Category: Kharcha paani

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Kharcha paani

Start ups: Plan small, reap big

Start ups should not be too ambitious in scope, despite regular funding. Keep your goal large but your scope small.
by Reyna Mathur

Jignesh Parikh runs a web solutions company in Mumbai with his college friend and partner, Ketan Joshi. The duo currently caters to about 20 national clients, and is in talks to increase their office space and staff strength this fiscal. “We have been in business for 10 years now, and it is this year that we are going to increase our office size for the first time. Till now we have been operating from a 10×20 space, which has a low rent and maintenance costs. We have been fortunate to receive so much business despite only five staff members for so long,” Jignesh says.

Despite the modest nature of their office, their business is experiencing a turnover of Rs 6 crore for the last two years. “We realised early on that we were in the digital business, which does not require a posh office. It requires a robust computer and Internet setup, so we invested our initial money in them.” Low overheads and only a minimal staff – all of them web developers, two of them freelance staffers – ensured that of the hefty profits made, only a small portion went towards payments every month. Eventually, the duo has now made enough money to move into a bigger office and hire two more full-time staff.

It is quite easy to run your own start-up provided you are clear in your mind about not wasting your resources for any reason, and are prepared to not even have the money to afford the rent on an office in the initial period. If you get a few basics right and change your approach, you can start small but have big returns on your initial investment.

You are there to do business, not to impress others. No business person in the world, unless backed by a strong funding model, has the means to have a huge staff and a posh office on ownership basis. When you start your enterprise, realise that you are starting it to realise a personal goal, and not to impress people with how big and well-equipped your office is. Many start-ups insist on putting in all their money to keep up appearances, which ultimately leads to huge losses (especially if the expected turnover doesn’t happen). For example, if you have just opened a café, don’t invest in too much imported equipment and staff. As more and more customers begin to trickle in, you can look at investing more money.

Don’t take an office if you don’t need one. Some businesses, especially freelance ones, don’t need an office set up at all. If your work requires you to travel often and take in business via meetings, you might not need a permanent office but a space to keep your computers, phones, printers etc. For a few days, try operating from your home or take up a storage space for rent. In case you need to conduct meetings, you can call them to a café. The overheads you save will help you invest in an office in the future.

Use communal office spaces. Many cities in the country are now offering start-ups and new businesses the use of ‘communal working spaces’, where a lot of entrepreneurs converge at one spot to carry out their daily work and even conduct meetings with clients. The working spaces offer a fixed spot with a computer and Internet connection for a month or longer, depending on the payment plan you select, apart from free use of the facility’s conference rooms and tea/coffee dispensers. Certain places also offer a courier service for your packages at a separate charge. At a monthly rental of not more than Rs 2,000, you get a complete office set up without any overheads.

Replicate, replicate. It is a good idea to maintain a team of experienced freelancers to do all the tasks that a full time staff can do. You will save the money you would spend on their salaries, plus they will each have their own set-up for completing the tasks. You might only have to pay for transporting certain paperwork and equipment, based on your businesses, to and from the freelancers’ postal address. If your work entails the same set of tasks to be done repeatedly (like editing technical papers), pay five freelancers to do it. The work will be replicated five times over at lower costs to you.

(Picture courtesy knowstartup.com. Image is used for representational purpose only)

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Kharcha paani

How to make money as a self-employed person

Don’t let the pressures of being in business for yourself bog you down. Strategise carefully to manage your business finances.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Nobody expects business to be an easy affair to handle, but some people make a difficult task impossible by reckless and foolish behaviour. You can’t predict when your next big contract will be signed or when you can announce that you are breaking even, but with the help of cautious spending and common sense habits, self-employed persons can make sufficient money out of their work to lead quite comfortable lives.

Make a list of all expenses. Since your business is going to pay for your household expenses, you need to have a clear idea of what your home expenses are every month, and the times they are likely to increase (like in the case of a family wedding coming up in a few months, or fees for a new course for your child). Once this list is made, preferably with a month-by-month projection, you will be in a better position to devote a minimum percentage of your income to the home. Keep this sum of money fixed till such time inflation or necessary expenses necessitate reallocating more money.

Minimise overheads and expenses. If you are finding the going tough on the business front, causing stress at home, you might consider scaling down your operations, at least for a little while. If you can make do with three full-time staff instead of five, relieve the extra staff and save on their salary. You might even cut down your own salary for a while. Also, make sure that there are no wasteful expenses taking place in the office – air conditioners being left on when nobody is there, printouts being taken repeatedly when only once will suffice, employees leaving computers on even after they leave office, etc. All of these unnecessary expenses can be easily done away with by careful monitoring.

Accept that there will not be fixed income. Being a self-employed professional, whether on a freelance or a business basis, means that your income will be different every month. Some months will be a financial windfall, while others will be very lean. For the times when money is low, anticipate the reduction in business much before you hit a troublesome patch, and set aside funds to help you keep the office running even when there is no business. Business or not, you still have to shell out money for salaries, overhead, water and electricity, etc. so be on the guard before trouble actually comes knocking.

Never make the home finance the business. A mistake that most businesses in the red make is to use up all their assets to keep the office running. They forget why they went into business in the first place – to give a comfortable life to themselves and their families. Hence, the ideal business model is one in which the money flow is one way: from office to home, and never the reverse. People make the mistake of selling off personal assets like jewellery or mortgaging their homes to raise money. Still others take heavy loans against property and insurance policies, hoping to replace all the sold or borrowed assets when money comes later. Your office and home and two separate entities, so you cannot use your home to fund your office.

Invest wisely. You will need to secure your and your family’s life by timely investment in suitable insurance policies, equity bonds, mutual funds, etc. However, don’t opt for the first savings instrument you come across. Take professional help in planning for your family and your business. Your accountant will tell you how much income you will lose by way of paying taxes based on a projection of your business, so make sure you set aside this sum months in advance. Also, your spending should be the same, irrespective of how much money your business gives you. Never be tempted to splurge recklessly when you have surplus funds on hand.

(Picture courtesy www.wordlypost.in. Image is used for representational purpose only)

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Kharcha paani

5 reasons to shop online

With a credit card and access to the right websites, online shopping is the smartest way to save time, effort.
by Dipen Tewari

What would you rather do – make your tired way to the shopping mall to pick out a dress by a reputed brand, or save time and pick the same dress online? As our spending power increases and more and more people get connected to e-commerce, shopping online for a variety of products is becoming the norm, rather than an exception.

Earlier, people were cautious about sharing their credit or debit card information on the Internet. However, with sites enhancing their payment gateway security, shoppers slowly started buying such items as books, perfumes and movies online. Slowly, as sites started offering photographic views of such categories like clothes, shoes and bags, people ventured into buying even these items online. Now we have reached a stage where shoppers are buying expensive diamond jewellery, home appliances, and even furniture online.

If you’re still one of those people who are not shopping online, here’s why you need to check out this option:

Save time. Let’s face it, most of us really don’t have the time to trudge to the nearest mall or department store to check out the sale for a brand that’s been advertising in the papers. We can’t say when we will be done with work, and after facing the long day in the office, how many of us are really in the mood to shop? Instead of checking out products in a physical store, we can save a lot of time by checking out the same merchandise online, comparing the best prices and placing our orders. It’s often that simple, and you save yourself a lot of precious time.

Save the effort. Bibliophiles buy books by the dozen at times, and after browsing for the correct titles and buying the books, they have to cart the heavy purchases home by themselves. Or, there may be people who are scouting for an attractive dining table and who are haggling with the store owner over the transportation costs of their new furniture. Both these categories of shoppers can benefit from shopping online. Not only do many e-commerce portals offer different views of such product categories as clothes, shoes, bags, furniture, even crockery and household utensil sets, they also ship the merchandise to your doorstep for free. It’s really not worth the effort to go to the shops to buy what is so easily available for sale on the Internet.

Save money. Shopping sites like Flipkart have regular discount days every week, if not finite sale periods where customers get very heavy discounts on products. By merely sitting at your workstation or scrolling on your mobile, you can shop on the go for a wide range of needs, compare your spends and make the best purchases. Most reputed portals these days also have tie-ups with banks for cash back offers on selected categories and brands, or on all purchases. Ultimately, you end up saving quite a lot of money with no extra associated costs of travel borne by you.

Change what you don’t like sitting at home. Most e-commerce sites in India offer a ’30-day return’ option for purchases, even for such items as clothing and bags that you may have used during this time. As long as the product is not being returned to the company in a mangled condition, it is taken back with either a full or partial refund (depending on company policy on returns, condition of the product and reasons for returning). This normally happens with categories such as shoes and clothes, where people can mistakenly pick the wrong size or colour; however, jewellery companies such as Caratlane also take back sold merchandise. The best part is, just as the product is delivered to your doorstep, so is it picked up from your home, thus making the entire process convenient for you.

The entire shopping universe at one go. Sure, a mall offers you the widest possible range of products in one spot, but no mall in the world can stock all the brands and services that you require. This is where online shopping portals do the trick – on one gadget, you can access every possible product category, the corresponding brand selling the product, the price range for it and the delivery system. What’s more, these days there are sites that even compare the prices and products across a spectrum of other e-commerce sites, so the shopper is not confused by the wide array of options.

(Picture courtesy www.kgns.tv. Image is used for representational purpose only)

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Trends

Low women’s education leads to early marriages?

A fact finding report reveals links between the level of women’s education in India and their subsequent status in life.
by Child Relief and You (CRY)

In India, all issues related to girl children ranging from female infanticide, domestic child labour to prevention of girl child trafficking are all enormously challenging tasks requiring sustained efforts on part of all duty bearers. Like all other rights viz Right to Nutrition, Development, Protection and Participation, a girl’s Right to Education continues to remain a critical and seemingly insurmountable challenge.

Last few years have seen a significant improvement in school enrollment at primary education, however, the same is not the case with secondary and higher secondary level. The Net Enrollment, which is a measure of the percentage of girls who attend school age-appropriately, is 89% at the primary level, and it drops to a meager 32% in higher secondary education (Source: Unified-District Information System on Education (U-DISE) 2014-15).

The link between low education and early marriage

Today India is leading in the total number of child brides globally. There is abundant documented evidence linking lack of education to early marriage, particularly for girls. There are also available studies showing the link between low education level of mothers and the early marriage of their daughters. NFHS-3 (2005-06) revealed that more than 85% of the surveyed girls who were married before the age of 18 had mothers who had received less than 10 years or no education.

We also have a high number of girls working as domestic workers and those who constantly face issues of protection. At a micro level the work demands convincing parents of the girl child to continue her schooling; changing attitude and practices of communities and closely tracking that no girl child drops from school. The need of the hour is to invest adequately in secondary and higher secondary education for this segment of population, so that our girls stay away from these multiple vulnerabilities.

The figures on the ground

The RTE Act (2009) covers children between the ages of 6 to 14 years, and enables free and compulsory education at the primary and upper primary levels. However, in absence of any legislation for children above the age of 14 years the scenario at the secondary and higher secondary level unfortunately remains dismal. The average annual dropout rate for girls rises from 4.14% at primary level to 17.8% at secondary level (Source: U-DISE 2013-14). Access to education post the elementary level continues to be a huge challenge, considering only 15.4% of schools in India offer secondary education and further still only about 7% of the schools offer higher secondary education.

Year % of Privately Owned Secondary Schools % of Privately owned Higher Secondary Schools
2010-11 54.8%
2011-12 Data not available
2012-13 52.38 54.04
2013-14 54.76 55.57
2014-15 55.52 58.79
Table-1 showing share of privately owned[1] schools in India (U-DISE statistics)

Back in 1966, the education commission (1964-66) chaired by DS Kothari recommended that India should allocate 6% of its GDP. Later this figure was challenged and revised by many scholars but the fact still remains that India is nowhere close this figure in terms of spending on education. More than 55% of schools offering secondary and higher secondary education in the country are not State-owned which renders them unaffordable to children of low income households (Source: U-DISE 2014-15). On the other hand the share of State owned schools have not seen any significant increase over the years.

STATE % OF PRIVATE SECONDARY SCHOOLS % OF PRIVATE HIGHER SECONDARY SCHOOLS
Maharashtra 92 94.8
Uttar Pradesh 90.44 94.1
Gujarat 86.65 91.78
Karnataka 64.94 68.32
Kerala 67.92 64.72
Table -2-Top 5 states having private ownership of secondary and higher secondary schools (U-DISE 2014-15)

Only in 10 out of 36 States in the country does the Government currently have an ownership share of two thirds or more of both secondary and senior secondary schools. The issue of privately-owned schools needs further attention in States such as Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh where the percentage of private schools is more than 90% at the secondary and higher secondary level.

According to the 12th Five Year Plan (FYP), household expenditure for children going to private schools is higher (Rs. 893/- per month) than for Government schools (Rs. 275/- per month). The lack of access to secondary and higher education coupled with this challenge of affordability certainly impacts the girl child most since traditionally, families are more likely to invest in the education of the male child and girls tend to be married off early. There are over 4.6 million married children in India the age group of 15-17 years (eligible for secondary and higher secondary education), of which more than 70% (3.35 million) are girls.

Kreeanne Rabadi, Regional Director, CRY – Child Rights and You adds, “Mindsets to educate girl child are changing in India. Even in the most remote villages, many parents want to send their daughter to school. We need to drastically increase resources to meet these demands of making secondary and higher level education, affordable and easily accessible to girl child.”

(Picture courtesy www.realyouth.org. Image is used for representational purpose only)

 

Categories
Become

Budget stays with a smile

Mumbai-based start-up Vista Rooms has you covered if you’re looking for a brief and low-cost stay in India’s smaller towns.
by Ritika Bhandari Parekh

Picture this: You have a business meeting at Valsad in Gujarat. And for a one-day visit, you do not wish to spend on a luxury hotel. You wisely choose the option of a local budget stay, but the dilemma arises in picking the right hotel.

Enter Vista Rooms, a budget-friendly option for travellers who wish to experience low-cost branded accommodation. With rooms starting from Rs 800 to Rs 1,500, Vista Rooms is hoping to revolutionise the way a local Indian businessman travels.

An idea germinates

Vista Rooms founders (left to right) Amit, Ankita and Pranav

This Mumbai-based start-up was founded by three enterprising individuals – Amit Damani, Ankita Sheth and Pranav Maheshwari. Bidding goodbye to their jobs in the corporate sector, the trio plunged in the competitive budget hotels arena.

28-year old Pranav, who heads the Finance and Technological department says, “The genesis of the idea came from Amit, who travelled the small cities and rural areas of China in his previous job. Over there, he noticed how efficiently one could stay in low-cost hotels and became familiar with their standardisation process. Starting January 2015, he researched the Indian budget hotels domain and chanced upon OYO Rooms which had a similar concept.”

With a belief that the budget hotel market is huge and there is space for competitors to co-exist, they started Vista Rooms. Their third partner, Ankita was heading the acquisitions team for OYO Rooms before she quit and joined them.

With a focus on the Tier II and Tier III cities, she manages the offline sales and partnership domain at Vista. While 27-year old Amit is very active in the social domain and handles the marketing relationship with online travel agents.

No more ‘Buyers Beware’

Normally, a person making online bookings is solely responsible for selecting their hotel rooms based on the customer reviews and photos uploaded. But the team at Vista Rooms is looking forward to making this dubious ‘caveat emptor’ style obsolete. “We want our customers to be exceptionally confident that the room they book via our website will adhere to all the parameters set. So from a clean and comfortable room to a hygienic bathroom, free Wi-Fi, complimentary breakfast to a concierge service – Vista Rooms will make sure that your stay in the small towns and sleepy cities of India is perfect,” says Pranav.

He continues, “The key to this experience is standardisation. Once a hotel property has the stamp of Vista Rooms, they become a part of our brand and their visibility increases. We do not take over the hotel operations, but help them in the sales, marketing and branding of the services.” With the occupancy percentage increasing, it is a win-win situation for the partnering hotels.

The growth story

For Pranav, the most exciting part is the growth story of Vista Rooms. “We started with four properties in April 2015 and over the next four months added 450+ properties across 55 cities in India. This initial success is what helps us stay motivated.”

With a vision to be the number one player in the budget hotel scene, they wish to make online bookings and feedback as seamless as flight bookings. With an asset-light and operational-lean model, the start-up has 40 employees under its wings.

Pranav signs off saying, “We are forever scouting for new talent and would welcome a second round of funding.” So the next time, you are in Salem or Somnath – fret not. Just head to Vista Rooms and look for your smile-worthy accommodation.

For more information and booking details, please visit their website www.vistarooms.com

(Featured image courtesy www.asiatravel.com)

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Kharcha paani

Cheaper to buy space in city malls?

ASSOCHAM report finds that mall space in Mumbai and other metros has dropped by 30% rental value with lower footfalls.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Rising inflation and higher living costs have taken a toll on our favourite pastime: shopping. Tighter budgets are prompting many Indians to stay away from shopping malls. This has resulted in lower footfalls and high losses for retailers. On the other hand, if you are looking to buy shop space in a mall, now might be a good time to do it.

As per a new study published by ASSOCHAM (Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry in India), a “slowdown in consumer footfalls, coupled with online shopping that provides convenience of delivery at door steps, have led to troubles for the shopping malls which are suffering 20 to 25% vacancy rates and 30% drop in rentals in the last one year.” The study finds that this trend runs parallel to a global one, where declining footfalls in retail space in over 200 shopping malls across the US, UK and other countries has lowered commercial space rentals. In the US, the malls are facing 46% vacancy rates whereas malls in UK are impacted by 32%.

“On the other hand, the  Indian e-commerce industry appears to be unaffected by the demand slowdown and is likely to clock a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 35% and cross the $100-billion mark in value over the next five years,” the study finds, pegging the e-commerce industry in India presently at $17 billion.

Continuing on the strong growth momentum of 2015, the e-commerce industry is estimated to see a 72% increase in the average annual spending on online purchases per individual in 2016 from the current level of 65%, the study said. Online shopping mainly focusses on purchasing electronics, books, music, apparel, sporting and outdoor goods.

“It is true that the online shopping has shown handsome growth while the brick and mortar malls are witnessing slowdown. It looks that the growth in e-commerce looks impressive because of quite a low base and increasing penetration of internet,” ASSOCHAM Secretary General DS Rawat said. “The brick and mortar outlets on high streets and inside malls are trying to hold on through lower prices and deals. In India, sales in shopping malls have dipped by 25 to 30% and footfalls by 15 to 20% compared to the same period last year.”

There were around 50 operational malls in 2005, a number that rose to 610 in 2015 in top 10 cities. Additionally, with improvement in infrastructure such as logistics, broadband and Internet-ready devices, there is likely to be a significant increase in the number of consumers making purchases online, the study said. It estimates around 65 million consumers in India to buy online in 2015, as against around 40 million in 2014.

“The challenges of suburban sprawl, worsening automotive traffic, rising fuel prices and the increased difficulty of time management in modern families have made going to the mall a planned activity,” adds the paper.

Mobile technology is also having a huge impact on brick and mortar retail. Amazon recently reported that roughly 8 to 10% percent of their total sales are being generated by mobile devices, and expect this trend to continue upwards.

(Picture courtesy www.indiantravels.com. Image is used for representational purpose only)

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