Yummy southindian treat

This weekend we had chance visit to CP and after a short but expensive shopping spree, my friend suggested we go to Sarvana bhavan, a restaurant famous for its southindian delicacies. For me this was a first time and being a big fan of Sagar Ratna chain, I was a little sceptical. But I must say that I loved the food, its definitely better than Sagar anyway.

Well this place is located on the Leo Tolostoy Marg near CP, just adjacent to the McDonalds. I was warned that there would 1/2 - 1 hr waiting in the evening but we were lucky to get inside in just 10 minutes. The place is pretty crowded for obvious reasons but is hygenic and the service is decent. The wait time outside is completely worth it and the idli's, the vada's, the uttapam's, the dosa's and the traditional southindian food are just mouthwatering. To top this, they also have a sweet shop where you can enjoy mysore Pak, an amazing delicacy.

Overall, a very nice place to enjoy authentic southindian food and a must visit restaurant for all those who love to succumb to the temptation.

Hangover! time to cheer

With all the fun and excitement of shogi trip flushed out of my system by the monday blues, i was feeling slightly tired in the evening and was not in a mood for a movie. But some of my friends were going for this "Hangover" and i decided to join them anyway and boy, it was a good decision.

This is a seriously hilarious flick with no loose ends. The movie keeps you glued to your seat and is a laugh riot. The story revolves around 4 friends out in LA for a bachelor party. After a long, wild night, they wake up to find a real tiger in the toilet, a bed thrown out of the window, one of them married to a stripper and the groom missing.

The rest of the movie is a chase to find the groom and to iron out all the mischeaves of the night.
A thorughly enjoyable story that leaves you smiling all the way to your home.

Solace @ Shogi (Shimla)

Delhi is one of the worst locations you could find yourself in if it is a weekend break you are contemplating. You can take any of the 6 arterial roads to get out of the city and ride in your boxy car for over 300 Km and find nothing. When I say nothing, I obviously mean nothing. I mean if you are one of those folks who visit relatives for weekend breaks, you might get lucky but if you are looking for a romantic, cool getaway, you are out of your luck.

But this weekend after a really long time, we came across a spot near shimla where you can be among the wilderness and can enjoy a cold beer without worrying about your boss, office or any of those other trivial things that make life dull.

Shogi is a small village, about 90 Km from Kalka on kalka-shimla highway. Best way to reach shogi from Delhi is to travel via howrah kalka mail that leaves delhi at 9 50 PM and reaches kalka early in the morning. From there you can take a cab or a shimla bound bus to reach shogi.

Shogi doesn't offer a lot of options for the stay but parkwood and oakwood are 2 of the better resorts. our stay at parkwood was very peaceful with great food, snacks and drinks. This resort offers fantastic views of the valley below and provides almost every amenity you could ask for, right from comfortable beds and modern bathrooms to running hot water.

On the activity side, shogi offers the following activities -
1. Take a day off to relax amid the lush green surroundings
2. Just sit on the hilltop with your friends and do what the french do best, "parler de tout et de rien"(to speak of everything and nothing)
3. Enjoy a cold beer as mentioned earlier on a moonlit night
4. In case you really get time to move beyond these obvious and very appealing activities, you can take an obstacle course or go for a hike in the hills

Overall shogi is one place that is close enough to delhi and that offers great views, amazing scenaries and wonderful service for a 2-3 day trip if you are looking to run away from city life.

Where is the stock market headed?

So if you follow markets with a dream in your eyes, are your dreams going to come true in near future? Are markets really headed for the heights it achieved before this crash?

Well if you listen to all the stock advisers and the panel analysts then you will gather that by July 2010, markets will breach 25,000. :-)

But looking at the present earning rate of companies and their income statements, you can realize that most of the companies whose stock is trading at all time high are not really delivering on terra firma. Their profits are down, revenues have taken a hit and there is no real growth expected in the next 2-3 quarters. Then how come the stocks are at an all time high? P/E ratios have crossed 1000 mark for a few stocks. 1000, a P/E ratio of 1000 means that if the share of the company is available at 1000 bucks, it earns a profit of just 1. Normally a P/E between 5-20 is considered ok depending on the industry and the growth rate of business but 1000 P/E means you can go short on these companies with your eyes closed and your monitors on. Sooner or later, these companies are going to lose momentum and fall back sharply. Nothing and i repeat nothing can support such high P/E levels.

Beware of the stock tips that you recieve from your relatives, friends and TV analysts. Either the person providing the advice is not smart enough to understand the dynamics of market and is acting on tips himself or he has a hidden agenda involved.

Take a back seat, enquire about the fundamentals of the company, study the business model and then invest your hard earned money.

ROI under scanner

Now lets assume that you have somehow reached a consensus and have finalized your business metric. Good now start tracking it. But as soon as you start getting the data, you realize that you are getting traffic from different sources. The money spent on each of the source is different and the tracked metric has a different value. In other words, each source has a different ROI.

The next buzzword is "optimization". You want to optimize the money spent on advertising and increase your ROI. For this you need to stop going to some sources and promote other sources till they saturate, but the problem is to know where to draw the line. What is the ROI, below which you don't want to advertise and above which you want to promote?

It is a general practice to use average as the beacon below which you press the panic button. Several businesses use average as the sacred no. below which to demote and above which to promote. But is average really a good number? Let me use an adage, I heard from a statistics professor of mine - "Average is a bad thing, remember the guy who drowned in a river that on average was only 4 feet deep."

The point is that average can be skewed BIG TIME due to outliers. Lets take an example. If you are riding a bus with commoners, the average of the bus passengers could be a few thousand Rs. a month but if at the next stop, the Ambani Duo board the bus for some unexplained reason, the average salary of the bus passengers can go through the roof. This is because the 2 newcomers earn more than few crores every month. These passengers are considered outliers and they skew the averages from 1000's to 100000's.

A better option is to keep an eye on the median, mode and average before deciding where to draw the line. You can also use frequency table in case you are stats savvy and that will give you a much better perspective.

Marketing Mirage

Marketing is a very interesting domain. You know, you hardly ever get the credit for what you achieve but you get loads of s*** when things go wrong even without your help. ;-)

Presently my main focus is online marketing and I am glad that it offers quick analysis of achievement or performance improvement. But with experience and after several discussions, I have come to realize that the metric on which efficacy of online advertising should measured is elusive and always under argument.

Lets see, if we have a site that sells sports equipment, should the online adv. be measured on the traffic coming to the site or on leads generated through online adv. or on the online sales through traffic source. This is a case where you can atleast target a particular segment and maybe show your ads to relevant clients.

First, suppose I choose traffic to the site as the metric, then problem could be that the SEM manager starts driving irrelevant traffic to the site and the overall sales remain stagnant but the cost of marketing goes up. ---> ROI moves down, so not a good metric.
* traffic to site could be a good metric for SEO campaigns but not SEM campaigns

Now lets select leads generated as the metric. This means that no. of forms filled on site through online traffic is the new metric. This metric could be a good metric if your conversion rate of leads is stable and not very random. But this requires cooperation from marketing, design and tech teams as various forms in different colors, formats, position and length have to be tried on before settling for the best.
---> ROI might move up inc ase of stable conv. rate, could be good metric.

Now consider the online sales as the metric. This is the best metric business wise, but could be difficult to target. You need to bring in people who will buy from your store. How do you target them? You can use SEM account to get you focused traffic but the intention to buy is not conveyed in the searches. This only gives a vague parameter on which to improve performance.
---> could be a great metric, but difficult to employ and optimize.