If someone would ask me which is the biggest learning app out there ?

I would instantly answer that it’s YouTube. You can learn anything and everything using YouTube, be it cooking, dancing, technical skills, singing, painting and writing etc.

You can even study through YouTube as well. There are a lot of entertainment and sports related videos on YouTube which get trending every now and then.

How the idea of creating such an amazing video app came up?

Not only, one can learn through YouTube but also can help others to learn new skills. It is the era of social media influencers where people have different platforms in front of them to share their creativity with millions of people through online media.

YouTube is the world’s largest video streaming website and the second largest search engine after Google.

The creators behind this wonderful innovation were Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim who just not made their mission possible but also  created a phenomenon that is everlasting and never gonna end anytime soon.

After college Chad Hurley worked in PayPal division where he met Steve Chen and Jawed Karim who later came together to create YouTube in 2005.

Hurley worked in PayPal till it got acquired by eBay in 2002 and after that he started working in Silicon Valley as a Consultant.

In January 2005, Steve hosted a party for his friends and Hurley was one of his guests. Both Steve and Harley recorded the party on a camcorder and digital camera but were not able to send the recording to their friends and guests because of the massive file size.

It was then they came up with an idea of creating a site which would help people to share their videos.

They wanted to do something like the concept of Flickr which was one of the new websites back then that facilitated the sharing of the photographs.

After a few days, the team came up with a memorable and consumer-friendly logo. The website was launched on February 14, 2005.

A sneak peek was offered to interested parties in May , 2005. However, potential youtubers had to wait for another six months to be able to freely enjoy the site.

YouTube employees had to work from home and even from the garages where many start-ups used to work. It had roughly 8 to 10 employees who were enthusiasts and were working without any pay.

The first video published by the YouTube was titled “me at the zoo” by one of the co-founders of YouTube who was Jawed Karim.

In no time, YouTube became a huge success.

Later in September, 2005, YouTube got its first one million hit video. The video was a NIKE ad which went viral. YouTube acquired $3.5 million funding from Sequoia Capital and made an official launch in November, 2005.

In July, 2006, the company relieved that 65,000 videos were getting uploaded on YouTube every day. It slowly became the 10^th most popular website all around the world.

This much success in such a short time was unbelievable. In the later year, YouTube witnessed another huge success.

This tech video start-up got acquired by tech giant GOOGLE  for a whooping $1.65 billion. The idea of two technically inclined pioneers turned out to be a revolutionary milestone in the history.

In May 2007 , YouTube launched its partner program which allowed the creators with the viral videos to get paid. Now, people started to get paid due to their hobbies, only thanks to YouTube.

In August 2007, Google decided to introduce Ads on YouTube.

In 2007, Usher introduced the world to Justin Bieber via a YouTube video which got hit and made JB one of the greatest singers in the history of music. With Gangnam Style becoming viral on YouTube also was a huge event in the YouTube history. A lot of artists made their careers through YouTube. Not only artists but also videos related to education are getting popular among the people. YouTube also helped many K-pop groups like BTS and BlackPink etc. to be popular worldwide.

Now, It has become impossible to imagine a world without having YouTube in it!!

The world’s biggest and the most popular sportswear company – NIKE . In just 50 years, one man’s dream of better shoes turned into a global corporation worth over a $100 billion.

What did NIKE had that others didn’t? How come NIKE achieved the spot where it is right now??

The year is 1962 and Phil Knight was just graduated from Stanford.  Becoming a successful entrepreneur is a difficult task if you don’t have an idea which can make a bigger impact in this world.

He was a distance runner back in the university. In one of his business classes, he wrote in a paper title:

“Can Japanese sports shoes do the same to German sports shoes that Japanese cameras did to the German cameras?”

He was aware of the fact that Japanese cameras replaced German cameras and was pondering if Japanese shoes could do the same to Puma and Adidas which were domineering in America at that time.

He got so conscious of that idea of bringing Japanese shoes to U.S.A.

He could not find much exposure to Japanese shoes, so he decided to contact the Japanese company in order to import the goods in America. But he had zero experience in it.

As a determined man who created NIKE, we all know he actually did it.

In November 1962, he flew over to Japan like a tourist and just started exploring. In a beautiful city of Kobe, he laid his eyes on a shoe store that caught his eyes.

It belonged to the company called Onitsuka Tiger and the shoes they were producing at that time were of very high quality that Phil got tempted to import them to America.

He proposed to the company to let him import the shoes to America and became the distributor. Surprisingly, the company accepted the offer. He received his shipment of 12 pairs of Tiger shoes in 1963 and he started selling them at every running track he could get into.

Obviously, his strategy was not that scalable, so he approached the right person he knew at that time who was his former coach at the University of Oregon, Bill Bowerman. Bill was one of the famous coaches in America at that time. He had in fact trained multiple Olympic Athletes.

He liked the Tiger shoes so much that he wanted to partner up. Thus, in January 1964,  Bill and Phil incorporated Blue Ribbon Sports, each investing $500 into it.

They spent all that money on their first order, which at $3.33 a pair, amounted to 300 pairs of shoes.

The shipment came through in April, 1964 and thanks to Bill’s connections it was sold out by July.

In their first year, BRS sold $8,000 worth of shoes and with that money Phil started hiring salesmen for his company.

In 1965, their revenue had increased to $20,000 and pretty soon they opened their very own store in Santa Monica.

But while Phil was handling the business side of the operation, the actual innovation was

coming from Bill.

He was the guy who single-handedly brought jogging to America.

In 1966, he wrote a book about it that sold over a million copies, and of course his company was among the first to start marketing the Tiger shoes for jogging.

Bowerman was all about innovation and with every new shipment from Onitsuka, he’d cut open a few shoes to see how they were made, and he’d always try to improve them, for example adding to the cushion or using more lightweight materials.

He’d constantly sent his notes to Japan requesting changes; he was effectively designing Onitsuka’s shoes for them.

It was one of Bill’s designs that catapulted BRS into the mainstream: the Cortez, as he

called it, became one of the best-selling shoes in 1968, undoubtedly thanks to the 1968 Olympics, held in Mexico.

Thanks to the Cortez, BRS sold $300,000 worth of shoes in 1969.

But they had a big problem: the Cortez was so successful that they couldn’t keep up

with the demand.

Every new shipment they received sold out faster than the one before, but Onitsuka kept sending them at the same glacial pace.

What Onitsuka were actually doing was satisfying their local demand in Japan first and then sending whatever was left to America.

Phil and Bill knew that to expand they would have to evolve beyond being just a simple

distributor. Then they realized that they held all the cards: the Cortez was Bowerman’s design

so as soon as their contract with Onitsuka expired, they were free to start making it for themselves.

Luckily for them, their contract would end in 1972, just before the Olympics in Munich.

Thus, Phil had plenty of time to prepare for his big move.

In 1971, he started working on the branding: his first employee suggested calling the brand Nike, after the Greek goddess of victory.

Then, Phil needed a logo, so he went to a nearby university, snatched the first graphic design student he could find and told her to make him a logo.

For the impressive sum of $35 he got this: the swoosh.

In hindsight, that was money well spent and with his branding now complete, Phil was ready

for the Olympics.

This time, instead of locking himself into exclusive agreements, Phil established a network of subcontractors across Japan.

With production under his control, Phil could finally spread his wings.

You can see in this graph of Nike’s sales exactly when Phil started importing shoes from his Japanese subcontractors, and yes he started before his contract had even expired in 1971.

From then on, the story of Nike became one of growth.

They became the largest sportswear company in America in 1989 on the back of brilliant marketing like the “Just Do It” campaign and by signing rookie athletes that would eventually become famous across the world!!

LinkedIn is a very famous employment oriented online service where various professional corporate workers and job seekers get connected with each other. It provides the best networking opportunity in this online era.

How the idea of creating this kind of site came up?

How Reid Hoffman built LinkedIn?

Reid Hoffman was born on 5^th August, 1957 in California. When he was only 12, he wrote the suggestions for the gaming company and then the game developer asked him if he wanted to do something with the game, after that he started working there and received his first pay-check. After graduating from high school, Hoffman graduated from Stanford University. At Stanford, he met Peter Thiel who became his good friend from then. While being at Stanford, he pondered about influencing others at a large scale. He wanted to make a big impact in the world. Hence, he started to invest his time in making software which can be used by billions of people.

He tried to get funding from various company but got rejected each and every time. Hoffman joined Apple Computer in 1994 through the reference he got from his room-mate at Stanford. At Apple, he worked at eWorld which soon got stopped due to heavy losses.

He left Apple and join Fujitsu and overtook project management field. In July 1994, he resigned from Fujitsu and took a big step of opening his venture on his own. He named that venture socialnet.com!

SocialNet was focused mainly on online dating although you can connect with people for different purposes as well on it. It was a good venture from the beginning but it didn’t last in long run. It started to look scattered due to lack of a clear purpose. Online dating and making friends was a new idea back then which was not accepted by the people at that time.

He learnt a great lesson from this failure that the product distribution strategy is as important as the quality of the product itself.

After that he joined PayPal, where he was responsible for the external affairs department. In 2002, PayPal went public, Hoffman was a real contributor in the success of PayPal. After that he achieved the financial freedom by becoming a millionaire.

He though of taking a long break after a huge success but he got back to work only after the break of three weeks. He founded LinkedIn in December, 2002 with his teammates from PayPal and Socialnet.

He founded LinkedIn on his idea that the people would have two identities on the internet . One is their social identity which people want to show others to befriend them and the other one is the real identity which is for their achievements, educational background and works till that date.

LinkedIn is a professional networking site which connects professional people and job seekers from all over the world to help them in getting better opportunities and the better insights of real corporate world.

Initially, they invited the people they already knew about. From there, the things began to grew. In first month of operation, a total of 4500 users joined the platform. Some of them found jobs and new clients through LinkedIn which itself was fulfilling the purpose of the platform.

 People started to recommend the platform and more people started to join in. By the time, LinkedIn was a year old, it already bagged about 5,00,000 users on its platform.

Meanwhile, Sequoia Capital invested in this venture. By the year 2004, the platform managed to have a million users already.

Hoffman pointed out two major problems with LinkedIn in 2006. One was its user base which was comparatively low and the other was the product itself.

He resigned from the post of CEO and appointed Dan Nye as the new CEO of LinkedIn.

He worked as CEO for two years and helped LinkedIn to grow more and more. During those two years, the site reached to 35 million users and sales jumped over 900%.

A mobile version of LinkedIn was introduced on February, 2008. In January 2011, LinkedIn filed for an Initial Public Offering.

Over the years, LinkedIn acquired many small start-ups to increase the quality of the product and make it more useful for their users.

On 13^th June, 2016 , nearly 14 years after starting the company, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn for $26.2 billion.

This was the largest acquisition made by the Microsoft till date. This deal made Hoffman and his teammate billionaires!

Today, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking site with over 706 million users all around the world.

Money, if someone would ask what exactly money is for me then I would tell him without hesitation that it is the thing that can either make me or break me.

Pretty daring, right! When you know that without money, you can’t even survive by yourself then why not better manage it carefully. From office workers to comedians, everyone needs to manage their money.

Investing your money as early as possible is what we need in this era. When your money is sitting idle in your banks, there would be person who’ll be multiplying his assets through investment in other corner of the world.

First advice: Don’t take loans hastily

You get bound with liabilities once you take loans. Buying a house is definitely gonna help you in making assets, but buying it with the money from your loan will increase the liabilities. Taking education loan is still fine as the ROI ( Return On Investment ) in this case would not only include the money but also your overall personality . But always ensure to take the education loan under your own name. Avoid taking personal loans or loans to buy bikes or cars etc. At your 20s, it’s necessary for you to reduce and eliminate the loans as much as possible.

Second advice: Insurance

For the planning of unforeseen or any unexpected situation that might occur in your future, Insurance for that time becomes inevitable. There are two types of insurance which are highly recommended and attainable:

First is Life Insurance and

Second is Health Insurance.

In Life Insurance, choose term plan. As a working professional, to get a good idea of cover, 20 to 25 times of your current salary would surely make a good cover. If you have salary of 6 lakhs per annum then a financial cover of 1.5 crores would be a better choice which comes under a term insurance plan. If you are in twenties then you could get this cover in minimum price which is a huge benefit in itself.

Health Insurance should be taken for everyone dear to you. If you work in a company then it is most likely they would have a corporate health insurance on their own which would cover you and your family.

When should you start investing?

In your twenties, when you don’t have to pay large amount of taxes due to low income, you have the potential to invest as much as possible at that rate.

What is the right investment ratio?

Investing at least 20 percent of your income is the best choice. If you are investing 50,000 per month then investing at least 10,000 rupees is an ideal  choice. In 20s, no one expects you to be rich from the beginning of your working life. When no one expects from you then you have the less pressure on you , so why don’t you use that to be focused on doubling your assets as much as possible through investing. Having luxurious food, living in lavish places and hanging out with your friends is not necessary but having financial freedom as soon as possible is the most important thing in the 20s. If you invest 1 rupee from your twenties and if you invest the same 1 rupee from your 30s then it will make a huge difference.

In 10 years, the same rupee would lose half of its value meaning the value of 1 rupee now would be equal to 50 paise in the next ten years and that is how inflation works.

Inflation is the biggest reason for you to start investing as early as possible.

To get a satisfying return through your investment, where should you start to invest exactly?

Firstly, avoid investing in FDs (Fixed Deposits). FD is the worst investment you can make if you are in your in 20s. As you are free to take risks in your 20s then let your money to grow as much as possible than to protect it under the name of FD.

Invest and hold in stocks and equities..

Invest in the stocks of the companies which are doing great in the market but if you don’t have the knowledge of the stocks that much then invest in mutual funds. You can invest in direct stocks, portfolio stocks and in cryptocurrency (though it’s a bit risky)..

Don’t wait for your 40s to invest. Start investing your money in 20s as soon as you begin to earn!!

Way back in 1992, an immigrant from Ukraine came to the U.S. in search of some opportunity. This young teenager was accompanied by his mother and they’d barely had any money for their daily expenses. Due to the limited cash on hand, he used to save his old Soviet notebooks for schools and queued up with his mom for food stamps under government subsidy.

At the same time there was another guy who had lost a small fortune in the.com bubble and wasn’t close to finding something big. Now the friends have come together to disrupt the communication sector by merging a mobile messaging app that today has over 1.2 billion monthly active users with over 30 billion messages sent every day the friends. This journey is about Jan Koum and Brian Acton who founded the company together which is none other than the most popular mobile app currently in the world WhatsApp…

Jan is no stranger to failure and as a founder who had to go through his fair share of reductions by top tech companies including the one that eventually bought their servers only to become the most valuable messaging platform on the planet.  

Jan was born in the rural areas of Ukraine this was during the Soviet era so being a Jewish and living in a rural area was definitely not easy. He lived in a house that did not even have electricity connection. Being in a country that mostly had a temperature below zero degrees, they didn’t even have hot water.

His parents also denied the usage of course because they were often tapped by the government. To worsen things more being financially unwell , they also had to go through a regularity of hardships as well. Hence, in an attempt to put an end to all the sufferings, Jan along with his mother and grandmothers decided to move to Mountain View, California in 1992. In the U.S. , they were helped by a social support program to get a small two-bedroom apartment.

During this time, Jan started learning computer network by reading manuals that he used to purchase from a used bookstore at the age of 16. He had also begun working as a cleaner at a grocery store while his mother worked as a babysitter. Just once, things began to look normal, another tragedy hit his life when his mother was diagnosed with cancer but he became more stronger and his adversities were only making him more resilient. In the next two years, he had fully trained himself all about computer networking and was all set to take the next step. This is when he gains a sudden interest in programming and got himself enrolled at San Jose State University along with that he also began working with Ernst & Young as a security tester.

After working there for roughly six Months, Jan got the biggest opportunity of his life where he got selected to work at Yahoo as an infrastructure engineer. Now this was when he was still studying at San Jose State University.

Yahoo Back then was just another start-up and was beginning to grow and since Jan loved what he was doing he dropped out of his college and moved ahead with Yahoo. However, the happiness was short-lived and his mother couldn’t out beat cancer for long and passed away in the year 2000. He was suddenly left all alone and that is when his friend from Ernst & young and Yahoo, Brian Acton helped him fight the loneliness by inviting Jan to his house for playing soccer. Together they went on to work with Yahoo for more than nine years. they got  to intake numerous amounts of priceless knowledge and experience. Later in January 2009,

Jan bought an iPhone and realized that the seven-month-old App Store was in the process of launching a whole new range of apps. This gave him a brilliant idea although the idea itself was at very nascent stages. They were very clear about three rules:

• Their service would definitely not carry any advertiser.

•  The service would have a satisfying experience and

• Keeping in mind the privacy of their customers, their product would not store any messages.

Additionally it would also maintain to deliver the product without any gimmicks or signs with endless amount of readability and rich experience. Having said that, Jan quickly got the name WhatsApp incorporated on his birthday that is on 24^th of February 2009 in California. Now, as the world progressed, they figured that WhatsApp kept crashing or getting stuck at a particular point, this went on for a long time. It built up a great amount of frustration. Jan at one point even lost hope and felt like giving up and started looking for a new job but Brian helped him to motivate and got his act together and asked him to invest a few more months. And finally a few months down the line, help came from Apple.

They launched their push notifications which used to pin their users whenever they were using the app. By August 2009,  WhatsApp had no significant growth. This time Jan persuaded Brian Acton to join the in.

Later, on October 2009, Brian contacted several old Yahoo buddies and got together a 250,000 dollars in seed funding. This made Brian to earn the title of co-founder and since then there was no stopping to this Tech phenomena.

By the early 2014, WhatsApp has witnessed humongous growth In its user base with millions of people across the globe using its messaging service. WhatsApp had never publicized or promoted itself anywhere and at organically growing numbers. By this time, it only had 55 employees over serving millions of people each day. Later the very next month in February 2014, Facebook declared that they were acquiring WhatsApp. It was the deal which is known to be one of the biggest acquisitions in the tech history.

Facebook acquired WhatsApp at a whooping 19 billion dollars and also offered a board member position to Jan in Facebook. Jan signed the Facebook take over contract at an unused building in Silicon Valley where he and his mother once queued for food stands in the city of Mountain View where WhatsApp was located!

Well the story of WhatsApp is yet another live example of innovation in true terms for everyone out there waiting for motivation. The journey of Jan Koum and Brian Acton is a lesson for every entrepreneur that capital jumping and marketing will not reap benefits, it is ultimately the product and service that automatically drives customers’  attraction without any need for paid publicity.

Well with billions of users addicted to WhatsApp style, it is undoubtedly a tech marvel of this era!!

“They frame it as if the whole reason for making Facebook and building something was because I wanted to get girls or wanted to get into some kind of social institution they just can’t wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things” – Mark Zuckerberg.

Mark Zuckerberg, the programming prodigy who turned to town for making cool things into social network dynasty the website he started in his dorm room when he was 19 years old is one of the most influential in the world with profiles for over a quarter of the world’s population. Zuckerberg became a self-made billionaire before his 24th birthday!! How is that possible that’s what we’re gonna find out…

Mark Zuckerberg was born on May 14^th, 1984 in upper-middle class parents in the outskirts of New York. His father told him to go basic in the early teens and Mark really took to it. He created a program that allowed the computer at his dad’s dental office to communicate with the family computer in Colditz arcnet.

The program was an early form of messenger while in school he excelled a number of subjects from computer science to languages and literature, he transferred to Exeter prep school where he met his good friend Adam D’Angelo.

They created music software called synapse that learned what music people liked and made suggestions based on it as writer Jose Antonio Vargas said

“some kids played computer games…. Mark

created them”.  It was clear he had an entrepreneur’s mindset from an early age. Synapse was treated as a high school project but drew the attention of big software companies including Microsoft who apparently offered Zuckerberg a rumored 1 million dollars for it as well as a job before college.

Despite the job offer Zuckerberg chose to attend Harvard doing computer science and philosophy his first year of college plus without any significant creations, probably love partying. It was in his sophomore year that he began to show signs of things to come.

He created a site called Coursematch at the beginning of his second year which had led his classmates to log in and see what courses their friends. It quickly became popular which prompted Zuckerberg to try a new idea he’d recently had that he’d go on to call face masters. Facemash was created October 2003 with the intention of finding the most attractive person on campus.

Slowly a ranking was formed that created the entire thing during a tipsy eight-hour coding session that ended at 4 a.m. Despite the drunken programming, Facemash was an instant hit, been used by 450 students in one day before the Harvard admin team shut it down to new plates of sexism things.

Zuckerberg was put under probation over the incident  “I was thread with exclusion” although apparently didn’t faze him too much at the time as it’s written in David Carr Patras book the Facebook Effect “ it’s not the mark necessarily set set to break the rules… he just doesn’t pay much attention to them”.

Over the next few months, undeterred by his warning from Harvard’s, Mark worked more on computer programs simply because he enjoyed it, he created a web program that brought art images from his art in the time of Augustus class and encouraged his classmates to add comments beside them to create study aids. He then used these notes to cram for an exam far more quickly. He also created a program called six degrees of Harry Lewis, a program that created links between people and his favourite computer science professor. He also began  to work on other people’s produce , setting up a website for the association of Harvard black women and significantly helping three Harvard seniors finish coding on their web site idea the Harvard connection.

Zuckerberg was sold for the project in November, 2003 after the founders heard about Facemash through the Harvard magazine. They asked him to finish programming their social network site Harvard connection since he didn’t have much coding experience themselves Zuckerberg agreed to do it soon lost interest in favour of his own site, the Facebook. He stalled the

Harvard connection team by coding his new site and may have borrowed some ideas which led to a lawsuit and even a movie down the line although the initial idea of sourcing process may not have been entirely on the up the execution and launch of

Facebook was close to flawless. Zuckerberg bought the domain the facebook.com on January 11^th  for $30 and officially launched the site. On February 4^th , by emailing a few of his friends to check out just four days after it launched, 450 Harvard undergrads signed up and 300 joined the following day. As previously mentioned, he had a knack for building social websites that people wanted to use.  The idea of

Facebook was to move the physical books the university issued with a picture of all the students called face books online and students to update them with more recent pictures. It also allowed students to see what other students were talking about, what their interests were and also their relationship status. Another two weeks later , Facebook had over 6,000 users which formed over three-quarters of the undergraduates as well as some alumni. Not only did thousands of students sign up but they also readily spent hours on it each day which  made it unique to every other website. Zach put a team of his roommates and friends together to handle various aspects of the project as he didn’t yet consider a business.

Eduardo Saverin handled business ,Dustin Moskovitz was a programmer, Andrew McCollum was a graphic artist and Chris shoes as a spokesman all joined the team. With the team around him that complemented his strengths and weaknesses, Zuckerberg tried to span

Facebook into other colleges starting with the Yale, Stanford and Columbia. Facebook sweat the competition and the number of people signed up kept growing.

It took them a few weeks for 80% of each of the campuses to sign up for Facebook. The team decided to rent an apartment in Palo Alto for the summer as it was where all the big start-ups seemed to come from.

After many 16-hour days, in all-nighters Facebook reached a hundred thousand users in June 2004. Just four months after its launch, a venture capital firm offered ten million dollars to buy Facebook.

He apparently didn’t even consider the offer and often said to continue drawing it for themselves. For Zach, it was never really about the money but always about really a really cool product. Over the summer, the team continued to expand Facebook’s functionality and user base. They also met Sean Parker, a Silicon Valley veteran, who became their president and introduced him to investors including

Peter Thiel who put 500k into the venture for around ten percent of the Business. All in all, a pretty solid Investment. It took Mark and his friends all of two minutes to decide to postpone their Harvard return as the social network was all about timing and they didn’t want to screw this up.

“Well that’s unclear… I am 21 but I finished my sophomore year and came out to Palo Alto fully expecting that I’d actually go back to Harvard in the fall but didn’t quite make it after Peter put his money in but started building a company instead and I got a little side-tracked but fortunately Harvard lets you take indefinite periods of time off so you know if the sever falls through… I’m back at Harvard”, he said.

They’re dropouts. The team focused on expansion, they hit many road bumps and continued to work extremely hard but it paid off for them as they reached a million users in early 2005. They continued to add more features such as the ability to share photos and post on people’s walls and their valuation kept climbing.

If we fast forward seven years, Facebookwent public in the largest tech IPO to this date and become the company over a hundred billion dollars and made all the founders billionaires while still in their early to mid-20s. While there’s no doubt Mark’s a genius. There are so many things that we can learn about him and his story so far.

Facebook was an example of a great idea at the right time with fantastic execution. They made many mistakes along the way but it all paid off in the end. One thing we have to remember is that the multi-billion dollar company that we all use today was started by a handful of forward-thinking teams in a college dorm room. With that in mind, encourage yourself to keep hustling towards your own goals!!

BLACK HOLE!!
Is black hole a pitch dark pit??
Want to know what a black hole is? But just give up everytime watching a typical definition soaked with physics on wikipedia about how even light can’t pass through it….Is black hole a big hole? But if it is a hole, how to get to know about its color? First of all I want to make sure it clear that a black hole is anything but empty space. Infact it is a place where huge matter is packed into a very small area…..what does that mean now??😦
Got confused🥴 okay then come with me to the wonderland of Alice where we see a magic✨ ‘gravity machine’ – a device with which we could control Earth’s gravity, by turning a dial. Initially it is at 1g, gravity that we are used to experience since childhood. Okay just turn the dial to 0g and you will see all your friends floating in the air even with the slightest motion. The tea☕ that you spilled on your beloved to make an old romantic movie scene, formed spherical globe in the air. Yes, balls of tea everywhere💦. But just to make a scene memorable I changed the dial to 1g and taadaa here you get the rain of tea🌧️ as earth got its gravity back….Now I again changed the dial to 3g to 4g…. everything becomes immoblised. Even if you want to have a normal walk under the sky with your crush, it requires enormous efforts. As kindness, I am removing you and your friend from the domain of gravity machine before I dial a higher gravity number. Okay, now I dialed 1000s, trees become squashed but beam of light is straight. Now at 1 lakh gs, rocks are crushed by their own weight but beam of light is still straight. When a gravity approaches a billion gs, something strange happens, the beam of light which was going straight to the sky starts bending. Now imagine a dial greater than billion gs, nothing, not even a beam of light can get out, it would bend back to the starting place. Such a place is called black hole. That is why it is called black: no light can escape from it. A place whose density and gravity is very high. But the question is from where it’s formed??……..(To be continued)

Cadbury, one of the biggest chocolate brands in the world with operations in more than 60 countries and billions of dollars in revenues. It is not only a brand of mouth-watering chocolates liked by Consumers of all ages, but also one with a 200 year old history filled with wonderful achievements and depressing failures.

Let’s dive into the origins and rise of Cadbury and see how they got to where they are today coming from a wealthy family of Quaker Christians in Britain, John Cadbury, just like any other member of his community was not allowed to attend Universities and his non-violent beliefs and values Kept him out from Joining the military. So, starting a business was the only option for him to make a living. That is why, in 1824 he Opened A Grocery Store In Bull Street, located in the city of Birmingham, UK.

As Alcohol was considered bad For Society by quaker community Tea, Coffee, Cocoa and drinking Chocolate were seen as healthy alternatives by them including John himself. That’s why among other things he sold high quality Cocoa and drinking Chocolate in his store, which he used to prepare using a pestle And mortar.

Due to high demand in 1831 John moved to a four-story warehouse nearby and started producing Cocoa and drinking chocolate on a commercial-scale.

Thus, the Cadbury manufacturing business was born.

Because of the high cost of production these were sold mainly to the wealthy people. By, 1842 he was selling around 11 varieties of Cocoa and 16 varieties of chocolate.

In 1847, his brother Benjamin Cadbury became a partner in the business and the company came to be known As Cadbury Brothers. The same year they rented larger factory in Birmingham which had a private canal that connected to all the major ports in Britain.

In 1854, the Cadbury Brothers of Birmingham received an exclusive royal warrant as manufacturers of chocolate and Cocoa to Queen Victoria this was a great luck for them as businesses which used to have these warrants had a better and sophisticated image among general buyers. However, just six years later in 1860, they had dissolve their partnership due to John’s wife’s Death and his declining mental and physical health. In 1861, John handed over the complete control of the business to his sons Richard and George Cadbury who were 25 and 21 at that time. During this time the market was not doing well and most chocolate manufacturers in Britain were going out of business of which Cadbury was not an exception.

Richard and George invested 4000 pounds each from their inherited money and started to work long hours to keep the business alive. But their turning point came in 1966 when they decided to buy a new type of Cocoa press developed in the Netherlands which removed much of the unpalatable Cocoa butter from the Cocoa beans. Up until this point almost all Cocoa makers including Cadbury had a high level Of Cocoa butter in it, to which they had to add starches to mask its taste and texture. But with this press, that would not be necessary anymore. However, buying this machine was a massive risk for Cadbury as it was expensive, they had very little money to invest, and no one knew if there would be enough demand for the products that came out of it.

But they decided to go for it and were the first British manufacturers to do so. Thus they introduced the Cadbury Cocoa Essence as the UK’s first unadulterated, pure Cocoa. With its high quality and extensive marketing it became extremely popular leading to dramatic sales numbers and changed the future of British Cocoa industry.

In 1893, George Cadbury bought 120 acres of land surrounding the factory at his own expense to create a model village so that many more of their workforce could be given a healthy, pollution free And greener environment where they could thrive. By 1900, this was expanded to 330 acres with 313 cottages and houses along with other facilities like playgrounds, swimming pools and medical centres. Many more similar properties were built in.

The years leading up to the First World War, with smaller developments taking place later on in the 20th century. In 1897, Cadbury introduced their First Milk Chocolate bar. Although they were making milk chocolate drinks from 1849. This was a new recipe that they copied from contemporary Swiss Chocolate manufacturers.

But in terms of texture Swiss Chocolates were far superior as they added condensed milk instead of milk powder. Because of this, Swiss Companies dominated the British Market which Cadbury started to challenge. In 1904, Cadbury launched their Dairy milk bar. Developed by George Cadbury Junior, it was a production of exceptional quality with a higher proportion of milk than any previous chocolate in the market. On the suggestion of a customer, it was named Dairy Milk. With a distinctive and attractive purple wrapper, gradually it became, Cadbury’s best-selling product by 1914.

Due to the shortage of supply, the British Government banned manufacturers from using fresh milk. So, dried skimmed milk was used instead. Due to these issues with essential supplies, the Dairy Milk and many other Cadbury products came Off the shelves during The War. But once the war ended, the company worked hard to restore their business did a lot of promotions, kept competitors away with a direct distribution chain and continued launching new products like Milk Tray Bars, Fudge, Toffee Buttons and Picnic. In a few years they were back to the game like before.

In 1969 ,they merged with Swiss Drinks company Schweppes and demerged again in 2008.

Then in 2010, Kraft Foods bought the brand for an astounding $19 billion but they themselves split into two companies one of which was named Mondelez International which owns the Cadbury brand till date.

In 2019, Mondelez ranked 116 in the Fortune 500 list of largest corporations by total revenue.

As of today, Cadbury is the second largest confectionery brand in the world with products ranging from chocolates, ice cream and beverages to biscuits, desserts, spread and much more.

With operations in more than 60 countries including the UK, USA, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and India, it continues to be one of the most favoured name in the segment of chocolates, confectionaries and most probably would continue to be so for a long time!!

John S. Pemberton  first produced a drink in 1866 and named it COCA-COLA.

It is a really astonishing fact that the beverage with 1.9 million daily servings was initially made as an alternative to morphine, a pain reliever.

Pemberton was working as a colonel in the confederate during the American Civil War as well as a pharmacist. He sustained a saber injury from the war in April 1865 and was prescribed morphine to relieve his pain.

He realised that gradually we was becoming addictive to morphine and decided to prepare an alternative that would not contain morphine in it. He then experimented with a lot of different pain relievers.

After a lot of trials, he finally came up with an alcoholic wine that he called Pemberton’s French Wine Coca. The drink was mixed up with cocaine  extracted from coca leaves and caffeine from kola nut. Pemberton registered this French Wine in 1885. In 1886, Atlanta and Fulton County prohibited that wine,

This led to development of a non-alcoholic version of the wine.

Pemberton relied upon the Atlanta drugstore owner Wills E. Venable to help him perfect the product.

While trying to make the beverage, he accidently mixed the base syrup with  carbonated water which eventually gave birth to the drink Coca- Cola.

Frank Mason Robinson, Pemberton’s bookkeeper and partner came up with the name Coca-Cola which is the hybrid of the coca in Cocaine and cola ad in kola nut spelled as ‘cola nut’ at that time. Robinson also hand wrote, using the standard writing script for business correspondence in the U.S. at that time; Spencerian script on the bottles and ads, which are still in use until today.

The Coca-Cola was first sold at Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia on the 8^th of May, 1886 at 5 cents per glass at soda fountains, which were popular at that time in U.S. due to the belief that the carbonated water was good for the health.

Pemberton claimed Coca-Cola as a brain tonic which could cure many diseases such as morphine addictions, headaches, nerve disorders and impotence. It sold 25 US gallons the first year. By 1888, three versions  of Coca- Cola were produced and sold by three separate businesses. Years later Asa Griggs Candler, an Atlanta Pharmacist and businessman stated in the testimony that he had acquired stakes for $2,300 in Pemberton’s company as early as 1887. Candler sold products called ‘yum yum’ and ‘koke’ which he prepared with the same formula while Charley Pemberton, the son of John Pemberton, kept selling cruder syrup under the name of Coca-Cola. After the death of Pemberton, Candler bought the name ‘ Coca-Cola’ for $300.

By 1888, Candler had the full control over the ‘Coca-Cola’ company. In 1889, Benjamin Thomas and Joseph Whitehead, two entrepreneurs from Chattanooga, Tennessee suggested bottling and offered to be in charge of the procedure. They were so compelling that Candler agreed to a contract of only one dollar granting

them exclusive rights to bottle and sell the Coca-Cola.

Candler never collected his one dollar.

The first bottling of Coca-Cola was done in Biedenharn Candy Company in Vicksburg, Mississippi

in 1894 with John Biedenharn as proprietor.

In 1899, the first Coca-Cola bottling company was set up in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The contract came with many issues for the Coca-Cola Company.

It stated that each bottle was to be sold at 5 cents without stating a specific period.

As a result, a bottle of Coca-Cola was sold at 5 cents from 1886 to 1959.

The first outdoor wall advertisement of Coca-Cola was painted in Cartersville, Georgia in 1894.

Coca-Cola from 20th Century In 1910, the papers of the old Coca-Cola Company

were burned during a move to New Corporation offices and surprisingly in 1914, Margaret

Dozier, came out to profess that her signature on the Coca-Cola company bill of sale was

forged.

Analysis of certain similar transfer documents showed that John Pemberton’s signature was

forged and some accounts show that Charley Pemberton did it.

However, on September 12, 1919, a group of investors purchased the company for $25 million

and proceeded to release five hundred thousand shares to the public with each share costing

about $40.

In the same year, the company merged with Johnston Coca-Cola Bottling Group Inc. and

in 1986, the Coca-Cola company merged with two of its bottling companies, owned by HTL

corporation and BCI Holding company, to become Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc.

The longest running soda fountain that sold Coca-Cola was Fleeman’s pharmacy, established

in 1914 and existed for 81 years until 1995.

On July 12, 1944, the one-billionth gallon of Coca-Cola syrup was produced.

In 1955 the Coca-Cola cans were first introduced.

On April 23, 1985, Coca-Cola tried to change the formula of the syrup by preparing “New

Coke”.

Subsequent taste tests showed that people loved the taste of New coke better than Coke

or Pepsi and the company went on to produce more of it.

Soon after, the public wanted the old Coca-Cola soda back.

The Coca-Cola Company granted the wish of the public and produced the old drink with

a slight variation in the main sweetener; using high fructose corn syrup instead of

cane sugar.

This new drink was produced under the name Coca-Cola Classic on July 10, 1985.

Coca Cola in Recent Years On July 5, 2005, it was announced that Coca-Cola

would resume production in Iraq for the first time since the Arab league refused its use

in 1968.

By April 2007, Canada removed the “Classic” from the name, as New Coke was no longer in

production, so there was no need to differentiate between the two kinds of coke.

In 2009, Coca-Cola introduced the 7.5-ounce mini can.

Also in 2009, the “Classic” was removed from the 470 ml bottles of Coca-Cola sold in the

South Eastern United States and in 2011; “Classic” was removed from all Coca-Cola products.

In September 2011, the Coca Cola Company announced price reductions asking retailers to sell

eight packs at $2.99.

That same day, the company announced that the 12.5 ounces would sell at 89 cents and

the 16 ounces would sell at 99 cents.

In 2012, Coca-Cola resumed operations in Myanmar after 60 years of absence due to investment

sanction imposed on the US.

In 2013, the company announced that Coca-Cola Life would be introduced to Argentina and

other parts of the world.

This drink contained stevia and sugar but the production of Coca-Cola Life was discontinued

in Britain in June 2017.

Coca-Cola together with its investors is working to invest $5billion in their operations in

India by 2020.

Presently, The Coca-Cola Company owns several outlets around the world with the headquarters

situated as a 29 story; 403-foot tall building in Atlanta, Georgia called the One Coca-Cola

Plaza.

As of 2017, the company employed 61,800 members of staff with Muhtar Kent as the Chairman

of the Board and James Quincey as the President and Chief Executive Officer.

The net income in 2017 estimated around $1.4 billion with total assets worth $87.8 billion

and estimated net worth around $180 billion.

With more than 30,000 cafes around the globe, Starbucks has become a well known name across the world. From its iconic and popular cups with espresso inside them, Starbucks evolved from on coffee bean shop in Seattle to a brand with $80 billion business over 48 years. Starbucks cover total of 57% sales in the cafe market.

You heard it right!!

57% is not a small number. Nearly 2/3 of the coffee sold in the U.S. comes from Starbucks. But this itself has come with real pains. With 14,000 locations in U.S. alone, Starbucks has spread itself too thin.

Having too many stores out there led to fewer transactions in individual stores. To compensate the loss of fewer transactions, the company tried to increase the prices of their products. Doing this frequently can drive the customers away.

So, what strategy did Starbucks use to attract its customers ?

This was the time of 1970. Three college friends Zev Siegl, Jerry Baldwin and Gordon Bowker decided to go for a coffee business. They found a mentor in Alfred Peet, founder of Peet’s coffee and the man behind the custom coffee roasting to the U.S. So, with the help of Peet, the three friends founded Starbucks , a coffee bean shop and roastery at Seattle’s famous Pike Place Market in 1971. Peet helped those young entrepreneurs with coffee beans and helped them to connect with coffee brokers to provide the source to get their own roasted coffee beans until they could set up their own roastery. For the first decade, the founders opened the branches of Starbucks at 5 locations. At that time, the conventions coffee consumers found out a glaring absence that was actual coffee drinks or the actual cups made especially for coffee. There was no actual bars and no such demand for espresso based drink at that period of time. People usually take coffee beans their homes and just with simple method, they used to brew the coffee. No one had the thought of getting a beverage at a Starbucks coffee shop until 1980. Initial focus of Starbucks was the high quality coffee as customers were more focused on the canned coffee.  The company hired its first Director of Marketing and Sales, Howard Schultz. That man was very professional to the level where he became the CEO of Starbucks later.

In 1983, Schultz went To Italy and returns with an idea that was turning the coffee bean stores into cafes. Starbucks launched its first latte the next year. That experiment was a success and four years later Schultz partnered with the investors and bought Starbucks with $3.8 million. Schultz proposed a strategy of aggressive expansion.

By 1996, the company had opened the cafes in the more than thousand  locations including the international cafes in Japan and Singapore.

Growth was too rapid in the case of Starbucks that in just three years later, the company opened the café in 2000^th location as well.

Schultz switched from CEO to Executive Chairman at 2000. Between 2000 and 2007, Starbucks witnessed the extreme growth that the number of its cafes got more than quadrupled like 3,500 to 15,000 cafes directly.

Sales hot up from $2 billion to $9.4 billion in that period. But then Starbucks hit a wall.

The 2007 financial crash:

The growth from that year remained constant. The stock price fell by 50 percent. So Starbucks brought back Howard Schultz.

This news alone raised the Starbucks stock by 9 percent. He laid off 6,700 baristas in the café. He wanted customers to remember his brand. Schultz ordered all the cafes in the U.S. locations to call off in the afternoon so that he could show the baristas how to make the signature espresso. He wanted to make the customers to experience real life coffee in the stores to let it remember fresh in their minds. Schultz even ordered to remove automatic espresso machines.

Schultz’s strategy worked and the company stock price soared up by 149 percent in 2009. The company has been gaining positive reviews since then.

Starbucks took the big step of opening the new kind of stores that are Starbucks Reserve Roasteries. These massive foot stores are designed to be a tourist destination. Here, Starbucks baristas experiment new and different brewing methods to come up with delicious beverages. With this , Starbucks decided to come up with something new for the customers every now and then.