Chai Stop
You might think I am talking about a “Starbucks Type” joint. There are indeed places like that – Coffee Day for example. But what I am going to tell you about beats that any day I feel. A large majority of the Indian population doesnt really think of going to places like Starbucks or Coffee Day. Its simply too expensive. These are your average Joe folks who start early in the morning, take the bus, get to their work a couple of hours later. They leave work late and you can find them at 7 pm, 8pm 9pm at bus stops waiting patiently for the bus to take them home for a quick dinner and a few hours of sleep before the maddening rush of the next day.
Near on such bus stop at a corner where an opening connects the highway to the feeder side road stood a man with 2 or 3 flasks of tea. He stood right at that point where pedestrians walk, where scooterists have to slow down and turn to get off the highway. Thats also the place were people have to slow down to get onto the highway and it is on the way to the bus stop (probably 10 – 15 yards away from the bus stop). His Chai is a welcome break, an almost unnoticed refreshment in the dust and sweat filled commute of the people who stop by. Unnoticed but almost addictive in the comfort it provides. His teenage son periodically comes back with filled flasks and takes back the empty ones.
At Rs 10 per cup (half the size of what you’d get in Coffee day and a third in price) its almost irresistable. Its Chai after all. In the minds of those buying it how different would it get between Coffee day and this guy’s flask? Even with an estimation of every 10th person passing by him and a total of 200 – 300 people a day, he makes an estimated Rs 2000 – 3000 a day. Even very conservatively a sum of 1000 results in a tax free earning of 24,000 a month and a whopping range of (Rs 2,88,000 – Rs. 8,64,000). My sister’s driver makes Rs 8000 a month. So to make as much as him this “chai in a flask” person only needs 34 customers a day at Rs. 10 per cup. Comparing this to Coffee day … from one customer Coffee day makes Rs 30 (including taxes). This guy makes Rs 20 – 30 on the same amount of chai TAX FREE (depending on the coffee day cup volume vs this chai wallah’s cup volume) on the same volume of chai sold. And he is at a busy intersection.

Kalmane Coffee

A spectacular way in which you can take a mispronounced word and turn it into a product brand. So imagine a very poor street vendor who doesnt know how to properly pronounce coffee and instead says “Kaapi”. Imagine this happening all over a country with a billion people.  Kaapi – a word known to everyone, amusing, maybe frowned upon yet recognization and something that evokes that comforting feeling of that simplicity of life and the warm fresh aroma of coffee. Now take this word and name all your coffee offerings with Kaapi. And you have Kalmane Coffee.

Though unfortunately I couldnt sample their coffees because their coffee shop at the Phoenix mall in Bangalore didnt have any of the 5 or 6 options I chose on their menu.

Vitamin Bedsheets

An aunt of mine went to buy a bedsheet for her son in Austin, to send along with me. The salesman showed her a special bedsheet, so he said. He announced it as a vitamin bedsheet. Wrap yourself in it and you’ll have vitamins go into your body. No need to take any pills. Seeing through his gimmick she asked, what about when its put in a clothes washer. He said “This is special ma’am. It wont lose its vitamin content”. I bet any less educated or less knowledgeable of the ways of the world, maybe she’d have been impressed and would’ve bought it. I say this as I hazard a guess that it obviously it worked on a lot of others or else he wouldnt be using this approach to make the sale.

Ice Gola/Gus Gola

While I growing outside the school or at the bus stop there’d this guy who had a wooden box on the wheels and serving ice during summer on a stick and he’d pour a syrup on it to make it sweet. It probably cost 5 paise or 10 paise. (100 paise = 1 rupee and to give a perspective today 50 rupees approximately is the exchange rate with a dollar. At that time it was probably 30 rupees.)

During this trip I found how simple marketing can make this into a dramatically profitable business. Starting a company/service called Gus Gola someone created a brand and recruited people to work as servers and setup nice looking colorful stalls. The workers have attractively designed uniforms and the mobile stall itself looks very clean and  tastefully done. There are now about 30 different syrups and a sign clearly stating that the ice is made from mineral water. The guy making the gola wears gloves. But all this is on a street corner so I am not sure if it really matters. But the marketing definitely does the trick. The procedure is still the same, the product is still the same and the place still the same. All that has changed is the packaging.

What this has done is that its brought this product out from the perception that its a poor man’s delicacy. The price is higher hence its worthy of the middle class consumption. The mineral water reassures the middle class mothers that the gola is safe for their children and the cool ads and colors makes it appear that its worth spending the $30 on it.

One such company came up and succeeded. 10 other guys started similar companies and named their products similarly.

Want to sell ice? All you have to do is make it sweet and market it.

Tata Nano

A couple of years ago Tata introduced the “cheapest car in the world” – the Tata Nano. However due to mechanical and other engine problems its reputation took a hit. The company worked hard to fix many of these and price rose from approximately $2.5 K to slightly above $3000. Still despite all the hype the actual sales didnt exceed 50% of the targets. Asking around a bit I realized that the car was marketed as the poor man’s car. Even poor men do not want to be labelled poor men and definitely dont want to be associated with the poor man’s car. Consequently the poor men preferred buying more expensive cars at second hand or just brand new more expensive cars. Here is an example of where a marketing campaign actually ended up hurting the product sales that it was supposed to help increase. .

I have heard of Mendelssohn but I dont quite recall hearing his music. Maybe I did but I didnt know. But tonight’s concert was completely out of this world. Mendelssohn, the son of a banker and the grandson of a philosopher was a prodigy along with his elder sister and actually wrote many compositions very early in his age starting at about 13. He was considered as much as Mozart the difference being that Mendelssohn’s music having during certain times not been so popular as other times. Mendelssohn was also a great conductor who pretty much brought back the music of Sebastian Bach and reintroduced it to the world (it had almost been forgotten) 75 years after Bach’s death. He is very well known for The Hebrides Overture.

Tonight they played The Hebrides Overture, the Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor and the Symphony No. 3 in A minor. I read about the Hebrides Overture and it was very nice but what I heard next was simply mesmerizing. The Piano Concerto (the Pianist was Alessio Bax)  was a beautiful piece starting off with a vibrancy and energy and then moving into a soulful and very peaceful middle which made me feel like I was in heaven and coming back with a gusto to the third piece that simply lifted me into a state of excitement. At times it was even playful and made me smile. I am not qualified to critique Mr. Bax but I thought he was simply wonderful on the piano. Sitting almost at the edge of the stool and making me think a couple of times that it would topple he delivered a masterpiece of a performance.

If I thought this was the best and as they pulled the piano off the stage I prepared myself for another piece of nice music which maynot be as enthralling as this one that just ended. But the last piece … the Symphony No. 3 was something else. It had one of the most melodious parts which were so beautiful. These then blended into a vibrant music that made me want to just jump out of my seat or tap my feet. I had to hold myself still for the sake of my fellow concert goers.

The Conductor Jaap Van Zweden did a fantastic job bringing this together. In some ways I felt history was made today. Not only did the Pianist Alessio Bax receive standing ovation and was called back out twice to take a bow, but at the end of the entire concert even Mr. Zweden received that honor. In the past 6 years of going to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra I dont recall ever seeing this.

So what is the Fibonacci sequence? It is a sequence of numbers that begins with 1 and 1 where each number is a sum of the previous two.

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55…..

as you get higher and higher in this sequence when you take a number and divide it by its predecessor (or its successor) you will approach what is known as the golden ratio … i.e 1:1.618 or 0.618:1. Why is this called a golden ratio? Because this ratio is found in many of the pleasing and aesthetic things in the nature, mathematics and art. For example the shape of a conch shell … the way it spirals outward or in the pentagram or the golden triangle, in flowers such as the Yellow Chamomile etc.

I was searching for Leonardo Fibonacci’s name on Google and I found this information in the Wikipedia pages. You can more information on this there.

Before Fibonacci, the sequence was discussed and presented a 50 years prior by Acharya Hemachandra and even before him by another mathematician by the name Gopala but I havent been able to find more information on him yet.

Try this … draw two adjoining squares… each say having 1 cm in length of the edge. Adjoining these with edges of both squares forming half of its side draw another square thats 2 cm in length. Then adjoining to the 2cm and 1 cm square draw another of 3 cm in length and continue this process. Then from each square draw an arc that connects the opposite corners and with a raidus equal to the length of the edge and continue on from one square to another. Does this shape look familiar? If my explanation is not clear enough check out this picture of the same …http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FibonacciBlocks.svg.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-andhrapradesh/article2445891.ece

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. – Robert Frost

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army  -Edward Everett

The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn. – Alvin Toffler