Streamlining Payroll Processes: A Review of the Top Payroll Management Software

Daily writing prompt

What are 5 everyday things that bring you happiness?

By Shashikant Nishant Sharma

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, managing payroll efficiently is paramount for businesses of all sizes. Payroll management software has emerged as a crucial tool to streamline payroll processes, minimize errors, and ensure compliance with tax regulations. Here, we delve into the top payroll management software solutions that have garnered acclaim for their features, usability, and effectiveness.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

ADP Workforce Now: ADP Workforce Now is a comprehensive payroll solution suitable for businesses of all sizes. It offers robust features including payroll processing, tax compliance, time tracking, benefits administration, and HR management. Its user-friendly interface, customizable reporting tools, and mobile accessibility make it a favorite among HR professionals.
Gusto: Gusto is a cloud-based payroll software designed for small to mid-sized businesses. Known for its simplicity and intuitive interface, Gusto automates payroll processing, tax filing, and employee benefits administration. It also offers employee self-service tools, such as online pay stubs and direct deposit setup, enhancing employee satisfaction.
Paychex Flex: Paychex Flex is a scalable payroll and HR solution suitable for businesses of all sizes. It offers features such as payroll processing, tax administration, time and attendance tracking, and employee benefits management. Paychex Flex’s robust reporting capabilities and dedicated support make it a reliable choice for businesses seeking comprehensive payroll solutions.
QuickBooks Payroll: QuickBooks Payroll is an integrated payroll solution offered by Intuit, tailored for small businesses. It seamlessly integrates with QuickBooks accounting software, simplifying payroll processing and ensuring accuracy in financial reporting. With features like automatic tax calculations, employee self-service portal, and mobile accessibility, QuickBooks Payroll streamlines payroll management for small business owners.
Workday HCM: Workday HCM is a cloud-based human capital management solution that includes payroll functionality. It offers a unified platform for payroll processing, HR management, talent acquisition, and workforce planning. Workday’s intuitive interface, advanced analytics, and scalability make it a preferred choice for large enterprises looking to streamline their payroll and HR operations.

Each of these payroll management software solutions comes with its own set of features, pricing plans, and target audiences. While ADP Workforce Now and Paychex Flex cater to businesses of all sizes, Gusto and QuickBooks Payroll are tailored for small to mid-sized businesses. Workday HCM, on the other hand, targets large enterprises with complex payroll and HR needs.

In conclusion, selecting the right payroll management software depends on the specific needs and size of your business. Whether you prioritize ease of use, scalability, or comprehensive HR functionality, the top payroll management software solutions reviewed here offer reliable options to streamline your payroll processes and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.

References

Arora, M., & Chakrabarti, D. (2013, August). Application of business intelligence: A case on payroll management. In 2013 International Symposium on Computational and Business Intelligence (pp. 73-76). IEEE.

Mahajan, K., Shukla, S., & Soni, N. (2015). A Review of Computerized Payroll System. International journal of advanced research in computer and communication engineering, 4(1), 67-70.

Shukla, V. K., & Bhandari, N. (2019, February). Conceptual framework for enhancing payroll management and attendance monitoring system through RFID and biometric. In 2019 Amity International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AICAI) (pp. 188-192). IEEE.

Zhao, M., & Rabiei, K. (2022). Feasibility of implementing the human resource payroll management system based on cloud computing. Kybernetes, 52(4), 1245-1268.

Top Management Skills for Young Professionals

Daily writing prompt

Describe something you learned in high school.

View all responses

In today’s dynamic and competitive work environment, young professionals face unique challenges as they navigate their careers and strive for success. Beyond technical expertise, the ability to effectively manage oneself and others is crucial for advancement in the corporate world. Here, we explore the top management skills essential for young professionals to thrive in their roles and emerge as effective leaders.

1. Communication Skills

Effective communication lies at the heart of successful leadership. Young professionals must master the art of conveying ideas clearly, both verbally and in writing. This includes active listening, articulating thoughts persuasively, and fostering open dialogue within teams. By honing their communication skills, young leaders can build trust, resolve conflicts, and inspire others to action.

2. Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to understand and manage emotions, both in oneself and others. Young professionals with high EQ can empathize with colleagues, adapt to diverse personalities, and navigate interpersonal relationships with finesse. By cultivating self-awareness, self-regulation, and empathy, they can foster a positive work environment and lead by example.

3. Adaptability

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, adaptability is a prized trait. Young professionals must embrace change, stay flexible in their approach, and continuously learn and grow. Whether faced with new technologies, market trends, or organizational restructuring, adaptable leaders remain resilient and resourceful, turning challenges into opportunities for innovation and growth.

4. Decision-Making

Effective decision-making is a hallmark of strong leadership. Young professionals must develop the ability to analyze complex situations, weigh options thoughtfully, and make timely and informed decisions. By leveraging data, seeking input from stakeholders, and considering long-term consequences, they can mitigate risks and drive strategic outcomes that align with organizational goals.

5. Problem-Solving

Problem-solving is an essential skill for overcoming obstacles and driving progress. Young professionals should approach challenges with a proactive mindset, breaking down problems into manageable components and exploring creative solutions. By fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration, they can harness the collective intelligence of their teams to address complex issues and drive sustainable change.

6. Team Leadership

Effective team leadership requires the ability to inspire, motivate, and empower others to achieve common objectives. Young professionals must cultivate a collaborative spirit, build cohesive teams, and leverage individual strengths to maximize collective performance. By setting clear goals, providing constructive feedback, and fostering a culture of accountability, they can unlock the full potential of their teams and drive results.

Conclusion

In conclusion, mastering top management skills is essential for young professionals seeking to excel in their careers and emerge as effective leaders. By prioritizing communication, emotional intelligence, adaptability, decision-making, problem-solving, and team leadership, they can navigate the complexities of the modern workplace with confidence and drive meaningful impact. As they continue to refine these skills and lead by example, they will not only achieve personal success but also inspire others to reach their full potential in the pursuit of organizational excellence.

A Note on Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana (SJSRY)

By: Kavita Dehalwar

Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana (SJSRY) is a government scheme in India aimed at promoting employment opportunities and improving the quality of life for urban poor individuals. It was launched on 1st December 1997, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of India’s independence, and is part of the broader National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM).

Key Objectives of Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana:

Employment Generation: The primary goal of SJSRY is to generate sustainable employment opportunities for the urban poor, with a specific focus on skill development and self-employment ventures.
Skill Development: The scheme emphasizes the importance of skill enhancement and training for individuals from marginalized urban communities. By imparting relevant skills, the program aims to enhance employability and income-generating capabilities.
Self-Employment: SJSRY promotes self-employment among the urban poor by providing financial assistance and support for starting small businesses or enterprises. This aspect of the program is crucial for fostering entrepreneurship and economic independence.
Urban Poverty Alleviation: The scheme is designed to address the challenges of urban poverty by creating a conducive environment for income generation, thereby contributing to the overall improvement of living standards in urban areas.

Components of Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana:

The SJSRY is broadly divided into two sub-components:

Urban Self-Employment Program (USEP): This component focuses on providing financial assistance and skill training to individuals interested in starting their own ventures. The financial aid is intended to cover a portion of the project cost.
Urban Wage Employment Program (UWEP): UWEP is aimed at providing wage employment opportunities for the urban poor. This involves the creation of temporary employment through various community-based projects.

Implementation and Monitoring:

The implementation of the Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana involves collaboration between the central government, state governments, and urban local bodies. The program is monitored by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India, to ensure effective implementation and adherence to the program’s objectives.

It’s important to note that policies and schemes may undergo changes and updates over time. For the most current and detailed information on the Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana, it is advisable to refer to official government sources or recent publications related to urban development in India.

References

Rajkonwar, A. B. (2005). Swama Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana: A study on effectiveness in Dibrugarh. SEDME (Small Enterprises Development, Management & Extension Journal), 32(4), 23-42.

Sharma, S. N. (2020). A Review of Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana. Think India Journal, 23(1), 26-32.

Shobha, K. (2007). Performance of women beneficiaries of the Prime Minister’s Rozgar Yojana in Coimbatore City (Doctoral dissertation, Avinashilingam University for Women (India)).

Digital Skills to Rural Youth

By Shashikant Nishant Sharma

To promote Digital Skills amongst all the learners across the country, Ministry of Education through its autonomous bodies such as All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has entered into Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with leading technology companies to drive skilling and future readiness for the students. The partnerships cover wide areas such as project-based assignments, courses in Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics (AVGC), online teaching materials, familiarization with digital tools and platforms that will be pursued on a best-efforts basis across colleges to cover students of the higher education institutions in India including but not limited to Engineering colleges, Degree colleges and Polytechnics for expanding digital skills.

The Directorate General of Training (DGT) under Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE) is implementing the Craftsmen Training Scheme (CTS) in Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) across the country. Under this scheme, Essential Digital Skills are taught under the subject of Employability Skills that are mandatory for trainees under all trades. DGT has signed MoU with IT Tech companies like IBM, CISCO, Future Skill Rights Network (erstwhile Quest Alliance), Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft under which technical and professional skills with respect to new age technologies which includes courses on topics like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data Analytics (BDA), Blockchain, Cloud Computing, Cyber security, Internet of Things (IoT), Web, Mobile Development and Marketing, Machine Learning, etc. is being provided to trainees through Bharatskills, a Central Repository for skills, to make the trainees industry ready.

National Institute for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development (NIESBUD), an Autonomous Institute under the administrative control of Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) as of now has signed an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Meta on 4^th September, 2023 to support the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem. The aim of the MoU is to provide aspiring and current small business owners with the necessary tools, knowledge, and resources to thrive in today’s dynamic market environment. The partnership will help in training budding and existing entrepreneurs in digital marketing skills by Meta platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram in seven regional languages.

Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship (IIE), Guwahati, an Autonomous Institute under the administrative control of Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) has partnered with reputed institutions and colleges to take digital skill to rural youth and is assisting in building talent pool capacities and seamlessly connecting students, youth and micro-entrepreneurs across North Eastern Region of India.

Under the partnership of Ministry of Education with leading technology companies and NIESBUD with Meta, there are no financial obligations. Under the partnership of NIESBUD with Meta, the Meta platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram have provided inputs for participants on Digital Marketing in seven regional languages.

Functioning of Boards of Multi-State Co-operative societies

By Shankar Chatterjee

The Multi-State Cooperative Societies (MSCS) (Amendment) Act& Rules, 2023 have been notified on 03.08.2023 and 04.08.2023, respectively to strengthen governance, enhance transparency, increase accountability and reform electoral process, etc.in the Multi State Cooperative Societies by supplementing existing legislation and incorporating the provisions of Ninety-seventh Constitutional Amendment.

To increase the representation of Scheduled Castes/Tribes in the boards of Multi-State Co-operative societies, to make the board more professional and to increase participation of board members in board meetings, following provisions have been introduced via above amendment, inter-alia: –

Provisions for reservation of two seats for women and one seat for SC or ST in the Board of multi-State cooperative societies have been made.
To ensure timely, regular and transparent conduct of elections in the multi-State cooperative societies, provision of Cooperative Election Authority has been included.
To increase professionalism in the Board of multi-State cooperative societies, provision of Co-option of such directors who have experience in the field of banking, management, co-operative management and finance or specialization in any field relating to the objects and activities undertaken by such multi-State cooperative societies have been introduced.
To increase participation of board members, quorum of 1/3^rd of elected members, has been prescribed for board meetings.
Casual vacancies are to be filled by nomination up to 1/3^rd of the board strength, if the term of office of the board is less than half of its original term. If casual vacancies in the same term exceed 1/3rd of number of elected directors, elections have to be conducted through Election Authority.
If Chairman of the society fails to direct the convening of the meeting within the quarter, it shall be convened by Chief Executive Officer (CEO) on the requisition of Vice-Chairperson or Vice President. In other cases, meeting to be convened by Chief Executive Officer (CEO) on requisition from at least 50 % of board members. This will ensure holding of meetings in regular manner and on demand.
Additional grounds for disqualification for directors have been made to improve governance, for better recovery of dues and to ensure that such acts of omission or commission or fraud are not repeated elsewhere.
To curb nepotism and favoritism in multi-State co-operative societies, the Director of a multi-State cooperative society shall not be present in the discussion and vote on matters where he or his relatives are an interested party.
For strengthening governance, criteria for appointment of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) are stipulated.

Women empowerment through Co-operative institutions

By Kavita Dehalwar

The Ministry of Cooperation has made various efforts for the betterment, empowerment and income generation for women in the cooperative sector. The major initiative taken by the Ministry in this regard are as under:

1. Reservation for Women on the Board of Multi State Cooperative Societies

The Multi-State Cooperative Societies (Act) 2002 has been amended to mandate requirement of women Directors in the Board of Multi-State Cooperative Societies. This will ensure representation of women in the Board of more than 1,550 Multi-State Cooperatives across the country.

2. Reservation to Members in Primary Agriculture Cooperative Credit Societies (PACS) through adoption of Model Bye-laws

Model Bye Laws for the PACS has been prepared by the Ministry of Cooperation and adopted by the States/UTs across the country. It mandates requirement of women Directors in the Board of PACS. This will ensure representation of women and their decision making in more than 1 Lakh PACS.

3. Nandini Sahakar Scheme

Nandini Sahakar Scheme of National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) under Ministry of Cooperation is a financial assistance scheme for project formulation, hand- holding and capacity development of women cooperatives. NCDC has disbursed 5,714.88 Crore to Women Cooperatives benefitting more than 1.56 Crore women members.

The Ministry of Cooperation also organizes various training programs for skill development of the women in the cooperative sector through its National Level Institutes like National Council for Cooperative Training (NCCT), Vaikunth Mehta National Institute of Co-operative Management (VAMNICOM), and Laxmanrao Inamdar National Academy for Cooperative Research and Development (LINAC). The details of these training programs are given in Annexure-A.

In addition to the above, Ministry of Cooperation has taken 54 major Initiatives which will further benefit and empower all members of the cooperative sector including women. The details of such initiatives taken and progress made so far is given in Annexure-B.

Annexure-A

Ministry of Cooperation

The Ministry of Cooperation organizes various training programs for skill development of the women through its National Level Institutes. The details of these programs are as under:

National Council for Cooperative Training (NCCT):

NCCT and its Training units organized skill development programmes covering the sectors like Dairy, Handlooms, Micro Credit, Rural Entrepreneurships, Bee-Keeping, Industrial Cooperatives etc. where the women participants also attended.

The Last three-year training participants are as follows:

S. No.	Year	Total No. of Participation for Training	Total No. of Women Participants	Percentage of Women participants
1.	2020-21	40,288	8,875	22.02
2.	2021-22	62,774	15,309	24.38
3.	2022-23	2,01,507	77,584	38.50

Vaikunth Mehta National Institute of Co-operative Management (VAMNICOM):

(1) VAMNICOM, as a National Institute has been conducting various training programmes for women’s empowerment / skill development in Cooperative Sector and SHGs including SC/ST women participants for example: –

(a) Strengthening of Cluster Level Federation (CLF) of women SHG

(b) Management Development Programme for Women Directors in Credit Cooperatives

(d) Book keeping and Auditing Training for Women Members of SHG

(e) Business Development Strategies for Women’s SHGS

(2) During the year 2022-23 the Institute has conducted 24 training programmes exclusively for women with 1056 participants.

(3) During the year 2023-24 (up to Nov, 2023) the Institute has conducted 29 training programmes exclusively for women with 1,010 participants.

Laxmanrao Inamdar National Academy for Cooperative Research and Development (LINAC):

Laxmanrao Inamdar National Academy for Cooperative Research and Development (LINAC) endeavors to develop its programs and interventions with a strong client-orientation and inter-disciplinary perspective to strengthen institutional capabilities and human resources in cooperatives.

Number of training programmes conducted during 2022-23 and 2023-24 for women participants on “Role of Women Directors in Governance & Business Development in Coops/SHGs”:

S. No.	Year	No of training Programmes	No of women Participants
01	2022-23	18	951
02	2023-24(Till 14.12.2023)	18	957

Annexure-B

Ministry of Cooperation

Ministry of Cooperation, since its inception on 6^th July, 2021, has undertaken several initiatives to realize the vision of “Sahakar-se-Samriddhi” and to strengthen & deepen the cooperative movement from Primary to Apex level Cooperatives in the country. List of initiatives taken and progress made so far are as follows:

Making Primary Cooperatives economically vibrant and transparent
Model Bye-Laws for PACS making them multipurpose, multidimensional and transparent entities: Government, in consultation with all the stakeholders, including States/ UTs, National Level Federations, State Cooperative Banks (StCBs), District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs), etc., has prepared and circulated Model Byelaws for PACS to all the States/ UTs, which enable PACS to undertake more than 25 business activities, improve governance, transparency and accountability in their operations. Provisions have also been made to make the membership of PACS more inclusive and broad-based, giving adequate representation to women and Scheduled Castes/Schedules Tribes. Model Byelaws have been adopted by 31 States/ UTs so far.

Strengthening of PACS through Computerization: In order to strengthen PACS, project for Computerization of 63,000 functional PACS with a total financial outlay of ₹2,516 Crore has been approved by the Government of India, which entails bringing all functional PACS in the Country onto a common ERP based national software, linking them with NABARD through StCBs and DCCBs. A total of 62,318 PACS from 28 States/ UTs have been sanctioned under the project. Software is ready and trials have already started in 5,673 PACS in 26 States/ UTs so far.

New Multipurpose PACS/ Dairy/ Fishery Cooperatives in uncovered Panchayats: A proposal has been approved by the Government to set up new multi-purpose PACS or primary dairy/ fisheries cooperatives covering every Panchayat/ village in the next five years, with support of NABARD, NDDB, NFDB, NCDC and other National level Federations. As reported by the States/ UTs, the process for registering 9,961 new PACS/ Dairy/ Fishery cooperative societies in 23 States/ UTs is in various stages.

World’s Largest Decentralized Grain Storage Plan in Cooperative sector: Government has approved a plan to create warehouses, custom hiring centres, primary processing units and other agri-infra for grain storage at PACS level, by converging various schemes of Government such as AIF, AMI, SMAM, PMFME, etc. This will reduce wastage of food grains and transportation costs, enable farmers to realize better prices for their produce and meet various agricultural needs at the PACS level itself. 22 States/ UTs and National level Cooperative Federations such as National Cooperative Consumers Federation (NCCF) and National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd. (NAFED), have identified 1,711 PACS for creation of storage capacity under the Pilot Project. At present, construction is going in 13 PACS of 13 States/ UTs under the Pilot Project.

PACS as Common Service Centers (CSCs) for better access to e-services: MoU has been signed between Ministry of Cooperation, MeitY, NABARD and CSC e-Governance Services India Limited for providing more than 300 e-services such as banking, insurance, Aadhar enrolment/ updation, health services, PAN card and IRCTC/ Bus/ Air ticket, etc. through PACS. So far, 24,470 PACS have started providing CSC services to the rural citizens which will also result in increase in income of those PACS at the same time.

Formation of new Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) by PACS: Government has allowed 1,100 additional FPOs to be formed by PACS with the support of NCDC, in those blocks where FPOs have not yet been formed or the blocks are not covered by any other implementing agency. This will be helpful in providing the farmers with necessary market linkage and get fair and remunerative prices for their produce.

PACS given priority for Retail Petrol/ Diesel outlets: Government has allowed PACS to be included in the Combined Category 2 (CC2) for allotment of retail petrol/ diesel outlets. As per information received from Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs), a total of 228 PACS have applied online for retail petrol/ diesel outlets.

PACS given permission to convert bulk consumer petrol pumps into retail outlets: Based on the discussions with the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, guidelines have been issued to convert the existing bulk consumer licensee PACS into retail outlets for increasing the profit of PACS and generate employment opportunities in rural areas. 109 PACS from 5 States having wholesale consumer pumps have given consent for conversion into Retail Outlets, out of which 43 PACS have received Letter of Intent (LOI) from the OMCs.

PACS eligible for LPG Distributorship for diversifying its activities: Government has now allowed PACS to apply for LPG Distributorships. This will give PACS an option to increase their economic activities and create new employment opportunities in rural areas. Two locations have already been advertised in the State of Jharkhand.

PACS as PM Bharatiya Jan Aushadhi Kendra for improving access to generic medicines at rural level: Government is promoting PACS to operate Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Kendras which will provide additional income source to them and provide easy access of generic medicines to rural citizens. So far, 4,289 PACS/ cooperative societies have applied online for PM Janaushadhi Kendras, out of which 2,293 PACS have been given initial approval also.

PACS as Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samriddhi Kendras (PMKSK): Government is promoting PACS to operate PMKSK for ensuring easy accessibility of fertilizer & related services to farmers in the country. As per the information shared by States/ UTs, 28,648 PACS are functioning as PMKSK so far.

Convergence of PM-KUSUM at PACS level: Farmers associated with PACS can adopt solar agricultural water pumps and install photovoltaic modules in their farms.

PACS to carry out O&M of rural piped water supply schemes (PWS): In order to utilize the reach of PACS in rural areas, on the initiative of the Ministry of Cooperation, Ministry of Jal Shakti has made PACS as eligible agencies to carry out the Operations & Maintenance (O&M) of PWS in rural areas. As per information received from States/ UTs, 1,381 PACS have been identified by 12 States/ UTs to provide O&M services at Panchayat/ Village level.

Micro-ATMs to Bank Mitra Cooperative Societies for providing doorsteps financial services: Dairy and Fisheries cooperative societies can be made Bank Mitras of DCCBs and StCBs to ensure their ease of doing business, transparency and financial inclusion, Micro-ATMs are also being given to these Bank Mitra Co-operative Societies with support from NABARD to provide ‘Door Step Financial Services’. As a pilot project, 1,723 Micro-ATMs have been distributed to Bank Mitra cooperative societies in Panchmahal and Banaskantha Districts of Gujarat.

Rupay Kisan Credit Card to Members of Milk Cooperatives: In order to expand the reach of DCCBs/ StCBs and to provide necessary liquidity to the members of Dairy Cooperative societies, Rupay Kisan Credit Cards (KCCs) are being distributed to the members of cooperatives for providing credit at comparatively lower interest rates and enable other financial transactions. As a pilot project, 73,503 Rupay KCC have been distributed in Panchmahal and Banaskantha Districts of Gujarat.

Formation of Fish Farmer Producer Organization (FFPO): In order to provide market linkage and providing processing facilities to the fishermen, NCDC has registered 69 FFPOs in the initial phase. Department of Fisheries, Government of India has further allocated conversion of 1000 existing fisheries cooperative societies into FFPOs to NCDC, with an approved outlay of Rs 225.50 crore.

Strengthening the Urban and Rural Cooperative Banks
UCBs have been allowed to open new branches to expand their business: UCBs can now open new branches up to 10% (maximum 5 branches) of the existing number of branches in the previous financial year without prior approval of RBI.

UCBs have been allowed by RBI to offer doorstep services to their customers: Door step banking facility can now be provided by the UCBs. Account holders associated with these banks can now avail various banking facilities at home such as cash withdrawal, cash deposit, KYC, demand draft and life certificate for pensioners, etc.

Cooperative banks have been allowed to make one-time settlement of outstanding loans, like Commercial Banks: Co-operative banks, through board-approved policies, can now provide process for technical write-off as well as settlement with borrowers.

Time limit increased to achieve Priority Sector Lending (PSL) targets given to UCBs: RBI has extended the timeline for UCBs to achieve Priority Sector Lending (PSL) targets by two years i.e., up to March 31, 2026.

A Nodal Officer designated in RBI for regular interaction with UCBs: In order to meet the long pending demand of the cooperative sector for closer coordination and focused interaction, RBI has notified a nodal officer as well.

Individual housing loan limit more than doubled by RBI for Rural and Urban Co-operative Banks:
1. Housing loan limit of Urban cooperative banks have now been doubled from Rs 30 lakh to Rs 60 lakh.
2. Housing loan limit of Rural cooperative banks has been increased to two and a half times to Rs 75 lakh.

Rural Co-operative Banks will now be able to lend to commercial real estate/ residential housing sector, thereby diversifying their business: This will not only help Rural co-operative banks to diversify their business, but benefit Housing co-operative societies also.

License fee reduced for Cooperative Banks: License fee for onboarding Cooperative Banks to ‘Aadhaar Enabled Payment System’ (AePS) has been reduced by linking it to the number of transactions. Cooperative financial institutions will also be able to get the facility free of cost for the first three months of the pre-production phase. With this, farmers will now be able to get the facility of banking at their home with their fingerprints.

Non-scheduled UCBs, StCBs and DCCBs notified as Member Lending Institutions (MLIs) in CGTMSE Scheme to increase the share of cooperatives in lending: The co-operative banks will now be able to take advantage of risk coverage up to 85 percent on the loans given. Also, cooperative sector enterprises will also be able to get collateral free loans from co-operative banks now.

Notification of Scheduling norms for including Urban Co-operative Banks: UCBs that meet the ‘Financially Sound and Well Managed’ (FSWM) criteria and have maintained the minimum deposits required for classification as Tier 3 for the last two years are now eligible to be included in Schedule II of the Reserve Bank of India Act 1934 and get ‘Scheduled’ status.

Monetary ceiling doubled by RBI for Gold Loan: RBI has doubled monetary ceiling from Rs. 2 lakh to Rs.4 lakh, for those UCBs that meet the PSL targets.

Umbrella Organization for Urban Cooperative Banks: RBI has accorded approval to the National Federation of Urban Co-operative Banks and Credit Societies Ltd. (NAFCUB) for the formation of an Umbrella Organization (UO) for the UCB sector, which will provide necessary IT infrastructure and operation support to around 1,500 UCBs.
Relief to Cooperative Societies in the Income Tax Act
Surcharge reduced from 12 % to 7% for co-operative societies having income between Rs. 1 to 10 Cr.: This will reduce the burden of Income Tax on Cooperative Societies and more capital will be available with them to work for the benefit of their members.

MAT reduced for cooperatives from 18.5% to 15%: With this provision, now there is parity between Cooperative Societies and Companies in this regard.

Relief in cash transactions under section 269ST of the Income Tax Act: In order to remove difficulties in cash transactions by cooperatives under Section 269ST of IT Act, Government has issued a clarification that cash transaction of less than Rs. 2 lakhs done by a cooperative society with its distributor in a day will be considered separately, and will not be charged with income tax penalty.

Tax cut for new manufacturing Cooperative societies: Government has decided that a flat lower tax rate of 15% will be charged, compared to an earlier rate of up to 30% plus surcharge, for new cooperatives commencing manufacturing activities by March 31, 2024. This will encourage the formation of new cooperative societies in the manufacturing sector.
Increase in limit of Cash Deposits and Cash Loans by PACS and PCARDBs: Government has enhanced the limit for Cash Deposits and Cash Loans by PACS and Primary Cooperative Agriculture and Rural Development Banks (PCARDBs) from Rs 20,000 to Rs 2 lakh per member. This provision will facilitate their activities, increase their business and benefit members of their societies.

Increase in the limit of Tax Deducted at Source (TDS) in Cash Withdrawal: Government has increased the cash withdrawal limit of cooperative societies without deduction of tax at source from Rs.1 crore to Rs.3 crore per year. This provision will save Tax Deducted at Source (TDS) for cooperative societies, which will enhance liquidity of the cooperative society.
Revival of Cooperative Sugar Mills
Relief from Income Tax to Sugar Cooperative Mills: Government has issued a clarification that Sugar cooperative mills would not be subjected to additional income tax for paying higher sugarcane prices to farmers up to Fair and Remunerative or State Advised Price, from April, 2016 onwards.
Resolution of decades old pending issues related to Income Tax of Sugar Cooperative Mills: Government has made a provision in its Union Budget 2023-24, wherein Sugar cooperatives have been allowed to claim as expenditure their payments to sugarcane farmers for the period prior to assessment year 2016–17, giving a relief of more than Rs.10,000 crores.
Rs. 10,000 crore loan scheme launched for strengthening of Sugar Cooperative Mills: Government has launched a scheme through NCDC for setting up ethanol plants or cogeneration plants or for working capital or for all three purposes. Loan amount of Rs. 3,010 cr. has been sanctioned by NCDC to 24 Cooperative Sugar Mills so far.
Preference to Cooperative Sugar Mills in purchase of ethanol: Cooperative Sugar Mills have now been put at par with private companies for ethanol procurement by Government of India under the Ethanol Blending Programme (EBP).
Reduction in GST on molasses from 28% to 5%: Government has decided to reduce the GST on molasses from 28% to 5% which will enable cooperative sugar mills to earn more profits for its members by selling molasses to distilleries with higher margins.

Three new Multi-State Societies at the National Level
New National Multi-State Cooperative Seed Society for certified seeds: Government has established a new apex multi-state cooperative seed society under the MSCS Act, 2002, namely Bharatiya Beej Sahakari Samiti Limited (BBSSL) as an umbrella organization for quality seed cultivation, production and distribution under a single brand. BBSSL has received 8,200 PACS/ cooperative societies applications from 27 States/ UTs for membership so far.

New National Multi-State Cooperative Organic Society for organic farming: Government has established a new apex multi-state cooperative organic society under the MSCS Act, 2002, namely National Cooperative Organics Limited (NCOL) as an umbrella organization to produce, distribute and market certified and authentic organic products. NCOL has received 2,475 PACS/ cooperative societies applications from 24 States/ UTs for membership so far. 6 organic products have already been launched by NCOL so far.

New National Multi-State Cooperative Export Society for promoting exports: Government has established a new apex multi-state cooperative export society under the MSCS Act, 2002, namely National Cooperative Export Limited (NCEL) as an umbrella organization to give thrust to exports from cooperative sector. NCEL has received 2,625 PACS/ cooperative societies applications from 22 States/ UTs for membership so far. Till date, NCEL has got permission to export 14.92 LMT rice to 16 countries and 50,000 MT sugar to 2 countries.

Capacity Building in Cooperatives
Establishment of the Cooperative University: Steps are being taken by Ministry of Cooperation for setting up of a National Cooperative University for Cooperative education, training, consultancy, research and development and a sustainable and quality supply of trained manpower.

Promotion of training and awareness through National Council for Cooperative Training (NCCT): By increasing its reach, NCCT has conducted 3,287 training programs and provided training to 2,01,507 participants in FY 2022-23.

Use of Information Technology for ‘Ease of Doing Business’
Computerization of the Central Registrar’s Office: Central Registrar’s office has been computerized to create a digital ecosystem for Multi-State Cooperative Societies, which will assist in processing applications and service requests in a time bound manner.

Scheme for computerization of office of RCSs in States and Union Territories: To increase ‘Ease of doing business’ for Cooperative Societies and create a digital ecosystem for transparent paperless regulation in all States/Union Territories, a Centrally Sponsored Project for computerization of RCS Offices has been approved by the Government. Grants will be provided for purchase of hardware, development of software, etc. to the States/ UTs.

Computerization of Agriculture and Rural Development Banks (ARDBs): To strengthen the Long-term Cooperative Credit structure, the project of computerization of 1,851 units of Agriculture and Rural Development Banks (ARDBs) has been approved by the Government. NABARD is the implementing agency for the project and will develop a national level software for ARDBs. Hardware, support for Digitization of legacy data, training to the employees, etc. will be provided under the project.

Other Initiatives
New National Cooperative Database for authentic and updated data repository: A database of cooperatives in the country has been prepared with the support of State Governments to facilitate stakeholders in policy making and implementation of programmes/ schemes related to cooperatives across the country. So far, data of around 7.86 lakh cooperatives has been captured in the database.

Formulation of New National Cooperative Policy: A National level committee comprising 49 experts and stakeholders drawn from all over the Country has been constituted to formulate the New National Cooperative Policy for enabling a vibrant ecosystem to realize the vision of ‘Sahakar-se-Samriddhi’.

Multi-State Co-operative Societies (Amendment) Act, 2023: Amendment has been brought in the MSCS Act, 2002 to strengthen governance, enhance transparency, increase accountability, reform electoral process and incorporate provisions of 97^th Constitutional Amendment in the Multi State Cooperative Societies.

Inclusion of Cooperatives as ‘buyers’ on GeM portal: Government has permitted the cooperatives to register as ‘buyer’ on GeM, enabling them to procure goods and services from nearly over 67 lakh vendors to facilitate economical purchases and greater transparency. So far, 559 cooperative societies have been onboarded on GeM as buyers.

Expansion of National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) to increase its range and depth: NCDC has launched new schemes in various sectors such as ‘Swayamshakti Sahkar’ for SHGs; ‘Deerghavadhi Krishak Sahkar’ for long term agricultural credit and ‘Dairy Sahkar’ for dairy. Total financial assistance of Rs. 41,024 Crores has been disbursed by NCDC in FY 2022-23, which is almost 20% higher than the disbursement of Rs.34,221 crore in 2021-22. Government of India has permitted NCDC to issue bonds worth ₹2000 crore with government guarantee, subject to the adherence of specified terms and conditions. Further, NCDC is setting up sub-offices in 6 North Eastern States – Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura with the objective of taking various national schemes to the cooperative societies at their doorstep.

Financial assistance by NCDC for Deep Sea Trawlers: NCDC is providing financial assistance for projects related to deep sea trawlers in coordination with the Department of Fisheries, Government of India. NCDC has already sanctioned financial assistance of Rs 20.30 crore for purchase of 14 deep sea trawlers for the Fisheries Cooperative Societies of Maharashtra.

Refund to Investors of Sahara Group of Societies: A portal has been launched for making payments to the genuine depositors of the cooperative societies of Sahara Group in a transparent manner. Disbursement have already started after proper identification and submission of proof of their deposits and claims.

Role of PDF Documents in Educational Services

By: Shashikant Nishant Sharma

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital communication, PDF documents stand as pillars of versatility, reliability, and universal accessibility. Portable Document Format, abbreviated as PDF, has emerged as a standard in the realm of document sharing and archiving. Its importance transcends industries and professions, offering a myriad of advantages that have solidified its position as a preferred format for conveying information in the digital age. PDF Cake‘s global accessibility ensures that its benefits transcend geographical boundaries.

One of the primary reasons behind the significance of PDF documents lies in their universality. Unlike other file formats that might alter in appearance or content when accessed on different devices or operating systems, PDFs retain their original formatting across platforms. This consistency ensures that the document appears the same for all recipients, maintaining the integrity of the content regardless of the software or device used to access it. This reliability makes PDFs an ideal choice for sharing official documents, reports, and academic papers.

Moreover, PDF documents are highly secure, allowing for encryption, password protection, and digital signatures. This robust security feature ensures that sensitive information remains confidential and protected from unauthorized access or tampering. Businesses and individuals alike rely on PDFs to safeguard their proprietary data and confidential documents, instilling trust and confidence in their digital communication methods.

Another compelling aspect of PDFs is their capacity for multi-functionality. From simple text documents to complex interactive forms, PDFs support a wide array of content types. They accommodate images, hyperlinks, annotations, multimedia elements, and form fields, making them suitable for diverse purposes, including e-books, manuals, presentations, and legal contracts. This versatility empowers users to create dynamic, interactive, and engaging content while maintaining the document’s structure and readability.

The accessibility of PDF documents also plays a pivotal role in their importance. PDFs are viewable on virtually any device, whether it’s a computer, tablet, or smartphone. Additionally, they can be easily shared via email, file-sharing platforms, or integrated into websites. This accessibility ensures seamless distribution of information across global audiences, transcending geographical barriers and facilitating efficient communication in various contexts.

Furthermore, the archival quality of PDF documents makes them invaluable for long-term storage and preservation of information. PDFs retain their formatting and content integrity over time, ensuring that the information remains accessible and readable even years after its creation. This aspect is particularly crucial for archiving historical documents, research papers, legal records, and government reports.

In conclusion, the importance of PDF documents in the digital era cannot be overstated. Their reliability, security, versatility, accessibility, and archival capabilities make them indispensable tools for individuals, businesses, educational institutions, and government bodies. As technology continues to evolve, PDFs remain steadfast, serving as a cornerstone of efficient and secure digital communication, document management, and information dissemination. Whether for sharing critical business information, disseminating educational materials, or preserving historical records, PDF documents continue to play an indispensable role in our increasingly digital world.

References

Devine, Heather, Andres Gonzalez, and Matthew Hardy. “Making accessible PDF documents.” Proceedings of the 11th ACM symposium on Document engineering. 2011.

Sharma, Shashikant Nishant. “An Insight into the Book Titled Why Stories Work.” Think India Journal 26.4 (2023): 19-24.

Waller, Rob. “What makes a good document.” The criteria we use. Technical paper 2 (2011).

THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN SOCIETY

Social media supports many businesses as well as society as a whole. It offers resources like social media marketing tools to connect with millions of potential customers. Using social media, we may easily access information and obtain news. Any social cause can benefit greatly from the usage of social media.

Social media in our society used in several ways.

they are:

1.Education .

2.Agriculture..

3.Business.

4.Entertainment.

In many ways social media used.

1.Education:

Teachers can use social media to connect with their peoples. even when they are not in the classroom. Students may access an infinite number of resources and texts from reliable sources by using social media platforms, which they can then use to their advantage in essays, projects, and presentations.

Students are inspired and encouraged to learn through the usage of social media platforms in the classroom. Major factors that contribute to educational progress include simple access to e-books, online notes, and learning through video conversations.

Advantages of social media in Education:

1.To learn new things for studying

2.Social media provides current information and updates to the students.

3.Increases connections among to the students.

4.Learn new skills to students

5.Improve Knowledge retention and understanding.

6.It builds a community for students.

7.Even Teachers are out of the station .They are communicate in online class room.

2.Agriculture:

Most farmers today use smartphones with internet and social media capabilities. Social media is being used by farmers to exchange information, novel techniques, etc. The most well-known social media sites for agricultural marketing. .The spread of various agricultural information is being greatly aided by social media in the agricultural sector. It aids in bridging the geographic gap that separates farmers in various locations.

Advantages of social media in Agriculture:

1.Advanced training provided by farmers on use of social media.

2.Farmers share there plans in groups by use of socil medioa.

3.create organic content.

4.Get knowledge about what type of crops are in fields.

Business:

Social media provides a venue for businesses to engage with their clients and establish a cherished relationship, making social media marketing a crucial component of digital marketing. It streamlines communication between brands and customers by cutting out the middlemen.

Advantages of social media in Business:

1.Develope the brand of our business.

2.Do market research and reduce marketing prices

3.Increase your market,international market business.

4.attract customers, get customer feedback and build customer loyalty.

5.Improve business ideas to develop business.

6.keep an eye for your competitors.

4.Entertainment:

In essence, social entertainment marketing may be used to describe any type of online content that is published or broadcast with the intention of entertaining its audience. Long or short-form videos, live streaming, and other types of content that promote a closer relationship between content producers and users are now popular trends.

The popular social media entertainment apps are You tube,face book,Whats app,Instagram,Twitter,Tiktok.

Advantages of social media on Entertainment:

1.Use of social media for promoting and advertising.

2.To watch movies on online OTT platforms.

3.Stress relief for entertaining apps.

4.stay update on local and global events.

5.Enjoy video games and films.

6.Wide range of availability.

Disadvantages of social media:

1.It addict the people.

2.Self image issues

3.Increasing of usage, The more time spent on social media can lead to social anxiety,depression and exposure content

that is not appropriate.

4.A fear of missing out can keep you returning to social media again and again.

5.Feeling inadequate about your life or your appearance.

Citizenship Journalism

What is citizenship journalism? It is more or less a medium through which rural people can communicate and share the ongoing problems in their state. One such example is cgnet Swara. Cgnet Swara started in 2004 as a website which acted as a middleman between the people and the news. Using the site is simple. All you need to do is call a number and tell them your problem and they’ll report it. A lot of times these stories have broken up like wildfire.

Ndtv once reported a piece of news that was reported by cgnet Swara first. The wonderful thing about this is illiterate people can also tell the news from the ground in a very convenient way. This is revolutionary. Keeping in mind that most of the people only speak their tribal language, it becomes hard for them to understand English or Hindi. But the problem with citizen journalism is that its structure is not very professional. Most of the time the calls might not result in anything because they are just opinions.

This is one of the reasons journalists are sceptical about this. Sometimes the mainstream media has used information from cgnet Swara and didn’t credit them. This makes the relationship worse. One of the officials from cgnet Swara said “Their relationship has become more antagonistic … It is very unfortunate, that local media see us as a competitor—which we cannot be and never intended to be. Every platform has its problems and strengths. We understand the structural problems of mainstream media and we want to fill in the gaps.” The initial goal of citizen journalism was to bridge the gap between the alienated theories that mainstream media provides us as entertainment. This is why the big conglomerates don’t like the idea of citizen journalism. Although it’s unprofessional, it represents the voices of the people in the rawest way possible. Since the narrative in India is controlled by a handful of people, they’ll always try to not let citizenship journalism grow. Going forward, one of the major challenges for citizen journalism is building a structure and improving fact-checking.

E-commerce – Market Trend of the 21st Century

Even today, some considerable time after the so called internet revolution”, Electronic Commerce (E-Commerce) remains a relatively new, emerging and constantly changing area of business management and information technology. Speaking in layman’s terms, E-Commerce refers to the entire process of marketing. selling, delivering goods and servicing customers over the Internet. It has revolutionized the way companies do business. Consumers can buy almost anything online 24 hours a day.

In the 21st century, the rapid development of information technology and the rapid increase in information exchange have brought new drives and innovative ideas to the whole society. The wide adoption of information technology by the community has led to great changes. These changes are not simply in the context of data processing or computing. They are changes which affect how we communicate with each other, how we organise our daily activities, how we educate the younger generation, and how we run business. The great development and acceptance of information technology, computer networks and the Internet have transformed the mode of operation of many businesses, and at the same time have brought along unprecedented business opportunities. Businesses are now able to conduct transactions across geographical boundaries, across time zones and at a high efficiency. E-Commerce has become the market trend of the Century.

Life has become very busy these days. Odd working hours, hectic schedules and time constraints have changed how people shop these days. Hence, E-Commerce has become the preferred method of shopping for many people. They love the ease with which they can shop online from their home at any time of the day or night. Purchasing options are quick and convenient with the ability to transfer funds online. Consumers save time and money by searching for items and making their purchases online. It can take several days of physically going from location to location, costingtime and fuel, to purchase a hard-to-find item. Moreover, E-Commerce is an retail method for business transactions. Start-up costs for establishing an E-Commerce business is far less than expanding your business with more brick and mortar locations. Fewer licenses and permits are required to start an online business than that of a physical store location. You will also save money by using fewer employees to perform operations such as managing inventory and billing customers. You won’t have to search for an appropriate geographic location or worry about paying high utility costs for the facility. efficient

Advertising done well on the web can get even a small firm’s promotional message out to potential consumers in every country in the world. A firm can use electronic commerce to reach narrow market segments that are geographically scattered. The web is particularly useful in creating virtual communities that become ideal target markets for specific types of products or services.

The prospects are, in no doubt, great for E-Commerce and its followers. But still, there are some consumers who are reluctant to embrace E-Commerce because of privacy issues. Making an online purchase often requires disclosing personal information such as an address, telephone number and banking or credit card account information. While many people feel making an online purchase does not compromise their personal information, some still prefer not to take a chance of having their account information accessed by a third party, and will only make their purchases at a storefront operation.

Then there is the issue of inability to feel the product physically or check it with your own hands while buying. When making a purchase at a brick and mortar business, you get the product when you pay for it. On the web, there may be a time lag from purchase to actually being able to consume. The consumer will have to wait for delivery of physical goods.

Also, some businesses are less suitable for electronic commerce. Such businesses may be involved in the selling of items which are perishable or high-cost, or which require inspection before purchasing. Most of the disadvantages of electronic commerce today, however, stem from the newness and rapidly developing pace of the underlying technologies. These disadvantages will disappear as electronic commerce matures and becomes more available to and accepted by the general population.

Not only the new generation, but also the older generation is getting a hold of technology. They are adapting to the changing technologies and try to be up-to-date. Therefore, E-Commerce is also making its way into their lives. It is true that going to markets or malls to shop will never go out of fashion but E-Commerce is also here to stay and become more and more popular as people realize its advantages and get comfortable with it.

HOW DOES THE STOCK MARKET WORK?

By Moksha Grover

Are you scared of investing in the stock market too? Have you heard of people losing all their money by investing in the stock market? If it is so, then you are not alone. There are many individuals with limited experience who are scared to invest in stocks after hearing the horror stories of investors losing 50% of their portfolio value[1]. The reality is that investing in the stock market carries some amount of risk. But it is one of the best methods to increase one’s net worth if carried out in a disciplined manner. Today, most rich and affluent people have the majority of their wealth from investment in stocks.

WHAT IS THE STOCK MARKET?

The stock market is where investors connect to buy and sell investments — most commonly, stocks, which are shares of ownership in a public company. ` When you purchase a public company’s stock you get entitled to the stock ownership of that particular company that is you become a shareholder. Stock ownership implies that the shareholder owns a slice of the company equal to the number of shares held as a proportion of the company’s total outstanding shares. For instance, an individual or entity that owns 100,000 shares of a company with one million outstanding shares would have a 10% ownership stake in it.[2] Most companies have outstanding shares that run into the millions or billions[3]. Anyone with a brokerage account can easily buy stocks online through the stock market. Most of the stock trades take place between investors. If we buy shares of a company, we are not buying these shares from the company itself. We are buying shares of another investor who has decided to sell his shares.

TYPES OF STOCKS

There are mainly two types of stocks that are common stocks and preferred stocks.

COMMON STOCKS

Common stock is a security that represents ownership in a corporation. Holders of the common stock vote on corporate policies and elect the board of directors. Common stock is further classified on the basis of voting rights. The basic proposition of common shares is that they should have equal rights –one vote per share system. But some companies have multiple classes of stocks, wherein each class of stock has different voting rights. In such a dual-class structure, Class A shares, for example, may have 10 votes per share, while the Class B “subordinate voting” shares may only have one vote per share. Dual- or multiple-class share structures are designed to enable the founders of a company to control its fortunes, strategic direction and ability to innovate[4].

PREFERRED STOCKS

Preferred stocks are a class of stocks that are granted rights different from common stocks. They usually have higher claims over dividends and asset distribution. Preferred stocks have limited or no voting rights in corporate governance. Preferred stocks have more priority to investors than common stocks as they possess characteristics of both bonds and common stocks.

HOW THE STOCK MARKET WORKS?

The stock market works in a very simple and easy way. In a stock market, buyers and sellers negotiate the prices of stocks and make trades. This process is carried out with the help of a network of exchange. When companies list shares of their stock on an exchange then this process is called Initial Public Offering or IPO. Investors buy and sell stocks among themselves. The supply and demand of stocks are determined by exchange networks like the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq. Supply-demand helps to determine the price of the security. Price is determined by the investors and traders willing to buy or sell. Bidding by the buyer for the highest amount is done. The amount that the buyer is willing to pay is often lower than the amount sellers ask for. The difference in the amounts is called the bid-ask spread. The bid-ask concept is not much of a concern for beginner and long-term investors as the amount differs by pennies.

The working of the stock market is a fascinating example of the law of supply and demand, in real-time. If there are more buyers than sellers, then the price of stocks trends up. If there are more sellers than buyers, then the price falls down. The stock market serves two very important purposes both for the companies and the investors. For the companies, the stock market helps to raise funds from the public and helps in their funding operations. It also helps in the development and growth of the company and further expands its projects and business. As the companies grow and expand their business, shares bought by investors become more valuable, thus helping them to gain more capital. In addition to this, investors also receive dividends from the company as their profits. Public companies selling their shares need to disclose all the material information required and also give a say in how their business works to the investors.

All these processes that help in the working of the stock market seem to be complicated, but in reality, these have become relatively easy with the help of computer algorithms that help in price-setting calculations. Bid, ask and bid-ask all are available on the broker’s website with the required information. Today, the stock market is considered to be one of the most reliable ways of making money.

WHAT IS THE STOCK MARKET DOING TODAY?

Anyone can look at the performance of the stock market with the help of market indexes like the S&P 500 or the DJIA. Previously, when the covid-19 cases in India were at a hike, the stock market fell drastically. But now, in the current scenario around 3.2 per cent of the 1,216 listed companies on the National Stock Exchange that have reported their June quarter earnings have managed to defy the odds by expanding their operating margins on a sequential basis for four consecutive quarters[5]. In India, currently, there are 40 stocks that are defying a widespread trend[6].

HOW TO INVEST IN THE STOCK MARKET?

Decide the kind of account which you want to open: –

The first step to investing in the stock market is to decide the kind of account you want to open. Investment accounts can be opened for anything ranging from short-term goals to long, retirement savings to college savings etc.

Open a brokerage account: –

After deciding the kind of account you want to open, you have to open an account at a provider called a brokerage. When you choose a company, do look at their fees and available investment opportunities.

Depositing Money: –

To further continue with the investing process, you have to make an initial deposit. You can also set up recurring deposits to automate your investments going forward.

Choose your investments: –

Once you are done with the above-mentioned steps. You can buy and sell securities. You can take up mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), individual stocks and bonds etc. These include hundreds of individual securities. It is recommended to have a diversified fund-based approach as it reduces the risk of losses and bad investments.

Purchasing chosen investments: –

After choosing what you want to buy simply enter the ticker symbol in the buy field and indicate how many shares you want to buy.

STOCK MARKET VS STOCK EXCHANGE

The stock market and stock exchange are two very different things but they are often interchanged with each other. The stock market is a wider term than the stock exchange. In fact, the stock exchange is a part of the stock market. The stock market includes many stock exchanges such as the Nasdaq or New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in the U.S and NSE – National Stock Exchange in India.

We might have heard people talking about the performance of the stock market. When they talk about performance they mean thousands of public companies listed on multiple stock exchanges. In general, too stock market is a very broad term which comprises all the terms like mutual funds, ETFs, bonds and other securities beyond just stocks.

[1] Adam Hayes, ‘How Does the Stock Market Work?’, Investopedia (1^st June 2021) < https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/082614/how-stock-market-works.asp> accessed 1st September 2022

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Chiranjivi Chakraborty, ’40 Stocks that are Defying a Widespread Trend in India Inc right now, The Economic Times (1st September 2021) <https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/40-stocks-that-are-defying-a-widespread-trend-in-india-inc-right-now/articleshow/85822852.cms > accessed 1st September 2021

[6] Ibid.

The Night Economy

Do you like going to films or clubs with your loved ones at night too? Events or concerts are usually after 5 pm or the nightlife to be precise and that is what the ideas of the night economy are. Huge cities with upbeat nightlife usually have more profit than any daytime industry.

The foundation of a night time economy that benefits everyone is cooperation. It involves bringing together all interested parties, including city planners, designers, builders, managers, investors, community organizations, governmental agencies, private industries, and tourism organizations. The nocturnal economy can then encourage inclusiveness and social harmony. Develop the creative and artistic sectors.Bolster regional economies with money.Expand the cultural and tourist offerings.
Give nighttime employees access to transportation and vital services.

Some of the daytime demand will move to the night if the industry starts to operate on a night shift; for example, if you opt to go grocery shopping at 1am on a weekday rather than on Saturday. This is a substitute that does not increase productivity overall, but it is beneficial since it will relieve daytime traffic congestion in a country like India. New economic activity, such as companies that add another additional shift, as well as the development of new firms and business models will result in increased production.

WARREN BUFFET- A MODEL FOR HIS BILLIONAIRE PEERS

By Moksha Grover

Warren Edward Buffett is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is currently the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. Born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1930, Buffet is 91 years old. He is one of the most successful investors of all time and a model for his ultra-rich peers. Buffet also runs Berkshire Hathaway, which owns above 60 companies, including insurer Geico, battery maker Duracell and restaurant chain Dairy Queen. He has a net worth of over $104.4 billion as of August 2021, making him the world’s ninth-wealthiest person[1]. “If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die” is a famous quote said by Warren Edward Buffet.

EARLY LIFE AND CAREER

Warren Buffet displayed his interest in business and investing at a very young age. At age seven, he was inspired for investing in the book “One Thousand Ways to make $1000”. Much of buffets childhood was filled with business ventures. He sold chewing gum, Coca-Cola bottles, and weekly magazines door to door. When in high school, he made money delivering newspapers, selling golf balls and stamps etc. As a sophomore, with one of his friends, he established a large paper route and invested in pinball machines. They are stationed in barber shops and split their profits with the shop owners. They started their business with just $25 and sold their business later for $1200. Buffet also bought 40 acres of Nebraska farmland, by age 15 with the proceeds from earlier business ventures[2].

After completing his graduate degree from Columbia University, Buffett worked for the investment legend Benjamin Graham, in New York City. He considered Benjamin Graham as his mentor and was inspired by him a lot. After Graham retired from his business, buffett went back to his hometown and started running a series of successful hedge funds, known as the Buffett Partnerships.

In late1960s, Buffet closed down his original investment business and took over Berkshire Hathaway, a struggling textile maker. He decided to close his business when he saw the stock market being overvalued and made Berkshire Hathaway his primary business activity. Over the decades, with the help of buffet, Berkshire Hathaway turned into a conglomerate with annual sales of $245 billion[3]. It has a market capitalization of $654 billion and employs roughly 360,000 people through its many subsidiaries[4]. With the rise in the value of Berkshire’s stock, many people became rich. Buffet declared employee Greg Abel as his successor, keeping in mind his age-related health risks and long-term, interests. Although buffet has not retired or declared his intention to retire from Berkshire Hathaway. Its shares gained about 25% in the first eight months of 2021[5].

LIVING LIFE ON HIS OWN TERMS

Buffet got much of his philosophy from his father, Howard Buffet, who was an American businessman, investor, and politician. He describes this philosophy as trying to “keep up with the Joneses.”. This means that he enjoys living up his life on his own terms and doesn’t care about what others think of him.

Talking about buffet’s personal life, Although, Buffet is a Democrat, he has still voted and donated to both democrats and republicans. He has also described himself as an ‘agnostic ‘person. His late wife and the foundation named after her that he has funded, the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, were and are substantial supporters of reproductive rights organisations that favour access to legal abortions. Warren Buffet married Susan in 1952, who spent her later years in San Francisco. He spent more than 20 years considering himself to be happily married to Susan. After his first wife’s 2004 death, Buffett married another woman named Astrid Menks, who lived in Omaha, at the same time in a small and informal ceremony.

WARREN BUFFET’S CHARITY

Warren Buffet became the founder of ‘The Giving Pledge along with Bill and Melinda French Gates. The Giving Pledge is a campaign to encourage extremely wealthy people to contribute a majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. Buffet also pledged that more than 99% of his wealth will go to philanthropy, either during his lifetime or at his death[6]. He could have started his own charitable foundation but has contributed his money to five foundations run by others. Until 2021, he served Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as a trustee and poured most of his charitable money into the foundation.

Buffet says that he has given very little money to his three children Howard Graham Buffett, Peter Buffett and Susan Alice Buffett, who themselves are millionaires and own hundreds of millions of dollars for the foundations they each run. For example, he’s one of corporate America’s strongest proponents of women in business. He mentored Tracy Britt Cool for more than a decade as she rose from a financial assistant to CEO of Pampered Chef, a Berkshire subsidiary. Later, she started her own private equity firm, modelled after Berkshire, with Buffett’s support.

Buffet also shared his knowledge of the financial markets and the economy in 1977 and conducted annual shareholder meetings.[7] His annual shareholder meetings, known as “Woodstock for capitalists” is akin to a Disney vacation for thousands of families each year. Buffett also voluntarily met with scores of college students for decades about eight times a year for a Q&A session and tour of his businesses[8]. Buffet has given more than $4.1 billion to charity[9].

BUFFET’S RULE

Buffet recently admitted that he pays tax less than his secretary. The reason behind this, he told is a system from which he has benefitted a lot. This system lets billionaires pay very low tax bills, partly because it taxes income instead of wealth. For years he advocated for the so-called “Buffett Rule,” a minimum 30% tax on those making more than $1 million a year to remedy the problem[10]. Rich pay less tax when they deduct it from what they have donated to charities is a fact, also recognized by the buffet.

For his rules on business, Buffet is a very sensible investor. He only invests in those companies which he has thoroughly researched and understands. Buffett personally lost about $23 billion in the financial crisis of 2008, and his company, Berkshire Hathaway, lost its revered AAA rating[11]. The most important quality, as defined by buffet for an investor is temperament, not intellect. For a successful investor, being with or against the crowd is not the centre of attraction.

Buffet was inspired a lot by the book “The Intelligent Investor” by Benjamin Graham as it inspired and convinced him to invest in stocks. With the help of this book, he got to know that investing in stocks is equal to owning a piece of the business. So, when Buffet searches for stock to invest in, he always prefers the business that exhibits favourable long-term prospects. Buffet never buys anything unless he can write a particular reason to pay a particular price for that shares of the company and advises all the investors to do the same.

“Leave the children enough so that they can do anything but not enough that they can do nothing” is a famous quote said by buffet to wealthy families for charitable purposes.

[1] John M.Longo, ‘Why Warren Buffett Is a Model for His Billionaire Peers’, The Wire (August 30,2021) < https://thewire.in/business/why-warren-buffett-is-a-model-for-his-billionaire-peers> accessed 30^th August 2021.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Stephanie Loiacono,’ Rules That Warren Buffett Lives By’, Investopedia (Jan 12,2021) < https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0210/rules-that-warren-buffett-lives-by.aspx> accessed 30^th August,2021.

Era of Small Business

Small business, a word which before lockdown meant just a business that is done on small scale. However with the onset of lockdown the number of Small Businesses exponentially went up . Soon it became a trend specially among the gen z to have their own small business page and website.

Small businesses that are now in countless number on Instagram, Facebook, etc sells a variety of goods from food materials to fabrics , from accessories to home decor . Everything and anything was available on your screens and are ready to be delivered at your doorsteps.

Small businesses do seem lucrative as it not only gives you financial independence but you also get a sense of being a businessman/ businesswoman of your own homemade brand …..as they say boss bitch! It not only helps the young business owners make money on their own but also train them to run a business at larger scale in future.

Since lockdown is almost over and now everything is opening up these small business owners are also actively moving out of screens and setting up shops and stalls. You can easily spot small businesses setting up exhibitions in any event you attend . Not to mention the amount of crowd gathered around these stalls. Although it’s all a trick to stick that customer with sweet talk. But nothing is wrong in it since we all are doing something to earn our living.

Since small businesses know the value of personal touch to the customers they have taken advantage of it very efficiently. From handwritten lovely messages with the parcel to providing free goodies , they show that businesses are not about money but about love. And that’s the beauty of it.

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Marketing Basics

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. A market is an arrangement between a seller and a buyer in which:

The seller agrees to supply the goods or the service.
The buyer agrees to pay the price.

Defined this way, the market is not necessarily a geographical location. Products and services are purchased over the phone, through mail and electronic mail, as well as through the online. For any organisation, marketing makes the economy strong and stable. The lesser the stress on the marketing function, the weaker will be the economy. Marketing is complex mechanism involving many people in one form or the other. The major marketing functions are buying, selling, financing, transport, warehousing, risk bearing and standardization, etc. In each such function different activities are performed by a large number of individuals and bodies.

Marketing strategy is the comprehensive plan formulated particularly for achieving the marketing objectives of the organization. It provides a blueprint for attaining these marketing objectives. It is the building block of a marketing plan. It is designed after detailed marketing research. A marketing strategy helps an organization to concentrate it scarce resources on the best possible opportunities so as to increase the sales.

Importance of Marketing Strategy

Marketing strategy provides an organization an edge over it’s competitors.
Strategy helps in developing goods and services with best profit making potential.
Marketing strategy helps in discovering the areas affected by organizational growth and thereby helps in creating an organizational plan to cater to the customer needs.
It helps in fixing the right price for organization’s goods and services based on information collected by market research.
Strategy ensures effective departmental co-ordination.
It helps an organization to make optimum utilization of its resources so as to provide a sales message to its target market.
A marketing strategy helps to fix the advertising budget in advance, and it also develops a method which determines the scope of the plan, i.e., it determines the revenue generated by the advertising plan.

Marketing is not just one single strategy, but rather a combination of many different techniques and tactics. Below listed are some essential marketing strategies that are popular

Marketing Plan: Discover what a marketing plan is, why you need to design one, and the keys to creating a strong plan. Without a marketing plan, a company or brand can’t reach its goals.

Digital Marketing: Digital marketing is the discipline of marketing which focuses on developing a strategy solely within the digital environment.

Direct Marketing: Direct marketing is a type of campaign based on direct, two-way communication that seeks to trigger a result from a specific audience.

Email Marketing: Email Marketing is one of the most profitable and effective techniques in terms of return. Naturally, it consists of sending emails to your audience, but make sure to define your segments well in order to be effective.

Mobile Marketing: Mobile Marketing is a broad concept which brings together all marketing campaigns and actions focused exclusively on mobile platforms and applications (i.e. smartphones and tablets).

Viral Marketing: Having something go viral is every company’s dream. Viral Marketing spreads from one person to the next and is capable of going incredibly far incredibly fast.

Performance Marketing: Performance Marketing is a methodology which applies various marketing methods and techniques and guarantees advertisers that they only have to pay for achieved results.

Inbound Marketing: This methodology focuses on creating valuable content to attract qualified traffic and work towards the final sale.

Porter’s Five Forces Model

Porter’s 5 Forces Model is a business model and a tool which helps in identifying main competitive forces of an industry or a sector. The 5 Forces Model is mainly used to create a corporate strategy which will help a company to enhance its long- term profitability.

Understanding Porter’s Five Forces Model

The 5 Forces Model was created by Harvard Business School’s Professor Michael E. Porter and was published in his book “Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors” in 1980. The model was created to explain why various industries are able to maintain varying level of profitability. Porter’s 5 Forces helps in analyzing the industry of the company so that a company can adjust their corporate strategy, boost their profitability and beat their competition.

What are the five forces of the Porter’s Model?

Competition in the industry
Potential of new entrants into the industry
Power of Suppliers
Power of Customers
Threat of substitute products

Competition in the Industry

For most industry, the level of competition in the industry determines the positioning of the product in the market. The intense the competition in the market, the more the company has to focus on innovation, marketing, price, etc. of the product. When the competition is less, a company has more authority to charge higher prices and establish the terms of deals in order to increase sales and profits.

Potential of New Entrants into the Industry

A company’s positioning is also affected by the new entrants in the market. This in turn puts pressure on prices, costs, and the rate of investment needed to sustain a business within the industry. The less the time, money and effort it takes for a competitor to enter the market, more is the threat for a company to lose its market share. On the contrary, if there are strong barriers to entry in the industry, companies more secure about their market share.

Power of Suppliers

Power of suppliers in a market means how easily suppliers can increase the cost of the inputs. The suppliers’ power in the market is determined by the factors like number of suppliers in the market, uniqueness of the inputs they provide, cost of switching a supplier for a company. If the number of suppliers in an industry is less, a company would depend more on its current supplier, thus giving more power to supplier in terms of cost of inputs and other advantages in trade. However, if the suppliers are more in the market, then company has the advantage of switching the supplier in case the supplier increases the price or if a company finds a cheap supplier, thus keeping their input costs low and increasing their profitability.

Power of Customers

Customers are more powerful in an industry when there are less number of customers in an industry and more number of suppliers. Because the client base for a company is smaller and more strong, each customer has greater negotiating leverage to get better rates and deals. A company with a large number of smaller, independent consumers will find it easier to raise prices and increase profits.

Threat of Substitute Products

A substitute is a product or service that can be easily replaced with another by consumers. In economics, products are often substitutes if the demand for one product increases when the price of the other goes up. When there are no close substitutes in the market, a company can take advantage of charging higher prices. However, if there is availability of close substitutes, customers will switch to substitutes in case of increase of the prices of the products of a company.

Understanding Porter’s Five Forces and how they apply to a particular industry can help a company change its business plan to make better use of its resources and generate more profits for its shareholders.

How Do Website Content Services Help in Business Promotion?

As soon as technology started taking its most advance form it became imperative for the businesses to have one foot on the online platform and one in the offline market. But to get a firm foot base is important, if the businesses want an outcome that is profitable and that base is not very easy to build. The virtual world as easy as it might seem isn’t that soft for the enterprises specially small and new. It is like a mirage until it’s held together with the reality that content services provide. Content services are like the rainbow which not only makes the sky after rain beautiful but also increases the number of the people who look at it. The different ventures with an aim of making a million need the rainbow of content services at every step of their journey. These services aren’t just fancy promoting or marketing of their ventures but it is also the shade during a rainstorm i.e. when the businesses find themselves in pit-hole of losses content services come to their rescue.

The main advantage that the content services provide is that the business becomes more cost effective. The content services usually provide quality service for lot less than some might charge offline. These services have a grip over the modern technology and use the same for the marketing and promotion of the brands that associate with them. The use of cost effective techniques for marketing and the hold of the virtual world better than the companies as their clients makes it easier for both the clients and the consumers to better know the brands. The kind of content that is to be used as the promotion technique plays an important part. Mainly the companies want the content that just not only describes their business in the best of interest but also that is relevant to the customers.

The content services provide the kind of content that boosts the interaction with the brands coming in for the promotion. They engage in SEO, which just increases the interaction with concerned company and thereby increasing its credib9lity. For individuals usually indulge in the highly credible companies. Content services aren’t just the marketing or promoting for the business in one single language rather it is about the multilingual promotion of the website. With over 22 regional languages that India has, the diversity of customers is the obvious result and for this diverse customers it is important to have marketing that is multilingual and content services provide this the best. The cost that the content services take might be seen as hefty by some but in real it is rather the most cost effective way of promoting business online. With the heavy competition, comes the opportunity to promote the business heavily and if content services got your back it becomes a piece of cake to attract consumers towards the business. It is the sought of investment that just gives you enough returns.

Code of Ethics

A code of ethics sets out an organization’s ethical guidelines and best practices to follow for honesty, integrity, and professionalism. It is a document that outlines the core values and ethics of business that professionals must follow. The codes of ethics are determined by the professional body, company management or the association. The main types of codes of ethics include a compliance-based code of ethics, a value-based code of ethics, and a code of ethics among professionals.

A code of ethics will start by setting out the values that underpin the code and will describe an organization’s obligation to its stakeholders. The code is publicly available and addressed to anyone with an interest in that organization’s activities and the way it operates. It will include details of how the organization plans to implement its values and vision, as well as guidance to staff on ethical standards and how to achieve them.

Types of Codes of Ethics

A code of ethics can take a variety of forms, but the general goal is to ensure that a business and its employees are following state and federal laws, conducting themselves with an idea that can be exemplary, and ensuring that the business being conducted is beneficial for all stakeholders. The following are three types of codes of ethics found in the business.

Compliance-Based Code of Ethics

For all businesses, laws regulate issues such as hiring and safety standards. Compliance-based codes of ethics not only set guidelines for conduct but also determine penalties for violations. In some industries, including banking, specific laws govern business conduct. These industries formulate compliance-based codes of ethics to enforce laws and regulations. Employees usually undergo formal training to learn the rules of conduct. Because noncompliance can create legal issues for the company as a whole, individual workers within a firm may face penalties for failing to follow guidelines.

To ensure that the aims and principles of the code of ethics are followed, some companies appoint a compliance officer. This individual is tasked with keeping up to date on changes in regulation codes and monitoring employee conduct to encourage conformity.

This type of code of ethics is based on clear-cut rules and well-defined consequences rather than individual monitoring of personal behaviour. Despite strict adherence to the law, some compliance-based codes of conduct do not thus promote a climate of moral responsibility within the company.

Value-Based Code of Ethics

A value-based code of ethics addresses a company’s core value system. It may outline standards of responsible conduct as they relate to the larger public good and the environment. Value-based ethical codes may require a greater degree of self-regulation than compliance-based codes.

Some codes of conduct contain language that addresses both compliance and values. For example, a grocery store chain might create a code of conduct that espouses the company’s commitment to health and safety regulations above financial gain. That grocery chain might also include a statement about refusing to contract with suppliers that feed hormones to livestock or raise animals in inhumane living conditions.

Code of Ethics Among Professionals

Financial advisers registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or a state regulator are bound by a code of ethics known as a fiduciary duty. This is a legal requirement and also a code of loyalty that requires them to act in the best interest of their clients.

Certified public accountants, who are not typically considered fiduciaries to their clients, still are expected to follow similar ethical standards, such as integrity, objectivity, truthfulness, and avoidance of conflicts of interest, according to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).

Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a form of international private business self-regulation which aims to contribute to societal goals of a philanthropic, activist, or charitable nature by engaging in or supporting volunteering or ethically-oriented practices.

According to the World Business Council of Sustainable Development, corporate social responsibility is the “continuing commitment by business to contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the community and society at large.” It is also called corporate sustainability, sustainable business, corporate conscience, corporate citizenship, conscious capitalism, or responsible business.

CSR is generally understood as being the way through which a company achieves a balance of economic, environmental and social imperatives (“Triple-Bottom-Line-Approach”), while at the same time addressing the expectations of shareholders and stakeholders. It is a management concept that helps companies be socially accountable to themselves, their stakeholders, and the public. Corporate social responsibility is now a familiar metric of how well a brand interacts with stakeholders and communities, both locally and globally.

On April 1, 2014, India became the first country to legally mandate corporate social responsibility. The new rules in Section 135 of India’s Companies Act make it mandatory for companies of a certain turnover and profitability to spend two percent of their average net profit for the past three years on CSR.

Some examples of CSR in action include:

Reducing carbon footprint
Engaging in charity work
Purchasing fair trade products
Investing in environmentally conscious businesses
Getting involved in volunteer work
Improving labour policies

Corporate social responsibility is divided into four categories: environmental, philanthropic, ethical, and economic responsibility.

Environmental Responsibility: Environmental responsibility refers to the belief that organizations should behave as environmentally friendly as possible. It’s one of the most common forms of corporate social responsibility. Some companies use the term “environmental stewardship” to refer to such initiatives.

Companies that seek to embrace environmental responsibility can do so in several ways: Reducing pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, the use of single-use plastics, water consumption, and general waste; Increasing reliance on renewable energy, sustainable resources, and recycled or partially recycled materials; Offsetting negative environmental impact; for example, by planting trees, funding research, and donating to related causes.

Ethical Responsibility: Ethical responsibility is concerned with ensuring an organization is operating fairly and ethically. Organizations that embrace ethical responsibility aim to achieve fair treatment of all stakeholders, including leadership, investors, employees, suppliers, and customers.

Firms can embrace ethical responsibility in different ways. For example, a business might set its own, higher minimum wage if the one mandated by the state or federal government doesn’t constitute a “livable wage.” Likewise, a business might require that products, ingredients, materials, or components be sourced according to free trade standards. In this regard, many firms have processes to ensure they’re not purchasing products resulting from slavery or child labour.

Philanthropic Responsibility: Philanthropic responsibility refers to a business’s aim to actively make the world and society a better place. In addition to acting as ethically and environmentally friendly as possible, organizations are driven by philanthropic responsibility often dedicate a portion of their earnings. While many firms donate to charities and nonprofits that align with their guiding missions, others donate to worthy causes that don’t directly relate to their business. Others go so far as to create their charitable trust or organization to give back.

Economic responsibility: Economic Responsibility is the practice of a firm backing all of its financial decisions in its commitment to do good in the areas listed above. The end goal is not to simply maximize profits, but positively impact the environment, people, and society.

Examples of CSR Companies

Lego: The toy company has invested millions of dollars into addressing climate change and reducing waste. Lego’s environmentally conscious efforts include reduced packaging, using sustainable materials and investing in alternative energy.
TOMS: TOMS donates one-third of its net profits to various charities that support physical and mental health as well as educational opportunities. As of April 1, 2020, the brand is directing all charitable donations to the TOMS COVID-19 Global Giving Fund.
Johnson & Johnson: The brand focuses on reducing its environmental impact by investing in various alternative energy sources. Globally, Johnson & Johnson also works to provide clean, safe water to communities.
Starbucks: The global coffee chain has implemented a socially responsible hiring process to diversify their workforce. Their efforts are focused on hiring more veterans, young people looking to start their careers, and refugees.
Google: Google has demonstrated its commitment to the environment by investing in renewable energy sources and sustainable offices. The company’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, is also known to take stands on certain social issues.
Pfizer: The pharmaceutical company’s focus on “corporate citizenship” is reflected in its healthcare initiatives. Some of the company’s initiatives include spreading awareness about noninfectious diseases and providing accessible health services to women and children in need.

A properly implemented CSR concept can bring along a variety of competitive advantages, such as enhanced access to capital and markets, increased sales and profits, operational cost savings, improved productivity and quality, efficient human resource base, improved brand image and reputation, enhanced customer loyalty, better decision making and risk management processes.

While the goal of CSR is to push businesses to act responsibly and ethically toward the environment and community, there are some disadvantages. Engaging in CSR is not always cheap. It can rely on expensive structures and strategies to plan, execute and measure. A poorly planned CSR strategy that doesn’t deliver what it says it can quickly become a failure and business liability. The impact on a business’s reputation can be detrimental, and the community will be quick to scrutinise its actions.

H&M’s Greenwashing campaign is an example of a misleading or disingenuous CSR – Swedish fast-fashion chain H&M has been called out recently for supplying insufficient information about the sustainability of their “sustainable style” collection. This is known as greenwashing (the act of giving a false impression that a company and its products are more environmentally friendly than they truly are). The internationally renowned fashion company has marked some of its products as ethical and environmentally friendly, yet they still produce materials at a non-environmentally friendly rate. The Norwegian Consumer Authority called out the chain for failing to produce sufficient information on how their products have “environmental benefits”. As a result, H&M have received criticism in the media.

The movement toward CSR has had an impact in several domains. For example, many companies have taken steps to improve the environmental sustainability of their operations, through measures such as installing renewable energy sources or purchasing carbon offsets. In managing supply chains, efforts have also been taken to eliminate reliance on unethical labour practices, such as child labour and slavery.

As the use of corporate responsibility expands, it is becoming increasingly important to have a socially conscious image. Consumers, employees and stakeholders prioritize CSR when choosing a brand or company, and they are holding corporations accountable for effecting social change with their business beliefs, practices and profits. In today’s socially conscious environment, employees and customers place a premium on working for and spending their money with businesses that prioritize CSR.

How To Set Up Your Own Business

The start-up of a business seems to be a challenging undertaking. Even so, it can reap great rewards for both the company and the economy at large. The process of setting up a business in India can be a bit confusing if you elect to do so. There are a few considerations you should keep in mind. Keeping this in mind, here are some basic steps necessary for registering a business in India:

Spend no more than you need to on your start-up

It is possible to work from home on a laptop computer. When working from home, keep in mind that your household insurance may no longer be valid. You’ll need to check with your current broker as you may need to upgrade your insurance. Make sure that your business has its own bank account. You shouldn’t combine your personal and business accounts. It’s confusing, extra work, and of no use when you’re trying to take care of your business or have a fulfilling life in general. A business account doesn’t need to be expensive; it can just be a regular current account with your current bank or with another provider.

Availability of Company Names

A proposed name must be available before company registration can occur. The MCA 21 website allows applicants to check the availability of their desired company names online. The selected company name appears on the website once it has been approved.

Set Up a Plan

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

To stay afloat even if you are just starting out as a freelancer, you need to know your monthly costs and how much profit (or other income) you need to generate. Calculate what your monthly income needs to be. Identify the growth in revenue you can realistically expect over the next 12 months, and be clear on how you will acquire new clients. Although it’s hard to guess, thinking about it will provide you with earnings goals and points to consider as you run your business. You can easily download a free business plan template from either the Prince’s Trust website or the Start Up Loan websites.

Networking

In the age of digitization and the fact that people are always online searching for goods and services they need, businesses without a strong digital presence are missing a great opportunity. Therefore, you will need to be committed to building an online presence for your business because it is imperative in this digital age. Digital marketing strategies will help you get noticed by a lot of people, and a good SEO company can guide you down the right path since SEO is a way to make a strong online presence. Your chances of getting a job increase if you are ‘out there’ touting for work. Meeting people online is possible without having to leave the office.

A Lot Of Sales, A Lot Of Sales

Make sure you don’t ignore the marketing and sales sides of your business. Become an expert at it. Study it and practice it. Initially, it is likely to be nerve-racking, but persevere! Question everything you do in your business, asking yourself, ‘How is this going to make me money?’ If it won’t make you any money, then don’t waste your time doing it.

LESSONS TO SURVIVE FIRST YEAR IN BUSINESS

You have an extraordinary thought and the desire — what’s going on? As you go into business, there are a few things each business visionary has to know to endure that basic first year effectively. In my over 30 years as a tech chief, business person and C-level corporate leader openly and privately owned businesses, here are three of the greatest exercises I’ve learned.

1. DISREGARD PERFECTION AND FOCUS ON FINDING MORE CUSTOMERS

The main explanation business people fizzle is that they don’t have clients who need to purchase their item or administration. In light of that, your first year ought to be tied in with discovering networks of individuals who need to purchase what you’re selling — or even portion of what you’re selling.

As you do, don’t expect that you need to make the ideal item or administration before you find your client base. That will just thwart your energy. Exile negative speculation as per, “On the off chance that I simply get this piece right… ” and rather remain laser-zeroed in on the greater inquiry: “Am I ready to discover or produce sufficient interest to continue to push ahead with my thought?”

One of the most mind-blowing approaches to distinguish your base can be through paid channels like Google that expand your openness to shoppers. Consider how organizations would open in shopping centres since that is the place where the people strolling through was, yet today, the entirety of that traffic is on the web. When you find your clients, you are in a solid beginning position and you can divert to tweaking from that point.

2. CONTROL YOUR CASH

The other fundamental explanation that organizations flop from the get-go is that they run out of cash, so dealing with your month-to-month income and costs is urgent during this window. Obviously, the two-go connected at the hip: You need to have the option to endure sufficiently long to find clients.

To set yourself up for practicality, embrace a profoundly traditionalist methodology. Start by carrying out a decent income the board framework to follow the cash going in and out and have sure you comprehend the effect between income and benefit. For instance, regardless of whether you offer loads of your item to clients, that doesn’t really mean you can cover your bills. In the event that you sell, say, $50,000 worth of items on layaway with 60-day terms, yet you requested $35,000 worth of provisions to cause those items and you to need to pay your providers inside 30 days — on top of lease and finance — the math rapidly becomes muddled, and you will be unable to keep the lights on.

Part of being moderate is likewise settling on determined choices — which means, don’t over enlist ability until you decide how you will find your client base, bring in cash and be alluring to financial backers. Watching out for the entirety of this is vital for opening up development openings.

3. STAY CALM AND TAKE NEXT RIGHT STEP

During the primary year of establishing another organization, there is in every case some motivation to freeze or have an existential emergency. Possibly your new item turns out not to have the take rate you expected, or somebody who you feel is basic to the group stops, or you miss your income numbers in light of a startling cost, or unexpected rivalry enters the market — the rundown can feel perpetual.

These situations are not kidding, yet have confidence that they are common and can be explored effortlessly. The arrangement is frequently to remain quiet (I for one find that reflection assists me with trying not to become twisted up and stay sensitive to what exactly going on around me), pay attention to your impulses and do the following right thing. In the event that you do that, the way ahead will begin to uncover itself.

By conveying these strategies, business people can explore a portion of the more normal difficulties that will definitely emerge during the first — and seemingly the hardest — year while keeping fixed on what is important most for progress.

Entrepreneurship

We often hear that so and so is an entrepreneur who has started his or her own business. It is also the case that when we hear the term entrepreneur, we tend to associate it with a person who has or is starting their own ventures or in other words, striking it on their own. This is indeed the case as the formal definition of Entrepreneurship is that it is the process of starting a business or an organization for profit or for social needs. We have used the phrase for profit or for social needs to delineate and separate the commercial entrepreneurship from social and charitable entrepreneurship. After defining entrepreneurship, it is now time to define who an entrepreneur is and what he or she does.

An entrepreneur is someone who develops a business model, acquires the necessary physical and human capital to start a new venture, and operationalizes it and is responsible for its success or failure. Note the emphasis of the phrase responsible for success or failure as the entrepreneur is distinct from the professional manager in the sense that the former either invests his or her own resources or raises capital from external sources and thus takes the blame for the failure as well as reaps the rewards in case of success whereas the latter or the professional manager does the job and the work assigned to him or her for a monetary consideration. In other words, the entrepreneur is the risk taker and an innovator in addition to being a creator of new enterprises whereas the professional manager is simply the executor.

Attributes of Entrepreneurs

Moving to the skills and capabilities that an entrepreneur needs to have, first and foremost, he or she has to be an innovator who has a game changing idea or a potentially new concept that can succeed in the crowded marketplace. Note that investors usually tend to invest in ideas and concepts which they feel would generate adequate returns for their capital and investments and hence, the entrepreneur needs to have a truly innovative idea for a new venture.

Leadership Qualities
Apart from this, the entrepreneur needs to have excellent organizational and people management skills as he or she has to build the organization or the venture from scratch and has to bond with his or her employees as well as vibe well with the other stakeholders to ensure success of the venture.

Further, the entrepreneur needs to be a leader who can inspire his or her employees as well as be a visionary and a person with a sense of mission as it is important that the entrepreneur motivates and drives the venture. This means that leadership, values, team building skills, and managerial abilities are the key skills and attributes that an entrepreneur needs to have.

Creative Destruction and Entrepreneurship

We often hear the term creative destruction being spoken about when talking about how some companies fade away whereas others succeed as well as maintain their leadership position in the marketplace. Creative destruction refers to the replacement of inferior products and companies by more efficient, innovative, and creative ones wherein the capitalist market based ecosystem ensures that only the best and brightest survive whereas others are blown away by the gales of creative destruction. In other words, entrepreneurs with game changing ideas and the skills and attributes that are needed to succeed ensure that their products, brands, and ventures take market share away from existing companies that are either not creating values or are simply inefficient and stuck in a time warp wherein they are unable to see the writing on the wall. Therefore, this process of destroying the old and the inefficient through newer and creative ideas is referred to as creative destruction which is often what the entrepreneur does when he or she launches a new venture.

Some Famous Entrepreneurs

Given this basic introduction to entrepreneurship, we can now turn to some famous examples of entrepreneurs who have succeeded despite heavy odds because they had game changing ideas and more importantly, they also had the necessary traits and skills that would make them legendary. For instance, both the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, and the late Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, were college dropouts though their eventual success meant that they had not only truly innovative ideas, but they were also ready to strike it out for the longer term and hang on when the going got tough. Even the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, as well as Google’s Larry Paige and Sergey Brian can be considered as truly revolutionary entrepreneurs. What all these legends have in common is that they had the vision and the sense of mission that they were going to change the world and with hard work, perseverance, and a nurturing ecosystem, they were able to self actualizes themselves.

How COVID-19 has changed the world economy

The COVID-19 pandemic has reached almost every country in the world.

Enormous changes in financial exchanges, where partakes in organizations are purchased and sold, can influence the worth of benefits or individual investment accounts.

The major Asian and US stock markets have recovered following the announcement of the first vaccine in November, but the FTSE is still in negative territory.

If the economy is developing, that by and large means more abundance and all the more new positions. It’s deliberate by taking a gander at the rate change in GDP, or the worth of labor and products created, normally more than 90 days or a year. The IMF appraises that the worldwide economy contracted by 4.4% in 2020. The association portrayed the decay as the most exceedingly terrible since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The movement business has been gravely harmed, with aircrafts cutting flights and clients dropping work excursions and occasions. New variations of the infection – found distinctly lately – have constrained numerous nations to present more tight travel limitations. Information from the flight following assistance Flight Radar 24 shows that the quantity of flights worldwide endured a gigantic shot in 2020 and it is as yet far from recuperation.

Retail footfall has seen unprecedented falls as shoppers stayed at home. New variants and surges in cases have made problems worse.

Best Lifestyle Blogs to Follow in 2021

Lifestyle Blog niche is one of the most competitive blogging niches around. Lifestyle bloggers are competing against digital lifestyle magazines, in a niche that is already quite saturated. So lifestyle blogs that gain a large readership are of a high standard in both design and content.

Online mags often have huge budgets, a print edition as well as digital, and content that is varied and expertly written, with professional photos. But lifestyle blogs have an edge in that they can supply new content every day if they so wish. Lifestyle blogs are free to access whereas digital magazine editions can only be accessed through paid subscriptions.

For a lifestyle blog to thrive, the authors need to provide excellent, accurate content and photos that create interest and capture the readers’ imaginations. Lifestyle bloggers have raised their standards to compete with the best of both online mags and other lifestyle blogs.

But what exactly constitutes a lifestyle blog?

Let’s find out!

Defining Lifestyle Blogs

A lifestyle blog is defined as digital content representing the author’s everyday life and interests. The word “lifestyle” according to the dictionary means “habits, attitudes, moral standards, which together constitute the way of life of a given person or group”. (source: dictionary.com)

As a result, lifestyle blogs can fall into many micro-niches. This allows bloggers to provide content for a specific target audience. Lifestyle bloggers often promote products, brands, and services to monetize their blogs. So it’s almost essential that the person behind the blog is well-versed in whatever the specific topics are.

Here’s a shortlist of typical Lifestyle Blogging niches:

Luxury Lifestyle Blogs
Foodie Lifestyle Blogs
Home & Garden Lifestyle Blogs
Fashion Blogs & Beauty Lifestyle Blogs
Travel Blogs & Photography Lifestyle Blogs
Health & Fitness Lifestyle Blogs
Men’s Lifestyle Blogs
Natural Living Lifestyle Blogs
Outdoor Lifestyle Blogs
And Lifestyle Blogs for people with children (also called mom blogs or parenting blogs.)

Sometimes even these categories get split into various combinations, depending on the blogger. So you could end up with a Fashion and Travel Blog, A Natural Living Mom Blog, or even a Foodie and Photography Lifestyle blog.

Lifestyle blog vs. personal blog

Lifestyle blogs are not personal blogs because they focus more on users (readers). The content is created here for the reader and his expectations. What’s more, lifestyle blogs focus on the author’s benefits, not just on telling stories.

In personal blogs, the most important are the author’s emotions and thoughts, who expresses his opinions, writes about his experiences, feelings, reflections. In the personal blog, the author himself is the most important, not the reader.

I can’t write about lifestyle blogs without mentioning a few from each niche. I’ve tried to give you a selection of the most captivating from each subgenre (or micro-niche). These Lifestyle blogs check all the boxes. They are fun, relevant, trendy, polished, and loaded with content that appeals to a specific target audience.

A Quick Note To Would-Be Lifestyle Bloggers

Before I launch into “Our Best Of” list, a word of caution to would-be lifestyle bloggers; even if you have many areas of interest yourself, try to whittle your content down to cover only one or two main topics. This helps when you are trying to grow a steady, loyal readership.

Male readers don’t want to read about fishing, fashion, and raising a brood of ankle snappers! A young professional will not be interested in “Ten Tips To Wean Your Child off Breast Milk”, and your Luxury Lifestyle blog will not impress our Tree Hugging friends who will recoil in horror at the decadence of luxury lifestyles! Readers who enjoy luxury will also not be impressed with Frugal Living!

On the other hand, the lifestyle blogging niche allows the most freedom for bloggers who genuinely do have a vast array of topics that pair well together. If you can create the content and maintain the variety, then you will create space for a wider readership.

Top blogs in lifestyle category

This collection of blogs showcases the variety and range of lifestyle blogs that get it right!

1. Goop.com

Goop was one of the first lifestyle blogs to hit the circuit, way back in 2008. The brainchild of actress and mother, Gwyneth Paltrow, Goop covers everything for the modern woman. She focuses on wellness and how to create a balance between parenting and work. Something all working moms know about! She has a strong team behind her and Goop is a mini-empire in its own right.

Goop covers:

Beauty
Food & Home
Style
Travel
Wellness

Target Audience: Women of all ages and enlightened men.

2. The Pioneer Woman (thepioneerwoman.com)

This is a lifestyle blog that stands out for me. Unlike so many lifestyle blogs, Ree Drummond blogs about a lifestyle that all Americans know and love. Pure salt of the earth, rustic ranch life. The blog packs a punch! Ree has combined recipes, style, beauty, home & life, food & cooking, news, and entertainment. And great giveaways. She started as a lone ranger but now has a team of editors assisting her in keeping the blog relevant, trendy, and homegrown.

Target Audience: People keen on ranch-style living.

*3. Brightbazaarblog.com

Bright Bazaar blog was founded in 2009 by Will Taylor. This is the place where Will blogs about his love for colorful design, travel, and fashion. This blog is recommended by esteemed publishing houses Elle Decor, Martha Stewart Living, and many others.

If you need more home inspiration, look at other famous bloggers in the article: The Best Interior Design Blogs.

Target Audience: People who love design.

4. Cup of Jo (cupofjo.com)

Joanna Goddard is a perfect example of what can be achieved through blogging. Joanna launched Cup of Jo in 2007, as a hobby. At that time her career was quite a high-powered one. She has loads of editorial experience and her resume brags the likes of Cosmo, Bene, Glamour, and New York.

Today Cup of Jo has a team of writers and is Joanna’s full-time gig. She lives in Brooklynn with her husband and two kids. The blog covers relationships, design, food, style, travel, culture, and motherhood. This is a great blog for women.

Target Audience: Women and mothers of all ages

. Say Yes (sayyes.com)

Hope for the best, but expect less

I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine. -Bruce Lee

A friend’s status update on a social media site: ‘Who hurt you? My own expectations.’

Yes, we all have expectations in our lives: what we want out of life and who we want to become. I believe one of the keys to happiness lies within the management of your expectations of people and circumstances. If you do not have expectations, you can never be disappointed. Often we tend to believe that the way we treat others will be the way we are treated in return. But, unfortunately, this does not always happen.

The biggest disappointments in our lives are often the result of misplaced expectations. This is especially true when it comes to our relationships and interactions with others. You need to make sure you enter into relationship with someone who has as big of a heart as you do. If you do not, you may feel as if you are being taken advantage of. You need to find people who appreciate what you do for them and who will reciprocate those actions.

There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality or lower your expectations. Having realistic expectations will allow you to accept the flaws each person has. We need to learn how to take responsibility for our own lives and our own decisions before we can expect others to do the same.

One of the biggest challenges we face in life is learning to accept people for who they truly are. Once you realize that your expectations cannot change people, the better off you will be. Give without expectation, accept without reservation, and love with hesitation. Unrealistic expectations most often do lead to disappointment. Too many people are obsessed with finding the perfect career or the perfect spouse, and as a result become increasingly frustrated when this does not happen in reality.

Expectation is the root of all heartache. Try to remain confident while maintaining positive aspirations; just remember not to make the aspirations so high that they are impractical or unreachable.

Acceptance is an amazing trait that needs to be actively worked toward. When things do not work out the way we had planned, it is much more beneficial to realize that is how life works rather than becoming frustrated at the situation. Have hope rather than expectations and you will tend not to be as disappointed.

People rarely behave exactly the way you want them to. Hope for the best, but expect less. And remember, the magnitude of your happiness will be directly proportional to your thoughts and how you choose to think about things. Even if a situation or relationship doesn’t work out at all, it’s still worth it, if it made you feel something new, taught you something afresh.

Feeling alone

LONELINESS is packed with feelings and emotions. It can consume you at any time – day or night – and create havoc with your emotions. Feeling lonely can cause you to lose perspective and, sometimes, to lose all hope. Even before COVID, we lived in an isolated culture where people were starved for connection. And now with the fear of COVID, loneliness is even more intensified.

There are days when my life is filled with the sound of voices on the phone, or pictures of friends on Zoom and Facetime, and yet, I feel alone. There have been times in my life when I would walk in a church filled with people, or show up at a party where I knew everyone, and yet, I felt alone. At some point, we’ve all experienced feelings of being alone and the shadow of loneliness that follows close behind.

Being alone isn’t a bad thing. It’s a good, necessary, healthy thing. It’s a time to reflect, to appreciate, to think, to create, to process your life. Reflection and synthesis of ideas is crucial to learning and growing, and for many people this can only be done when they are alone. Kierkegaard nails this with one of my favorite quotes: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” Damn, Kierkegaard, I bet you spent a ton of time alone.

So why are we so damned afraid of being alone?

Because we’re afraid others will think we’re lonely. There’s something wrong with lonely people, or else why wouldn’t they have people around them? There must be something broken about them! If you learn someone is lonely, you best stay away from them. Leave them to their cats. Loneliness results in more loneliness; it’s a beast that feeds itself. (Please know that I don’t believe any of this — or at least I don’t want to, but these are thoughts that I hear in my head, because Society)

I’m not lonely! I have 2200 facebook friends. Look at all the things I share. Look at all those likes! I have all the likes! And retweets. Don’t even get me started on retweets. I have to call them RTs because I get so many I don’t even have time for all those other letters. Look at me on Instagram! Follow me! #TeamFollowBack Connect with me! Please, please, connect with me. How am I so damned lonely?! Nobody else feels this lonely. Look at all the friends they have on Facebook. Look at all those likes they’re getting…

We are living in a time when it’s easy to feel uncomfortable being alone, because there are so many ways you can “be” with other people. So we’re never truly alone. And that makes it ever more uncomfortable when we feel lonely.

I saw someone post a photo on Facebook last Friday night of themselves with a glass of wine and the caption “Relaxing into a much-needed quiet Friday night date with myself. #DontHate”

The irony hurt. If you really want to be alone, WHY ARE YOU TELLING THE WHOLE WORLD, my brain yelled.

Then I realized I knew the answer: this person is uncomfortable being alone on a Friday night, and this is how they are trying to mitigate that discomfort.

They are seeing all of their friends posting photos of their fun nights out with dozens of people and having so much fun and internalizing all of this as something being wrong with them. Maybe they chose to be alone tonight, or maybe they got ditched by a friend, or maybe they wanted to go out and don’t really have any friends who wanted to go out with them, but, whatever the case, they were probably terrified they would slip from enjoying a night alone into being lonely on a Friday night. The first is good. The second is bad. And maybe a “like” or a reassuring comment would stave that off.

spend a lot of time on the road traveling alone. And during the day, when I’m performing, or visiting a campus, or flying, eating, writing — keeping my mind busy — I’m on the road traveling alone; I’m not lonely on the road. And I enjoy it. I enjoy the aloneness. I thrive in it. But at night, when I get back to my hotel room and plop down on the bed, I regularly toe the line between being alone and being lonely.

I am usually good at landing on the enjoying a night alone side of the line, but sometimes, usually after a particularly long stretch on the road, of if a show doesn’t go as well as I want it to, I’ll find myself stumbling onto the lonely side. It probably doesn’t help that I have this disgusting and self-body-destroying habit of having a huge pizza delivered to my hotel room and eating it by myself in my underwear. And, as I am typing that, I am reminded of this

Coca Cola controversy

As Cristiano Ronaldo snubbed Coca-Cola at the press conference ahead of Portugal’s Euro 2020 opener, the move had a spiralling effect all across the football fraternity. The move also coincided with the share prices of Coca-Cola dropping down, wiping off about USD 4 billion from their brand value. However, industry experts don’t feel the two incidents were related.

Highlights

Cristiano Ronaldo’s Coca-Cola snub at a Euro 2020 news conference has been a huge topic of discussion
The move also coincided with the brand value of Coke sinking by USD 4 billion
A market expert, however, has brushed aside any connection between the two

Ronaldo wasn’t pleased seeing Coca-Cola bottles placed on the table as he arrived to attend the press conference with Portugal manager Fernando Santos on the eve of the Hungary match. He put the Coke bottles aside and picked up a water bottle saying ‘Agua’, asking people to drink water over soft drinks.

While the move was to promote a healthier lifestyle, the fact that Coca-Cola is an official sponsor of Euro 2020, is bound to leave both the beverage brand and UEFA a little disappointed.

“Coke and UEFA will both be fuming,” sports marketing expert Tim Crow, who worked as an advisor to the beverage-maker for 20 years, was quoted as saying by The Athletic. “The fact is there’s an agreement between them, which all the FAs and players sign up to, and one of the contractual agreements is going to press conferences where you’re surrounded by the sponsors’ branding.”

It’s certainly not ideal that one of the most famous and most followed athletes on the planet makes a gesture like that. The sports marketing community will have raised more than an eyebrow in Ronaldo doing that,” he added.

A day after the incident, reports of Ronaldo’s move hurting Coca-Cola’s stock prices and brand value surfaced but Crow has dismissed any co-relation between the two incidents. Branding it as ‘complete nonsense’, Crow said that the investors in the United States of America are not impacted by what happens in a European football match’s press conference.

American investors are not driven by what happens in a press conference ahead of a European football match. It doesn’t work like that. Tonnes of stocks went down for several reasons but the two things are not related. There are a billion servings of Coke every day. I think they’ll be OK,” he said.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)

What is Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)?

A Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is a form of investment to get controlling ownership in a business in one country by a business or entity based in another country. Generally, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) takes place when an investor is establishing business operations or is acquiring assets in a foreign company. The investment can be of two types:
1) Organically- by expanding the operations of the existing business in another country.
2) Inorganically- by buying the company in another or target country.
It refers to building a new facility and the investing business or entity should have control over 10 percent or more of the voting rights of the business or firm in which it has invested. However, this definition is flexible, as there are instances where the control can be less than 10 percent of the business or firm’s voting shares.
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is the summation of the following:
1) Sum of equity capital
2) long-term capital
3) and short-term capital as reflected in the Balance of Payments (BOP).

History of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)

Three quarters of the new Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) was acquired by the United States during the period of 1945 to 1960. Since then Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has grown a great importance as a global phenomenon. It no longer remained the exclusive preserve of OECD countries.
After 1945, global FDI flows recovered from depression and war, but there was a transformation in the geographical pattern of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). In 1945-80 most of the investment flow took place within and between the developed countries.
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has grown its importance in the global economy and it accounts a great share in the global GDP. In the early 1900s two third of the world FDI was flowing into present developed countries (which were developing countries at that time). But now FDI is flowing more in the developing countries.
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to developing countries in the early twentieth century was mainly for the exploitation of the natural resources present in the host country. But now government is opening up more areas for the private sector for the development of their country.
Economic liberalization started in India after the 1991 economic crisis and since then Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has gradually increased, which subsequently generated more than one crore (10 million) jobs. Since then many changes are made in FDI policies to attract more foreign investors to invest in India. The new FDI policy does not restrict markets.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) by direction

Inward FDI
Inward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is encouraged by different economic factors. These include loans, tax breaks, subsidies and the removal of restrictions and limitations. These factors determine the growth of FDI in the country.
Outward FDI
The outward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is backed by the government for all types of associated risks. This form of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) involves tax incentives, subsidies and risk coverage provided to the domestic industries.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) by target

Greenfield Investment
In Greenfield investments a company operates in other countries by investing n sites, plants, offices, etc. and acquires control over its activities.
Horizontal FDI
It means when a business or fir duplicates its home country based activities at the same value in a host country through Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).
Vertical FDI
It takes place when a business or firm through Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) moves upstream or downstream in different value chains.

Benefits of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)

Advantages to the investor:
1) Market diversification

The diversification strategies are developed in order to reduce the risks perceived by investors. The investors can diversify their business by investing in various stocks of foreign companies, mergers and acquisitions, investing in already established companies or firms, etc. This helps them to diversify their business and their market in various foreign companies.

2) Tax incentives

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) provided by the foreign company helps the company which it has invested in to provide them with expertise, technology and products. Therefore, the foreign investor gets tax incentives that are useful for their select area of business.

3) Low labour costs

The foreign investor gets skilled labour in developing countries like India at very cheap rates which results in increasing their profits by cutting down their costs.

Advantages to the host country:
1) FDI leads to economic development

It results in opening of factories and businesses in the host country for which labor and other sources are utilized. It also increases employment rate in the host country because of the large scale employment that takes place in a newly established business or firm.

2) FDI increases employment opportunities

The service and manufacturing sectors of the host country receive a boost which results in a large scale creation of jobs. People are employed for these jobs created and now they have a source of income.

3) FDI helps in development of human resources

The employees are known as human resources. They are provided with adequate training and skills required for the respective jobs, which help to boost their knowledge. As more and more people are trained, they can train others also which will be beneficial for the economy.

4) FDI helps in development of backward areas

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) enables the transformation of backward areas of the host country into industrial centers. The people employed in the industrial sectors get job which increases their standard of living.

5) FDI leads to creation of a competitive market

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) creates a competitive environment in the host country for the already existing domestic firms. A healthy competition pushes these domestic industries or firms to continuously enhance their products and services.

Investment Risks

1. Economic Risk

This type of risk refers to the country’s ability to pay back its debts. The economies which are stronger and have stable finances provide more reliability for investments than the economy which is weaker and has unstable finances.

2. Political Risk

This type of risk refers to the political decisions made in a country that might lead to unanticipated loss for the investors. Political risk is associated with the willingness of a country to pay off its debts.

3. Sovereign Risk

This is the risk that a foreign central bank will change its foreign exchange regulations which could result in nullifying or reducing the value of its foreign exchange contracts.

Market Size

According to the Department of Promotion of Industry and International Trade (DPIIT), Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) equity flow in India stood at US$ 521.47 billion between April 2020 and December 2020, which indicates that the government’s efforts to improve the ease of doing business in India and relaxing FDI norms lead to very good results.
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) equity flow in India stood at US$ 521.47 billion in 2020-21 (between April 2020 and December 2020). The data for 2020-21 indicates that the top four sectors which attracted the highest FDI inflows were:
• computer hardware and software sector – US$ 24.39 billion
• construction (infrastructure activities) – US$ 7.15 billion
• Service sector – US$ 3.86 billion
• Trading sector – US$ 2.14 billion
Highest Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) equity inflows from other countries in India in 2020-21 (between April 2020 and December 2020):
• Singapore – US$ 15.72 billion
• United States (US) – 12.83 billion
• United Arab Emirates (UAE) – US$ 3.92 billion
• Mauritius – US$ 3.48 billion
• Cayman Islands – US$ 2.53 billion
• Netherlands – US$ 2.44 billion
• United Kingdom (UK) – US$ 1.83 billion
States that received highest Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) equity inflows in 2020-21 (between April 2020 and December 2020):
• Gujarat – US$ 21.24 billion
• Maharashtra – US$ 13.64 billion
• Karnataka – US$ 6.37 billion
• Delhi – US$ 4.22 billion

Flow of FDI in India over the years (2010-2019)

From the graph it is visible that the FDI inflows from 2010-2019 kept varying year after year.

• India’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for 2019 was $50.61 billion, a 20.17% increase from 2018.
• India’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for 2018 was $42.12 billion, a 5.38% increase from 2017.
• India’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for 2017 was $39.97 billion, a 10.01% decline from 2016.
• India’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for 2016 was $44.46 billion, a 1.02% increase from 2015.

Conclusion

FDI flow into an economy benefits the economy in terms of investment capital, technology transfer, management skills, and job creation. It also improves the standard of living of the people and encourages domestic firms to improve themselves in product specialization and have the ability to withstand competition from other firms.
We have seen in the report that in many sectors flow of FDI has increased over the period of time, but there are still some sectors in which 100% FDI is not allowed. We saw the performance of various sectors over the years. In recent years, FDI inflows have increased in the Education, Non-Conventional Energy, Hospital and Diagnostics sectors. Like them many other sectors are also performing very well. However, Hotel and Tourism, Construction, Drugs and Pharmaceuticals are among the sectors receiving inconsistent FDIs annually.
We also saw a consistent increase in annual FDI inflows over the decades. This was only possible because of the measures taken by the government on the fronts of FDI policy reforms, investment facilitation and ease of doing business have resulted in increased FDI inflows into the country over the years due to which India is getting very high FDI inflows as compared to previous years and we hope the same to continue for a long period of time.
FDI is not only an alternative to domestic investment, but can also improve the host country’s balance of payments. It is one of the major stimuli to economic development of the developing countries, like India.

Cryptocurrency

What is this crytocurrency that everybody is talking about? In simple words, it is digital currency in encrypted form. Money transaction is processed and validated through data mining. As of now, using crypto currency is a very complex process. Still, it is becoming popular in recent times worldwide.

Here, money transaction is carried out between two parties only.Hence there is no third party involvement. After validation and processing through data mining,it is kept in public ledgers but the transactions are kept confidential.Once a transaction is validated, miners get this crypto currency as reward.

Litecoin, Bitcoin, Ethereum ,Pipple are some examples of cryptocurrency. Out of this, Bit coin is the most popular crypto currency.

Cryptocurrency works on Block Chain Technology, which is a decentralised technology spread across many computers that manages and records transactions.

There are more than 4000 cryptos worldwide as of now. It’s users are called miners. This virtual currency is exchanged over the internet and uses cryptography as a means of security. There is no central authority to manage this system and it is immune to government interference.It is highly confidential and totally decentralised person to person payment method. All the transactions and accounts can be traced but the owner accounts are usually not easily traceable.

International money transfer can also be done through crypto. As it is becoming popular nowadays, it’s value is getting increased. Some people even use it for investment purposes. A large number of individuals and businesses have started using this. Many online websites also accept virtual currencies as payment.

Bitcoin is a premier crytocurrency created by Satoshi Nakatomo on 31 st October, 2008. It is pseudonomous and is controlled by users called bitcoin miners. These miners use different computer program and resources to solve highly complicated mathematics problems and get a number of bitcoins in exchange. They do this by verifying transactions and adding them to a public ledger called Blockchain. It holds the transaction history of all bitcoins in circulation. These miners keep the network secure and ensure that all systems are synchronized together. Those miners who help to accurately track the transactions and maintain network are rewarded with cryptos.

Ripple or XRP is an open source digital payment platform. Here money can be transferred in actual currency or cryptocurrency. XRP is used as a bridge currency to settle cross border payment in a faster and cheaper manner.

The cryptocurrency has neither been made legal nor banned. In India, they are not in use legally. Experts are advising on shutting down its trading. Likewise, other major countries are thinking of banning cryptocurrencies. So we have to wait and watch if the crypto will become the future of transactions or goes away for good.

Formulating the Designer Centric Funnel

The Funnel concept and flipping the funnel

In this modern aeon of society, any salesperson would have a limitless budget to market his/her business to find new customers for their products. The salesperson can buy offline and online advertising for their growth or run promotions and campaigns to bring traffic towards their products. The most basic thing is to understand that the possibilities for getting new customers to range from cold calling names to buying lists of those customers who can drive new businesses to their website.

Increasing sales isn’t an easy job. You need a great marketing plan to approach the customers and get them to buy your products. Before finding new customers, you must understand your customer’s needs and concerns, what is currently trending, what are facilities you offer and what your competitors are offering. Building trust and understanding is the basis of every relationship so you as a seller need to understand your customer and earn their trust. To understand your customer and their needs, you have to break down the whole process in a series of continuous steps which the customer will have to go through. This series of processes create a funnel.

A Funnel is a journey travelled by a customer from being a usual viewer to a devoted customer of the product. This funnel concept includes visiting the website, checking the product and its features, trying the free trial and then finally purchasing the product. It is also concerned with product development and is based on the customer’s buying perspective. To design the best funnel for your customer you must get rid of the issues and the loopholes that are disturbing your customer. The funnel should include the areas of interests of the customer. This concept will make the customers compelled to try your products and you can become successful.

If your company has a slogan that is eye-catching and ensures the people that your company is concerned for them, the customers will check out your products. It also highlights your company’s first impression and abilities. For broken funnel steps, you must try to understand the customer’s perspective again and redesign or try to use what encourages them. Even if all of this does not work, you should consider Jaffe’s phrase “flipping the funnel”.

Flipping the funnel means spending fewer resources on gaining new customers and spending more on acknowledging and retaining the current customers. If you make sure that the current customers are satisfied then they will reach out to their known ones and share their product experience which will bring you more sales. You have to use the information of your existing customer to develop a target audience and drive their way to your products.

To check whether flipping the funnel is beneficial or not, you can compare how much you are receiving from your customers to how much you are investing in them. The hardest part of flipping the funnel is changing the company’s organization and culture. Your company must commit to staffing customer service call centres even on the weekends, answering emails promptly and maintaining a system for monitoring the social handles daily to keep it updated. Your company has to recognize and reward outstanding customers. Rewarding and recognition does not always mean giving away free products, at times it just means a simple welcoming gesture, thanking them and saying comforting things.

You can also try various schemes like special offers or one day free trial for the best customers. Such schemes attract people and can make your product popular. Some products may be appealing to a particular group of audience but they may not be liked by another so to eliminate this issue you can conduct surveys. A survey is a list of questions that are aimed at extracting data from your customers. It includes questions regarding your products and customer’s reviews. The surveys will tell you about your weaknesses, strengths, opportunities, threats and they give you an overall look of how your customer thinks about your product.

Proper and convincing management is a must to fulfil the final step, i.e., to catch and cover up all of these things. It seems hard to start a business by yourself but once you get started with it, you will be used to it and can even learn from your mistakes.

Credits:

https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/launch-scale-2017/

https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/first-look-flip-funnel-joseph

Email- sneharam543@gmail.com

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How to create the initial team for your startup

Establishing a startup is not a one day task. It requires a lot of hard work, patience and most importantly, it requires an excellent team to work with you to achieve your goals. And building a winning team that rides your startup to victory is not an easy task. The people you choose have the ability to make or break your business. You need to take a few essential steps at your initial stage to begin your work.

Identify Positions

If you are not doing a sole proprietorship, you and your co-founder need to know the positives and negatives of each other. You can’t be perfect in every skill, so you both must do a self-evaluation and know what are your strengths and weaknesses. When you know about it then you both can categorize your work according to your skills.

When things between you and your co-founder are settled, you should start identifying positions to complete your team. Marketing and sales, accounting and finance, research and development are just a handful of examples of positions that you may need in your team.

Selecting your team members

The process of hiring of team members should be done very accurately for the firm.
Try to find T- shaped people for the organization. These people are experienced in one specific area but can handle other tasks too. They are quick learners and ready to take new challenges. They will benefit you more as compared to the employees experienced in a specific area. This will also help in recruiting a few numbers of employees in the beginning.
Hire people who understand the importance of customer service.
You can appoint advisors to guide on important matters.
If your capital is limited, then you can go scouting in different colleges. Choose interns from there. Explain your plan to them and convince them to join you.

When you select your candidates, you must see that they fit in your startup culture, possess the right set of tools for your startup and should be passionate about what they do.

After selecting your candidates, there should be hiring and training. After this, they should be assigned their roles and responsibility.

Always keep in mind whether you are choosing your 1st or your 100th candidate, you should know about the needs of your company and only then appoint someone who perfectly fits in that role.

Important things to keep in mind while building your startup:-

Be focused on your plan.
Make products keeping in mind what customers will be attracted to.
Customer satisfaction must be a priority list.
You need to create a unique brand proposition of your product.
You must have good leadership quality.
Always communicate with your team members.
You must have a proper check on the cash flow of your company.
Never ignore or underestimate your competition.
Ability to listen and understand your teammates.
You should always be willing to learn and adapt to the changes happening around you.

In conclusion, this African proverb sums up beautifully:

If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.

Building your startup is a ride of ups and downs. You need to be calm and positive in the initial period. Thus, if you want to make your startup into the leading company, you need to start by building a winning team that will take you far.

WHERE IS JACK MA, THE CO-FOUNDER OF ALIBABA?

Jack Ma is the second richest person in China and the co-founder of the Alibaba Group, a multinational technology company.
He is also the ambassador of Chinese business globally, an investor and a philanthropist. Forbes ranked him 21st in “world’s most powerful people” in 2019. His total net worth as of January 2021 was estimated to be $58.3 billion. He was also ranked among the “world’s most powerful people” in 2017 by Fortune.

Jack Ma wanted more from his life and thus, in September 2019 he retired from Alibaba. He wanted to pursue educational work, environmental causes and philanthropy. He has actively supported and worked for underprivileged communities in China, Africa, Australia and the Middle East.

Apart from being a businessman, Ma likes being in the spotlight. He made his acting debut in a short film called Gong Shou Dao, participated in a singing competition, presented a dance performance on Alibaba’s 18th anniversary, all in the year 2017.

Recently, he was also the judge of his reality show Africa’s Business Heroes. But was later replaced because of a “schedule conflict”.

But for the past few months, he has not been seen publicly. After his last public appearance in October, no one is familiar with his whereabouts. This happened after he criticised the Chinese government stating that they need to change now.

After the news flouted and people started questioning Jack Ma’s disappearance, China’s official newspaper printed an article stating that he is currently “embracing supervision”. This post was, however, taken down soon after.

Jack’s Ant Group was also suspended after this event. They were offering a $37 billion public offering last November. Alibaba, which was co-founded by him, is also under antitrust investigation. Although he has retired from the company, he still holds a considerable amount of power in the company. All these events happened after Ma pointed out the banking system of China calling them “pawnshop mentality”.

Jack has since then not posted anything on his social media also. For someone who loves the spotlight and is extremely active publicly, this event seems a bit unusual.

But this isn’t the first event where a celebrity or a millionaire has gone missing from China. A pattern can be observed here. All the previously missing celebrities or businessmen also hit the Chinese government with their critics one time or the other.

In 2020, a Chinese actress suddenly went missing and later it was reported that she was imprisoned for three months.

Another similar event happened with a Chinese scientist, He Jiankui. He disappeared and was reportedly under house arrest.

A reporter who revealed about the origins of the Coronavirus has also been missing ever since.

It is yet uncertain as to where Jack Ma is. His company continues to keep silent about his whereabouts. But patterns and the chronology of the events similar to this have been seen in the past as well.

All we can do is wait and see how this turns out and if Jack was actually “embracing supervision” or was it some other deeper and darker reason.

Decision making in Business

Every organization faces some problems. Due to this, a decision has to be made by the top management. Decision making is an essential part in business organization. It is a decision made by the managers by choosing and selecting the best alternative from different alternatives in an organization. Decision making is a part of planning. Good decision has to be made quickly and at the right time .

Steps of decision making :

Identify the problem:
The first step is to understand what the issue is arising. We have to state the problem and then we can take what type of decision we need to make.
Analysis of the problem: The second step is to understand why this problem has arised and what are the reasons behind this particular problem. A detail analysis will be done on a particular problem. They will work on how the problem can be resolved.
Generating alternative solution:
To list all possible solution can be taken to solve the problem. Different people give different opinions. We have to give the best solution so that the target will be finished at the right timing.
Evaluate alternatives:
Whatever options that had come out, we have to evaluate it. It is to state out the advantages and disadvantages of the alternatives. We have to evaluate the alternative at a company’s risk,time and budget. Cut out all the options which can hinder the organization. We have see which will be the most highest demand alternative that can be brought into the market.
Select alternative:
We have to choose the best alternative out of different alternatives, we have to select the best choices for the profit of the organization.
Implement the alternatives:
To take positive action and implement the alternative that have been chosen. We have to practically implement the decision taken.
Monitoring the decision:
To take review and feedback of the alternative decision taken for the organization. It is to see whether everything is going according to the planning.

These are the important steps that every organization should follow. This can strengthen the leadership qualities and help creating innovative ideas and can survive very well in the business world.

Now, foreign investors allowed to invest in ‘Alternative Investment Fund’ without PAN

In what has come as a relief to non-residents investing in category I and II alternate investment fund (AIF) located in International Financial Services Center (IFSC), the income tax department has amended rules to exempt such entities from obtaining permanent account number (PAN) on a mandatory basis.

The carve-out for such investors from section 139A of the Income Tax Act is contingent on non-residents not earning income other than from said funds. Additionally, these funds are also required to deduct TDS on such income.

Further, the exempted non-resident investors are also required to furnish declaration containing name, address, country of residence and tax identification number of the country or specified territory of their residence. Among other conditions, to avail the relaxation, the funds are required to furnish quarterly statement for non-resident investors in the newly notified format.

Sunil Gidwani, partner at Nangia Andersen LLP, said, “The demand for exemption has been based on the fact that the fund operating from IFSC would be withholding tax payable by the investors. This would go a long way in making it easy for the fund managers to attract foreign investors in a fund set up in IFSC and would give impetus to IFSC as a fund jurisdiction.”

Under section 139 of the Income Tax Act, any person who has earned taxable income in the previous financial year must apply for PAN.

Why Support Small Businesses?

Small businesses are part of every community and very often closely connected to its people and history. Unlike larger corporations, small businesses are usually local, privately owned, and employ a lesser number of workers. They also have lesser incomes since their scope of market is usually much smaller than the large-scale companies and industrial outlets. However, they are intrinsic to the development and growth of a locality and its economy. It creates sources of income, expansion of trade, and employment opportunities. Cottage industries and small-scale home businesses have been very important to the growth of India’s economy for decades. However, with the advent of multi-national corporations, neoliberal policies and privatization of many industries, small businesses have seen a decline in income in recent years. Yet they are still an important part of our economy and our everyday life.

crop ethnic mother serving little girl glass of refreshing drink — Photo by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels.com

With the internet revolution which has so transformed our life in the 21^st century, we rely much on online stores for our daily necessities. We also go to supermarkets with national or international chains to buy our daily products, usually looking at their discounted rates and environment. However, we also need to know that these discounts are only given to us because that cost is extracted from us in other ways, or from their working force who are often forced to work long hours with minimal wages. Now with the novel coronavirus pandemic ravaging the world, we are facing a global economic crisis and a steep increase in unemployment rates. Many multi-national companies are laying off their staff and cutting salaries. This means that many who previously went out to buy their groceries now do it online. This has greatly jeopardized the future of small business in a way that has never happened before.

Supporting small businesses is something that all of us should be engaged in since they support entire families and communities. The various agents who come in between the worker and their salary in larger corporations are usually absent in small business. This means that the worker gains more for his hard work and is more amply rewarded than in corporations that exploit them. Supporting small business help them sustain themselves and the people behind it. Since it is difficult to stay in business with an influx of other larger chains, small businesses are focused on providing authentic and good products to their customers. This is also the reason why many customers remain faithful to these small stores, since they have understood its value and the work behind it. They also employ many creative ways to stay in business and retain customers.

Small businesses differ starkly in their environments from other larger businesses by creating a space of warmth and familiarity. The detachedness of the sterile supermarket white lights and the mechanical ways of engagement are often directly in opposition to the warm glow and friendly chatter that fills small spaces. They are often a meeting point for the people of that locality and their interactions. The owners are often also able to do favours for the customers or offer discounts on the bill which doesn’t commonly happen anywhere else. Local businesses become part of the story of that locality as they themselves are handed down between generations, and are able to give back to the community much better than others. They are not controlled by an algorithm created to maximize profit or a nameless person behind a computer somewhere far away. They are run by people and families we develop bonds with, leaving a human touch in their exchanges. It enriches the life of the individual and their society, becoming a saving grace in a consumeristic culture where profit is made at the expense of humans.

Women Empowerment

Women empowerment refers to making women powerful to make them capable of deciding for themselves. Women have suffered a lot through the years at the hands of men. In earlier centuries, they were treated as almost non-existent. As if all the rights belonged to men even something as basic as voting. As the times evolved, women realized their power. There on began the revolution for women empowerment. As women were not allowed to make decisions for them, women empowerment came in like a breath of fresh air. It made them aware of their rights and how they must make their own place in society rather than depending on a man. It recognized the fact that things cannot simply work in someone’s favor because of their gender. However, we still have a long way to go when we talk about the reasons why we need it.

Almost every country, no matter how progressive has a history of ill-treating women. In other words, women from all over the world have been rebellious to reach the status they have today. While the western countries are still making progress, third world countries like India still lack behind in Women Empowerment.

In India, women empowerment is needed more than ever. India is amongst the countries which are not safe for women. There are various reasons for this. Firstly, women in India are in danger of honor killings. Their family thinks its right to take their lives if they bring shame to the reputation of their legacy.

the education and freedom scenario is very regressive here. Women are not allowed to pursue higher education, they are married off early. The men are still dominating women in some regions like it’s the woman’s duty to work for him endlessly. They do not let them go out or have freedom of any kind.

In addition, domestic violence is a major problem in India. The men beat up their wife and abuse them as they think women are their property. More so, because women are afraid to speak up. Similarly, the women who do actually work get paid less than their male counterparts. It is downright unfair and sexist to pay someone less for the same work because of their gender. Thus, we see how women empowerment is the need of the hour. We need to empower these women to speak up for themselves and never be a victim of injustice.

There are various ways in how one can empower women. The individuals and government must both come together to make it happen. Education for girls must be made compulsory so that women can become illiterate to make a life for themselves.

Women must be given equal opportunities in every field, irrespective of gender. Moreover, they must also be given equal pay. We can empower women by abolishing child marriage. Various programs must be held where they can be taught skills to fend for themselves in case they face financial crisis.

Most importantly, the shame of divorce and abuse must be thrown out of the window. Many women stay in abusive relationships because of the fear of society. Parents must teach their daughters it is okay to come home divorced rather than in a coffin.

How to build a startup?

Already building a startup was not an easy task, COVID-19 has made the situation even more difficult. But not to worry, here are a few steps one can look up to launch the startup in 2020.

Develop an idea: This was expected isn’t it? Without an idea, there can be no startup. The development of an idea is the most laborious task. For an effective startup, many things are needed to be taken into account like the vision of the startup, needs of people. Check for the problem area that people are facing, that’s the place from where the best ideas generate. The main criteria for a successful idea are trustworthiness, durability, and sustainability.

Explore the market: Understand the market, do thorough research, that is the key to success. Half knowledge is dangerous, if you don’t know particular features of the business you chose, all efforts will go in vain. Make sure to stay within the area you’re familiar with. Don’t start anything that you don’t have an idea about. Figure out the consumer’s needs.

Be fast: React fast to the changing market needs. This is crucial for a successful startup. All great businessmen have done so, whether it is Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, or Thoman Gensemer.

Always be determined: Never lose hope! Be determined and always have a willingness to continue until your startup becomes profitable. Cope with the challenges and difficulties that come your way creatively.

Be creative: Don’t be scared to go beyond the usually accepted business schemes. It’s your startup and you can mold it in whatever way you want.

Decide about the team: For the start, the number of people in the team should not be big. Find these three kinds of people: one who knows how to build technological systems to solve problems; one who understands the human factors hid by problems and can solve them; and one who knows how to reach people whose problems are to be solved.

Even if your first try of creating a successful startup fails, don’t be disappointed. It’s not necessary is that it will be rewarding always. Keep trying, don’t give up the difficulties.

Financial Literacy for girls

We all are aware that education is a very important tool for all of us, to build our personality, to shape our future. It really does not matter whether we get this education from school, or from outside school, education has a key role to play behind the success of any person. But now, from school time, we are told about that education that will help us earn money by working for it. Hard-work, dedication, and skill in a particular field are told to be the requirements to be a good employee, focusing on which can help us earn money and grow. Schools and society hardly teach teenagers about the importance of financial literacy in one’s life. There is no school where students are made aware of financial literacy and its importance. But, indeed, it is a very important skill needed to get out of the ‘rat-race’.

financial-education

If we want to become financially literate, surely we won’t be spoonfed. We need to be alert, aware, curious, as well as creative enough to gather the knowledge. One needs to understand that hard work and dedication can’t get us to everything in life. Studying hard, getting a government job, with a secure future can sound peaceful, but once people get to it, people often complain about their work, problems like not getting promotions, lack of holidays, and a lot more. Employers are often blamed. But it is not employers’ fault, it is our fault that we lack financial education to get out of this “trap”. Yes, but, smart work and the desire to constantly learn and grow is what that can help us get out of the ‘rat-race’. The trick is to “stop working for money and make money work for us”.

A very major issue is financial literacy is lacking too much in girls. Yes, there are girls who are financially literate but the fraction is too low. The general mindset that society has is that there exist a father and husband in a girl’s life and they can very well take care of the finance part for them. It is common that things like fashion, cooking skills, etc are discussed with and among girls but it is quite uncommon to find them discuss stocks, investment, and finance. Apart from these, being financially literate comes with the power to overcome fear and take risks. But, it is quite difficult for a girl to take risks as a society often don’t recognize their potential. We need to overcome this mindset that keeps girls dependent on others. It is the need of the girl as well as the need of the society that they stand out strong and work for their own financial goals. Girls need to be aware and they need to become financially literate. It is also known that girls can better handle finance than boys. So, why one should not use this potential. Financial literacy for girls is also a very important and crucial step towards women empowerment. They also need to understand finance and work for their financial independence.

Happy Woman Holding Piggybank

Financial literacy is very important for the progress of any individual or society. It helps you get out of the trap where you start working for money and can never get out of the trap. It prevents us from becoming slaves to money and become master of it.

What you need from your Customers: Loyalty

Customer loyalty is an important part of any type of business. Loyal customers are more likely to come back and purchase more of your company’s goods or services and thus increase the profits of the company in the long-term. Customers who are given the chance to participate in loyalty programs are also known to be more likely to recommend goods and services to friends and family as they begin to feel loyal towards the company. However, gaining and maintaining customer loyalty can be a challenge especially depending on the type of business and the strategic goals that the company wants to achieve in the future.

One way that a company can attempt to gain the loyalty of their customers is through loyalty programs. The term loyalty program refers to the use of a special gift or incentive being used after a repeated action by the customer. An example of this would be if a cake shop decided to give their customers a free cake for every nine cakes that they had already purchased. This incentive encourages customers to spend their money at the store because there is a special reward for giving the company their business. Aside from this, there are two main reasons why companies should consider using this method of customer service to improve their customer loyalty. One of these reasons includes the fact that loyalty programs have a positive effect on the relationship quality between the customer and the business and that these types of programs make the customer feel entitled towards their reward from the company because of the business that the customer gives them.

A loyalty program “gives the customer a sense of superior status relative to the other, “ordinary” customers” (Steinhoff & Palmatier, 2014). This, in turn, makes the customer feel more valued and is more likely to bring them back to your business instead of someone else’s business the next time they want to purchase a good or service. The other reason is that there is the principle of reciprocity once the customer receives that reward from the company. They will feel like they need to reciprocate or give back to the company for the reward that they received. This is a principle that is taken from studies done on human behaviour and the factors that motivate human beings. This principle can be used to benefit companies through the loyalty programs, because as stated above, once the customer receives their rewards they will feel as though they have an obligation to pay the company back by giving their loyalty to that business. This can increase profits for the company as loyal customers will continually purchase their goods and services.

Overall, companies can greatly increase their long-term profits and sales if they implement customer service practices such as loyalty programs since loyal customers have been proven to repeatedly revisit the company and repurchase goods and services that are offered. Loyal customers are also more likely to recommend the business and thus companies are receiving positive benefits yet again. All of this is because customers not only begin to feel more special to the company because of the rewards they receive but because they also feel a need to reciprocate for those rewards as well. If a company is willing to invest in creating a loyalty program for their customers then they will directly see the positive effects that it could have on their business and customer relationships.

References

Ma, B., Li, X. and Zhang, L. (2018), “The effects of loyalty programs in services – a double-edged sword?”, Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 32 No. 3, pp. 300-310. https://doi-org.library.sheridanc.on.ca/10.1108/JSM-06-2016-0227

Steinhoff, L., Palmatier, R.W. Understanding loyalty program effectiveness: managing target and bystander effects. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 44, 88–107 (2016). https://doi-org.library.sheridanc.on.ca/10.1007/s11747-014-0405-6

How has the Pandemic affected the Supply Chain?

COVID-19: Is Your Hospital's Supply Chain Ready for Coronavirus?

Current scenario

The impact of Covid-19 across the world has been completely devastating. The nations across the world have taken steps out of ordinary. From putting ban on travel, closing borders, stopping business to complete national lockdown, the economic growth has downgraded tremendously. Several attempts have been made to “flattening the curve” which involves reducing the number of new COVID-19 cases on day to day basis.

For a country like India with high population density, it becomes necessary for the Government to take up vital steps to protect its citizens as high population attracts the virus to spread easily and rapidly. Therefore, keeping in mind, the limited infrastructure, the Government had to completely lockdown the nation from March 25. The lockdown was supposed to last for only 21 days but has been extended till further instructions. The impact of this has already begun by troubling the Indian economy resulting in slow growth and shrinking consumption.

Impact on supply chains

Even before the spread of Covid-19 across the globe and nationwide lockdown, there seemed to be a ripple effect on the global flow of trade due to disruption in China. Due to this many companies had started working to thin the supply chain from China. Because of Covid-19, the vulnerabilities of costs have been exposed and “just in time” deliveries with emphasis laid on minimization has led to decrease in inventory buffers and has left very small or rather no room for adequate buffers

However in India still there are certain industries which are heavily dependent on Chinese imports. Some of these industries are that of pharmaceuticals where about 70 per cent of pharmaceutical ingredients are imported from China for the requirement of industry. Automobiles which adds up to 10-30 per cent of imported raw materials from China for the base parts. The renewable energy sector especially Solar in the area of solar is heavily dependent on China for Solar panels which is 80 per cent of our renewable sector’s requirement.

Managing the crisis

To combat the current crisis, Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) imposed restrictions on the export of 13 Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients and 13 formulations made from these ingredients. Major actions were taken to quickly initiate customs clearances of imports from China.

The Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC) advised its members not to rely on Chinese products by diverging the source of raw materials as the supply from China has been cut off due to the pandemic. According to AEPC Chairman A. Sakthivel the industry body has approached the government on the matter who in turn has asked the Indian embassies to find the alternate sources of suppliers for India.

Due to crisis many companies want to move at least a part of their supply chains locally which would increase investment in India’s local industries and help to overcome economy in crisis. The Indian Government has decided to promote domestic manufacturing of critical Key Starting Materials (KSMs) and Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients in the country which will promote Bulk Drug Parks with investment of ₹3,000 crore in the next 5 years. This is a wake-up call for India to develop its own local sourcing units and adopt alternative strategies for reducing the dependency on China.

References:

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/covid-19-exposes-indian-industrys-supply-chain-vulnerabilities/article31224928.ece

How to become a successful Entrepreneur?

Whether you’re starting as a pro or an amateur, who doesn’t want to be a successful entrepreneur? Owning your own business gives you a sense of freedom. You become more creative, release your ideas, visions, and make decisions yourself.

So to be strong at this game, here are some tips you may need:

Challenge Yourself: Every day is a new beginning. Your biggest motivation should be to keep challenging yourself. No one else is going to push, it is you who has to take the charge. Learn every day. Read books, blogs, and articles on entrepreneurs. Doing this will not only increase your knowledge but also expand your creativity.

Take Risks: Successful entrepreneurs always take risks. Without this one can never figure out what is good for their business and what is not. It is dangerous but sometimes it presents opportunities that often outweigh the potential danger.

Know your goals: Rome was not built in a day! Who hasn’t heard this famous quote? Just like that, a startup also cannot be successful in a few days. One needs to be patient in their way up. You should have a proper goal plan. Work on all your plans, make mistakes, and explore.

Be passionate: Nothing in this world fuels you better than your passion does. When you’re passionate about what you do, long hours won’t even matter. But if you are not, you won’t have any motivation when you are sleepy or tired. Ever noticed entrepreneurs who get that gleam in their eyes when they talk about what they do?

Support System: Let’s be honest, achieving things on your own, will only double the trouble in your journey. One needs a supportive network to lean on. Hire someone you have great character and whom you respect too.

Put everything on Calendar: Yes, you heard that right! Put everything on the calendar. From every important meeting to working hours, meeting friends, workouts, games, etc. The reason being this will always keep you on your toes and you will have no time to waste. ‘ Time is money’ – Every famous entrepreneur abides by this rule. Follow it and no one can stop you from being successful.

What’s your favourite success tip for entrepreneurs? Share it in the comment section.

Want to be a entrepreneur? Business skills that you should master

Are you aspiring to be the next Steve Jobs of Mark Zuckerberg? That’s great. These are some of the greatest entrepreneurs known today. An entrepreneur is one who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit. Being an entrepreneur can be rest when it comes to a fixed schedule and the most important thing is that you enjoy what you work.

But in order to be a successful entrepreneur you need to have the right skillset which suits your business. Acquiring these skills can be very effective when it comes to success of your entrenpeurship!

Here are the essential soft skills that you will need to learn or import to help you to succeed in your business:

Delegate your work

Delegation involves assigning responsibility to other people for the completion of work. The ideal position that you want to obtain is one where your staff carries out all the routine activities of your business. Effective delegation involves achieving the correct balance between effective controls and allowing people to complete their job effectively.

Be a good communicator

Communication is an important part of a business but the sad part is that it is the taken for granted. Good communication skills can enable you to convey your idea effectively to your colleagues and employees. Communication does not include only verbal part, it also includes the non verbal part such as body posture, level of eye contact, your dressing sense, your gestures and actions. This things together present a picture of yours Infront of your colleagues.

Be a leader!!

Strong leaders can help an organisation to maximize productivity and achieve business goals, whereas weak leadership can hurt productivity and put the health of the business in jeopardy. Leadership is not one blanket characteristic that cures all ills, however, there are many different elements that must be present for an organization’s leadership to be considered adequate.

Learn to negotiate!!

Negotiation skills are qualities that allow two or more parties to reach a compromise. These are often soft skills and include abilities such as communication, persuasion, planning, strategizing and cooperating. Understanding these skills is the first step to becoming a stronger negotiator.

Develop a strategic plan…

A business plan is about setting short- or mid-term goals and defining the steps necessary to achieve them. A strategic plan is typically focused on a business’ mid- to long-term goals and explains the basic strategies for achieving them.

Analyse…

Analytical skills refer to the ability to collect and analyze information, problem-solve, and make decisions. Employees who possess these strengths can help solve a company’s problems and improve its overall productivity and success.

Learn to sell!!

Sales techniques are the methods that sales professionals use to create revenue.The techniques are refined through trial and error based on the sales associate’s experiences. Developing effective sales techniques is an ongoing process for an individual and his entire organisation.

Manage your finances

This skill comprises of analysing the companies balance sheet and identifying which of your products are profitable for your business. These are important to uphold the financial stability of the business ensuring that the cost is not exceeding the revenue generated.

Learn the Art of Time management

Time Management is a set of related common-sense skills that help you use your time in the most effective and productive way. Time Management is a very important skill to master. Learning this skill will empower you to achieve more and to use your time wisely. The key is to know how to manage your time efficiently and to focus on the activities most likely to deliver value to your business.

How can you learn these skills and succeed in your business?

With developing technology, everything is available in the comfort of your home. Here, are some of the amazing ways that will definitely help you to enhance your skills…

Do a online course. Yes, you heard it right. Do a course in anything you love and wish to be a entrepreneur in it. It can be finance, marketing or anything. Sky is the limit!!
Do internships. There are some well known platforms like Internshala and let’s intern which provide the platform to connect the employers with interns like us. Doing a internship have countless benefits it gives you exposure into the corporate world even before you enter in it. Your overall personality gets developed eventually.
Next one and the perhaps the easiest one you can do is engage with as many people as you can. Learn the skill to express your ideas, work on your expression, gestures.

Acquiring these skills will take time definitely but once you have done achieved perfection in this , noone will be able to stop you from achieving your goals.

All the best!!!

What is your USP?

The competition is getting fiercer with every passing day as new things are introduced and the world population is on a rise. Living a good life isn’t as easy as it used to be years ago when unemployment wasn’t as high as it is now. Every man fights several men everyday to make his place in this highly competitive world and fights even more to safeguard his place from the new entrants and improved competitors. There’s no end to this struggle.

Unique Selling Proposition or USP in short, is a business term for a quality that sets your business apart in a market full of competitors that are more or less similar to you but they too cannot copy that quality of yours. It is what differentiates your business and makes the consumers want to try and buy what you are selling and choose your brand over competitor brands.

Tata Group is one of top Indian Companies and the USP of Tata Motors is that they are fuel efficient and easy to drive. An environmentally conscious customer might buy a Tata vehicle because oil is a nonrenewable resource and an economical person might buy it because of fluctuating prices of oil. Ease of driving will please any and everyone. This is what sets Tata motors apart from the other automobile companies of the country.

The business term ‘USP’ is not specific to just businesses anymore because every single person is competing against the world full of people for a seat, a job, a promotion, for power and a variety of other things. The fact is that there will never come a time when the competition will lower or become steady and ‘survival of the fittest’ is actually ‘survival of the best’ now. Every person who is fighting out there needs to have an eccentric weapon of some sort – a quality that is impossible or extremely difficult for other fighters to imitate – to have any chance at winning the everyday battle that the world is.

Read: Most Sought-after Skills at this very second

When you are trying to get into anything, be it an interview for a job or starting a new venture, ask yourself what sets you apart? It is possible to not find a unique skill or quality in yourself when you start looking but it is also not impossible to develop a few. Hard work can do wonders. Start with making a list of all the skills and qualities that you have and be honest to yourself. You can’t just say that something like overcoming challenges is one of your qualities without actually embodying that passion and zeal. There could be some skills in that list that you could work on further and master to make them your USP. You can also pick a skill randomly that you think you can master and others cannot but it should be consistent with the place you want to enter for it to differentiate you from other entrants.

I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.
Elon Musk

Big Data and IoT Explained

How Big Data Influences Your IoT Solution

Technology has been advancing and lives are getting improved everyday now. Businesses are doing everything to exceed the expectations of their customers and IoT is the next promising step towards the same. Internet of Things, IoT in short, is a platform that collects and analyses data from our regular use appliances with the aid of the internet and gives out information to both the manufacturer and user. This information could be about the servicing that is required or a part that has become dysfunctional and needs to be replaced. The huge amount of data that is generated by these sensor equipped machines is called the Big Data (no surprise there, hopefully).

Big Data has always been present but in earlier times, it was simple and could be easily recorded on Excel spreadsheets and analysed as such. The type of data wasn’t as complex back then and it could be easily filled into the cells of spreadsheets. Now, however, the format of data that is being transmitted is not very fixed and it could be in forms like audio, video and pictures. This data cannot be collected and analysed by traditional programs. New softwares (Cloud) are getting developed that can help separate the valuable information and recognise the trends or patterns if there are any. Examples of the same can be seen in apps like Netflix and Amazon Prime when they give you recommendations on the basis of your previous watch.

The big data is characterised by 4 Vs: volume, velocity, variety and veracity. The volume of data could be trillions of gigabytes and has to be stored at multiple locations. The velocity of transmission and collection of data currently, is unprecedented. ‘Variety’ refers to the format of data that can be both structured and unstructured but equally important. Veracity or the accuracy of the set of data that has been generated by a source and needs to be verified in case of redundancy or just to check if the data is suitable for analysis by a particular software. The role of data analyst becomes important with this discussion and it will be the most sought after profession eventually.

IoT and Big Data are very similar but yet very distinct at the same time. IoT seeks to analyse the data when it is transmitted and the data then contributes to the Big Data. A company can use both the technologies at the same time. For example, a sensor in a car could emit a signal that the car is in need of servicing and the owner might get a notification reminder for the same. The data of the times all the cars of the same company required servicing can be stored and used for predictive analysis for newly manufactured cars.

The integration of the two technologies can help the both consumer and seller in the long run. The businesses will make more profits as they will become more efficient in catering to the needs of their customer and the overall costs will get reduced as well. The customer might be hesitant at first, for the idea of their appliances tracking their usage behavior seems like invasion of privacy, but it will save their time and money in maintenance and replacement.

Decision Making 101: Opportunity Cost

Wherever we are and whatever we are doing currently, is the result of the decisions we have made in the past. You have chosen to read this article and not scroll past it or do something else like watching TV or taking a nap. You have consciously made a choice from an array of options that were in front of you. Opportunity cost is the loss of benefits that could be derived from the next best alternative once a choice has been made. By reading this article, you have forgone the pleasure that could have been derived from watching TV or energy that you’d have got from taking a nap.

Opportunity cost is a term in economics but it can be applied to almost every aspect of life and not just the things that can be measured in monetary terms. When an investor chooses to invest his money in a particular stock, the opportunity cost is the return on investment that he could have enjoyed if invested in a different stock. If that investor had an excess amount of funds, he could have invested in both the stocks but that sets things like money, time and even opportunities apart – they are limited. This elucidates the importance of making well thought out decisions.

People who are doing 9 to 5, 5-days a week jobs face difficulty in realising their opportunity costs because they have a fixed schedule and only do what they are told to. They barely make any decisions on their own and just do what their boss tells them to on a regular basis so when they finally see an opportunity to relax on weekend, they don’t look for alternatives and just go with the flow. In case of freelancers or businessmen, however, these people are much more conscious of what they lose when they decide to spend their limited resources in a particular activity. A tailor can easily sacrifice the amount of business he is sacrificing when he decides to go on a week long vacation.

Opportunity cost is everywhere and in everything we do. When a person with a job decides to party on saturday night and sleep in because it’s sunday, he gives up on the time that he could have spent with his family. When you decide to get an MBA from a named university and pay a hefty tuition fee for the same, you sacrifice not just the money but the time, 2 years in this case, that could have been spent in doing a job or learning a different skill. You still chose to go for an MBA and the reason could be because you can get a much better job that pays better than the one without an MBA. Basically, It is all about weighing your alternatives correctly and carefully.

Decision making process isn’t complicated but two of the most crucial steps are identification of alternatives, followed by thorough examination of each alternative. All the benefits that are derived from all the alternatives need to be compared and the one that seems the most satisfactory should be chosen. One can also weigh his options on the basis of what he would regret sacrificing the most.

How to grow your business through Instagram

Instagram is a great marketing tool for any business to flourish. It has over 800 million monthly active users. Despite it being a massive platform, it is fairly easy to grow your business on it. It allows you to connect with your fans, customers, partners, and prospects. For your account, to be worth your efforts and time, the most important thing is to be active on it.

Let’s take a look at how Instagram can help in building a brand and grow your following without spending a single penny on advertising.

Post images that attract the audience – A picture is worth a thousand words so make sure it counts. To get active audience engagement, offer both – great design and value. Use sites like Canva and Stencil to design the best infographics or posts. No need to hire graphic designers, these tools make your posts look extremely professional at free of cost.

“Call to action” a must thing – There are a lot of companies that just post on Instagram without the customers knowing what to do, where to go. One can always make use of the bio section for a strong “Call-to-action” that directs people to the sales page or the company’s website. This way it is much easier for better functioning of the business.

The right use of Hashtags (#) – Hashtags are extremely powerful for increasing engagement, categorizing posts, attracting followers to a certain niche and also to strengthen the brand image. Every time you make a post, make sure to write a caption with it including the hashtags ( don’t use more than 5 ). This will make your post look well put up and appealing to the audience.

Regularity in posting content – You don’t have to spam the audience but make sure to at least post one or two times a day. This will help in keeping the audience updated and be interested in your brand. None the less, the more the posting is done more the chances of a rapid increase in followers.

Engagement is the key – Engagement with the audience can be fruitful for your company. Start liking, commenting on their posts, it can often lead them to visit your brand’s Instagram handle. There are chances that they can also reciprocate by liking and following it. Purchasing followers can never be in one’s interest, so avoid it.

Look up to Analytics – Instagram provides an option to check the insights of the profile. One can see which post got the most engagement, which day is when people are most active, when is the best time to post. With the help of this information, plan your future posts accordingly to get the most mileage out of them.

All in all, this visual feed can reflect your brand’s uniqueness and differentiate your business from others. So with the right marketing strategy make the best use of it possible. Take advantage of all that Instagram has to offer and you are good to go.

Everything You Wanted to Know About mega city’s

A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings

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Metro city’s should make road with protection In mind

I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine.

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Go For Western Economy With These Pioneering

but it is too much for my strength — I sink under the weight of the splendour of these visions!

I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine. I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect my talents.

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Where to travel asia Kind Mid Spirit

I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine.

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References

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1. Communication Skills

2. Emotional Intelligence

3. Adaptability

4. Decision-Making

5. Problem-Solving

6. Team Leadership

Conclusion

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1.Education:

Advantages of social media in Education:

2.Agriculture:

Advantages of social media in Agriculture:

Business:

Advantages of social media in Business:

4.Entertainment:

Advantages of social media on Entertainment:

Disadvantages of social media:

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WHAT IS THE STOCK MARKET?

TYPES OF STOCKS

HOW THE STOCK MARKET WORKS?

WHAT IS THE STOCK MARKET DOING TODAY?

HOW TO INVEST IN THE STOCK MARKET?

STOCK MARKET VS STOCK EXCHANGE

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EARLY LIFE AND CAREER

LIVING LIFE ON HIS OWN TERMS

WARREN BUFFET’S CHARITY

BUFFET’S RULE

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Understanding Porter’s Five Forces Model

What are the five forces of the Porter’s Model?

Competition in the Industry

Potential of New Entrants into the Industry

Power of Suppliers

Power of Customers

Threat of Substitute Products

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Attributes of Entrepreneurs

Creative Destruction and Entrepreneurship

Some Famous Entrepreneurs

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Defining Lifestyle Blogs

Lifestyle blog vs. personal blog

A Quick Note To Would-Be Lifestyle Bloggers

Top blogs in lifestyle category

1. Goop.com

2. The Pioneer Woman (thepioneerwoman.com)

*3. Brightbazaarblog.com

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Highlights

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The Funnel concept and flipping the funnel

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