Vijay Basrur

Bill for Rs. 0.00

Corazon Group, Peru

No way you’ve heard about the Corazon Group in Peru. Even I hadn’t. But when I looked up their profile on Kiva, I decided to take a step and lend $25 to them. I used the Kiva platform for it and was mighty impressed.

I currently work very closely with a NGO, Punyatma Prabhakar Sharma Seva Mandal, and am fully aware how difficult it can get to generate funds. And in most cases it is the lack of awareness that is the biggest road block. People are willing lend or donate to a cause as long as they know that it is being used for the right purpose in the right way.

Kiva is an excellent platform for rural entrepreneurs to reach out across the world for a loan which they are confident of repaying. Kiva works with various agencies to make this work and suggests that you top the $25 loan with a 10% charge to cover Kiva’s expenses. I am sure everyone chips in for the additional 10%.

GiveIndia also has started a similar effort in India but more focused on donation rather than lending to rural entrepreneurs. We are taking assistance from them to generate funds for our school project at Igatpuri which will accommodate over 100 hearing & mentally challenged students.

I am going to try and be involved with Kiva more over the months. Kiva gives every lender a lender page where you can track all your loans.

David vs Goliath?

Rajesh Jain has a interesting problem. His highly successful mobile business MyToday is being arm twisted by Vodafone. MyToday is a highly successful mobile alerts business which is seeing a lot of traction. Vodafone sees this as a potential threat to their VAS solutions (which really beats me).

So what do they go and do? Ban all Vodafone subscribers to sign up for MyToday. Rajesh has more dope on his blog. He is doing a good thing by blogging about the progress.

I’ve been loyal to Orange/Hutch/Vodafone since the past 8 years. It is disappointing to see such a response from Vodafone. I expected much better.

Obama’s Internet Strategy

If over the past few months you didn’t spot Obama on the Internet (nevermind the newspaper or TV) then you probably weren’t surfing at all.

Obama spun a really good web on the web making him probably the first president to have leveraged the Internet successfully in his campaign. I am sure the Internet will become mainstream for all politicians in the year to come. Our own L K Advani has kicked off an online presence but seems to be just buying Google Ads to get the message across.

Some learnings from the Obama Campaign are captured in this slide show

Trust

Trust is quite a heavy word. It can sometimes take years to win somebody’s trust and sometimes it can take seconds. You may not trust the stranger who sits next to you in a bus ride but you will trust a stranger’s review of a hotel room on a travel website. Funny isn’t it?

We, me & my wife, trust people fairly easily. We generally believe that people are good and you should treat people well. We usually live by this rule in our daily lives.

But a few days back, this belief was in for a shock. The trust on our maid was shattered by the maid herself and we are finding ourselves in a strange situation. We are heartbroken and sympathetic at the same time. One emotion over rides the other and its been quite a churn trying to think rationally.

We are hoping that this incident doesn’t change our belief about the goodness in individuals but it will take us a while to get this off our backs. It does feel unfortunate but c’est la vie.

Train Travails

Over the past fortnight I endured 4 train journeys. I usually like train journeys. They offer the luxury of watching the world zip by, catch up on reading, catch up on sleeping and of course sample the variety of food peddlers who constantly wander through the train. But if I say that I endured the train journeys, you’ve realized that I didn’t enjoy them this time around.

2 of my trips were in the 3 tier AC & two of them in the 2 tier AC. Suddenly the 3 tier AC feels very crowded (or am I getting old?) and there forever seems to be some confusion with the TC and a few fellow passengers who follow the TC to every seat in the hope of pouncing on any available seat.

Comparatively the 2 tier AC feels nice (sans the crowds) but the one thing that is common is the level of cleanliness. Both are equally bad leaving a lot to be desired. Though folks tell me that the cleanliness level is improving, I am yet to experience it. I wonder why this is difficult in a 2 tier compartment where only 46 people travel. Surely 46 people can’t generate so much of a stink in 12 hours? But you never can be sure.
I really wish this improves because train journeys leave such great memories. Our childhood travels are full of them. Those days there was first class with coupe’s ensuring complete privacy. My brother & me used to have a ball playing all through the journey.

Though we tend to take a flight more regularly these days, I am hoping that my daughter gets to experience her share of memorable train journeys.

Coffee pourings skills

For all you coffee lovers, you’ll like this guys tricks