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

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 (continue reading…)

First of all, my heartiest congratulations to Abhinav Bindra J who made India proud by winning gold medal for the 10m Air Rifle section at the Beijing Olympic. It is the first ever individual gold that India won in the history of Olympic.

Now, this post is a little bit personal as I’ll try to put a point across by taking example of one of my friend. But before I dwell into that, let me give a brief update on the latest business scenario.

Inflation is at 18 years high that stands more than 12 percent. Stock market has recovered to some extent and has been on a bullish run for last 10 days or so. Tatas and Reliance Infocom have decided to invest huge sum to create GSM based network while keeping their CDMA services. The central government has decided to come to the exporters’ aid and has announced that it would return taxes already paid.

Well, that’s what I call brief update. J

Now the main topic! The other day I was called by my fried who got some exorbitant Credit Card bill and didn’t know where he spent the money. He called me because we went to some websites one night and used it to get membership. It was quite late in night and he didn’t know how to browse the net properly. L So I told him not to browse the net any more after I left. He did!

For the next 3 months he kept receiving those bills and soon he was in debt. I repeatedly asked him to contact the issuing branch to block the card. He didn’t! But when the bill piled on, he was desperately looking how to get out of debt and this mess. Finally he called the customer service of the issuing bank and they did oblige his request.

I am blogging on this because this might happen to anybody who is regularly using credit cards for online purchase – especially from phony sites. There are lots of instances of unauthorized use of credit cards by hackers who steal the card access codes. So everybody must first check how reputed and trusted the site is (Verisign verification is one of those) before putting the sensitive personal data.

While plastic money in the form of credit or debit cards is of great convenience, one must use it judiciously even if they are not using them online. As one does not have to carry and dish out lots of cash, it is very easy to spend a lot by swiping the card at various counters. Its only after that you start worrying how you pay off credit card debt that is now quite a huge amount.

(continue reading…)