IT companies and calculating environmental impact

Typically for an IT companies, the impact to environment from their operations or products is relatively very low. Whatever it is, comes from following -
1. IT Servers and user computers
2. Facilities/ Offices
3. Use of products (like some hardware) at customer' end

Look at these links from leading IT companies on how their operations cause environmental impact and what steps have they taken to mitigate the same - 

1. Apple's environmental impact 

2. SAP and Greening of Service Business 

Wazup with UID - Updates

I found an interesting article which gives an update on UID, one of the most ambitious IT project of Govt. of India. Details can be found here --> UID Round-Up: All The News on AADHAAR : For IT, Against It? 

Some keywords from the article- Ernst & Young, MindTree, 3000 crores, 600 million Aadhaar numbers, finger printing, iris scans, government kiosks, Citizens against UID

StanChart IDR - Money raising as well as branding

London based StanChart' IDR (Indian Depository Receipt) today came out with an issue for raising money from Indian market. The bank is offering a price band of Rs 100-115 per IDR and 10 IDRs would map to a single share of the bank. At Rs 50 per USD simple conversion, this maps to Rs 975-1125 as premium for a single share of the bank.

The issue from the bank which operates as a branch in India and not as subsidiary is first of its kind issue of raising money by a foreign company in India. Once this is complete, this should become a trend setter and open up similar issues by other companies wishing to raise money. This hopefully would improve the overall image of Indian market in global landscape.


Besides raising money for the bank, it serves as a good branding exercise for the bank too. With Government inching ahead with plans to liberate the financial services industry, this issue would help bank establish a more market-visible commitment to Indian market. This should also help Indian people see the bank as a more trusted option for savings and investments.

Few more details about StanChart Indian operations- The bank’s profit in India rose 19 per cent to $1.06 billion (over Rs 4,600 crore) last year, contributing 21 per cent of group earnings. The Indian operations rank fractionally behind Hong Kong as the biggest profit contributor. Most of the Indian earnings came from wholesale banking, where profits grew by half to $1 billion while consumer banking, which had been hit by bad debt, declined around 25 per cent to $54 million (around Rs 250 crore).

Blog has a new URL

I bought a new URL for my blog yesterday. So from now on, you can access my blog as either of the following-
1. http://amrit-singh.blogspot.com/ (Existing)
2. http://www.amritpalsingh.com (New)

Kites is such a disappointment

Ah, Kites.. first I dont know why is this name ... except that I got to see some kites flying as the movie began, there was no co-relation with the movie story line..

two, this movie is such a bore .. unless u just recently got in love and have 'filmy' notions about romance, u wud find for most part, this movie a complete dumb ! Characters played by Barbara (Linda in movie) and Hrithik (J in movie) fall in love for no obvious reason .. and no, its not love at first sight or something of DDLJ types, the guys just fall in so called 'love' .. and then they keep fighting the world to keep together their love..  some of the action scenes look so childish.. remember all those 10 cars chasing your car and u making them fall over each other types.. or the ones where gun shots are fired and u wud escape unhurt .. oh, let me mention comedy too.. theres just one scene which tries to make u laugh.. where Linda playing a Spanish girl trying to speak Hindi with 'mein ullu ki pathi hun'...  again one of the ideas picked up from some old movie..

three, things that u wud probably like.. dance is good.. songs are too.. US and Mexico or wherever its shot, the scenic beauty is awesome... Barbara's smile looks good and so does Hrithik's toned body ....

To sum it up, I guess the story line has taken its toll on the movie and taken its sheen away...The entire movie looks like a collection of few short stories picked up from old movies with predictable love, action, comedy scenes .. Its like selling a product in market with nice packaging, good advt. for promotion, discount to traders and all but the product doesn't do what its supposed to. My rating for this movie would be 1.5 out of 5 of which 0.5 is just for Barbara ! :-)

I am with Adobe on Flash vs Apple case

Ever since Apple didn't come out with Flash support on 'i' products namely iPhone, iPad etc., Adobe has been fighting its case vigorously for its presence on these gadgets. Recently, Adobe has launched 'I love Apple' campaign as well highlighting its arguments. The reason for all this comes from losing market share in the mobile space for Adobe. Apple too has posted its arguments here -> Thoughts on Flash.

Broadly, the arguments are on these lines-
1. Closed vs open standards
2. Support for touch screens
3. Security vulnerabilities
4. Flash vs H.264
5. Performance

Well, I am not a techie (as in one who has worked on Flash or iPhone development) to understand lots of these stuff but from an end-user, my point is that I don't care if Flash is 'bad', I want it to be running when I buy an Apple product ! Flash has been in internet for a while and a world without Flash is hard to imagine. I wouldn't want myself to be constrained from viewing certain website content just because my device doesn't play it.

Even if we assume that Flash has poor performance and is vulnerable, we still need to give the Web world enough time to move to a new standard or technology. Stopping support for a technology just because one has the power to do so is not ethical.

Shale gas technology

My friend from XL pointed me to this article on Shale gas (WSJ: Shale Gas Will Rock the World) and how it is going to be the future of gas extraction technology. Readers interested in learning more about this should read this article as it provides an interesting view point of how this balances out the world (li'l exaggerated though). More details are available on wikipedia: Shale oil extraction also.

The biggest problem per me with this is the high cost of oil extraction which is sustainable only when the prices of oil are in the range of $90 plus per barrel and the environmental impact of polluting water when the gas is taken out.

International travel and people culture

Somethings never seem to change. I traveled to US last month and noticed the same odd things that give a bad impression to the country and its people culture. See a sample of what we are good at -

1. Rushing to get into line the moment boarding announcement is made irrespective of the fact whether our seat number is called for or not.
2. Using the maximum capacity of our hand bag to our advantage and get in whatever we can in that bag.
3. Occupying not only our luggage compartment but also making sure that our neighbor's is occupied too.
4. Once on board, ordering for whiskey, scotch or beer whatever the airline has to offer for free and then drinking it to the maximum.
5. Belief in the fact that announcement for cell-phones turn off when the plane takes off or lands is something that is to be ignored.
6. Cribbing about anything and everything - so, no matter if we had to stand for half hour at New York for security checkup, we would crib about standing for the same time for immigration here.
7. Getting in some reference of higher up to allow for expedited immigration, quick baggage clearance, bringing in items with value higher than allowed by customs, so-on and so forth.

Guess, there are many more items to the list which can be added. The idea for me is not to criticize something but to open up a channel for introspection !

UPSC civil services results- Source of inspiration

This year UPSC Civil Services results are a source of inspiration on at least two counts - 

One, a candidate from Kashmir who had lost out his father and brother to militancy made to the list as topper. 

Two, the percentage number of candidates who attempted more than once to clear the exam. Among first 25,

• six have made to the merit list in their first attempt - 24%
• four in second attempt- 16% 
• eleven in third attempt - 44%
• three in fourth attempt- 12%
• one in seventh attempt - 4%

God, and how soon did I give up !

McKinsey and consulting

I have high regard for consulting companies because they employ the best of talent. Not only in India, but world over best b-school grads' first choice is a consulting company and McKinsey tops the chart. Yet, looking at articles on McKinsey Quarterly often makes me wonder is this what they do. For example, look at this article "Three trends in business-to-business sales" - it talks about the following trends in B2B sales (abridged for copyright issues) - 

First, customers have become more demanding. Second, B2B companies are exploring lower-cost ways to make clients happier and to generate sales growth. Third, B2B companies are making smarter use of customer data to predict behavior, drive sales, and deepen relationships.

Now, except for second point what's new in this? Customers have always been demanding, every basic sales and marketing book would tell you that. And which company doesn't analyse customer data? Again basic marketing book  would tell you about this. Well,  McK has figured this out by talking to senior executives with 150bn USD combined B2B sales. Come on McK, tell me something new !!

Greece Debt Problem- One of Solvency

Well, this was gonna happen. During recession most government across the world followed Keynesian economics of boosting growth by spending more. To finance such spending, governments borrowed heavily from the market. And when the government cannot repay back, it becomes a problem. That’s what has happened to Greece. 

To summarize in financial terms, the Greece debt problem is one of solvency and not of liquidity. Picking up dictionary meanings for these- 

1. Solvency comes from Solvent which means a liquid substance capable of dissolving other substances, in a way, which in finance would be like something that can help or dissolve obligations. 
2. Liquidity comes from Liquid which means something fluid that has a property of flowing easily, which in finance would be something that can easily be liquid like. 

Elaborating more and relating to Greece situation this would mean that the Government’s balance sheet had more of liabilities than assets and it was in a situation where the interest to be paid on loans was higher than receivables for the government. That made it insolvent. Government could have still converted most of its liquid assets into cash (which is liquidity) but that would not have solved the problem either. 

Thoughts after The Great Indian Butterfly

I just completed watching movie The Great Indian Butterfly. Well, if you leave all the name calling in this movie aside, this movie has wonderful message of finding the happiness within oneself. One of the characters in this movie says we have a habit of turning away the peace when it knocks our door saying we are looking for peace. So true and relevant ! The protagonists in this movie are characters just like you and me probably, ones who are so busy and engrossed in their professional lives and successes that they hardly have any time for each other or for themselves.  


Well, as I saw the movie, thoughts ran in my mind of how I have been living so far, whether I truly enjoy what I do now, have I truly enjoyed what I have done so far, whether am I more proud of personal stuff or my professional stuff, where does it take me from here to and many others. 


And, I remember watching a not very similar but a related movie, 'Dasvidaniya', while I was at XL which talked of defining 10 things that you would want to do before you die. The main character played by Vinay Pathak had a moron life until he discovered that he was to die and after which he set out to accomplish each one of his ambitions. Well, I cannot say that I have accomplished all 10 of my ambitions in life but yes, I did achieve one of doing a Masters in Business ! :-).. So at least, I am not gonna die disheartened ! 

Changing the flavor of the blog

To my regular readers,


I am gonna change the flavor of the blog a little. I realized that  probably I  had more to share with my friends about what I am doing and what I feel rather than having just a kind of 'academic' blog.  So while all my financial and social media blogs would continue, I would tend to write on more topics, somewhat more general in nature. If you don't like that, do let me know.


- Amrit