Reva:First Electric Car(EV) of India

Reva, as a car can be described as small, environmental friendly, cost effective, no parking tension and at last but not least a perfect driving component with your loved one.
Reva is India's first Electric Battery Operated Car. It was designed keeping in mind the need for the decrease of the pollution levels of the cities. Reva was introduced in India in 2001. Reva has received certification from (ARAI) Automotive Research Association of India and EEC (European Economic Community), which has led to the export of Reva's to UK. Reva has a life span of about 40,000 km and its running cost is approximately 40 paise per kilometer. Reva has the best safety features as well according to world standards of today. Reva offers you a wide variety of colors to choose from it's over 2000 shades and it can be customized as well.
Car description:
Manufacturer: REVA Electric Car Company
Door: 2 door hatchback
Fully automatic: no clutch, no gear
Tubeless tyres
Cost only 40paise/ km (company estimation)
Easy to use
Energy absorbing bumpers
Rear foldable seats
Payload: 227-240 kg
Top Speed: 80 km/h
Charge time: 100% in 8 hr
Length: 2.6 m
Width: 1.3 m
Height: 1.5 m

Future:
By 2009, high performance lithium-ion batteries are expected to be available for the latest model. A lithium- ion battery offers quick charging and will offer great speed. The anticipated new range for REVA with lithium- ion batteries is expected to be 112 km or more. With increase in oil prices and market financial crisis it seems to increase in the popularity of Reva. Also increase in the demand of cars in India day by day seems to be good for automobile industry.

Reva’s Investors profile
1. Global Environment Fund:
GEF was founded in 1990 by Dr. Jeffrey Leonard, President and CEO, and John Earhart, Chairman of the Board, on the principle that capital deployed with a disciplined approach in specific sectors can bring significant improvements to the environment and quality of life throughout the world. GEF has grown to be one of the premier global private equity groups investing in the environment. In recent years, the GEF investment team has completed more than 30 private equity or early-stage technology investments in businesses operating in a broad array of economic sectors and in all of the world’s major geographical regions. The Global Environment Fund (GEF) invests in businesses around the world that provide cost-effective solutions to environmental and energy challenges. The firm manages private equity dedicated to clean technology, emerging markets, and sustainable forestry, with approximately $1 billion in aggregate capital under management. GEF’s investors include prominent endowments, foundations, family offices, and pension funds.
The team invests in emerging markets across the globe, with a special emphasis on China, India, Brazil, Turkey, Mexico, South Africa, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe. GEF has a strong local and international support all over the world, in which YES Bank, Mumbai participate from India side.
2. Draper Fisher Jurvetson:
Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) is a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California with affiliate offices in more than 30 cities around the world and over $4.5 billion in capital commitments. Since its founding in 1985, DFJ has been proud to back over 500 companies across many sectors including such industry changing successes such as Hotmail (acquired by MSFT), Baidu (BIDU), Skype (acquired by EBAY), United Online (UNTD), Overture (acquired by YHOO), Athenahealth (ATHN), EnerNOC (ENOC), TicketsNow (acquired by TicketMaster), Feedburner (acquired by Google), Interwoven (IWOV), Four11 (acquired by YHOO), Parametric (PMTC), and Digidesign (acquired by AVID).
Official website of DFJ has everything for everyone. Weather you are enterprenuer, journalist or a job seeker, DFJ fulfills everyone's dream. If someone has a Business Plan, they can submit to DFJ to backup them. DFJ backs extraordinary entrepreneurs everywhere who set out to change the world.

Conclusion:
Thus Reva is like a dream comes true, especially for Chetan Maini. With present capacity of 6000/ yearly, company decides to expand its production capacity to 60,000. Company is also deciding to expand recently towards east India. Reva is getting huge incentives outside India in comparison to its home country. In Britain and Norway it sells as a G-Wiz, and is exempt from parking fees and road taxes. Japan gives a subsidy for electric car users while France waives taxes on electricity used to charge the car. So India should care its born and should take initiatives to promote it.

Reva: Born by Passion

Man behind Reva: Chetan Maini
Den: Bangalore
Passion: Flying remote controlled plane models and building cars from scratch.
Hobbies: Mountain Biking, Off road motorcycling, Hiking and Microlight flying.
Birth of passion: When he was in sixth standard, Manali built a remote control toy car and won a school prize.
Education: A mechanical engineer from University of Michigan
As the father of Reva: He was working up with Amerigon, an automobile company working on electric vehicle technology. And that is where the idea of Reva born.
Introduction to Home land: Maini introduced Reva in India in 2001.
Care taker of Reva: In 2006, Draper Fisher Jurveston and Global Environment Fund helped Reva with $ 20 million.
Current production capacity: 6,000.
Global presence: Britain, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Norway, Malta, Spain and Sri Lanka.

World Financial Cricis and its Impacts

World Financial crisis hasn’t left any industry or any part of the world. Job cuts, leave without pay, reducing regional offices, marketing and advertisement cuts, restricting bonus pay etc are the common steps that are taken by the organizations worldwide to fight this financial meltdown.
Jet Airways, major player in aviation industry of India had lay off 800 staffs on 13th October 2008.The move comes a day when Kingfisher and Jet Airways glued to form an alliance to reduce costs and improve operational efficiencies. But the political pressures by Indian political parties like Shiv Sena and Maharastra Navnirman Sena, headed by Raj Thackeray forced Naresh Goel, chief Jet Airways to take off his decision back.
Just after three days on 16th October 2008, Air India offered its 15,000 staffers leave without pay to save Rs 75,000,000 annually. But according to the statement of Aviation Minister, Praful Patel given on 21st October 2008, there will be no job cuts in Air India.
Kingfisher Airlines, headed by Vijaya Mallaya had also decided to cut salary by 10% from the present digits. Also trainee pilots will be hired on a fixed salary of Rs 20,000.
Meltdown also has profound effect on Auto Industry. ‘Cut in production’ is the eminent step taken by the most. India’s biggest auto company disengaged its 300 temporary employee at Jamshedpur unit. Mahindra & Mahindra, the country’s leading manufacturer of utility vehicles generally deploys more than 600 temporary workers at its Nasik Plant. All India Trade Union Congress confessed that down turn has forced company to trim their workforce.
In Banking sector, Cholamandalam DBS finance Ltd, joints venture of DBS Bank of Singapore & $ 2.4 billion Murugappa group has decided to close 75 of its 260 branches and also sees of nearly 200 employees. Its wonder that till now private banking giants like HDFC and ICICI has not taken steps like this!
In IT sector, Infosys has denied on any job cuts. In the 2nd week of October there was rumor that consultancy major TCS may cut variable pay, but after the Q2 result, TCS on 21st October decided to give full component of variable pay for the 2nd quarter of this fiscal. Call centers and business process outsourcing providers are among industry sectors in India that are likely to cut more than 25 percent of their staffing in the next 10 days, according to a report by a trade body.
Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) said jobs cut would be across steel, cement, construction, real estate, aviation, It-enabled services and Financial services sector.
Meltdown is not only affecting main industries but also the education sector especially professional courses. Twelve brilliant students of IIT- Kharagpur who were selected through campus last year by US based IT firms have received regret letters in September stating that they cannot be taken because of internal re-organizing. Presently Aviation Professional courses popularity is decreasing by seeing the present scenario. But people from the industry are debating that recession is the short term process and education and career should not be judged by comparing up with global crisis, as it will affect the every sector.

Modern Retailing in India

1. Organized and modern retailing form around 9% of the total retail in the country.
2. Modern retail refers to stores operating in experiential formats and providing customers with a pleasurable shopping environment.
3. Some steps that given new turn to modern retailing in India are
a) Launch of retail venture by Reliance Industries- ‘Reliance Fresh’ and ‘Reliance Digital’.
b) Other significant development is the announcement of the global retail giant –‘Wall Mart’, entry into India for setting up stores through franchise agreement with the Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Group.
4. The size of modern retailing put together is around $ 29 million in India.
5. India’s retail progress is so rapid that it has been ranked for the second year in 2006 in the Global Retail Development Index (GDRI) as the most attractive market for the global retailers to enter.
6. Organized retail in India is expected to grow at the rate of 35%.
7. It is estimated that organized retailing will be 20% of the total retailing by the end of year 2008.
8. According to reports, India retail industry is the largest industry in India with an employment of around eight percent. This industry contributes to over 10 percent of the country's GDP. It is expected that by 2016 modern retail industry in India will be worth $175- 200 billion.
9. India is one of the largest producers of fruits and vegetables in the world. Moreover, India's food market is valued at $70 billion, which is doubling every three years.
10. The Retail Sector is the largest sector in India after agriculture, accounting for over 10 per cent of the country’s GDP and around 8 per cent of the employment.

ATTRITION

A reduction in the number of employees through retirement, resignation or death is called attrition.
Annual attrition rate in India (2008) is 20-30%. High as 44% in BFSI ( Banking, Financial services and Insurance) and 35% in BPO Industry.
----------- HINDU
Attrition rate – The rate of shrinkage in the size or number in the human resource in a company or in an organization.

Is Attrition always bad?
No, Its benefits an organization when certain employees leave, whose continuation of service would have negatively impacted productivity and profitability of the company. There are also some people who have negative and demoralizing influence on the work culture and team spirit.
The term ‘healthy attrition’ is used to signify the importance of less productive employees voluntarily leaving the organization.
Good attrition minimizes the adverse impact on the business while bad attrition accentuates the loss.
Attrition and women
The high percentage of the females in the workforce (constituting 30-35% of the total), adds to the high attrition rate. Most women leave their jobs either after marriage or social pressure caused by the irregular working hours of the industry.
In trainee batches, when you have 30-40% young women coming together with young men, they get to know each other and get married.
Reasons of Attrition
1. Non-flexible schedules.
2. Non- progressive career path.
3. Aspirations to join more stable company.
4. Social and biological causes.
5. Grown to age and medical problems.
6. Fail to perform the given responsibilities.
7. Love and affection, results to marriage.
How to fight Attrition
1. Use of technology in finding the cause of attrition:- Early Warning System(EWS), utilizes proprietary software that tracks agent behavior and indicates evens such as declining or fluctuating productivity, increased rate of absenteeism, rejection for internal job postings, drop in call quality etc( Attrition Forecasting).
2. Three million students graduate every year out of which only 10% are employable by the BPO Industry. If this number could increased, attrition in BPO would come down.
3. Homemakers to fight attrition: BPO players now switching to non- conventional talent pool to meet its work force expansion needs. These include housewives, retired personnel and physically challenged persons.
4. Campus Ambassador Program: Helps not only in talent sourcing but also in increasing the talent pool.Creating brand equity in the eyes of potential employees and hiring for retaining purpose.
5. Attrition can be reduced by finding ‘right candidate' and building a conductive work environment which will be beneficial.
6. Internally most HR managers are busy putting in efforts on the development of their employees building innovative retention and motivational schemes (which was money oriented so far) and making the environment livelier.
7. Externally the focus is on creating awareness through seminars & going to campus for recruitment.

RATAN TATA

Ratan Tata
Born: - December 28, 1937
Occupation: - Chairmen of Tata group.
Marital Status: - Never Married.
Parents: - naval and Soonoo Tata.
Dates:-
1971:- Appointed as the Director In charge of the National Radio Electronics Company limited (Nelco).
At that time Nelco had 2% market share and a loss margin of 40%.
1972-75:- Nelco grow eventually to have a market share of 20% and recovered its losses. But
Declaration of emergency by Prime Minister Indra Gandhi and union problems in 1997,
did not let venture to survive.
1977:- Ratan was entrusted with Empress Mills , a textile mill controlled by Tatas. At that time it was one
of the few sick units of Tata group. But competition from less labour- intensive enterprises and
Modern mills made number of companies, including empress mill unviable. So some directors,
Chiefly Nami Palkhivala, took the line that Tatas should liquidate the mill, which was finally closed
in 1986.
1981:- Ratan was named as Chairman of Tata Industries, the groups other holding company.
1991:- He took over as group chairman from JRD Tata. Since then he has been instrumental in reshaping the fortunes of Tata group.
• Today Tata group has the largest market capitalization of any business house on the Indian stock market.
• On Jan 31, 2007, Tata sons acquired Corus group an Anglo-Dutch steel and aluminum producer. The merger created the fifth largest producer of steel in the world.
• Ratan Tata’s dream of manufacturing a car worth Rs 1000000 was launched in New Delhi Auto Expo on Jan 10,2008
• Tata Motors under Ratan Tata bought over Jaguar & Land Rover from Ford Motor Company for $ 1.5 billion ($2.3billion).

Awards
1. On the Occasion of 26th Jan 2000, Ratan Tata was honored with the Padma Bhushan, the third highest decoration that may be awarded to a civilian.
2. On 26th Jan 2008, he was awarded the Padma Vibhusan, the 2nd highest civilian decoration.

WORK-LIFE IMBALANCE

Work-life balance is a person’s control over the conditions in their workplace. It is accomplished when an individual feels dually satisfied about their personal life and their paid occupation. It mutually benefits the individual, business and society when a person’s personal life is balanced with his or her own job.
And when the situation get reversed, i.e one has no control on his/her life, driven by other forces, get workaholic etc, then one’s life get imbalanced, affecting personal and social life as well as working capacity, what is termed as work-life imbalance.
Imbalance in life and work may occur due to many reasons. It’s not always the employer who makes the life of employee, a hell.
REASONS:
1. The main culprit for the growing gap between work and life is globalization and the "productivity" pressures it's causing that are undermining progressive policies and a focus on equity in the workplace. The meaning of efficiency in present global-economic climate is that involve fewer people doing more work as well as myths and assumptions that characterize 'ideal' workers as those who can work as though they have few or no outside responsibilities outside of paid work.

2. Connectivity technology—e-mails, cell phones, PDA’s and other gadgets— make it easier than ever to keep in touch with goings-on in the office, allowing today’s workforce to save time and be more accessible. However, experts say they have the potential to do more harm than good. These lovely things really make our life hell. These let us attached to our paid work 24x7.

3. Ambitions and Prestige- are the reasons that are created from the employee side itself. It makes an employee workaholic and cut him from the rest of the world. One thinks that he/ she can balance or manage his/ her life after achieving dreams and ambitions but is should not be forgotten that ‘making life balance’ is a slow and continuous process.

4. Money is honey-Last but not the least, employee get paid extra for the extra effort as well as employer get more profits because of extra efforts and sincerity.

7 WAYS TO FIND WORK LIFE BALANCE:

1. ONE LIFE ONE DAY BOOK: Keeping separate calendars can easily lead to conflicts between work tasks and home-life commitments. By scheduling everything in the same place, you're less likely to get confused between your cell calls and sweet song of your daughter or beloved.
2. CAN’T SPARE A WEEK? TAKE AN HOUR: You don't always need an extended vacation to unwind. Instead, set aside an hour each day to enjoy something completely unrelated to work -- a short walk, a workout, or a chapter or two in a book. Quality, not quantity.
3. AUDIT YOUR WEEKLY SCHEDULE: Keep a log of everything you do during the week, from meetings to commuting to watching TV. With a sense of how the scales tip to one side or the other, you'll be better able to re-balance them.
4. PLAN AND PROTECT DOWNTIME: Don't take leisure time for granted. A day in front of the TV is no substitute for a round of golf, a trip to the beach, or a BBQ with friends.
5. KNOW YOUR OPTION: More than ever, new technology is offering employers and employees alike greater flexibility with work schedules. This includes everything from a compressed workweek, to flex hours, job-sharing, and telecommuting.
6. GET YOUR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT: Take the time to decide what's important for you. Then, try devoting your full attention to one thing at a time -- concentrate on work at work and family at home.
7. STOP BEING BOSS EVERYWERE: Entrepreneurs tend to be control freaks. That can be good for business, but bad for downtime. Whether it's paying the bills or organizing a trip, why not let family and friends run the business of your life every now and then?


CONCLUSION:
Seals don't balance balls on their noses for fun; they do it for fish. People don't try to achieve work/life balance for fun; they do it to survive. This means that balancing life with our paid work is not a fun or makes our life easier but it creates a path for us on whom we can schedule our whole responsibilities, likes, dislikes, hobbies etc on the same way. In fact balancing a life with work is itself a tough job.