“It’s virtually low or no cost for entry,” explains Adam Schwam of Long Island-based Sandwire, an information technology consultancy. “It allows individuals to post information about themselves, others and their business to a wider audience than they would normally meet in person.”

You can use these sites to connect with potential new customers, post jobs, find strategic partners and investors and build brand awareness, say experts.

“It increases word-of-mouth marketing and buzz,” notes Ross Johnston, vice- president of business development at Vancouver, Washington-based Dotster Inc., an Internet business services provider that can create customised social networking platforms for individual companies.

In essence, these sites allow you to build an online network of friends and associates. Most enable you to post your profile, work history, interests, education and other information that might help people find you. They also allow you to participate in groups and forums, as well as post and answer questions. You can either sign up directly or be invited by a friend or colleague. Most sites are free, but some may charge nominal fees for enhanced services.

You build your network by sending out virtual invites to friends and associates. Once you’re connected with an individual, you’re able to see a list of contacts within their network and they’d be able to do the same with yours. “You really only want to connect with people you know and trust,” advises Kay Luo of Mountain View, California-based LinkedIn, a business social networking site. “The strength of your network really comes from relationships you have with the people you’re connected to.”

Otherwise, you risk drawing unwanted solicitations. “You don’t want salesmen hitting up every person in your network,” says Rich Kruse, a consultant for the New York Islanders and president of ExecuLeaders, a business networking association, who belongs to LinkedIn and Facebook. Kruse gets invited to new social networking sites regularly but chose the two he found most of his friends and colleagues participating in. He has used them to generate interest for ExecuLeaders as well as new business opportunities.

When picking sites, select those that best match your goals and audience, suggests Johnston. “If you want mass market, you probably want to be in portals like MySpace and Facebook,” he notes.

MySpace had 114.5 million unique visitors in May alone, while Facebook had 123.8 million for the same month, according to comScore Inc. in Reston, Virginia. Start with one popular site and get your feet wet, suggests Schwam.

That’s what Steve Schwimmer, Long Island regional sales and relationship manager for Renaissance Merchant Services in Bohemia, has done. He joined LinkedIn about six months ago and says he has been slowly building his network and exploring the site.

Like Schwimmer, you need to take the time to familiarise yourself with a network, says Schwam. “Get involved in community and focus groups and participate in discussions,” he advises, noting that an online networking environment isn’t much different from a physical one.

The bottom line is you get what you put into it.

Sources: The Telegraph (Kolkata, India)

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It sure sounds like a fine job, doesn’t it? Owning the most coveted commercial address on the corner of the city’s main street, where lip-smacking dishes are tossed up day after day, and where the city’s glitterati habitually drops by to literally eat off your hands. Signature dishes being written about in the city’s newspapers, publishers turning up to sign a deal for a best-selling cookbook — even a TV show, maybe, in three years’ time? Surely, the restaurant business couldn’t be about anything but glamour, could it?

If you think the answer is “yes”, think again. For no matter what the whole food business might look like from the outside, the real picture — behind kitchen doors — is far from pretty. In his bestselling book Kitchen Confidential, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain labels the food business an industry which has one of the highest failure rates. It is commonly estimated that out of every 10 new restaurants that set up shop about eight down shutters within the first year of operations.

“In the food business, we live on a day-to-day basis,” says a Calcutta-based chef. “We can be here today, gone tomorrow. Fortunes change in a flash. And nothing can be taken for granted.”

Still interested? Frankly, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be. For despite the downside — job stress, high attrition and sky-high investments, to name a few — people have indeed made a name for themselves in the industry. And while dipping your toe in the business entails sundry risks, there’s simply no stopping you if you happen to strike gold.

So what exactly do you need in order to go speeding down this all-or-nothing highway?

“Passion. Determination. Drive. Every bit of it,” says Anjan Chatterjee, king of the restaurant industry in India today. “Youngsters desirous of getting into this profession have to be totally committed,” he says. “The dynamics of the industry are simple. One needs to be 100 per cent hands-on in this business.”

Coming from a person who has risen to the helm of a host of premium eateries across India, with brands such as Mainland China, Oh! Calcutta and Sigri to boot, that couldn’t be wrong. And Joymalya Banerjee, star chef who commands the kitchens of Oh! Calcutta, can only second Chatterjee’s views. “In the food business, there are no weekends, no Saturday nights, no Christmas vacations. You’ve simply got to be at it all the time,” he says.

Moving on to practicalities, one cannot expect to do well in the restaurant business without a proper understanding of the ropes involved. Much of the knowledge required, however, can be picked up along the way by enrolling at a reputed hotel management institute — such as the Indian Institute of Hotel Management, Catering Technology & Applied Nutrition (IIHM) — where certificate or diploma courses in food and beverages can prove to be helpful in the long run. Like IITs, there are several IIHMs across India. While the Calcutta branch is in Taratala, there are quite a few other IIHMs in Delhi, Bangalore, Lucknow and Goa to mention some.

“A hotel management degree is undoubtedly the best foot forward,” says Ranjit Chaudhury, principal of IIHM, Calcutta. “The three-year course at IIHM, for example, deals at length with the restaurant industry, so graduates are professionally trained for everything that lies ahead. Besides, in the second year of the course, students are given a 20-week industrial training with a star-grade hotel or restaurant, where they learn hands on,” he says.

Once out of college, you have the choice of joining a good restaurant, where new things can be learnt from more experienced people. That, of course, is the easy option. A more daring option would be to amass some money — and we’re talking of several lakhs here — and open a restaurant of your own, where you’re the boss, and give out orders instead of taking them.

Loans, if needed, should be garnered through personal contacts. “Banks and venture capitalists are wary of lending money for the restaurant business, since there’s a high possibility of these ventures going in the red, and they will not dish out money unless there’s adequate collateral to fall back on,” says a venture capitalist. In which case, money has to come in through personal trust and reputation.

Now that might sound rather romantic. But then, as opposed to working in someone else’s ship that sails on even keel, opening your own joint could potentially see you being swept away by the tide, before pushing your brave but futile effort to the verge of extinction.

“The initial years in the business are always very difficult,” says Banerjee. “It isn’t before a good five years or so that one can actually lean back and see the money coming in. The gestation period for a restaurant to thrive is very long.” Most ventures, predictably, don’t live through it.

If one is starting out as a junior chef in someone else’s venture, one starts on a monthly salary of about Rs 10,000-12,000. The increment is directly proportional to performance; it is not uncommon for a good performer to earn Rs 50,000 a month in three years’ time.

If one opens a restaurant, the monthly profits can range from Rs 50,000 to a couple of lakhs (or even more), depending on the restaurant’s profile, size, turnover, quality and popularity.

Nonetheless, if you’re hell-bent on going your own way, a few pointers may be of help. Most chefs and restaurateurs agree that a restaurant has to reek of personality, from its branding right down to its service on every table. A restaurant reflects the personality of the person running it. Much like human relations, people can develop either an affinity or an aversion to an eatery.

Ritu Dalmia, chef and co-proprietor of the fine dining restaurant Diva in New Delhi, dwells on this point at length. The location of a restaurant, she says, is of paramount importance. “You might have the best product, but no one will find it if it is in gooney-lands,” she says. Once the location has been selected, focus on the décor. Nothing too fancy or expensive, just enough to make your guests feel perfectly at home. “Decide on a particular theme and then follow it without mixing too many elements,” says Dalmia. In other words, keep it simple yet comfortable.

Next, of course, is the cost factor. While it’s nice to be adventurous, it’s foolhardy to give in to fancy and go overboard on fixed costs. “It is, at the end of the day, a business, and has to make commercial sense. If you’re not careful, it is very easy for monthly costs to go out of hand,” says Dalmia. What might happen next is only a matter of conjecture.

Once these stock issues have been taken care of, there are other smaller things that need to be observed. The lifestyle of your clients, their food habits and spending power, and their preferences or reservations over ingredients — all these, if studied well and addressed accordingly, can work wonders for your business. “The distinctiveness and contours of a restaurant’s character should connect with the target group,” says Chatterjee.

And yet, after all those things have been taken care of, your restaurant might still go kaput. The reason? The food is yucky. “At the end of the day, it all boils down to what you serve on the platter,” says Banerjee. “Your clients are a discerning lot and you just can’t stuff anything down their throat. Your food simply has to be sumptuous,” he says.

So coming down to the basics, if you have problems boiling an egg, just forget it. But if you’ve matched your mother’s skills at more exotic fare such as mochar ghonto, maybe you’ve got what it takes.

So pamper yourself with a brand new chef’s knife, and get chopping.

Sources: The Telegraph (Kolkata, India)

Many companies put a lot of effort into all the external aspects of what they do, yet completely overlook what is happening due to internal perception. Internal perception includes your thoughts and beliefs; the internal dialogues and thought processes you have regarding your business, your industry and your customers/clients. Often, we may not be aware of hidden thoughts. Our thoughts support or hinder our success.

To find out how what you believe take this simple test. For the next 48 hours notice what comes up when you are talking about your company, your products and services and the value you bring to the table. Do your internal thoughts match your words? Do you feel good about your interactions? Do you feel the prices you charge are fair and reasonable? Do you believe you are worth what you ask? Do you feel you are the best choice for your customers?

You can invest lots of money and time on external campaigns. Your true success will be determined when your thoughts and beliefs match your actions. Before you launch your next marketing campaign, ask yourself these important questions:
-How do you feel about your product or service?
-Do you feel the price you charge is matches the value your product/service -brings to your customers?
-Do you appreciate your clients?
-Do you feel appreciated by your customers or clients?
-Who do you want to do business with?
-Who wants to do business with you?
Whether you are in financial planning, training, banking, the beauty industry, day spas, or technology, take the time to know what sets you apart. In the consumer’s mind, Company A looks the same as Company B in many ways. The same with Salesperson A
compared to Salesperson B. To stand apart your must help the consumer understand your differences.
A simple formula to clarify your differences is to write down every reason someone would want to do business with you.
-Are you an expert in your industry?
-Do you deliver in record time?
-Do you have a unique location?
-What is unique about your business compared to your competitors?
-What is most important to your prospects and customers about doing business with you? (If you don’t know – ASK!)
-What can only you do that your competitors can’t do?

Once you answer these questions, create a short message that incorporates these answers. When you meet with a potential customer and they ask what you do, you want to be able to concisely tell them. This process is also helpful with your current
clients. Remember - they are only one call away from utilizing the services of someone else!
Before you begin to aggressively position yourself and gain visibility, think about the vision for you and your organization. Gaining a vision of what the organization stands for, the impact you want to have on your customers or clients, the quality of products and services, your contribution to your community, and where you want the organization to be in the future is essential as you move forward.Your vision is your ideal future state and includes your values and what you desire your organization to be like.

What’s most important to you? An essential aspect of your vision is understanding what makes you, your company and your team unique in the marketplace.

What makes your product or service different from your competitors? Once you have your vision in mind, write it down. This will help you to solidify your thoughts and stay on track with what is truly important.
Periodically revisit your overall vision. Your core values should be the main driver of your vision, yet some of the details are bound to change. As you and your customer’s needs and wants change, you may find it necessary to update your vision.
Where do you want your company to be? Where do you want to be? Match your actions with your thoughts and beliefs. Create a vision for success!

Sources: From Kathleen Gage’ article who is a keynote speaker, author and business advisor specializing in marketing and promotions.

The folks behind PhD (or Party Hard Drinkers, to give its full form) got their big idea from the crackdown against drunken driving in Mumbai. They reckoned that on New Year’s Eve there would be plenty of people willing to pay to be driven home after a spirited evening. The service costs Rs 500, 10 pm to 3 am. You provide the car.

That’s a venture that the folks who run discos and drinking joints may well tie up with. There are other service sorties more individually oriented. Wasiff Khan is the founder of the Mumbai-based Home Care Dog Food. He provides hot meals to pampered pooches all over the city. The menu is not exactly a la carte. But you can have the regular fare that costs Rs 30 per meal or the premium version which costs four times as much. Khan already has a clientele all over the city.

While on the subject of dogs, there is money to be made from taking them for walks. In Argentina, it’s big business (see box). In India, some of the dotcom companies were offering such services as part of the benefits. IT companies such as Wipro and Infosys offer concierge services which take over the headache of getting a passport, buying tickets for a movie, sending flowers to your significant other or shopping for groceries.

Another sortie in this arena is Transformations, a Delhi-based venture. It started off as a gag but has proved surprisingly successful. It offers beauty treatments and spas at home. Transformations will land up with all the equipment and give you the full treatment — effect a transformation. The cost depends on what you order. It ranges from Rs 600 to Rs 6,000.

Abroad, everything is corporatised. Take, for example, The Maids, a premier residential cleaning service in the US and Canada. It has spread to 40 US states and four Canadian provinces. It even offers gift certificates, which you can present to a friend who needs to be taken to the cleaners. “The Maids Home Services gift certificates can be used towards any of our services, such as maid service, carpet cleaning services, window cleaning services and more,” says the company. Maids in some Indian cities have started organising themselves. They have formed unions. Setting up a company is just a step away. Mumbai’s dabbawallas have done it.

Still abroad, look at Jim’s Group in Australia, with branches in New Zealand, Canada and the UK. Among its offerings are dog bathing, carpet cleaning, lawn mowing, painting, plumbing and bookkeeping.

All these services have existed in India for a long time. The difference today is that they are becoming organised and respectable. House painting, for one, was always handled by contractors and the unorganised sector. Today, companies like Asian Paints have integrated it into the business.

Or nursing. Fortis HealthWorld Ltd, Ranbaxy’s pharmacy chain, has just flagged off India’s first branded home nurse service. The company had a staffing arm, which placed nurses abroad. Now they will be given assignments at home too, in more senses than one.

Today’s India is becoming an entrepreneurs’ paradise. Forget that boring job. Walk dogs, breed ants (to supply to zoos), or simply drive drunks safely home. You could even get a tip at the end of the day.

Dog days in Argentina

Dog ownership isn’t just trendy in Argentina, it’s epidemic and on the city’s already overcrowded streets it often seems as though canines outnumber locals by an astounding ratio.

Of course, where one tourist sees adversity, another, more keen local eye sees possibility, and many Argentine entrepreneurs have been able to look beyond the poop-covered sidewalks. Welcome to the world of professional dog walking, undertaken by your friendly neighbourhood paseaperros (which means literally “strolls dogs”), who have rapidly become the biggest thing in Buenos Aires since dulce de leche.

While still a relatively new phenomenon, these young, invariably athletic locals are among the most common sights one now sees in the city’s downtown core; their recent rise to stardom is a testament not only to their ingenuity at capitalising on a niche market, but also to the willingness of the wealthy to shell out pesos in order to ride the latest trendy wave.

Typically, about 100 pesos a month provides your dog with two, two-hour walks each day, including pick up and drop off at your apartment. Paseaperros also brush and groom, as well as monitor for signs of ill health; for this reason, many of them even have veterinary training. Their duties are undertaken every weekday, but dog owners are left to fend for themselves on weekends.

(Source: Extracted from The Dog Days of Argentina, by Patrick Kennedy, CBC News)

riters starting out are often advised to write about what they know. For graduate entrepreneurs, the advice might be similar. Spotting a niche is easier when you’re in the market and you can ask your friends for their opinions; it is more difficult if your product is a power-saving device for remote Arctic communities. After all, Mark Zuckerberg, the 23-year-old creator of Facebook, started the social networking site while a student at Harvard and watched it become a global Internet phenomenon.

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Olivia Bedford, 25, hopes to help graduates with more than just their social lives. As a student she applied to many popular milk-round companies, not knowing what she wanted to do. She went into PR — “completely wrong for me” — before moving into headhunting, “I really struggled,” she says. “I thought, ‘there’s got to be a way of making the right decision earlier’.” She says that the one-size-fits-all careers service can leave graduates confused. So she founded Future Prospect, a career guidance service that offers advice to help graduates to hit the ground running. “So many think that to find a job they just need a 2:1. But to be employable you need to match your skills to the environment.” HR specialists offer psychometric testing, interview training and opportunities at SMEs as well as the big firms.

The workplace that graduates join could look very different if Lucian Tarnowski, 23, the founder of Brave New Enterprises, a consultancy, gets his way. Studying religion at the University of Edinburgh, he became interested in why Generation Y, those born after 1980, “are seen as the most difficult workforce to manage”. He intends to bridge the gap between what employers offer and what graduates need. Doted-upon Gen Yers expect a more personal experience, Tarnowski says. “A challenge is making them feel that they’ve joined a team, not a faceless organisation.” For the MTV generation, entertainment and technology are part of work. “We’ve been brought up with high-interest things, so we’re easily bored.”

If firms fail to adapt, retention rates will plummet, he says. The consultancy advises on everything from reward schemes to recruitment. Already 65 firms have signed up to a spin-off, Brave New U. Graduates will be able to befriend potential employers via Facebook, “the complete opposite” of CV websites such as Monster.

After leaving the University of Oxford in 2000, Charlie Osmond and his friend Caroline Plumb knew that they wanted to start something, they just didn’t know what. “We started with the idea of helping graduate fashion designers, but realised that we didn’t know anything about fashion. So we thought, what do we know?” The result was FreshMinds, a consultancy that gives research and consulting projects to people taking a year out. “The options for smart graduates to find interesting, challenging part-time work are pretty limited. We saw an opportunity.”

Darius Norell, a University of Warwick graduate, didn’t enjoy his degree and spent most of his time organising clubs and societies. He had always wanted to start a business and the graduate job hunt provided the impetus. “I saw first-hand the stresses people were going through. It can be a very depressing experience.” In 1999 he founded Real World Magazine, a free, independent careers publication distributed twice a term on campuses. It aims to give graduates a broader idea of the job roles available and “a warts ’’ all view of the working world”.

A successful venture takes hard work. Norell estimates that he made 1,000 phone calls over four months before selling a single job advert. The idea received a lukewarm response until after the first issue, when interest grew hugely. “People didn’t understand the concept. You need confidence and resilience.” He says that graduates thinking of starting up should seize the opportunity. “I’d say go for it. There’s no better time than now.”

©THE TIMES, LONDON

Types:-
There are four basic types of offshore outsourcing:

ITO — information technology outsourcing
BPO — business process outsourcing covers things like running call centers, processing insurance claims.
Software R&D — offshore software development
KPO - knowledge process outsourcing covers things that require a higher skill set such as reading X-Rays, performing investment research on stocks and bonds, handling the accounting functions for a business or executing engineering design projects.

Criteria
The general criteria for a job to be offshore-able are:

There is a significant wage difference between the original and offshore countries;
The job can be telework;
The work has a high information content;
The work can be transmitted over the internet;
The work is easy to set up;
The work is repeatable.
The driving factor behind the development of offshore outsourcing has been the need to cut costs while the enabling factor has been the global electronic internet network that allows digital data to be accessed and delivered instantly, from and to almost anywhere in the world.

Countries involved:
Some of the major countries/districts that provide such services are India ( Full Spectrum Services ), Indonesia (Programming, Data Entry, Customer Support), China (Programming), Philippine (Customer Support, Programming, Animation, Transcription), Russia (Programming and R&D), Pakistan (Programming, Customer Support), Panama (Programming, Customer Support), Nepal (Programming, Customer Support), Bangladesh (Web & Software Programming,Game Development,IT Support,Network Solutions,Offshore Outsourcing Service), Bulgaria (Programming and R&D), Ukraine (Programming and R&D), Belarus (Programming, R&D), Romania (Programming and IT), the Philippines (Programming, R&D, Data Entry and Customer Support), Egypt (Customer Support and Programming), Malaysia (Customer Support and R&D), and many others.

The widespread use and availability of the internet has enabled individuals and small businesses to contract freelancers from all over the world to get projects done at a lower cost due to lower wages and property prices. This trend runs in parallel with the tendency towards big corporations’ outsourcing, and may serve to strengthen small business‘ capacity to compete with their bigger competitors capable of setting up offshore locations or of arriving at major contracts with offshore companies. See Freelancing on the Internet.

Source of conflict:
There are different views on the impact on the various societies affected, which reflects the attitude of Protectionism versus Free Trade. Some see it as a potential threat to the domestic job market in the developed world and ask for government protective measures (or at least closer scrutiny of existing trade practices), while others, including the countries who receive the work, see it as an opportunity. Free-trade advocates suggest economies as a whole will obtain a net benefit from labor offshoring, but it is unclear if the displaced receive a net benefit.

One issue offshoring of technical services has brought more attention to is the value of education as an alleged solution to trade-related displacements. Education may no longer be a comparative advantage of high-wage nations because the cost of education may be lower in the nations involved in the controversy. While it is true that education is usually considered helpful to competitiveness in general, an “education arms race” with low-wage nations may not pay off.

Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore_outsourcing

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It was back to school for a Mumbai-based general manager of treasury at the State Bank of India (SBI). Keeping him company was a vice-president of HDFC Bank. They were sitting with the rest of the first batch at the Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai, learning the intricacies of commodity trading. That was three years ago, when the government first allowed futures trading in commodities. Since then, the three-month diploma in commodities market (DICM) class has seen a steady stream of students, ranging from housewives and bankers to analysts and MBAs, all seeking to tap into the future.

“Commodity trading has existed since Chanakya’s time but somehow, we lost the initiative to the West and the US,” says Anil Mendhi, who heads the DICM programme at Welingkar. Then came 2003, when the government allowed trading in a select list of commodities. In just 36 months, trading volumes rose by 28 times. Trading at the domestic commodity exchanges amounted to an incredible Rs 36,76,000 crore in 2006-2007, up from Rs 1,29,000 crore in 2003-2004. This fiscal year has seen a total business of about Rs 15,00,000 crore till August.

For the uninitiated, trading in this segment is buying and selling in commodity derivatives (futures or options). Right now, in India, options are not allowed. Futures trading in commodities take place in gold, silver, agricultural commodities, metals, crude and so on. The Forward Markets Commission (FMC) is the body that is responsible for regulating and promoting futures trade in commodities.

Commodity derivatives are traded at the commodity exchanges, the two major ones being the National Commodity and Derivative Exchange (NCDEX) and the Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX). NCDEX is promoted by ICICI Bank, the Life Insurance Corporation of India, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) and the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE). MCX, an independent and demutualised multi commodity exchange, is among the world’s leading bullion and energy exchanges. Its shareholders include Financial Technologies (I) Ltd, Nabard, NSE, one of the affiliates of Fidelity International, several public sector banks including the SBI and Canara Bank, HDFC Bank, SBI Life Insurance Co. Ltd, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup.

Gold, silver, agricultural commodities (including grains, pulses, spices and oilseeds), mentha oil, metals and crude are among the commodities that the exchanges deal in. Specialised commodity exchanges also exist and there is a recommendation to upgrade some of these to international futures markets.

Apart from this, those entering commodity trading include the public sector State Trading Corporation of India. Online trading in commodities is a new initiative that the trading major will begin this year, notwithstanding the fact that the government has banned trading in wheat, rice, urad and tur.

All this has opened up tremendous career opportunites. “When we started our diploma course, we thought we would begin with a batch of 30 but the response was so huge that Welingkar’s started with two batches of 60 students each,” recalls Mendhi.

Trading for a perfect future

The diploma was aimed at the national level exchanges which were facing a tremendous shortage of skilled people. “Just like the software industry had to hire ordinary graduates to plug vacancies when it took off in India 10-15 years ago, commodity trading is taking on anyone who has a basic knowledge of the subject,” Mendhi explains.

Exchanges like the NCDEX and MCX offer courses in futures trading. GB Pant University in Uttarakhand offers it as part of its agri-business module. And the Indian Institute of Management at Lucknow has incorporated it in its management executive development programme. Modules are conducted by the BSE and the NSE as well. Welingkar’s also offers commodity trading as an elective for its postgraduate course in management.

“Banks and FIIs are still not allowed to trade in futures but experts believe it’s only a matter of time before they are,” says Suresh Devnani, head of business development, MCX. ICICI Bank has started a commodities department in anticipation of just such a future.

No pun intended but what kind of future does commodity trading offer? “If you want to grow with a sector, commodities are where growth has been exponential,” says Devnani. Opportunities exist across the value chain, he says. Be it brokers, exchange members, analysts, traders and participants in exchanges (firms like Godrej and ICICI Bank) — all are seeking experienced people. These include charting in technicals, products, market watch and surveillance and product development.

Candidates with qualifications in soil physics or an agricultural background would have an edge over MBAs. Devnani says that when hiring people at senior levels, the exchanges try to mesh departmental requirements with corresponding functions.

For instance, in clearing and settlement and warehousing, people from retail and equity would be able to fit in as procurement, trading and distribution are functions in those fields as well. Those with similar portfolios in equity would be considered for risk management. But in commodities such as fisheries, pulses and wheat, specialisation is needed. This is where those with a degree in agriculture are required. The sector also needs people with majors in finance, currency and international markets.

The only drawback is the total lack of participation in commodity trading by farmers, says Mendhi. It would help them to hedge their risk in commodity exchanges and protect them from middlemen. There were plans to bring farmers into the fold through computer terminals in villages but these are at the early stages yet.

As of now, stay-at-home wives and mothers who feel they understand foodgrains best, traders looking at new trends and markets, executives from treasury banks dealing with currency that will open up for trading after further reforms and company sponsors are honing up on their trading skills in a sector that has just stepped into the limelight.

Shorthand
Specialised commodity exchanges: They trade in specific types of commodities, say bullion or grain or minerals. Currently, there are 21 such exchanges. NCDEX and MCX are two of the four multi commodity exchanges.

Commodities: These are raw materials used to create products, ranging from food to furniture, that consumers buy. They include agricultural products such as wheat and cattle, energy products such as oil and gasoline, metals such as gold, silver and aluminum and “soft” commodities (that cannot be stored for long) such as sugar, cotton, cocoa and coffee.

Charting in technicals: Technical analysts use mechanical rules to detect changes in the supply of and demand for a stock and capitalise on the expected change.

Future or Futures: Used to denote all contracts covering the sale of financial instruments or physical commodities for future delivery on a commodity exchange. Both futures and options are part of a class of securities called derivatives, so named because they derive their value from the worth of an underlying investment.

Futures trading in commodities: Agreement to buy / sell shares of a specific stock in a designated future month at a price agreed upon today by the buyer and seller. The contracts themselves are often traded on the futures market.

Commodity derivatives: Contracts such as options and futures whose prices are derived from the price of the underlying financial asset (in this case the raw material).

Option: It is the right to buy or sell. While a futures contract is the promise to make a transaction, options give the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an asset at a set price on or before a given date. Investors, not companies, issue options.

Demutualised : The process by which mutual organisations or companies convert themselves to for-profit public companies that distribute profits to shareholders in the form of dividends.

Participants: They are partners or shareholders in an exchange.

Clearing: An adjunct to a futures exchange through which transactions executed on its floor are settled by matching purchases and sales.

Warehousing: The interim holding period from the time of the closing of a loan to its subsequent marketing to capital market investors.

Source: The Telegraph (Kolkata, India)

Emily Galash’s friends are so jealous. The 16-year-old Portland, Oregon, high school sophomore is paid $125 a month to take digital photos of teen culture and send them to Look-Look, a youth-culture marketing and trend-forecasting firm in Hollywood.

Galash is one of Look-Look’s 35,000 teen trendspotters worldwide who feed their network inside information about the ever-shifting tastes of the lucrative youth market. The demand for hip, sharp-eyed trendspotters is growing as companies and consultancies attempt to learn more about what makes teens buy.

Some of Look-Look’s corporate clients, such as Virgin Mobile, a cell-phone service provider, use the images on their websites to give pages an authentic teen feel. Which is why Galash’s subjects must first agree to be photographed and then sign a release before she can upload their images to look-look.com.

Galash was offered a shot as a trendspotter last August, when her cousin gave up the job. Known at Look-Look as a “photojournalist,” Galash finds her best subjects at school, in the park, at local malls and near the city’s many music clubs. “It’s getting more difficult to capture original styles because so many young people work hard to stand out,” says Galash. “You have to be able to spot the difference between someone who’s copying trends and someone who’s truly inventing a new look.”

Galash’s advice: Develop your communication skills and intuitive feel for that next cool thing. But remember that “schoolwork comes first.”

Source:Reader’s Digest

Tenacity, Toys and a Talent for Teaching
How did a high school English and art teacher, with no business experience, create a multimillion-dollar company? There was never a master plan, insists Julie Aigner-Clark, 39, whose phenomenally popular Baby Einstein line of videos and books for infants and toddlers is known to millions of parents around the world. She credits her success to common sense — and tenacity.

When her daughter Aspen was born in 1994, Clark says she knew she wanted to stay home with her. “She became my world. I wanted to play with her and read to her and do the things I knew intuitively were good for my child. At the same time, I realized I missed what I had focused on so much — literature and art — and I thought, It would be so great if my child loved this as much as I do.”

But Clark found educational products geared only for older children. Aspen loved looking at things, and Clark loved classical music. Common sense connected the dots.

Friends didn’t have high expectations for her idea. Retailers thought it would be a passing fad. But it made sense to Clark. “I knew that if my baby liked this, other babies would as well.”

She launched The Baby Einstein Company in 1997, and shot the first video in the basement of her Atlanta home, using Aspen’s most prized stuffed animals and toys as props. Manning the borrowed camera was Clark’s husband, Bill.

The Clarks financed the project with $15,000 from their savings. “It may not sound like a lot of money, but I wasn’t working. I remember my parents shaking their heads and saying, ‘Oh, my God, Julie, what are you doing? This is so expensive.’” Part of Clark’s drive to succeed came from her determination not to lose the family’s savings. The personal gamble was also huge. “I was a teacher, not an entrepreneur.”

Realizing she needed a distributor, Clark set her sights on The Right Start, a company that sold slightly upscale products for babies. It had about 40 stores nationwide, a huge mail-order business and customers like herself — educated moms who wanted to invest in their children’s future.

Clark hopped on a plane, headed to the Toy Fair, an annual trade show in New York City. She couldn’t afford a display booth and The Right Start hadn’t rented one, so she started scanning the crowd of some 20,000 attendees. The next day, Clark saw a group with The Right Start name tags. “I was so excited that I charged up to these women and said, ‘Please, you have to have this product in your store.’ I probably terrified them, but I got a woman named Wendy to take my video.”

This Is More Than a Business”
After weeks without a response, Clark called The Right Start’s headquarters. “I was trying to sound like a big executive,” says Clark, “even though I was on the floor changing a diaper.” The receptionist dropped a bomb: Wendy had left the company.

Undeterred, Clark asked to speak to Wendy’s replacement. She got voice mail, but kept spinning her story. “I said, ‘Wendy loved the Baby Einstein video. I wondered if you had a chance to see it yet.’” Then she hung up and hoped for the best.

A few days later, Clark’s phone rang. It was The Right Start calling to order 100 copies of the video to test in their stores. Three days later, they called again. The initial order had sold out. They wanted more.

“I took some risks,” Clark admits, “and, yes, I told a little white lie. But that was how I got my ‘in.’ From that point on, it was word of mouth — moms telling moms telling moms.”

That tenacity, and being passionate about her product, launched the company and Clark’s new career. But even Clark was surprised that she “got addicted to the creativity.” The Baby Einstein video was followed by Baby Mozart, Baby Shakespeare, Baby Van Gogh, and more. The company grossed $100,000 in sales its first year, then skyrocketed to $1 million the second, $5 million the third and over $20 million its fifth year. Clark was the CEO; her husband, the chief financial officer. “It was more money than we ever thought we’d make in our lives,” says Clark. “We were thrilled.”

But also overwhelmed. “Baby Einstein started out as a fun way to have a professional life outside of my mommy life,” explains Clark, who by then had a second child. “Bill and I looked at each other and said, ‘The people who were supposed to benefit the most — our children — are benefiting the least.’”

The Clarks sold Baby Einstein to Disney in 2001. It was a choice that was initially wrenching, says Clark, but in the end “was totally worth it.” They are able to spend more time with their kids, taking tIn addition, Clark has the money to finance a new venture: rips to the Galápagos Islands, to the Sea of Cortez, to Africa.

The Safe Side, a collaboration with John Walsh, host of America’s Most Wanted, that presents safety information for parents and children.

“I wanted to make sure my children understood the right choices to make if confronted with situations that could be dangerous,” says Clark. “But there was nothing on the market that would teach them how to stay safe.”

The Safe Side line of products includes DVDs, safety packs and an ear-piercing whistle. Clark contributes ten percent of proceeds to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. “Keeping kids safe — this is more than a business,” she says. “This has become a cause.”

That’s the secret she shared during a speech at the Harvard Business School. “I was surrounded by these people who wanted to start businesses and make jillions of dollars. But I didn’t start my company for that reason. I started it because I believed in what I was doing and believed I could make a difference. Sometimes when you start a company for the right reasons, it comes to fruition even more so than if you just wanted to make a million dollars. And that’s a great place to be.”

Source:Reader’s Digest

When he’s not teaching Internet and constitutional law full-time at the University of Tennessee, Glenn Reynolds, 44, can be found “blogging” on his computer.

Reynolds, creator of the conservative instapundit.com, is one of a growing number of bloggers (blog is short for web log) who post commentary, reviews, photos and more on a wide range of topics on websites throughout the day. Imagine a cyberspace soapbox, and you get the idea.

Blogging is something of a Seinfeld experience — enabling anyone with a website to write about nothing and everything on a regular basis and receive feedback from readers. What did you do today? That’s a blog. What do you think about today’s headlines? That’s a blog too. “It’s like your own printing press, without having to worry about paper, ink or postage,” says Reynolds.

Technorati.com, a San Francisco-based real-time search engine that tracks web logs, estimates that 12,000 new blogs are created each day. They range from engadget.com, which features consumer electronics news and reviews, to boingboing.net, with posts on everything from spring-loaded women’s shoes to novelty records.

To attract and hold a large, well-defined audience that advertisers will want to reach, a blogger needs a strong point of view, an engaging writing style and a gift for smart analysis. Reynolds says his site receives up to 500,000 visits daily and earns income — $3,000 a month — through contributions and posted ads.

“I put a tip jar on my site in 2002 after a friend suggested it,” he says. “I thought it was a dumb idea, but I earned $1,300 in the first few days.”

Last year, instapundit.com generated so much daily traffic that blogads.com, an Internet ad-sales company, convinced Reynolds to accept ads on his site. Blogads.com takes 20 percent of the fee paid by advertisers.

Reynolds devotes two to three hours a day — between classes and at night — writing entries and reviewing upward of 200 e-mails. “When your site generates enough buzz, you start getting great links and opinions from others that you can post,” says Reynolds. “At this point, my site is almost a group blog with a strong editor.”

Does Reynolds dream about giving up teaching and blogging full-time? “This is just a hobby, not my life’s work,” he says. “The only difference between this and my other hobbies, like scuba diving, is that blogging makes a little money.”

Reynolds’s advice: Keep it fresh “so your audience will keep coming back.”

Source:Reader’s Digest