Continued from: Wasn't Entreprenueship About Innovation After Mohammad Yunus received his Nobel for microcredit - so many people have thought of starting up a micro-finance institution - its a simple idea, with minimal risk (if you know how to manage money) and what's more it in line with social justice. But as I have discussed with some of you - no point entering a field unless you can bring in some innovation to it - could be technology, process or scale. And boy! there could not be a better example than this to illustrate my point ... Kiva! Source: Kiva: Improving People's Lives Like a social networking site, Kiva posts profiles of potential borrowers. Lenders then peruse the profiles and make loans to people whom they find appealing. Once a lender makes a loan, Kiva sends the money to a microfinance institution, or MFI, in the borrower's home country. The MFI disburses the funds and works with the borrower to ensure timely repayment. In the language of the banking

Given the economically charged environment in India - lots of people are planning to start new ventures or planning to get involved with startups - and everyone from your uncle to your cousin's friend's elder brother has an idea! And with orkut/facebook/ linkedIn - it is so much more easy to link to other people who have similar ideas and hatch business plans. However, while the story might start there, it doesn't quite end, so many 'in-progress' ventures never make it to fruition and of those which do, few survive. Why? My personal answer is - we are all too fixated with making money and too less with making a difference. Daman [fictional] works for a bank as a financial consultant, he interacts with clients day in day out and sees how he is solving their problems using a bit of Google and a bit of Bloomberg. And the next thing he realises is that, he doesn't need his company - why not join hands with his Jijaji who runs a software company, get the software whi

You are dumb when ... ... someone says on the other line "Hello" as to mean "Hello there" and you ask them - "Can you hear me?" You are in the 21st century when: you work on a project for an associate of your employer the people who your first contacts at the client themselves are employees of a third party on a contract with your client your project associate is currently in transition to another city s/he works with a manager who is based out of a third city your primary liaison a the client is serving his/her notice period however people whom you interact with at the client happen to be from your own country, your own city and speak the same language as you ... .... that's Globalization for you !! :-)

Well ... getting bored of eating the same stuff, I tried out cooking rice kheer the other day. Here are some snaps. I first looked up the recipe here , and then cooked plain rice and set the milk for heating ... The next stage was to mix them up, add sugar and starts stirring ... And here's how the final preparation looks like ... Delicious ....

In 2004, on the same day as today, I made my first post on this blog, and I have loved every bit of it. Blogs are the individual's 'press releases' to the world - they are chronicles of what people do, think and feel about their lives - and by doing all this, blogs epitomize the much elusive state that mankind has been in quest of, since time immemorial - FREEDOM! And when it comes to freedom, lets hear from the perspective of freedom's champion - Mahatma Gandhi. I quote Louis Ficher: Gandhi believed in revealing himself. He regarded secrecy as the enemy of freedom-not only the freedom of India but the freedom of man. He exposed even the innermost personal thoughts which individuals usually regard as private. Guess Gandhi would have loved to have a blog :-) [I have quoted Gandhi on individualism earlier as well]. How correct Gandhi was becomes clear when you read today's authors talking about the importance of individuals in the present society. For example, Thom

Went around the city, its castle and cathedral today - check out the photos ...

Well actually nothing special - but it was the first time I made it all on my own: sandwiches. Got up lazily at 9 - and made tea - while having tea - cut some onion and tomatoes. Had put potatoes in the microwave. Once they were cooked I cut them too. Then, I mixed and mashed the whole thing, added salt and some biryani masala (since I did not have garam masala) and smeared some butter on it. This I microwaved for a minute and then mixed it to get the butter mix up. Reheated it for few more minutes. Toasted a few slices of bread - put the mixture above between them - and done! Anyone having any tips to further spice this up?

Well ... not exactly the Vegas look - but this was a picture I took just next to the New Delhi railway station. .

I am at Norwich now at my Studio apartment - nice cosy place. It has a couch like the one Joey and Chandler have in F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and I am spending most of my time at home watching Friends on TV, eating and surfing the net!! Proper Couch Potato Eh!! Yeah ... So presented below are some photos of my lunch today (Baked Beans with Onion sprinkled on a bread; the bread is smeared with butter) - tastes amazing - believe you me! And the next photo below that is the Sofas on which I spend most of time sitting and surfing! .

You might be surprised to see the title after the post I made last night. But I am really impressed the way Zapak has reacted to my post. Read on to know more ... When I made the post last night, India was still in deep slumber; and when India woke up - I was in deep slumber. But while I was asleep, the Zapak team woke up to my blog post - they thereafter tracked me through various Social networks and by the time I woke up, I had a couple requests from their team to connect to me. [The earliest one was as early as 7.57 AM India time] I was surprised (and impressed) about the speed with which they contacted me - so I sent out my contact details, and Lo! Within less than an hour I had them calling me explaining that the mail I received was because of some kind of spurious network activity and was a "security issue" which they were dealing with. They requested me to remove the image which I had put up on my blog, because it revealed some internal statistics they were tracking. W