanks to competition among Web-hosting providers, and the falling costs of Web storage, it's never been easier to get a Web site up and running -- from buying the domain name to building a site to setting up a payment system to tracking traffic.
But many small businesses still seem intimidated by the job. In a survey published last year, JupiterResearch LLC found that just 36% of online small businesses -- that is, businesses with fewer than 100 employees, where managers access the Web at least once a month -- have Web sites.
So, here's a guide for owners looking to make the leap online. We'll lay out all the steps you need to take to build your site, and present some expert opinion about getting it noticed and keeping track of customers -- all with no technical background required.
1. BUY A WEB ADDRESS
First, you have to buy a domain name -- e.g., YourCompany.com -- for about $10 a year. As an example, we'll show how to buy a domain using the registrar Go Daddy Group Inc., but you can shop around at others, such as Tucows Inc. and Register.com Inc.
Type the domain name you want in the search box at GoDaddy.com. If it's taken, try another. When you've settled on one, scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Proceed to Checkout." Ignore the offers for additional products and services, continue to the checkout page, enter your payment information and hit "Checkout Now."
You're now the owner of a Web address.
2. FIND A HOME
For years, companies have charged small businesses a fee to "host" sites -- store the sites' content on their computers. According to a recent survey from Jupiter, about a third of small-business executives say they pay up to $1,000 a year for Web hosting, and about another third pay more than $1,000.
Fortunately, in the past year, a number of companies have begun providing hosting services free of charge. They often make money by charging for premium services or running ads on your Web pages.
All you need to do is visit the Web site for one of these hosting services -- such as Microsoft Corp.'s Office Live Small Business, Weebly Inc. or SynthaSite Inc. -- and enter a user name, a password and some other details. Then visit your domain-name registrar and tweak your settings so that your Web address points to the service you've chosen. The hosting service will give you instructions on how to do this.
3. BUILD YOUR SITE
Once you've got a host, you'll want to design your site. The good news: Most of the free hosting services provide tools that let you build a site quickly, without lots of technical know-how.
Among the things you'll need: a welcoming home page; an "About" page that describes you and your business; and a "Contact" page that tells people where you're located and how to reach you. The rest depends on your business. If you own a restaurant, you might include a "Menu" page. If you're selling a product, you might include a "Store" page where people can buy your wares.
Adding those things can be simple. In Weebly, for instance, click on the "Pages" tab, then choose "New Page." In Office Live, click "Web pages" in the top left-hand corner of the editor and choose "New page." In SynthaSite, click "New Page" at the top of the editor.
In each case, doing so calls up a blank page template, like opening a new document in Microsoft Word. Once you've created a page, you usually can add content simply by typing the text you want into the template and dragging and dropping graphics.
There are some downsides to these free hosting services. Each offers several dozen design templates, but you could still end up with a site that looks pretty generic, unless you have Web-design skills or hire someone who does. What's more, most of these services don't offer an easy, one-click way to add flourishes such as shopping carts or more than two columns on a page; that, too, takes some know-how. Mostly, you just arrange pictures, text and other elements, and that's it. And, sometimes, even doing that can be tricky for nontechies.
There's one more free and easy way to improve the design of your site -- using HTML programming code. Fortunately, you don't need to have programming skills to use HTML. All you need to know is that a block of HTML -- essentially, a bunch of gobbledygook words and symbols -- can add extra features to your site. And numerous third-party sites offer handy HTML blocks you can plug into your site, as easily as copying and pasting text in Microsoft Word.
Ali Shapiro, a health counselor in Philadelphia, recently found one such program -- an appointments calendar -- at Scheduly Ltd.'s site. She copied a snippet of HTML from Scheduly and pasted it into the "Contact" page at her own site, PyourNutrition.com. The result: Visitors to Ms. Shapiro's site can see a calendar with her free time slots and sign up for appointments over the Web.
4. GET PAID
Probably the easiest way to let customers pay you online is to let somebody else handle the technical work. One popular option is PayPal, from eBay Inc. The service lets people pay you by clicking a button on your Web site, which takes them to a PayPal page where they can enter payment information. You don't have to do any work to process the transaction.
The basic service is free, but you have to pay a fee each time someone pays you: 30 cents, plus 1.9% to 2.9% of the transaction. This basic service isn't fancy -- if you want to build a full-blown retail site, you'll probably want to buy special e-commerce software -- but to offer a basic payment option on your site, it's enough.
To set up an account, click on the "Business" tab at PayPal.com and follow the instructions. Once you've done this, click on the "Merchant Services" tab. Then, choose "Website Payments Standard," from the left-hand column.
You'll see three orange buttons you can place on your site: "Buy Now," "Add to Cart" and "Donate." If your customers are likely to purchase one item at a time -- say, a yoga lesson or a day-care session -- click on the link under the "Buy Now" button, which will send them directly to a page where they can pay for the item. If your customers might want to browse around your site for different types of items before paying, choose the "Add to Cart" button, which lets buyers fill a shopping cart with several items before checking out. The "Donate" option is mostly for people who aren't selling anything, like bloggers soliciting donations.
You can then follow the instructions to create a button for each item you want to sell. PayPal will give you some HTML that you can paste into your Web site to add the buttons. You should put these buttons on your "Store" page, next to a picture and description of each item.
The service has been a boon for Graydon Blair of Syracuse, Utah, who sells biodiesel supplies at UtahBiodieselSupply.com. When he started his company, MGBJ Enterprises LLC, he looked for software to add a shopping cart to his site. "All of them wanted me to pay them lots of money, and I thought their stupid shopping carts didn't look nice," he says. So, "I built my little Web site, and threw some PayPal buttons on there."
Visitors to his Web site can use a "Click here to purchase" button to add an item to their shopping cart and buy it via PayPal. Payments get sent directly to Mr. Graydon's PayPal account, minus the PayPal fee. He says he now does 100 to 150 PayPal transactions a week. He brought in $750,000 in revenue last year and is on track for more than $1 million this year.
5. GET SPONSORS
It's easy to add advertisements to your Web site to make extra cash. Every time someone clicks on an ad on your page, you get paid a small amount, which varies depending on the particulars of the ad.
One of the most popular services is Google Inc.'s AdSense. Advertisers pay Google to place ads on Web sites throughout the Internet; site owners, meanwhile, can sign up at Google.com/adsense to host those ads on their pages.
You've probably seen the ads, which often appear as blocks of text along the right-hand column of a Web site. Google scans the content of participating sites to decide which ads would work best on the pages. For instance, an ad for used cars might appear on a site with car reviews.
But you need to ask: Will ads actually improve your site? Showing the wrong ads -- or, sometimes, any ads at all -- could turn off potential customers. If you run a funeral parlor, for instance, ads could come across as distasteful. Also, you'll probably need a lot of traffic to make significant money from the ads, since you typically get just a few cents when someone clicks.
For Tim Carter, ads made a lot of sense. Mr. Carter, a former carpenter, wrote a home-improvement column running in papers across the U.S. The only problem: Publishers were paying him a pittance.
In 2004, Mr. Carter figured out how to make serious money from his work -- by tapping into AdSense. He had been posting his work on his own site, AskTheBuilder.com, for nearly a decade. Google scans his site -- which has separate pages for topics like cabinets, fences and mold -- and places appropriate ads on each page, such as pitches for kitchen cabinets and mold removal.
He has since branched out by selling other types of ads. Taken together, his ads bring in close to $2,000 a day, based on daily traffic of about 40,000 visitors. He has also branched out by hawking his own products, like a stain-removal bleach. In total, his site brought in more than $1 million in revenue last year.
"I'll tell people in my columns, 'Look, this is what you need to do.' But they're still going to need the products to do it -- and that's what they see in those ads," Mr. Carter says.
6. GET KNOWN
So, you've got your site up and running. Next, you'll want to be sure people can find it.
We asked two experts, Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay Inc. and Alan Rabinowitz of SEO Image Inc., to reveal some tricks about search-engine optimization -- moving your site to the top of search-engine results.
Start with your site itself. You should use language on the site that is associated with the business. Let's say you're a florist. Most likely, you'll show up prominently in search results if people search for the exact name of your business. But the trick is to show up when people search for complicated terms related to your business, like "wedding flower arrangements." That's because you want to attract people who might not know about your business but are looking for something that you provide.
Mr. Clay offers two shorthand ways to do this. First, ask your employees to send you a couple of words or phrases that describe what your company does and incorporate that language into your site. Second, do a Web search for terms related to your business and look at the language used in the top search results. For instance, a search for "cowboy boots" turns up several Web sites that also use the phrase "Western wear." The fact that those sites turn up so high in search results means that they're doing something right. So, if you sell cowboy boots, you should also refer to Western wear on your site to draw additional traffic.
You should also make sure to include those phrases in your page titles -- the headings that appear in the blue bar at the top of a browser window -- since search engines pay particular attention to these. (How do you change the title bar? In Weebly, click the "Settings" tab and type in the "Site Title" field. In Office Live, click the "Page Editor" tab, then click "Page Properties" and type in the "Page title" field for each page. In SynthaSite, click the "Properties" tab and type in the "Window Title" field.)
If you primarily do business locally, there are other ways to get noticed. Start by trying this exercise: Type "Seattle spas" in Google and pay attention to the results. At the top of the page, you'll see several spa listings, with phone numbers, reviews and Web-site links, next to a map showing each spa's location.
Below that, you'll see traditional search results, but many of the links won't send you to a specific spa's Web site. Instead, they'll send you to a news or review site, like Citysearch or Yelp, that talks about area spas.
So, it's important to get into the listings at the top of the page, next to the map, as well as into the news and review sites. To do that, first register your business with Google's Local Business Center (Google.com/local/add). By entering some details, like your business's address and phone number, you can automatically be listed in Google's local results at the top of the page.
Next, the news and review sites. Say you're a spa owner in Seattle: Click on the Citysearch page that comes up in a search for "Seattle spas" and find contact information for a Citysearch editor who might want to include your spa in the site's list.
Also click on the links for review sites like Yelp, which solicit reviews from businesses' customers and often give businesses a way to list themselves. Don't review your own business on these sites (it's usually against the rules), but you can encourage your customers to post reviews, as long as you don't bribe them with freebies (also usually against the rules).
7. TRACK YOUR TRAFFIC
A bunch of companies offer free tools to help you track who visits your Web site, how they find it and what they do once they're there. This can help you tweak your Web site to attract more potential customers.
The best-known provider of tools is Google; you can find its offerings at Google Webmaster Central (Google.com/webmasters). We'll focus on one of the programs: Google Webmaster Tools (Google.com/webmasters/tools).
To set this up, follow Google's instructions for uploading a file to your Web site so that Google can track it. Once you've done this, look at a few areas on the Google Webmaster page.
In the "Statistics" area, click on "Top search queries." This shows you two things: the search queries for which your Web site turned up, and the queries from which people actually visited your Web site. If a search term appears in the first list but not in the second, it means your Web site is showing up in search results for that term, but people aren't clicking on it.
To improve your site's performance for that term, you should tailor the language in your Web site. Say your Web site shows up in searches for "experienced Seattle therapists," but nobody is clicking on it; that suggests that you might want to describe your level of experience on your site to improve your performance.
You can find another handy feature of Webmaster Tools in the "Links" area. Click on "Pages with external links" to see a list of other sites that include links to your site. This can give an insight into how others view your site. For instance, if you run a bar and see that a local hotel links to it from its own Web site, you can guess that the hotel is recommending your bar to its customers. So, you might offer special discounts to that hotel's visitors.
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121803326363016929.html
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Drive & Earn would be on-vehicle, a newer approach of marketing products or services in a professional, highly visible format. Advertising on vehicles is a growing concept globally and new to India. It is one of the most innovative forms of outdoor advertising and gaining popular across the globe.
All that a car owner has to do is drive normally. There is no change in mileage and no additional driving - just doing what they do each day of the week.
So Get Paid on Getting Seen!
Our business model delivers these results by placing advertising directly on privately owned vehicles and compensating the vehicle owner accordingly.
Owners Registration:
Step 1: Complete registration to join Drive & EarnStep 2: Entered onto the company’s databaseStep 3: Match suitable drivers with prospective clientStep 4: On getting selected for a campaign the owners will have a high quality graphic advertisement professionally placed on his car using a safe materialStep 5: The advertisement will stay on the car for the length of the Advertising campaign
Mandatory Requirement of the Owner/Drivers:
* Possess a full and valid driving license* Be able to show proof of vehicle ownership* Have valid motor insurance for the vehicle* Not have had any at-fault accidents in the past 2 months* Never have received a conviction for Drinking & Driving* Sign a contract outlining their responsibilities and conduct during the term of an advertisement* Ensure the vehicle intended for Ad Placement is in good condition* Supply and maintain the vehicle in a clean condition* Agree to random spot-checks during the Drive & Earn campaign* Complete and submit the online enrolment form and should print and keep their personalized agreement* Notify the company of major changes in driving habits, e.g. a new job causing a very different commute or significant change in the amount of miles traveled
FAQ of the Owners:
Does this cost me anything to participate?
No! Drive & Earn is FREE to Vehicle Owners. There are no membership fees, placement fees or any fee of any kind payable to Drive & Earn.
What is a vehicle wrap?
A vehicle wrap is a printed vinyl covering that is designed and engineered to adhere directly to your car with a lifespan of 3 months to 3 years however our company offers advertisers 3,6,9 and 12 month campaigns with the option to extend. In most cases, a vehicle wrap with Drive & Earn would be removed within the first 24 months or within the advertisers selected campaign length.
How long does it take to apply the vehicle wrap?
Depending upon the campaign, it could take as little as a few hours to a day for a (Half Wrap or Full Wrap). In the event your vehicle is selected for a Half or Full Wrap, you may be required to make arrangements for a day without your vehicle, however the benefits far exceed the inconvenience!
Can I take my vehicle through the carwash?
Yes, you can wash it just like you did before but Drive & Earn requires that you do not use wax on any portion of the wrap. Just soap and water!
Will the wrap damage my paint?
No. A vehicle wrap, when applied and removed correctly will actually protect your paint! (Unless it is an aftermarket paint job or the paint was already damaged prior to installation). In some cases, it is necessary to remove factory installed name badges from the vehicle to provide a smooth surface for application. In the event this is necessary, you will be notified and asked for permission prior to their removal. Any badges removed will be saved and given to you for reinstallation upon the wrap’s removal.
FAQ of the Advertisers:
Why should I advertise with Drive & Earn?
At Drive & Earn, we put ourselves in your shoes! We strive to give our customers the same excellent service and attention that we would expect.This is the fastest growing segment of the outdoor advertising industry. We have created a seamless service with a process for executing your desired campaign that has yet to be imitated. Therefore, you will be working with the company that started it all and not some copycat version of Drive & Earn.
Will my brand be protected since it is advertised on a private party vehicle?
Yes! First, each WHEELBOARD has been carefully screened and a thorough driving record obtained along with proof of insurance. Additionally, we monitor each vehicle with WHEELBOARD CHECKER so that the public can police our wheelboards and keep us informed of any compliments or concerns.
How can I be sure that I will be satisfied with my WheelBoard campaign?
We will gladly provide you with statistical data that vehicle advertising not only works but is highly effective. As with any advertising medium, the measure of how effective an advertisement is depends upon the message being conveyed and in many cases how long the campaign is in place. What we can guarantee is that your brand of product or service will be seen at eye level by thousands of potential buyer’s each and every day.
Can I be sure the vehicle owner is covering the minimum mileage requirements?
Yes, we conduct random checks of our participating drivers along with required odometer statements each month.
Do you provide any tracking procedures for the campaigns?
We provide resources for custom phone numbers so that you can best monetize your advertising campaigns; however we are in process to implement GPS tracking measures which will significantly increase our monthly fees.
How do you promote your company?
Newspaper, radio, television, direct mail?Unfortunately, these forms of media are declining in effectiveness as a method of reaching consumers.
How do you reach your consumer in the “offline” world?
Reality is, Young indians are watching less TV, reading less printed media and listening to less radio.
Who is the culprit?
The internet and the widespread use of personal listening devices like the iPod.
Why use a Wheelboard?
A Wheelboard campaign with Drive & Earn is the most innovative and environmentally responsible approach to outdoor advertising introduced in the past decade.
A softer and subtle approach..
However, consumers are readily available and are a captive audience…..in their vehicle. Whether in the driver seat or as a passenger or pedestrian, having a Wheelboard ad campaign with Drive & Earn will surely get your brand in front of the consumers you seek.
This is why we have created Drive & Earn.
Your advertising campaign will also be better for the environment.
You are advertising on vehicles that are already on the road, which implies that you are not using energy or natural resources to promote your product or service. The result is a greater environmental public image and the real world impact of reducing your company’s carbon footprint.
As a means of providing your company a clear path towards marketing to the consumers that you want to reach.
News:
CashURdrive focuses on advertising on private vehicles such as cars, and paying the car owners in petrol redemption cards. Out of a database of more than 14000 car drivers registered with CashURdrive.com, cars are selected for advertisements on the basis of the driver's age, profession etc., so that the advertisement on the car reaches the target group. The cars are then wrapped in the advertisement vinyl and the driver is paid in petrol redemption cards worth Rs. 1500 to 5000.
The firm expects a monthly turnover of Rs. 84,00,000 by April 2009 by covering a 10% of the total market share available, making it an annual turnover of Rs.10,08,00,000. Currently cashURdrive earns a monthly turnover of Rs.8,40,000.
At present, cashURdrive team comprises of 6 people, all under the age of 25yrs. Operations such as application of the vinyl and the printing are outsourced. The firm operates in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Bangalore and would be soon launching in Bihar, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Gurgaon. It’s clients include Virgin mobiles, Tata Indicom, Vodafone and Speed. The campaigns for SBI and The Financial Chronicle are expected to be launched by December.
Raghu admits that the global melt down has had an adverse impact on his business as most of the companies have cut down on advertising costs and campaigns. "Our deal with a T.V giant got dropped because of the slowdown”, added Raghu.
http://www.vccircle.com/500/news/cashurdrive-set-to-get-rs-25-crore-funding
All that a car owner has to do is drive normally. There is no change in mileage and no additional driving - just doing what they do each day of the week.
So Get Paid on Getting Seen!
Our business model delivers these results by placing advertising directly on privately owned vehicles and compensating the vehicle owner accordingly.
Owners Registration:
Step 1: Complete registration to join Drive & EarnStep 2: Entered onto the company’s databaseStep 3: Match suitable drivers with prospective clientStep 4: On getting selected for a campaign the owners will have a high quality graphic advertisement professionally placed on his car using a safe materialStep 5: The advertisement will stay on the car for the length of the Advertising campaign
Mandatory Requirement of the Owner/Drivers:
* Possess a full and valid driving license* Be able to show proof of vehicle ownership* Have valid motor insurance for the vehicle* Not have had any at-fault accidents in the past 2 months* Never have received a conviction for Drinking & Driving* Sign a contract outlining their responsibilities and conduct during the term of an advertisement* Ensure the vehicle intended for Ad Placement is in good condition* Supply and maintain the vehicle in a clean condition* Agree to random spot-checks during the Drive & Earn campaign* Complete and submit the online enrolment form and should print and keep their personalized agreement* Notify the company of major changes in driving habits, e.g. a new job causing a very different commute or significant change in the amount of miles traveled
FAQ of the Owners:
Does this cost me anything to participate?
No! Drive & Earn is FREE to Vehicle Owners. There are no membership fees, placement fees or any fee of any kind payable to Drive & Earn.
What is a vehicle wrap?
A vehicle wrap is a printed vinyl covering that is designed and engineered to adhere directly to your car with a lifespan of 3 months to 3 years however our company offers advertisers 3,6,9 and 12 month campaigns with the option to extend. In most cases, a vehicle wrap with Drive & Earn would be removed within the first 24 months or within the advertisers selected campaign length.
How long does it take to apply the vehicle wrap?
Depending upon the campaign, it could take as little as a few hours to a day for a (Half Wrap or Full Wrap). In the event your vehicle is selected for a Half or Full Wrap, you may be required to make arrangements for a day without your vehicle, however the benefits far exceed the inconvenience!
Can I take my vehicle through the carwash?
Yes, you can wash it just like you did before but Drive & Earn requires that you do not use wax on any portion of the wrap. Just soap and water!
Will the wrap damage my paint?
No. A vehicle wrap, when applied and removed correctly will actually protect your paint! (Unless it is an aftermarket paint job or the paint was already damaged prior to installation). In some cases, it is necessary to remove factory installed name badges from the vehicle to provide a smooth surface for application. In the event this is necessary, you will be notified and asked for permission prior to their removal. Any badges removed will be saved and given to you for reinstallation upon the wrap’s removal.
FAQ of the Advertisers:
Why should I advertise with Drive & Earn?
At Drive & Earn, we put ourselves in your shoes! We strive to give our customers the same excellent service and attention that we would expect.This is the fastest growing segment of the outdoor advertising industry. We have created a seamless service with a process for executing your desired campaign that has yet to be imitated. Therefore, you will be working with the company that started it all and not some copycat version of Drive & Earn.
Will my brand be protected since it is advertised on a private party vehicle?
Yes! First, each WHEELBOARD has been carefully screened and a thorough driving record obtained along with proof of insurance. Additionally, we monitor each vehicle with WHEELBOARD CHECKER so that the public can police our wheelboards and keep us informed of any compliments or concerns.
How can I be sure that I will be satisfied with my WheelBoard campaign?
We will gladly provide you with statistical data that vehicle advertising not only works but is highly effective. As with any advertising medium, the measure of how effective an advertisement is depends upon the message being conveyed and in many cases how long the campaign is in place. What we can guarantee is that your brand of product or service will be seen at eye level by thousands of potential buyer’s each and every day.
Can I be sure the vehicle owner is covering the minimum mileage requirements?
Yes, we conduct random checks of our participating drivers along with required odometer statements each month.
Do you provide any tracking procedures for the campaigns?
We provide resources for custom phone numbers so that you can best monetize your advertising campaigns; however we are in process to implement GPS tracking measures which will significantly increase our monthly fees.
How do you promote your company?
Newspaper, radio, television, direct mail?Unfortunately, these forms of media are declining in effectiveness as a method of reaching consumers.
How do you reach your consumer in the “offline” world?
Reality is, Young indians are watching less TV, reading less printed media and listening to less radio.
Who is the culprit?
The internet and the widespread use of personal listening devices like the iPod.
Why use a Wheelboard?
A Wheelboard campaign with Drive & Earn is the most innovative and environmentally responsible approach to outdoor advertising introduced in the past decade.
A softer and subtle approach..
However, consumers are readily available and are a captive audience…..in their vehicle. Whether in the driver seat or as a passenger or pedestrian, having a Wheelboard ad campaign with Drive & Earn will surely get your brand in front of the consumers you seek.
This is why we have created Drive & Earn.
Your advertising campaign will also be better for the environment.
You are advertising on vehicles that are already on the road, which implies that you are not using energy or natural resources to promote your product or service. The result is a greater environmental public image and the real world impact of reducing your company’s carbon footprint.
As a means of providing your company a clear path towards marketing to the consumers that you want to reach.
News:
CashURdrive focuses on advertising on private vehicles such as cars, and paying the car owners in petrol redemption cards. Out of a database of more than 14000 car drivers registered with CashURdrive.com, cars are selected for advertisements on the basis of the driver's age, profession etc., so that the advertisement on the car reaches the target group. The cars are then wrapped in the advertisement vinyl and the driver is paid in petrol redemption cards worth Rs. 1500 to 5000.
The firm expects a monthly turnover of Rs. 84,00,000 by April 2009 by covering a 10% of the total market share available, making it an annual turnover of Rs.10,08,00,000. Currently cashURdrive earns a monthly turnover of Rs.8,40,000.
At present, cashURdrive team comprises of 6 people, all under the age of 25yrs. Operations such as application of the vinyl and the printing are outsourced. The firm operates in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Bangalore and would be soon launching in Bihar, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Gurgaon. It’s clients include Virgin mobiles, Tata Indicom, Vodafone and Speed. The campaigns for SBI and The Financial Chronicle are expected to be launched by December.
Raghu admits that the global melt down has had an adverse impact on his business as most of the companies have cut down on advertising costs and campaigns. "Our deal with a T.V giant got dropped because of the slowdown”, added Raghu.
http://www.vccircle.com/500/news/cashurdrive-set-to-get-rs-25-crore-funding
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Companies
24/7 Customer, Inc.
24×7 Learning Solutions Pvt Ltd
7Hills Business Solutions Ltd.
Accenture Ltd. (NYSE:ACN)
Actis Capital, LLP
Advinus Therapeutics Private Limited
Alchemist Ltd. (BSE:526707)
Allport International Private Limited
ANSRSource Inc.
Apollo Health Street Limited
Aptara, Inc.
Ascendum Systems Pvt. Ltd.
Asian Cerc Information Technology Ltd (BSE:530619)
ASM Technologies Ltd. (BSE:526433)
Avendus Advisors Private Ltd.
AXIS-IT&T Ltd. (BSE:532395)
Basil Communications Private Limited
Bootstrap Technologies Private Limited
Brigade India
Cambridge Solutions, Ltd. (BSE:532616)
Cambridge Technology Enterprises Limited (BSE:532801)
Cat Technologies Ltd. (BSE:531682)
Cerebra Integrated Technologies Ltd. (BSE:532413)
Chambal Fertilisers and Chemicals Ltd. (BSE:500085)
Crossdomain Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
CustomerAsset
CyberMedia Careers Ltd.
e4e, Inc.
E5 Systems, Inc.
Eastern Software Systems Private Limited
Essar Group
Eurindia Ltd
eVizeon
FXLabs Studios Pvt. Ltd.
Globerian India Pvt Ltd.
Goldstone Infratech Ltd. (BSE:532439)
Helion Venture Partners
Henderson Equity Partners
Hero Corporate Service Limited
Hero Honda Motors Limited
Hewitt Outsourcing Services India, Ltd.
HP Global e-Business Operations Pvt. Ltd.
HP India Pvt Ltd.
iBackoffice.com
ICRA Limited (BSE:532835)
iGate Global Solutions Ltd.
Immaculate Interactions (India) Ltd.
IMO Communications Pvt. Ltd.
Indecomm Global Services Pvt. Ltd.
Indus Networks Ltd. (BSE:532381)
Infinite Computer Solutions (India) Ltd.
Inflow Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Infosys BPO Ltd
iSeva, Inc.
iSpace Software Technologies, Ltd.
Iteamic Pvt. Ltd.
KARVY Global Services Limited
Lanco Global Systems Ltd. (BSE:532368)
LAXAI AVANTI Life Sciences Pvt, Ltd.
Linear Financial & Management Systems Pvt. Ltd.
Logicbytes Pvt. Ltd.
MacMillan India Ltd. (BSE:532440)
McRaaN Systems Inc.
Mensamind, Inc.
Mold Tek Technologies Ltd (BSE:526263)
MphasiS Corp.
Mphasis Limited (BSE:526299)
MsourcE (India) Pvt. Ltd.
Multiple Zones India Private Ltd.
Neosys Inc
Ness Technologies India, Ltd.
Newgen Software Technologies Limited
NEXT Link Pvt Ltd.
Nihar Info Global Ltd (BSE:531083)
NIIT Technologies Ltd. (BSE:532541)
Nirvana Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
Outsource Partners International, Inc.
Peoplesoft Inc., Two Development Centers
Pradot Technologies Private Limited
Prithvi Information Solutions Limited (BSE:532675)
Promantra Synergy Solutions Ltd.
Proteans Software Solutions Pvt Ltd.
QAI Global Institute
Reach Sewn Technologies and Consulting Pvt. Ltd.
Recruise India Consulting
Religare Technova Ltd. (BSE:526927)
RT Outsourcing Services Ltd.
SA IT Enabled Services Pvt. Ltd.
Satyam BPO Limited
Satyam Computer Services Ltd. (BSE:500376)
Saven Technologies Ltd. (BSE:532404)
Serco BPO
Siemens BPO Services India Pvt. Ltd.
Sitel Worldwide Corporation
Softsol India Ltd. (BSE:532344)
Software Technology Group International Ltd. (BSE:532293)
Spheris India Pvt. Ltd.
SQL Star International (BSE:532249)
SumTotal Systems India Pvt Ltd.
SureWaves
Symphony Service Corp.
Symphony Service Corp. (India) Pvt. Ltd.
Synergy Infotech Private Limited
TCS Business Transformation Solutions Limited
Tecnovate
Tera Software Ltd. (BSE:590020)
The Business Analysts' Group
The Hackett Group
Trianz Inc.
Trident Capital, Inc.
Triton Corp Ltd (BSE:523387)
TVA Allegis
Valuemart Info Technologies Ltd. (BSE:532338)
Virtuos Solutions (P) Ltd.
Vision Technology India Ltd.
VJIL Consulting
Wipro Infotech
Wipro Ltd. (BSE:507685)
Worldzen Holdings Limited
Zavata India Pvt. Ltd.
Zensar Technologies Ltd. (BSE:504067)
24/7 Customer, Inc.
24×7 Learning Solutions Pvt Ltd
7Hills Business Solutions Ltd.
Accenture Ltd. (NYSE:ACN)
Actis Capital, LLP
Advinus Therapeutics Private Limited
Alchemist Ltd. (BSE:526707)
Allport International Private Limited
ANSRSource Inc.
Apollo Health Street Limited
Aptara, Inc.
Ascendum Systems Pvt. Ltd.
Asian Cerc Information Technology Ltd (BSE:530619)
ASM Technologies Ltd. (BSE:526433)
Avendus Advisors Private Ltd.
AXIS-IT&T Ltd. (BSE:532395)
Basil Communications Private Limited
Bootstrap Technologies Private Limited
Brigade India
Cambridge Solutions, Ltd. (BSE:532616)
Cambridge Technology Enterprises Limited (BSE:532801)
Cat Technologies Ltd. (BSE:531682)
Cerebra Integrated Technologies Ltd. (BSE:532413)
Chambal Fertilisers and Chemicals Ltd. (BSE:500085)
Crossdomain Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
CustomerAsset
CyberMedia Careers Ltd.
e4e, Inc.
E5 Systems, Inc.
Eastern Software Systems Private Limited
Essar Group
Eurindia Ltd
eVizeon
FXLabs Studios Pvt. Ltd.
Globerian India Pvt Ltd.
Goldstone Infratech Ltd. (BSE:532439)
Helion Venture Partners
Henderson Equity Partners
Hero Corporate Service Limited
Hero Honda Motors Limited
Hewitt Outsourcing Services India, Ltd.
HP Global e-Business Operations Pvt. Ltd.
HP India Pvt Ltd.
iBackoffice.com
ICRA Limited (BSE:532835)
iGate Global Solutions Ltd.
Immaculate Interactions (India) Ltd.
IMO Communications Pvt. Ltd.
Indecomm Global Services Pvt. Ltd.
Indus Networks Ltd. (BSE:532381)
Infinite Computer Solutions (India) Ltd.
Inflow Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Infosys BPO Ltd
iSeva, Inc.
iSpace Software Technologies, Ltd.
Iteamic Pvt. Ltd.
KARVY Global Services Limited
Lanco Global Systems Ltd. (BSE:532368)
LAXAI AVANTI Life Sciences Pvt, Ltd.
Linear Financial & Management Systems Pvt. Ltd.
Logicbytes Pvt. Ltd.
MacMillan India Ltd. (BSE:532440)
McRaaN Systems Inc.
Mensamind, Inc.
Mold Tek Technologies Ltd (BSE:526263)
MphasiS Corp.
Mphasis Limited (BSE:526299)
MsourcE (India) Pvt. Ltd.
Multiple Zones India Private Ltd.
Neosys Inc
Ness Technologies India, Ltd.
Newgen Software Technologies Limited
NEXT Link Pvt Ltd.
Nihar Info Global Ltd (BSE:531083)
NIIT Technologies Ltd. (BSE:532541)
Nirvana Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
Outsource Partners International, Inc.
Peoplesoft Inc., Two Development Centers
Pradot Technologies Private Limited
Prithvi Information Solutions Limited (BSE:532675)
Promantra Synergy Solutions Ltd.
Proteans Software Solutions Pvt Ltd.
QAI Global Institute
Reach Sewn Technologies and Consulting Pvt. Ltd.
Recruise India Consulting
Religare Technova Ltd. (BSE:526927)
RT Outsourcing Services Ltd.
SA IT Enabled Services Pvt. Ltd.
Satyam BPO Limited
Satyam Computer Services Ltd. (BSE:500376)
Saven Technologies Ltd. (BSE:532404)
Serco BPO
Siemens BPO Services India Pvt. Ltd.
Sitel Worldwide Corporation
Softsol India Ltd. (BSE:532344)
Software Technology Group International Ltd. (BSE:532293)
Spheris India Pvt. Ltd.
SQL Star International (BSE:532249)
SumTotal Systems India Pvt Ltd.
SureWaves
Symphony Service Corp.
Symphony Service Corp. (India) Pvt. Ltd.
Synergy Infotech Private Limited
TCS Business Transformation Solutions Limited
Tecnovate
Tera Software Ltd. (BSE:590020)
The Business Analysts' Group
The Hackett Group
Trianz Inc.
Trident Capital, Inc.
Triton Corp Ltd (BSE:523387)
TVA Allegis
Valuemart Info Technologies Ltd. (BSE:532338)
Virtuos Solutions (P) Ltd.
Vision Technology India Ltd.
VJIL Consulting
Wipro Infotech
Wipro Ltd. (BSE:507685)
Worldzen Holdings Limited
Zavata India Pvt. Ltd.
Zensar Technologies Ltd. (BSE:504067)
Monday, December 29, 2008
Self Help Group - Development of the Entrepreneurship Character
According to a report on “Entrepreneurship Qualities of Members of Self Help Groups in
Dharwad District of Karnataka State” by Suma Hasalkar, Suhasini Rao and Chhaya Badiger, the women self help group play an important role in the entrepreneurship development especially in the rural areas. The study focuses on the various enterprises taken up by the self-help groups in the selected area and the identification of entrepreneurial qualities of women members of these groups organized in the rural areas of Dharwad District. The study revealed that out of the 15 self-help groups, three were registered and all groups had the bank account with joint signatories and conducted regular meetings. As high as 85.97 percent members participated in the wholesale purchase and sale of consumer goods with marginal profit to the society or self-help group. The traditional enterprises of leaf plate production and marketing was taken up by maximum percentage of women (31.7%). About 40.2 percent members were identified to have the quality ‘cooperation’ followed by the qualities ‘contribution of new ideas in meeting’ (17.95%) and ‘purchasing abilities’ (17.56%).
It has been generally accepted that a woman’s income in the family is very essential and important in relation to the nutritional, economic and educational upliftment of her family. Women contribution to the basic family maintenance stands out to be more than her male counterpart and so an increase in women’s income leads directly to better child health and nutrition. Thus the Formation of women self help groups help in development of entrepreneurship qualities, increase in employment opportunities, her social participation and horizons of her knowledge. Though most of the women in India have the capacity and talent to work, they are not able to get ready made jobs due to the under and unemployment problems. Household enterprise constitutes the single biggest source of employment for women after agriculture. SHGs have become the best way to help a women recognize her own talents and capabilities and engaging herself in income generating activities. An entrepreneur as defined by Schumpeter (1961) is a dynamic agent of change or the catalyst who transforms increasingly physical, natural and human resources into corresponding production possibilities (Vinze,1987). The SHGs have emerged as a potent means of economic and social empowerment for the poor and especially the women.
Dharwad District of Karnataka State” by Suma Hasalkar, Suhasini Rao and Chhaya Badiger, the women self help group play an important role in the entrepreneurship development especially in the rural areas. The study focuses on the various enterprises taken up by the self-help groups in the selected area and the identification of entrepreneurial qualities of women members of these groups organized in the rural areas of Dharwad District. The study revealed that out of the 15 self-help groups, three were registered and all groups had the bank account with joint signatories and conducted regular meetings. As high as 85.97 percent members participated in the wholesale purchase and sale of consumer goods with marginal profit to the society or self-help group. The traditional enterprises of leaf plate production and marketing was taken up by maximum percentage of women (31.7%). About 40.2 percent members were identified to have the quality ‘cooperation’ followed by the qualities ‘contribution of new ideas in meeting’ (17.95%) and ‘purchasing abilities’ (17.56%).
It has been generally accepted that a woman’s income in the family is very essential and important in relation to the nutritional, economic and educational upliftment of her family. Women contribution to the basic family maintenance stands out to be more than her male counterpart and so an increase in women’s income leads directly to better child health and nutrition. Thus the Formation of women self help groups help in development of entrepreneurship qualities, increase in employment opportunities, her social participation and horizons of her knowledge. Though most of the women in India have the capacity and talent to work, they are not able to get ready made jobs due to the under and unemployment problems. Household enterprise constitutes the single biggest source of employment for women after agriculture. SHGs have become the best way to help a women recognize her own talents and capabilities and engaging herself in income generating activities. An entrepreneur as defined by Schumpeter (1961) is a dynamic agent of change or the catalyst who transforms increasingly physical, natural and human resources into corresponding production possibilities (Vinze,1987). The SHGs have emerged as a potent means of economic and social empowerment for the poor and especially the women.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Micro Marketing - Marketing people at the bottom of the pyramid
The bottom of the (economic) pyramid consists of the 4 billion people living on less than $2 per day. Mr. C.K. Prahlad in his famous book “the Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid” emphasizes that these people can turn as resilient and creative entrepreneurs and value conscious consumers and would lead to a new world of opportunity.
Marketing of Microcredit to the people in the bottom of the pyramid has helped in building up new entrepreneurs in the society. The banks were able to tap into this large market to extend their reach. They were able to keep their transactions costs low and also ensured a higher repayment rate. The Micro Finance Institution (MFI) was in their turn able to scale up their operations with more financing owing to their access of more credit products. This has turned out to be a win-win situation for both.
Such success of Microcredit business should not be only attributed to the banks and other financial organizations for their willingness to lend these people but to the successful development of Self Help Groups (SHGs) who help in bridging the gap between the financiers and the consumers. The SHGs and their Bank linkage have provided these SHGs, with the capacity to increase their capital base to fund more members and bigger projects. It is estimated that there are at least over 2 million SHGs in India. Some SHGs are networking among themselves into federations to achieve institutional and financial sustainability. According to APMAS, 1.6 million SHGs have been bank-linked with cumulative loans of Rs. 69 billion.
These SHGs have become a back bone in marketing the credit products of the MFIs and Banks in India. The reach of these SHGs could be leveraged to market other products to the people living at this level of the pyramid. Owning to the lesser income of these people certain products would surely need customization to get accepted. Companies engaged in segments like Consumer durables, Automobiles, FMCG, Healthcare and other Financial Services can take advantage of these network to market their products. This could help tap a greater untapped market giving them advantage in revenue and growth terms as well.
Marketing of Microcredit to the people in the bottom of the pyramid has helped in building up new entrepreneurs in the society. The banks were able to tap into this large market to extend their reach. They were able to keep their transactions costs low and also ensured a higher repayment rate. The Micro Finance Institution (MFI) was in their turn able to scale up their operations with more financing owing to their access of more credit products. This has turned out to be a win-win situation for both.
Such success of Microcredit business should not be only attributed to the banks and other financial organizations for their willingness to lend these people but to the successful development of Self Help Groups (SHGs) who help in bridging the gap between the financiers and the consumers. The SHGs and their Bank linkage have provided these SHGs, with the capacity to increase their capital base to fund more members and bigger projects. It is estimated that there are at least over 2 million SHGs in India. Some SHGs are networking among themselves into federations to achieve institutional and financial sustainability. According to APMAS, 1.6 million SHGs have been bank-linked with cumulative loans of Rs. 69 billion.
These SHGs have become a back bone in marketing the credit products of the MFIs and Banks in India. The reach of these SHGs could be leveraged to market other products to the people living at this level of the pyramid. Owning to the lesser income of these people certain products would surely need customization to get accepted. Companies engaged in segments like Consumer durables, Automobiles, FMCG, Healthcare and other Financial Services can take advantage of these network to market their products. This could help tap a greater untapped market giving them advantage in revenue and growth terms as well.
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