Byapaar.com -The Indian Business Blog

As usual, before I do a personal blogpost – here is some business updates that caught my attention over last couple of weeks.
• First and foremost among them is huge decrease in the rate of inflation that is almost @ 0% (.27% to be exact) which is the lowest in the last 30 years (lowest since 1977-78).
There is nothing surprising though with the figure as the Parliamentary election is little bit more than two weeks away and the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government is doing its best to utilize as much economic mileage as possible even if at the expense of the state exchequer. I have serious doubts if this inflation rate is a genuine reflection of the market or a manipulated one as I don’t see any marked reduction in prices of daily essentials which is so important for the poor and lower middle class people like me!
• The second major business development that attracted my interest is the official debut of “Nano” Car by Tata Automobiles Ltd. which has become the cheapest car in the world priced about $2500.
The irony is that, the car is rolling out for the first time from Mumbai, and not Singur or Kolkata as was originally planned. As they say “History repeats itself.” There was a time when the left front came to power in West Bengal after sweeping the rural Bengal on the promise of Land Reform Movement. The left front government did keep its words and introduced laws for sweeping change in land allocation favoring poor and landless farmers. This caused industries and businesses to move away from Bengal. But now, the same Left Front government has been trying to attract new investments and industries after realization that agriculture alone can not take Bengal too far and to bring more jobs, development – industry is the only way. As much power as they enjoy with huge majority in the Assembly, their only roadblock is one lady, Ms. Mamata Banerjee, the Trinamul Congress Supremo. While the left front give red carpet welcome to any industrialists interested to invest in Bengal by way of offering Tax soaps, lands of their choice – Ms. Mamata is leading an ever growing movement against usage of fertile land for industry.
The Clock has now turned full circle in Bengal politics, business and economics. :p
• The third notable development is strong demand by most political parties to bring back the $1456 billion black money kept deposited in foreign banks (mostly Swiss Banks) by Indian super rich, corrupt politicians and officials.

Now, I may write some personal notes which might be helpful for some in credit card debt. Some of my old readers might have read one of my posts that I did few months back on how reckless use of credit card may put someone in serious debt trap.
Now that I have my own credit card and more importantly as I want to use it very frequently on my web business, there is huge chance that I might use it for just about everything and might have to seek help of credit card debt consolidation companies offering help to people suffering from the bad habit of misusing a credit card.
But I promise, as I know the danger before-hand, I’ll not fall into the trap and use it with out most caution. Besides paying for hosting and domains of my sites from time to time, my primary usage will be to invest money in domains. Domain business has been one of the most mysterious and interesting of all online businesses for some time now. One has to learn a lot, do huge amount of research about the market, find premium domains and invest in them. Thousands of $$$ might be left unused for long, but it might also fetch huge profits. (business.com was sold for $8 million). So, I am planning to join this business and use my credit card only for this purpose.
I already bought a domain for $110 and I reckon it is worth around $250.
In the beginning I’ll start slowly, going one step at a time. Once I am confident, I will get into this seriously. And for this I must need a credit card. Domain registrars accept payment only through credit card or Paypal (also require a card for verification). The great advantage fr

Whatever is the case with Indian politics, one thing is sure though that there is an underlying consensus among all political parties that economic reform is the way to come out of that Nehruvian economic development which saw a sustained medium rate of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth also known in Indian economic folklore as Hindu Rate of Growth!

This consensus thing has become more pronounced when Left Front ruled state government in West Bengal has been trying hard to find vast spaces of land for big industrial houses interested in investing billions of $s in the state. Ironically, there is someone who is in their way of industrializing Bengal - it is their bête noire - Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamul Congress party who is doing the same same as the left parties did in the 60’s and 70’s - i.e. protect the farmlands which form most part of Bengal.

But I am not here for Bengal, I am here to talk about the new opportunities that has been brought about by economic reforms and rapid GDP growth over last 10 years or so.

Everyone is aware that Indian middle class is one of the largest in the world with huge level of purchasing power and MNCs come to India for them.  There are two groups though. One group is western educated, sauvé and highly urban working in the private sector with high salaries. The other group is semi-urban, traditionally educated, middle aged and look for security in government jobs. But members of both groups has one thing in common - ‘to own a house of their own’. While the first group had advantages so far to fulfill their dreams with their fat pay packages from so called sunshine industries (IT, ITes, Bio-technology), the second group had to think a lot before they took the plunge due to their low pay slips.

Some recent developments - both in the domestic and international scenarios have shifted the balance in this equation. The world economic meltdown caused by the now infamous US ‘Sub-Prime Crisis’ has affected the real estate and financial services sector more than anything else. With billions of square feet of real estate property lying vacant and liquidity crunch engulfing the world market, realty sector is not going to get hot in the near foreseeable future. Although most governments have taken several steps to infuse trillions of $s to come out of crisis, the market as a whole is still in the doldrums and real estate sector has simply crashed.

This is what I am talking about - a golden opportunity for all those who had to think ten times before owning a house in earlier scenarios. There are three plus points -

• Keeping with the rest of the world, Indian realty sector has also crashed.
• Indian banks have not been hurt that much with world liquidity crunch and with active initiatives by several branches of the central government through policy changes, the banking industry has been involved in home loan modification by way of rate cuts.
• The central government and most state governments have revised the pay structure of their employees with much higher pay so as to give the benefit of fast economic growth during last 10 years or so.

It is pure circumstantial that has brought about this opportunity. Now, a government servant is more suited to own a home or flat than someone working in the private sector. Employees in the private sector live in constant fear of loosing their jobs, Read the rest of this entry »

As usual, this is one of those personal posts which I do from time to time on this blog. As there is election just round the corner, there is hyper activity in the field of politics and business has taken a back seat. The effect of politics is such in India that, even media – all types at that are focusing on it, rather than highlight the economic problems that is engulfing us slowly but surely.
I can think of only one recent business news that caught my attention and that is Forbe’s latest list of shamelessly rich people though they have not been left untouched by the global market crash. Bill Gates returns as numero uno richest persona despite loosing $18 billion during last year. His buddy Warren Buffet lost $25 billion, but it is still enough for him to occupy number two position. India’s Anil Ambani and last year’s 6th richest man lost a whopping $32 billion during last 12 months and slipped out of top 10. The saving grace for India is Laxmi Mittal at number 8 and Mukesh Ambani at number 7.
Over-all, hundreds of people lost their billionaire tag from last year’s list and only few joined the list this year which is not very surprising. Interesting Communist ruled China has over taken India as home to most numbers of billionaires in Asia.
Now lets proceed to the main story.

Visa Credit Card

Billionaires or millionaires, India is a land of great diversity – literally in everything. Even last year, there was EDC machine to process payment by credit cards in my entire state (It now has two merchant establishments accepting payment by credit cards in our state capital 185 kms away from where I live). So there were no banks or agencies that issued them. Now there is one bank Union Bank of India) which is issuing the plastic cards to clients.
Due to my involvement in the web and being a webmaster for sometime now, I have been having great difficulty in paying for my domains, hosting and other services that I need to avail regularly. So I can say easily that, the non-availability of a credit card was hampering my online business and more than anybody else in my state, I felt the absence of plastic money to great extent.
When the bank opened a branch in our big village (with more than 100,000 population), I took the first opportunity to open an account with them in the first week of December, 2008 and immediately applied for the card. One fine day at the end of January, someone called me from Mumbai to verify information and documents that I put with my application form. I was hoping to receive it by 3rd week of February. But it never came. Finally, today I received my long cherished VISA credit card. :p
After carefully checking the envelop, I discovered that the card was issued on 25th February and posted via EMS Speed Post service offered my Indian Postal Department on 28th February. Today is 13th March. So it took 13 days to reach my address from Mumbai by Speed Post! Ideally, it is supposed to take maximum of 72 hours from any place in India to any corner of the country. So much so is for the service of an important public service department of India. I am jut wondering how long would it have taken had it been posted via normal post.

This is not an isolated case if you are wondering. One of my savings policies has Read the rest of this entry »