Small investment to start with

Investment options chosen by an investor depends upon the risk taking aptitude, the kind of investment, the maturity period, the rate of return, etc. Depending on the level and type of investment, you get returns. If you are low risk taking, you might have thought that Fixed Deposit or Post Office savings are the only options for you. But you must be aware that even a small investment can give handsome returns when investment in a mutual fund, government bonds, Gold ETFs, etc which are slightly high risk-taking.

If you are not sure if the volatility in the market will suit your needs and give you returns, start with a small investment and keep a daily check on the movement of the investment. You will soon find out that your investment is either giving you good returns or teaching you valuable lessons relating to the market.

Remember some basics about investing. The sooner one starts investing, the better. By investing early you allow your investments more time to grow, whereby the concept of compounding increases your income, by accumulating the principal and the interest or dividend in it, year after year. Also invest regularly and for a long-term. Because over a longer period you will observe that your investments are nullifying the lows in the market and your investment grows by leaps and bounds when invested at least for 5-10 year period.

To start with a low investment, you can invest in mutual funds where you can start investing with as low an amount as Rs.500 but achieve diversification of the stocks and also your investment gets managed by Asset Management Company (AMC). Mutual funds are considered to be safe investments and give you moderate-good returns. If you are high risk taking and understand the nuances of the market, then you can buy stocks of well-performing companies and increase your return on investment. Bank Fixed Deposits and Post office savings are of low risk and you can invest as much as you can to increase your returns. Your investment profile should comprise of a wide range of investments both low and high risk mostly with opposite correlation so that you are less affected by market volatility.

Your returns on the small investment and added to that your expertise in the market condition will drive you to invest more in areas where you anticipate to get better returns. Hence a small investment today becomes a larger investment with much better experience tomorrow. This is how the fundamentals of market work. So once invested, it becomes your responsibility to see it grow.

There are brokers and consultants who are guide or misguide you on investing. So, be cautious about them and form your own judgements by gaining knowledge from experts on the TV or internet. Also whether the investment is small or big, you need to carefully understand the documents related to the investment, verify their legitimacy, assess the risk-return profile of the investment, know the liquidity aspects, seek all clarifications, and explore other options available to you. All these important points help you tread the right path of investing.

All you wanted to know about 3G

If all you were hearing from the past days were about “Spectrum”, “3G auctions”, etc and wondering if someone could explain what the sciences involved are, then here we are to give you details of all you wanted to know about 3G.

Let’s talk about what is spectrum in mobile technology. When we use our cell phones, our voices are transformed into a stream of zeroes and ones, which then travels hundreds of kilometres over radio waves and reach the person on the other end of the phone. This is referred to as the spectrum of waves. Now when 550 million Indians use the cell phone at the same time, then the radio waves jostle for space.

What is meant by 3G? This is the Third Generation of telephony services. The first generation was sending text over air waves, like on pagers. The second generation now is about sending both voice and SMS messages over the air. To perform all those things on the mobile that can be done on a laptop using internet comprises the 3G features. To do all that, the telecom operators need more radio waves than what they already have.

The radio waves are strictly controlled by the government. The microwaves in our kitchens, the TV programmes, military cantonments, etc use a different set of radio frequencies. Lot of spare frequency is left with radio waves dedicated for defense use being replaced with underground cable network. So, these unused radio waves would be bought by telecom operators to perform 3G operations.

The auction of 3G mobile license ended with RCom, Bharti, and Aircel bagging 13 circles each and which leaves the government with a Rs.67,710 crore revenue windfall. The revenue mop up will help the government cut its fiscal deficit to nearly 4.9% from 5.5% of GDP projected in the budget. No single operator could bag a pan-India license. Key circles Mumbai and Delhi went to Bharti, Vodafone, and RCom.

Just as India gets set to herald an era of 3G telecom markets, the world is bracing for the next generation 4G technology. Nearly 132 countries across the world already have 3G technologies in one form or the other.

Should India have bypassed 3G and leapfrogged to next-gen 4G?

4G mobile broadband services, also known as Long Term Evolution (LTE) are designed for services such as high-speed internet, multimedia services like TV broadcasting, high definition video conferencing, and even online gaming. Countries like US and Japan have started initiatives to move towards 4G technology.

Both the technologies are focussed on ramping up internet data usage but at a different speed. LTE’s speed is more than 3 times faster than wimax’s technology along with compatibility with older phone models. Compared to 3Mbps speed offered by 3G services, LTE can offer speeds up to 10 Mbps.

The telecom regulator TRAI has already floated the pre-consultation paper on 4G even as 3G slots are being auctioned. With the Indian markets being primarily led by voice services, the demand for premium services led by 3G could be hit until subscribers are game for higher value-added services.

Join Your Business World

In the world of rapidly changing business cycles, you need to be aware of the happenings better than ever before. The world of internet has presented to both the seller and the buyer community to come closer to each other and understand each other well. Hence came up new businesses and newer ways of interacting with each other. The power of both the sellers and the buyers has increased due to that.

E-tigers.net is an online B2b marketplace where products are listed from various categories so that customers can choose their brand, price, quantity, and quality of the product they want to buy from the comfort of their home. The products are presented in a way that it is customised to your requirements. All the parties – manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, exporters and importers, and customers - get benefited from the products.  It in turn helps economies to grow and progress.

The system in VDealX.Com updates products listed by the sellers regularly. This helps the manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, importers, and exporters to stay competitive in their respective fields and makes online selling easy. The various features of VDealX.Com help in proper web development and maintenance, integration with operational databases, making it a dynamic website, and secure customer transactions.

Registration:

The association of the manufacturers, suppliers, importers, and exporters begins with a simple and FREE registration. Sellers can list their products and manage them easily. Managing products involve uploading new products, updating the existing ones, and deleting the old products.

The simple step for registration is

Register => Confirm registration => Create company profile => Add you products

To register, go to Join VDealX

Search:

This search option in VDealX makes it easy for the users to search for their desired products of the companies listed on the website. If users know the company that has listed its products, the users can also view all the products by searching with the name of the company. The ‘Advanced Search’ option helps the users to search the products or companies by several other criteria like ‘Country’, ‘State’, ‘Product Category’, ‘City/Street’, etc.

To search, go to VDealX

Queries:

Users can post queries, view queries, and reply to the queries posted on the website. This facilitates the interaction among sellers and buyers and helps in seamless flow of information.

The critical success factors for Business Classifieds would be communication about its services to a wide variety of international audience; easy and secure features; and superior after-sales services. These are the factors that make an online marketplace successful or reduce it merely to a me-too business. Hence to entrench its place at the top among the various marketplaces, Your business zone would continue to ensure that its critical success factors are well taken care of.

Indian fashion industries, fashion designing in India, an entry for new fashion designer, next fashion event in India

A raven-haired model slinks down a catwalk, wearing a tiny orange top trimmed with gold lamé. The garment, in a style usually worn demurely under a sari, is quintessentially Indian. Less traditional are the bare expanse of taut stomach, the skin-tight hipster trousers and the six-inch stilettos. Fusions of Indian dress and edgier western styles were the most popular trend on the catwalks of Mumbai's fashion week. Only ten years after the country held its first fashion show, India's fledgling designer-fashion industry is stepping out into the international market, with silhouettes designed to appeal to the foreign buyers who are given the best front-row seats at the twice-yearly shows in both Delhi and Mumbai.

India has a rich and varied textile heritage, where each region of India has its own unique native costume and traditional attire. While traditional clothes are still worn in most of rural India, urban India is changing rapidly, with international fashion trends reflected by the young and glamorous, in the cosmopolitan metros of India. Fashion in India is a vibrant scene, a nascent industry and a colourful and glamorous world where designers and models start new trends every day.

Join Your Business world at http://ebusinesszone.net

Apart from the rich tradition, the strength of the Indian fashion industry also rests on strong raw material availability. India is the third largest producer of cotton, the second largest producer of silk and the fifth largest producer of man-made fibres in the world. India also possesses large number of skilled human resources and has among the lowest labour costs in the world.
While previously a master weaver was recognized for his skill, today a fashion designer is celebrated for his/her creativity. Young urban Indians can choose from the best of East and West as Indian fashion designers are inspired by both Indian and western styles. This fusion of fashion can be seen on the streets and ramps of the fashionable cities of India. Fashion in India is also beginning to make its mark on the international scene as accessories such as bindis, mehendi and bangles have gained international popularity, after being worn by fashion icons like the pop singers Madonna and Gwen Stephani.
Fashion in India also gets a boost with international events such as the India Fashion Week, Lakme Fashion Week and annual shows by fashion designers in the major cities of India. The victories of a number of Indian beauty queens in International events such as the Miss World and Miss Universe contests have also made Indian models recognized worldwide. Fashion designers such as Ritu Kumar, Ritu Beri, Manish Malhotra, etc are some of the well known fashion designers in India.

They are not yet spending a lot of money. India boasts only a handful of designers that sell well overseas. In the past year several, including Manish Arora, known as "the John Galliano of India", have begun to show at Paris fashion week, the most prestigious event in a global fashion calendar. But Indian designer-wear is estimated to generate just $50m-250m of sales in a market worth some $35 billion. It is India's potential as a source of future design stars that attracts the foreigners.

Although many emerging designers have their sights on the global stage, their biggest and fastest-growing market by far is at home. Some 85% of sales at Delhi fashion week were to Indian buyers, who like more traditional sub continental styles. This presents a quandary for Indian designers and their financial backers.

Fashion in India is continuously evolving as new designers from leading institutes such as the National Institutes of Fashion Technology continue to redefine the meaning of Fashion in India. With the end of quota regime on January 1, 2005 the prospects for Indian fashion industry look upbeat. India is among the largest exporters of textile garments and fabrics. The end of the quota regime heralds the prospects of exponential growth for the fashion industries of countries like India that had faced quota restrictions earlier. 

Indian fashion industry needs to take following steps to fulfil its growth potential:

• Indian fashion industry needs to create global image. There are various agencies that can assist in the brand building exercise. The Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC), other textile promotion councils, and industry associations such as Confederation of Indian Industries can market Indian fashion globally.
• Large textiles players must develop linkages with SME clusters. Such networks would be a win-win for textile players that can concentrate on demand creation and branding as well as for clusters that can focus on quality production.
• Indian fashion industry has to forge designer-corporate links as is the norm in global fashion industry.
• There is a large part of the novice designer community, possibly more talented, which remains obscure. Hence there is an urgent need to give exposure to young and budding designers.

If we are able to take the above mentioned issues to their logical conclusion then there is no reason why Indian fashion industry cannot achieve its tremendous potential.

Register and upload all your fashion products at http://ebusinesszone.net/products/Fashion/ and get an international presence at no cost!

Double-digit inflation haunting Indians

Today the biggest concern facing the country is rising prices. There is uproar in the Parliament as political parties jostle to grab as much mileage as possible from the government’s apparent failure to curb runaway inflation while aam aadmi has been worst hit by the skyrocketing prices.

Food inflation is hovering around 20 percent. Everyone is facing the brunt of the oil prices. Food prices are souring as all the essential items like vegetables, oil, milk, sugar, etc are getting costlier. Rentals and real estate rates have doubled in just a few months in most of the cities in India. All these make lives miserable, especially for people who have migrated to cities for jobs.

Inflation hits you badly as prices keep rising. You end up spending more money for things that you could buy for less earlier. As a result, your savings and purchasing power comes down. Inflation hits the working group, the unemployed, and the retired lot.

Two theories explain inflation: demand-pull and cost-push theories. According to demand-pull theory, if there is a huge demand for products in all the sectors, it results in a shortage of goods. Thus prices of commodities shoot up. In cost-push theory, the labour groups trigger inflation. When wages for labourers are increased, producers increase the price of products to compensate for the wage hike.

The inflation fell to 16.3% for the week ended March 6 on easing prices of pulses and vegetables, but fuel inflation shot up to 12.68%. As fuel prices rise, the costs of all the essential items increase. So with the fuel price hike announced in the Budget, the inflation is going to move even more steeply. The annual rate of inflation stands at a high of 9.89%.

Inflation is not rising out of nowhere. While we aim for a double-digit growth, we do not look at effects on other factors of the economy. As growth rate increases, income rises and therefore the purchasing power in the hands of people increases. In conditions of shortage of rainfall, droughts, and floods the agricultural produce lessens. Because more people with increased income chase so few goods, the inflation rises over time. As we cannot curtail growth, we need to control inflation by removing supply-side bottlenecks.

On its part, the RBI tightens the monetary control and hikes the interest rates. This leads to people saving more than consuming. This only helps to control demand and balance it with supply. In the long run, however, it is the supply that has to match the demand. Therefore large-scale measures need to be taken to improve the agricultural scenario of the country.

The government should also take measures to prevent food wastage. According to a report, almost half of the wheat stored in the Food Corporation of India’s stock is stored in the open and runs the risk of getting spoilt. Mountains of grain will be built and rot, even as people starve for food and food prices stay stubbornly up. So before fresh procurement of food grains, the stock must be emptied, released in small batches to a large number of traders at prices significantly below the market price, so that in turn the consumers benefit from lower prices. So the government must revamp the entire food management system. Private public partnerships should be encouraged to play a larger role in procurement, storage, and distribution of grain.

Hence as large number of people find it difficult to arrange for two meals a day, we need to preserve the existing produce and prevent wastage at least till the time a revolution in agriculture takes place.

Strategies of using Online Marketing for the growth of businesses

Given the role that Internet plays today, it’s hard to imagine that Internet didn’t even enter business conversation until the mid-1990s. Well, barely a decade later, the issue is no longer whether small businesses should dive into the field of online marketing, but rather, how they should plan and implement their online presence.

Most businesses equate using the internet with building a website, but even without a site you can take advantage of opportunities to use e-mail, keep an eye on your competition, and connect with networks. Once you create a website, your opportunities expand even further. Instead of walking or phoning into your business, your prospects meet you online. Design your site to make a good impression by having a clean interface, efficient service, easy-to-access information, and quick response to prospect needs. Use your site the way you’d use a toll-free number. Send e-mails and ads to your prospects, get your site ranked in search engines and put banner ads in other high traffic sites. Also use your site to sell your products to current and new customers.

How to put a tab on your competition?

Go online as if you were a customer searching for services or products like the ones you sell. Find and monitor your competitor’s sites in the same way that you watch the brick-and-mortar competitors to evaluate how they might impact your business. Go to search engine and enter combinations of words that people might use to define your offering. The results reveal how you are placed vis-a-vis your competitor. You can also sign up for electronic newsletters offered on the competitor’s site and buy their products online so as to rate your purchasing and delivery experience.

Putting your website to work

If you’re trying to reach prospects outside your current market area, if you want to enhance your customer service by offering 24-hour access for those wishing to place or track orders, if you want your customers to find the latest news about your business, then you are probably in the market for a website. To make your website work for you, you need to define how prospects and customers will use your site, define your goal for the site, commit to the cost which includes site construction, hosting, and support and last but not the least be ready to market your site.

For small businesses, online presence gives more effectiveness and drives more revenue than a brick-and-mortar office. So, it becomes all the more important to plan out a well-designed website and online marketing techniques. You can also use it for e-commerce. E-commerce sites are to be constructed with security and privacy features built-in.

Blogging

Apart from hosting a website, you can communicate about your business through blogging. It keeps the prospects updated about your business, helps to build long-term relationship, get instantaneous customer feedback, etc. Firms can use blogs to share expertise and information with colleagues, suppliers, customers, and employees.

Some Dos and Don’ts 

1. Treat your website like other marketing materials. Launch it when it is ready and not a second before.
2. Do protect ownership of your site by adding a copyright notice followed by the year at the bottom of the home page.
3. Do keep your site clear, clean, usable, and easy to navigate.
4. Avoid any spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. A website builds the first impression on the prospect about your level of professionalism and quality of content.
5. Don’t assume that customers who need personal assistance would wait till someone is available in your office. He will directly switch to your competitor.

Growing B2B advantages for the sustainability of businesses and benefits for the consumers

As more organizations understand the importance of e-business concepts, the prefix e- may eventually disappear from our vocabulary. Whether we like it or not, e-business affects every organization. It is impossible to hide from its impact or influence in the marketplace.

Beginning with the fundamentals, there are three ways that we can do business: directly with consumers, commonly known as B2C (Business to Consumers); between business operations, whether in supply chains, partnerships, or development environments, known as B2B (Business to Business); and internally inside the organization B2E (Business to Employee). Using e-business tools extensively, organizations can effectively develop and deliver the improved strategies.

Among these three ways of doing business, the one way which is growing exponentially is B2B. As the technology progressed, and the world shrank due to globalisation, businesses all over the world realised the importance of collaborating with each other to better serve the customers and to survive in the marketplace. Competition is no more between competitors; competition is between supply chain strategies.

As competition in the marketplace increases, customers start reaping the benefits of low cost and better quality. The B2B development has also led to similar benefits. Consider the website http://ebusinesszone.net/. This is an online marketplace. It brings the whole supply chain under one roof. There are manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, importers, and exporters registered in this site to stay competitive in their respective fields and look for complementing their core strengths from national and international suppliers.

In the process, B2b business facilitates businesses as customers to look for the cheapest supplies, sourcing the best materials from worldwide markets, and making their products competitive in the market. These cost and quality benefits translate to lower costs and better quality for the end consumers. Companies can also afford to remain competitive when they are facing sharp increases in their raw material costs and during periods of recession.

The other cost benefits are obviously the low marketing costs, doing away with brokers or intermediaries, building relationship and goodwill with the customers. All the above clearly point out to improved advantages for both the businesses and the customers. Hence, manufacturers, exporters, importers, distributors, or any other businesses can register on http://ebusinesszone.net/ and update their products. You can register for FREE and start reaping the benefits of the new-generation business model.