Becoming smarter with a smart-phone!

It has been around 4 months since I bought an I-phone. For me it was more of an impulsive purchase, because everyone around me kept flashing his or her latest touch-screen gadget (I had a Nokia e-72 before this, which btw is also a smartphone). I had to shell out quite some amount, though I was lucky to get it from USA.

For the first few months, I was doing just the normal stuff like most of my friends: checking and updating statuses on fb, angry birds, getting latest news, watching YouTube on the go, booking flights, weather updates etc. While I-phone makes all of this very comfortable, there is so much more that you can do with your expensive smartphone.

1) Read 'Economist' for free: It is a wonderful weekly magazine, bringing news and latest developments from across the world in its own inimitable style. But it doesn't come cheap (5000 odd rs. for a year). No longer though. Most of the senior managers in my company are subscribed to this magazine for lifetime. All I had to do was to request one of them to pass on their Customer number and, voila, I now read every edition on my iPhone!! I have lifetime subscription of economist for free :). Means, I will recover the cost of my phone in 4-5 years. Talk about investment!

2) NPR planet money podcast: This is one useful podcast, esp. for people afraid of finance and economics. And it is presented in its own unique radio broadcast style- a welcome change from other forms of communication (Remember how our parents and grand- parents used to tell us the about the Sunday morning Vivid Bharti show). It is a weekly podcast and explains the big inter-play between politics and economics in USA. Wish there was something similar for Indian geography also. The next big business idea, maybe!

3) Stock-market: This can be a blessing or a bane. But very useful for first- timers. Download the 'money control' app and start tracking a few preferred blue chips daily. You definitely will get a feel of the market and you will make a much better decision in case you plan to invest in equity.

4) 'Khan mobile': For those of you who don't know about khan academy, it is an online encyclopaedia, much like the Wikipedia. Only difference being that it is in a 10min lecture format, much easier to understand and comprehend. It was started by a HBS alum, who got bored of earning too much money in a hedge fund and started recording his own lectures. I make sure to finish 1 lecture every week. Right now listening to 'banking system'. Try it out.

Let me know if you come across any other useful apps or stuff that you can do with your expensive phone. It no longer will feel that expensive. Btw, this blog was written on my smartphone at the airport waiting to board my flight. Add 1 more to the list :)

Cricket for Charity

Here I am. My first blog post! After years of thinking and yearning and dreaming, I finally gathered the courage to write my first post. I start off by sharing a charitable cause that I took up recently.

I joined Youth for Seva (http://youthforseva.org/) around 3 months back. The motive was to utilize my Sundays more productively (Only Sundays - no Saturdays, thanks to the corporate job). I became a volunteer for the 'school-kit drive' campaign.   Objective was to sponsor school-kits for poor students studying in government schools; each kit costing 250 bucks. We had set ourselves an ambitious target to sponsor around 80k school-kits.

I started off the fundraising activity by putting up posters and pamphlets in my society. I roped in my roomie (Sumeet) to help me out. After a few round of negotiations, we got the notice-board space for 2 full weeks for some token amount  (nothing is free in Bangalore, as they say). While the posters generated enough curiosity, people were reluctant to donate because they did not trust the whole thing. We did not collect much from this and I did not have the patience to meet everyone personally and collect funds.

Disappointed by the lukewarm response, we thought of an alternate strategy. Let's organize a Sports day! Different corporate-teams will register and compete against each other, where every participant has to sponsor at least one school kit. We planned Cricket for Guys and Throw-ball competition for girls. Thanks to 'Mico-Bosch', we got their sports ground free and they become our 'Title sponsor'. While 4 teams registered from Bosch, I managed 2 teams from my own company, ITC. We had planned for 32 teams and publicized extensively among our friends and relatives. Finally, 26 teams registered and 20 showed up at the venue. Not bad for a start; I was thrilled to see so many people playing for a charitable cause. The tournament went on for 2 days and it generated quite a lot of publicity. Many participants actually registered for volunteership after the event.

Although, everything went off smoothly, there were a few definite learnings for next year:

1) Long-weekend: We realized this after the tournament got over. Many teams failed to show up at the last moment, because their members had gone home on the long weekend (Sat, Sun and Mon). Too bad, else we could have collected at least a few thousands more.

2) Smaller team sizes: We could have restricted the team-size to 8 instead of 11 (for Cricket). Few teams did not show up, because they managed just 7-8 people from their company. We could have clubbed them with other smaller teams, but people just did not turn up at the venue.

3) Discipline of time: This is something we Indians suck at. The first match got delayed by 1.5 hours, due to some logistics and coordination issue. And it spiraled for the whole day, leading to lot of chaos. Thankfully, we started sharp on time the next day.

Hopefully, next year will be even bigger and better. In case, you feel like donating, please get in touch with me or directly donate on the YFS website. In these times, when people use cricket to showcase might and stay in limelight (IPL), we happened to use Cricket for charity!!