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Wednesday 27 July 2016

Urban Forest : Serenity of Forest Within Luxury of City

Each one of us loves nature and wants to be close to it as much as possible. Ask anyone whether they love nature, the greenery and the peace and fresh air around that greenery and almost all would say a big YES. In an ideal world all of this would have been possible easily but in fast growing societies where greenery is getting sacrificed for development, it is getting really tough to maintain such natural environment in our neighborhood. We have to travel hundreds of Kilometers from our cities to see the forest and enjoy its green cover. The natural environment that should be with us every single day has now become a far distance reality and we see it once in week or once in a month when we go out of our cities for trips.

Urban Forest, a project from Alembic Real Estate Developers is one unique residential apartment project that is planned in a way to bring Forest and nature to your neighborhood. It is being developed to give both, comfort of a nice home and the serenity of forest. The importance of living around greenery and forest has clearly been top priority of Urban Forest Project development group and they are working hard to make sure that it is not just for a showpiece. I was invited by Alembic real estate as part of their event and the Model view of Urban Forest project which I got to see there showcased the clear idea behind the project. I don’t know which other project from any other builder in Bengaluru has so much focus on providing complete green cover around apartments. I even got chance to see a model apartment and outside view from rooms looked scenic and soothing to eye.   

Urban Forest Residential Project Model  
There are many unmatchable advantages of staying in apartments that has such surroundings like the Urban Forest:
  • It makes you more immune from all sort of pollution of city which in turn helps you in being physically and mentally healthy. 
  • It has been scientifically stated that greenery reduce negative energy from its surrounding and it helps in person becoming calmer.
  • It can help in creating great bonding among neighbors especially among kids as kids love to play in such environment.
  • One won’t need to travel every week or month away from cities to see the greenery and enjoy its beauty, all one need to do is step out of home and enjoy the nature.
  • It makes you more aware about nature and its benefit, you start loving it more and then end up in trying to protect it as much as possible not only in your neighborhood but also in other parts of city. It makes the kids aware about value of greenery and helps them in becoming a responsible citizen in future.
The Inside view 
The picnic was organized by Alembic real estate team for its existing clients and potential clients at its Urban Forest project location in Whitefield. The event was not only to showcase the project with a model 3 BHK apartment but also to make people aware about what being close to nature and forest can bring to their life. The event had many activities for kids and even some for their parents. Activities like Pottery, crafting, creative sandwich making, all at a place that had trees, green grass and spacious ground which is becoming very rare to find in a city like Bengaluru.

The Fun place for all activities
The kids were given different tasks from Pottery to dance to sandwich making and they were all thrilled to get involved in all of those. They danced, they sang, they mimicked and all this made the event as refreshing as the surroundings at Urban Forest project location. The happiness on face of kids while doing activities and calmness and relaxed expression on face of parents was enough to make us believe that how much they value a calm and green environment.


The creative Sandwich making contest was one of the best activity which didn't just involve kids but also their parents. They got few mins to make a sandwich with as much creativity as they can and finally 4 winners were given prizes by Alembic Real Estate team.


The event had some really yummy Barbeque lunch for all of us and it was a different feeling of bliss to eat super tasty Barbeque lunch in an open green field surrounded with big trees.


 
The event was about to end but before that we got to to know that they have organized a musical event while we were enjoying our lunch and it turned out to be a Guitarist playing some melodious tunes for us. Those tunes and songs made the event extra special in which everyone who loved singing got chance to participate and Emcee of the event kept kids engaged till the last moment.    




The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness - John Muir

You can find all details about Urban Forest project and Alembic real estate at http://www.alembicrealestate.com and also can connect with them on Facebook and Twitter

Saturday 23 July 2016

Patience and Common sense : Must for Non-experts in Stock Market

[Disclaimer] : I am no expert in market, neither in technical nor in fundamentals so I am not going to give any tips or for that matter you don’t have to blindly believe what I am sharing here. All of this is my experience and mistakes I made in last 1-2 years of me actively being engaged in equity market.

If you are neither a fundamental expert nor a technical expert like me, you can still make some good returns in share market and all you need for this is Patience and Common Sense. There are always lots of opportunities and all you need is to grab very few of those and hold on and on for long time until you feel that all juice of the particular stock or sector as whole has been sucked up. For this you no need to be an expert as there are multiple credible sources like Mutual Fund owners, Credit rating agencies and individual experienced experts from where you can update yourself regularly and to be more confident try to understand the balance sheet and quarterly results of companies and what are future prospect of that sector and that specific company whose stock you own.


There are certain things I learned and experienced in last 1-2 years and I am sure it must be common to many of people who are regularly involved in equity market. Let me share few of those:

1. Do not invest money in market that you are definitely going to need in may be next less than 1-2 year. It simply means try to avoid short term investment as much as possible in market. If you are going to need that money in next less than 1 year then surely that is not long term. I had put lot of money when nifty was around 8500-8600 during mid of 2015, it went upto 9000 and then the great crash happed when market felt down to 6900. It resulted in my portfolio going down by almost 18-20% with around 4 lakh of investment. As I needed that money by start of 2016, I had to book losses despite knowing that markets would recover surely. Only if I didn’t need that money in less than 1 year of investment I would have made some handsome profit by now. 

I had many stocks at less than 20-30% of current market price. For example L&T at 1250 , SBI at 180, Axis at 390, Pidilite at 580 ,SREI Infra at 45.Tata Motor DVR at 230, Yes Bank at 700 and many many more. I sold main portion of all these by booking losses or minimal profits only as I needed that money.   

2. Do not just sell off after making some gains. This was second lesson for me and it comes from being not experienced in this field I guess. Once we get 8-9% gain we start assuming that it is much better than return on fixed deposit and try to book the profit and then ultimately see the stock going up and up every single week. In investment terms it’s called “being Greedy”. I did it many times myself and probably still doing it :). I guess we mature on these things as time goes by and especially when we have a specific goal set related to your financial future. One solution I can think of is may be to have 2 different accounts, one for long term investment and one for short terms or for trading. It might be bit costly but can work out well. 

Well these are just few and I am sure many more experiences are yet to come, hopefully of cracking some jackpots aka as Multi-Baggers :)

Wednesday 13 July 2016

The Social Media Week Bangalore 2016

Social Media is new and old both at same time when it comes to how people perceive it and at the same time how they use it. Many people who have got mastery on it in last few years when it has still been evolving find it easy to deal with and others who failed to gauge its worth find it really tough. Social media has given voice, power and sense of ownership to people who use it passionately day in and day out. It has been used successfully in social issues, political issues, cultural issues and many other areas of our lives and has made a great impact on how things are looked at.


Social media week is collaboration of all such groups and individuals who have used or using Social media platforms magnificently to make a change either for themselves and their organization or to the society as whole. The Social Media week Bengaluru organized and hosted by R Square Consulting that took place on 9th and 10th of June at Leela Palace had people from all walks of life who use Social media platforms to make an impact. The event had who’s who of marketing industry like Prahlad Kakkar, Twitter made celebrity Ramesh Srivats, well known cricket journalist Prem Panicker and also had people representing social media based groups/campaigns like #SaveWhitefield and Menstrupedia. It had speakers who are working on Artificial intelligence related to social media to speaker like Sandy Carter who works with Startups for IBM, people who know all details related to various social media platforms like Snapchat and Twitter and also person like Film Director Pawan Kumar who has used Social Media brilliantly to promote his movies like Lucia and U-Turn.


I am sharing some of the details about the sessions I attended during these two days of Social media week Bengaluru.

Building brand through Story telling:

The event started with well acclaimed ad Guru Prahlad Kakkar’s session on how the brands should ditch their love of PPTs if they want to create a positive and everlasting impression. PPTs have never been engaging with audience, the audience love the brand they can relate the most with and there is no better way to relate than having a brand story with human touch. He cited example of a very old ad of a Chocolate that used Cricket and its celebration to make people love that Chocolate brand.  As per him Brands should look to Indianised if they want to succeed here and same applies on startups as well. When it came to use of technology and social media in brand building, his clear message was “Do not let technology steal the real value or content.” To break it in simple way use the technology for sure but don’t marry it, give it just enough attention that works for you. His session left many people in crowd awestruck and I am sure they all went left that room with some clear understanding of building a brand from scratch.

The Maveric Prahlad Kakkar
#SaveWhitefield :

The #SaveWhitefield campaign started with some individual who like many Bengalurueans were pissed off with bad roads, bad traffic and bad system. They created online campaign and propagated it through Social media platforms. It didn’t become successful in one go but it surely attracted some eye balls and slowly and gradually because of perseverance of team and with efficient use of Twitter and Facebook it came in lime light and became a huge mass moment forcing administration to do things which they had turned blind eye upon so far.
Now this campign is surely blend of both offline and online campaign but I don’t think it would have been this much successful if it was nor for social media and its wonderful use by SaveWhitefield team.

You can find all details about this campaign at http://savewhitefield.com 

Nitya Ramakrishnan And Utkarsh Singh

Menstrupedia - Breaking Social Taboo : 

Menstrupedia started by Aditi Gupta is to fight with stigma that has been attached with periods, a normal physical process that females have to go through. This stigma doesn’t only prevail in rural areas but also in many urban areas. Aditi Gupta who herself had to go through all this societal embarrassment decided to make people aware about all this through various offline and online campaigns. She along with her team had done campaigns with various schools, colleges and other groups to make people aware that periods are natural just like any other normal body process and there is nothing to be embarrassed about. Mestrupedia team have launched online and offline comic book to explain more about it so that it can easily be understood by people.

You can find all details about this campaign at http://www.menstrupedia.com  

Host Pallavi And Aditi Gupta
There were around 20 sessions covering all aspects of social media ranging from pure technical aspects to pure fun aspects supported by various case studies and I will be sharing details about some of those awesome sessions in upcoming posts very soon. 




- Event pictures Credit to SWMi Bangalore Facebook Page. 

Sunday 10 July 2016

Raising Children in the healthiest way possible

For any parent their kids are the most precious person on earth and they do everything possible to make them the happiest kid in the world. Parents take care of all the necessities required to raise their children, many times trying things which are beyond their capacity. Despite all this many times kids found lacking something or other which in many cases can hamper their growth in future. These deficiencies can result in child being physically and psychologically weak or not up to the expected level.

For any parent it is the worst nightmare to see their kid not growing properly. A physically weak kid can fail in many fronts in life which are clearly visible to us in daily life. If kid is not healthy physically, he will never be successful in any other thing. Weakness can kill the best talent in any kid. It can stop kids from trying new things in life which could have made them better and also it will pull down kids confidence to lowest level, hence it is utmost important for kids to grow healthy physically and it is the most important duty of parents to take care of this need of their kids. Many surveys has been done in India in recent times that had thrown startling facts about level of physical unhealthiness in Indian kids of age 6 to 14. One of the point in survey (IMRB) was that around 30% of children in India miss school for more than 5 days in a month due to illness. If child is physically weak then he or she is the most prone to being ill in any circumstance. This one point is more than enough to tell us why it is most important to make your kid grow healthy physically.

Now sometimes we see kids who look really healthy physically but are actually weak from inside. This happens due to lack of some essential micro nutrients and vitamins which are not easy to consume as those are not available in food we eat regularly, but these needs can easily be fulfilled by feeding kids with health products like Horlicks Growth + . As per me a psychologically weak kid can succumb to pressure quicker than a physically weak kid because the support provided to physically weak kid by their parents will be more in such cases , for a simple reason the physical weakness is visible to naked eyes but psychological weakness is not. It is must for any kid to be mentally strong keeping in the mind the tough competition he or she has to go through both in school and outside in neighborhood and it is primary duty of parent to make their kid healthy mentally too.




To conclude it,I just want to emphasize on point that all parts of our body play important and essential role in functioning of our body and if any of those parts is not grown up properly it badly affects the other parts even though those are healthy. For any building to be strong its base has to be rock solid and in same way to for any kid to be strong in future he has to be grown up healthy both physically and mentally.

One can access some really useful information related to kids growth at https://growthplus.horlicks.in .

Quantum Hi Tech launches wood sound: QHM 630 Mini USB Speaker

This is press release for Mini USB Speaker launch by Quantum Hi Tech.

Extending its line up of Speakers, QHMPL, India’s leading frontrunner in consumer electronics & high-quality IT peripherals, under the brand ‘Quantum Hi-Tech’ with its unfailing commitment to highest standards of quality at most affordable prices,launches its latest Wood sound QHM 630 Mini USB Speaker,a compact sized speaker system with a wooden cabinet that produces rich bass effect with a perfect combination of vocal clarity.

Aesthetics being a big part of Quantum products, QHM 630 induces a sense of joy upon every glance. Featuring a modern, glossy finish the speaker sports the padded feet for a scratch-free surface, bringing a unified appeal at your home or office. 

Key Features:
  •  Wood Sound
  •  Mini USB Speaker
  •  Rich bass effect
  •  Compatible with almost all devices
  •  Price at Rs 599/-
  •  Available in Black, Red, Magenta and Cream Colour

Even with a small package design, QHM 630 produces amazing sound quality with its wooden housing and transforms the computer into superb hi-fi stereo sound system. The USB powered system with massive RMS power, features acoustic air spring technology, to produce crystal clear audio. It delivers clear vibrant sound and deep bass reverberation that ensures the bass, highs and mids are reproduced incredibly.

One can use it just about anywhere with the notebook or PC, Simple to set up and control, these speakers make it easy to enjoy the music, movies and games. Just insert the USB plug to a PC/notebook for power and the 3.5mm audio plug into the music playback device device.The dual plug and play speaker QHM630 is available for the introductory price of Rs. 599/- in Black, Red, Magenta and cream color. 

About Quantum:

Established in the year 2002, Headquartered at New Delhi, Quantum Hi-Tech today is the frontrunner in consumer electronics, security solutions & high-quality IT peripherals, under the brand ‘Quantum Hi-Tech QHMPL’ with its unfailing commitment to highest standards of quality at most affordable prices. The company has state of the art centre for Research and Development in India focused on quality innovation with latest global standards. In short span of time Quantum has proven to be one of the most sought after brands in terms of ‘quality’ as well as ‘affordability’.

A pioneer in Technology, Quantum has a pan India presence through its wide network comprising of 200 distributors, 20,000-plus resellers and 25 service touch points which coexist as the strongest pillars that strengthen Quantum Hi-Tech’s foothold as a player.