Banks going forward + Links to previous article

An article on how mobile banking is playing an important role in getting more financial inclusion for the people has appeared in HBR. See - Do We Really Need Banks? This article talks about the m-Pesa concept which I had blogged a while ago. See this - m-banking for the BOP.

Reliance in Shale Gas - Acquires US Co. for 1.3 bn USD

I had blogged a while ago on the Shale gas technology and how is it gonna be the future of oil industry. (see Shale Gas Technology ). The announcement from Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) for buying of 45% share in Pioneer Natural Resources, a company involved in shale extraction, for $ 1.3 billion gives some credence to that. This comes close on heels of similar acquisition by RIL for $ 1.7 billion in the another US company's shale-gas assets in Pennsylvania.

The reason for sudden interest for RIL in such technology is probably because India supposedly has lot of shale assets and as this technology matures (the cost of extraction gets cheaper), a petrochemical company like RIL would be best suited to exploit the situation.

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 ! :-)