Feedback

Rumour Mill

For the new birds, welcome, and for the old hands, welcome back for your dose of the juiciest and most authentic college rumours. So, without any further ado, read on for tales of new faces, new crushes, new break-ups and new victories.

 

Speaking of victories, a particular second year girl, often seen on the basketball court, and a cute chemical boy have conquered one another and pledged their loyalties to each other recently. We hope their love gets stronger by the day and wish them all the success in their relationship. Their seniors too are not far behind…rumours are strong that the most hyperactive workaholic of the college is going out with a tall, fair, slim lady, who is in high demand. They ‘grin’ together and weave their ‘web’ of love in their numerous committee meetings. Nothing concrete can be said about them, but rumour mill will be keeping an eye on their evening walks.

 

We all know about ‘asso’ meetings bringing together young hearts. This new one is about one such get-together causing some serious heartache for a very-much-committed-couple. This clash of perceptions brought out the worst male chauvinist in the guy and at the same time the veiled feminist in the gal…  both prominent senior members of the asso, which led to sparks flying off at both ends..The rumor mill wishes for the winter to cease and sweet spring to return to their lives…  

 

We here at the rumor mill are equally concerned about robotics as well as the romantics, we are finally relieved to see that this particular techie has finally started looking beyond robots …and has got a girl in ‘sight’. The couple has been zooming around the city to various interesting places on the guy’s gladiator. We hope to bring you confirmation of their new status in the next issue.

 

In the meantime we are still wondering why there was a short circuit in the chemistry among this final year couple (well, almost), especially after they had become quite a strong pair after their pi bonding in third year. We wish there is still energy left to jump to the conductance band. Let the electrons start flowing. 

 

Talking of pi bonds becoming pairs, chemistry is working overtime for this second year couple from the same state. Electrons do seem to be flowing really fast. Talking about more second yearites, the pied piper seems to have got a big catch, and seems to be happily leading her to drown in an ocean of coffee. You never know what can happen over a coffee they say!!

 

We do need to mention about this southie superman (not  Rajnikanth… Mohanlal would be a closer guess although the lucky maiden maybe more of a Chiranjeevi fan…Confused?? So are we!!) who has been brilliantly diversifying and reaping dividends as Wall Street is collapsing. His winning streak runs through IIT-M Shaastra to apnu SVNIT fests and it has been rumoured he is winning more than half the total prize money offered in all the fests.

 

Finally a curious case of a guy falling in love with SRK although he is not gay.

 

So… we hope to have made up for our absence in the previous issue… with your very own  juicy  mill that you’ve always loved…. Until next time till we get something by you for you and of you….

 

Happy Gossiping!!

Comment all you want ppl!!!

Gitanjali on the global economy

The world is watching with shock at the growing economic crisis. The global financial crisis, brewing for a while, really started to show its effects in the middle of 2008.The world stock markets began to fall, large financial institutions like Lehman Brothers collapsed and many other institutions had to be bought out and governments had to come up with rescue packages to bail out their financial systems.

The global economy is teetering on the brink of recession. The downturn after four years of relatively fast growth is due to a number of factors: the global fallout from the financial crisis in the United States, the bursting of the housing bubbles in the US and in other large economies, soaring commodity prices, increasingly restrictive monetary policies in a number of countries, and stock market volatility.

During this recession period all people irrespective of wealthy or middle class or poor are hit hard. For example, people may find their mortgages harder to pay or remortgaging could become expensive. For many recent homebuyers the value of their homes are likely fall in value leaving them in negative equity and many sectors may find the credit crunch and higher costs of borrowing will lead to job cuts. Also people will have to cut back on consumption to try and weather this economic storm with businesses struggling to survive.

THE CRASH OF 1929
It happened on October 29, 1929. The economy had been growing robustly for most of the so-called Roaring Twenties. It was a technological golden age as innovations such as radio, automobiles, aviation, telephone and the power grid were deployed and adopted. Financial corporations were flourishing as can be seen from the stock market value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average touched 381.2 in September 1929.  By the summer of 1929, it was clear that the economy was contracting and the stock market went through a series of unsettling price declines. These declines led to investor anxiety and events soon came to a head. October 24 (known as Black Thursday) was the first in a number of increasingly shocking market drops. This was followed swiftly by Black Monday on October 28 and Black Tuesday on October 29. Black Tuesday was a day of chaos. By the end of the week of November 11, the index stood at 228, a cumulative drop of 40 percent from the September high. The markets rallied in succeeding months but it would be a false recovery that led unsuspecting investors into the worst economic crisis of modern times. The Dow Jones Industrial Average would lose 89% of its value before finally bottoming out in July 1932.
The Crash of 1987
The mid-1980s were a time of strong economic optimism.  The rise in market indices for the 19 largest markets in the world averaged 296 percent during this period. The crash on October 19, 1987, a date that is also known as Black Monday, was the climactic culmination of a market decline that had begun five days before on October 14th. The Crash was the greatest single-day loss that Wall Street had ever suffered in continuous trading up to that point. The 1987 Crash was a worldwide phenomenon. In the month of October, all major world markets declined substantially. Despite fears of a repeat of the 1930s Depression, the market rallied immediately after the crash, posting a record one-day gain of 102.27 the very next day and 186.64 points on Thursday October 22.
One of the consequences of the 1987 Crash was the introduction of the circuit breaker or trading curb on the NYSE. Based upon the idea that a cooling off period would help dissipate investor panic, these mandatory market shutdowns are triggered whenever a large pre-defined market decline occurs during the trading day.

The Global Economic Crisis of 2008
The current Wall Street meltdown is now the worst financial crisis in the US since 1987′s “Black Monday” stocks plunge with the collapse and crippling of major American financial institutions.
The turmoil also saw investment banking firm Lehman Brothers, which after 158 years in business, forced to declare bankruptcy. Beginning on September 16, failures of large financial institutions in the United States, due primarily to exposure to securities of packaged subprime loans and credit default swaps issued to insure these loans and their issuers, rapidly evolved into a global crisis resulting in a number of bank failures in Europe and sharp reductions in the value of equities (stock) and commodities worldwide. Other countries also suffered. In the United States, 15 banks failed in 2008, while several others were rescued through government intervention or acquisitions by other banks. On October 11, 2008, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that the world financial system was teetering on the “brink of systemic meltdown”
The economic crisis caused countries to temporarily close their markets. European banks had to be bought up by the respective governments to safeguard the people’s money while many Asian countries temporarily suspended trading. Many countries also halted Stock market trade to prop up falling currencies.
The ongoing global financial crisis is likely to have only a moderate impact on India’s export growth rate in 2008-09, according to industry and experts. This is because lower exports of traditional products like handicrafts, textiles and leather will be compensated by higher overseas sales of engineering goods and resource intensive items like metals and petroleum products in 2008-09 to China, countries in West Asia as well as economic blocs like the South East Asian nations. Moreover, the 14 per cent depreciation of the rupee against the US dollar will also lead to an increase in rupee realisation of export earnings. India may find it difficult to achieve the $200-billion export target set for 2008-09, for which exports from the country will need to grow by at least 25 per cent over $160 billion recorded in 2007-08.
History books are spotted with numerous references to Black Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. We’ll have to wait and watch to see how the economy swings after this recession period while we tighten our belts for the time being.

Working in a Startup

All that you do day in the 12 active hours of a day is justified if you have gotten up in the morning to do it and go to bed at night to dream about how it will shape up tomorrow.

Every startup is a startup not because it is not big, but because the motivation behind its working is what is stated in above two lines. Before elaborating on startups generally and web based startups specifically let me recommend you a good read, ‘Long Tail’ by Chris Anderson. Check out shanivari, or Luckys book shop or try to get into our college library but don’t miss out on it.

While only a few months ago I was among you there, reading the last issue of Renesa, now I am part of team LootStreet. Check us out at www.lootstreet.com. This transformation has been very smooth and easy. So leaving generalization for all startups part, to you, readers, I’ll give you an account of how we work as a startup. As I talked of an easy transformation let me tell you what I meant. Few but very important things which have changed for me from the college, is that my ‘studies-classroom-exams-assignments’ part has changed to ‘research-office-deadlines-presentations’, which indeed is good and even if you don’t think so, it is inevitable. I make sure that I learn these new parts well, execute it, and at the same time keep learning more. And the best part of learning process here being it’s not ‘teach and learn’ model which is followed instead it is ‘discuss and learn’ model. You have to assume roles by yourself and live upto it. There are not set of instructions which you will be fed and if you think, having it will help, then you create it for yourself and if suitable for your company as well. There lies the pleasure, every single move of yours shows up as a noticeable result in a startup. Like in my case, how after a 40 mail long thread run to find a suitable name for our new product, the name unanimously zeroed in on, was given by me. Tomorrow insha-allah, if that product becomes any bigger than Google(here, you can dream big too) then I’m sure you would want to preserve this issue of Renesa with you. If you are working for a startup, though for your clients you will hold a very well sounding designation, it falls to floor when it comes down to work. Like how all of us here, though called CEOs and CTOs and VPs etc, still double up as delivery boys (though on a nice shining Karizma). When such is the case and everyone knows that every small contribution they make, accounts in a considerable way to how the whole company works, he or she is automatically motivated to better themselves. So half our work is actually what happens before even starting execution. The discussions, the role assignments, projections, assumptions etc which are decided through inputs from one and all, is what is the crux of any work here. Every one of us has to think on the same platform here and show the same zeal and more often than not, it clicks and we reach consensus regarding key issues.

If these were the things which I and you don’t get in college, there are certain things which a startup only can give you freedom to carry forward from college. And especially so if you are someone who thinks things like writing/reading this column here or reading up something on Uncyclopedia is indeed not something that can be called ‘waste of time’ . Like how all that googling tricks I picked up while working on my project is being put to its best use here for market research. And my ppt making skills (let me satisfy my ego) which even while in college had brought me many a shabhaash’s has got bettered and is being put into company’s presentations. Or even smaller things like introducing SOD and DOD (Song/Discovery Of Day) and making it a part of company’s DNA. (Indeed many of SODs are from apna DC network). Though DC and its amazing advantage is one thing you and everyone will miss once out of gates, I still get to name my comp Funster(my former DC name) and not some random alphanumeric code.

If that was about startups, 3 months here has taught me a tip or two on starting up as well which I would like to share here. If ever there has been the best time to turn entrepreneurial till now, it is now. With www sprawling wide and far, it’s becoming difficult to dream impossible things. But starting up is just one of the stages in the process. And this particular stage has been simplified a lot thanks to circumstances around like already successful startups, VC money flowing in, ease in reaching out on internet etc. Though the success of the next stages depend very much on your idea/product. Even here it is a very fair game, if I analyze the start ups around most successful ones are those who have made the most number of correct market decisions without letting it affect the quality of their idea/product. As it goes, ‘Goodness always sells’ the ROI(Return On Investment) on good product is also much higher than its not-so-good counterparts. You don’t have to forcibly market it to your consumers if it is so compelling, like how nobody asked you to join any of these networking hubs which you already have. Indeed it gets mileage out of every new customer marketing it by themselves. But that’s only because we all love only orkut and facebook and not its competitors. And in name of our profiles, facebook has earned a valuation of 250X on its earnings, which by itself are high enough. So with nobody to dictate, what you need to be good at, make a product and release it to people and the money will automatically follow if people like it.

Trying not to be judgmental, if you don’t have a strong flair for above things then definitely you will see some shortcomings in startups too. Most importantly the moolah factor, especially with a bootstrapped startup like ours, to start off initially you may not be able to expect to heavy pockets at the end of the month. But if you believe in the idea and its ability to succeed even cash flow is possible and has happened in many cases. So my suggestion would be if you are someone who works just for the love of it and things associated with it, then go join a start up, and if you also want to be rich at the same time then go start up yourself.

I myself am kicked by the whole starting up process and am working towards developing a new project about which I will get back to you guys there at college once it takes some initial shape. At the same time, while reading this, if your brain clouds thundered, producing a lightning inside which you want to spit out somehow then maybe I can help you, get in touch through any of the Renesa editors or directly on mail. sandeep.p@gmail.com.