Coal India and ITC rock among the biggies

Coal India and ITC saw spectacular gains today among the biggies. Coal India saw the rise due to its decision of hiking the coal prices by 30-45% for all its non-regulated customers w.e.f 26 Feb 11. ITC is under no pressure to hike cigarette prices in near term. The state budgets coming up would be watched.

It is another story that Infosys was accused by an American employee of breaking immigration laws. This would add "fuel to the fire" in local jargon to the anti-outsourcing sentiment. It didnt see any negative impact on the prices though. Maybe the move towards local investment and into "product" related sectors or an anticipated acquisition is in the mind of most people. Though the "acquisition" doesn't seem what Infy will do with the current oldies on the board.

Annual Percentage Rate and Initial Credit line

If you are in a Credit card division of a bank, you might have heard of APR and ICL. These are the two most important characteristics of a credit card apart from the fees. A bank's strategy has to strike a trade off with both these metrics. A higher initial credit line is always good as the spender might spend more due to more liquidity.

However, when we think on the basis of incremental profit, we might be able to arrive at an optimum ICL based on the customer's risk profile. APR also is extremely important. With higher APR, the bank makes more money, however the spending of the customer might reduce. It is important hence to get an efficient frontier for these before coming with the strategy. Also with the new CARD act, the change in APR is not as flexible as it was before.

Private Equity Funds in India

3i
Aavishkar India Micro Venture Capital Fund
Accel partners
Actis
Akansa Capital
Apax Partners
Ascent
Barings PE
Blackstone
Canaan India
Carlyle
Catamaran
Chrys Capital
Clearstone Venture Advisors
CVC (Citigroup)
DFJ India
Elephant Capital
Epiphany Ventures
Evolvence
General Atlantic
GVFL (Gujrat Venture Finance)
ICICI Ventures
IDFC
IDG Ventures India
ILFS
Indavest Ventures
Indiaco Ventures Limited
Indian Angel Network
Info Edge India
Intel Capital India
Inventus Capital Partners
JumpStartup
Kitara Capital
Kitven
KKR
Kotak PE
Lightspeed Advisory
Milestone Capital
Mumbai Angels
Nea-Indo US Advisory
Nexus Venture Partners
Norwest Venture Partners
Oak Hill Capital
Peugot Capital
Premji Invest
Rabo Equity Advisors
Redclays Capital
Reliance Venture Asset Management
Seedfund
Sherpalo Ventures
Springboard Ventures
Texas Pacific Group
The Morpheus
Trident Capital
TVS Capital
Unitus Capital
Vengo Ventures
Warburg Pincus
West Bridge Capital

"It's like your phone and your wallet had a beautiful baby" Venmo

Yes this is the punchline of Venmo, an upcoming online payment provider. It is still in a Beta phase and is available through only invites. The idea is quite appealing to me and yes, it would be an application I would use to pay my friends if I shift to the phone mode. Right now, I am on a laptop only mode.

Its quite interesting to note that Venmo has the design which is very much similar to that of Twitter (old). Venmo is funded by Angel investors which also includes Dustin Moscovitz of Facebook. If I were a VC, I would definitely be interested in investing in this one.

Folders in Ipod Classic Vanished? Don't worry

I had a strange experience with my 80GB Ipod Classic which I use as a Pen Drive as well. About 40GB is data other than Music/Movies in Ipod. One day I connected my Ipod to a friend's system and was shocked to see my folders missing. Only some files were present. Panicked, i immediately connected it to my laptop and was traumatized to see the folders missing on my system as well. I tried all sorts of things. I restarted the Ipod. However no use. The files weren't hidden as well. But the Itunes still showed only 1 GB as free and so did Windows. Hence I was sure that the folders were intact.

I tried searching by folder names. however no use. Then I used my Mcafee to scan the ipod. I was surprised to see the scanning going on for the files which I wasn't able to see. Then I noticed the path. The path was something like G:\_\A.doc. Then I immediately accesed the folder G:\_ and was relieved to see all my folders intact. Thank god.. I will create a backup of the data soon..

Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Web Customer Service