A Rewind

Hello Everyone,

I was wondering how some applications for SIPs can make you think deep. One such application had the below questionnaire which took back me to some of my good old days. I would like to share this with you all so that it gives a glimpse of some of my most treasurable experiences and situations.

1. What has been the most significant project/initiative/assignment that you have worked on? What was the context, what was your specific individual contribution, and what has been the outcome?

My most significant assignment so far would be turning around the success of the deployment of a new application in my team at Infosys. When I joined, the entire team was struggling as two of the leads resigned in onsite and we were failing to hit the goals. I was tasked to pick up MDM and Java within a short span and also to coordinate with the clients in the absence of my leads.

I had to strategically fill the knowledge gap, keep up the commitments, and ensure on-time delivery as the offshore development lead. I decided to use the discussion forum in our company to connect with the leads from different projects and gather inputs. I organized weekly meetings to understand the business and the bottlenecks across projects. This not only helped me to fill up the knowledge gap but also showed me ways to generate new use cases in my project.

Keeping up the commitments with clients was one of the bottlenecks as were running short of resources. I was able to achieve a considerable reduction in manual hours by automating the functionalities like data refresh and data validation that had a direct impact on the client business.

Within 2 months we were achieving 20 to 25% above our goals and we deployed the application 3 weeks before the deadline. I was awarded the most valuable player award and 2 Insta awards from my performance in 3 consecutive quarters.

2. What is the biggest challenge that you have faced in your life? How has it shaped you as an individual?

An incident that bought a significant impact on me was when I captained my cultural team in Infosys. At that time of the year, Kerala was invariably affected by floods and the company decided to help the victims. Being the captain of one of the teams I was assigned to gather resources and fulfill the basic needs of people around Alleppey. The three things on focus were the fund, resources, and the support team.

The Fund was considerably fulfilled as I had the reserve capital for the cultural fest and by the humungous support from our team. I formed a 15 member core team to run behind the shop owners, truck drivers, and also various teams in Infosys to get approvals. I used my people network for packing the essentials.

We helped each other throughout day and night for 2 days from packing and loading the trucks. We did many activities that would keep us motivated and energetic. This incident had a major impact on me as the sense of relief and happiness that it gave when our resources reached the needful was overwhelming. It also thought me that you can always feel powerful when you're surrounded by the right set of people.

 3. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our world significantly. Share your reflections on your learnings during this period.

 COVID 19 is a reboot to my thought mechanism.

The quality of life, I had felt sometimes that I am living a monotonous life and there are no things to keep myself engaged apart from work when I am at home. This mindset is now completely changed and I have a lot of things to do from cooking to cleaning and it keeps me more lively than social media. Balancing work and life was always a tedious task but now I feel I am good at it as everything that I do is scheduled.

The other impact was on my style of living. I could never resist myself from eating junk foods. I thought I could never control my mind and senses. But now when I look back, I have developed a strong control over my senses which I could prolong life long.

Regards,

VB

Farm Bill 2020

Farm Bill 2020 and Circular Economy

The Farm Laws jointly refers to an amendment to the Essential Commodities Act, 1955,  The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020 were recently passed by the Indian Parliament. While there are several elements to the Act and what it seeks to do for the farm produce sector in the country, I will try to briefly examine the Act from the perspective of whether it may contribute to greater circularity in our food system

Background

The agrarian economy is of critical importance to our country since more than 70% of the Indian population is employed in the sector and of course, the market outcomes in the sector impact our most essential need - food. Additionally, the output of farm and agrarian production is uncertain as it is reliant on multiple factors that are outside the producers’ control.  These factors combined, agriculture and allied activities are highly regulated in the country in line with the intent to protect farmers and agrarian professions as well as the interests of consumers.

The key changes relevant to our discussion that these laws together bring about may be summed up as below:-

(i) The amendment [1] to the Essential Commodities Act, 1955 removes the limit on stocking of farm and other agrarian produce unless it is specifically imposed by the government.

(ii) The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020 [2], allows farmers to sell their harvest outside the notified Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) mandis without paying any State taxes or fees. Farmers can choose to sell to any buyer, no requirement of going through the APMC, and no restriction on inter-state sale of agrarian produce.

(iii)The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020 [3], facilitates farming contracts and direct marketing of agrarian produce through sponsorship agreements where a buyer can agree to procure specified produce or seeds from a farmer/farmers prior to cropping. 

The Farm Laws create an entirely new category of actors in our food system, the farm sponsors, while these sponsors will control a significant part of our food generation process, there isn’t a mechanism to hold them accountable for the ‘how’ of the farm products that they commission

Things to think about 

The Farm Laws create an entirely new category of actors in our food system, the farm sponsors, while these sponsors will control a significant part of our food generation process, there isn’t a mechanism to hold them accountable for the ‘how’ of the farm products that they commission. The water, the soil, and other resources that this production will impact is not held as their property, yet the produce will be grown for them. How will liability for any adverse effect be attributed or in fact how are private players to ‘pay’ for the cost of consumption of these resources (land fertility, groundwater et. al? Further, we must ask ourselves, what will be the motivation for the sponsors to invest in the farmer and improved farm practices, considering that it’s a purely contractual relationship which can end at their convenience. While APMCs may not have enabled MSP collection by farmers, in the absence of regulated pricing, sponsors may not offer a fair remuneration to farmers.  Such critical pieces of the puzzle should be addressed before sponsorship agreements come to be.

That, while this law creates opportunities, stricter safeguards may still be required to ensure that agrarian producers remain fully aware of their options and can seek redressal against any form of exploitation. In this light, it is relevant to note that the contravention of the provisions of The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020 only comes with a fine of up to INR 25,000. A stricter deterrent will perhaps be required to prevent malfeasance. In the case of sponsorship agreements, as such the recourse available to the farmer is only what is available within the contract, there can be no penal action against the private party under the laws as they exist. Furthermore, the law doesn’t even mandate a written contract, so in several cases, farmers will be acting on faith and the hope that the sponsor will honor their end of the bargain.

Conclusion

What stands out is that the Farm Acts are enabling legislation that creates several opportunities, without setting a laudable trajectory for these opportunities.  As a policy, aside from the intent of creating more agrarian produce marketing channels, no other direction comes through. It is disappointing that the goals of sustainable innovation, prevention of wastage or the promotion of better agricultural practices have not been stated anywhere in the objects clause or in any other part of the Acts as responsibilities of the actors involved in the industry. By ignoring to do so, it makes a critical mistake of remaining indifferent to a core factor that adds to the woes of the farmer in our country - climate change.  It might be legislation that brings about far-reaching reforms, however, an explicit spelling out of the responsibility on private players to promote sustainability and circularity would have truly made this legislation fit for the times we are living in.

Supply Chain - Storage

 Hello Everyone,

I am writing this post as a part of the SIP preparation series. To start with I have chosen "Supply Chain Management"  as the initial topic for discussion. I hope this will be useful and add value to your preparation.

The supply chain, with proper management, can lead to tangible service and value to the business. Managing storage as a supply chain can lead to short lead times in meeting business application deployments and high quality of delivered storage services at reduced costs of operations and capital.

Storages in a supply chain are as follows:

1.Production: Types of storage available

2.Supply: Tiers of storage

3.Inventory: Available storage

4.Location: Both primary and secondary

5.Availability: Overall storage network performance

6.Reclamation: Reuse of existing storage

7.Information: Application through to the spindle on the array 

Types of Storage Sytems in Supply Chain

Static Shelving:

For lightweight articles and used in continuous replenishment. It is suitable for manually picked and placed inventory.

Short Span Shelving – Better suited to smaller stock items, although most systems are adjustable.

Long Span Shelving – Larger units with space for bigger items

Mobile Shelving:   

Shelves or cabinets are mounted on carriage and rail systems, eliminating fixed aisles. The Setup can hold more items in less space and it also includes the level tracks. 

Pallet racking:

Pallet racking is more suitable for the busiest and largest warehouses and the components are easily accessible. The racks are mobile, with weight, stability, and consume space. Items are placed with a help of a forklift or an automated mechanism. 

Various types of pallet racking are as follows

1.Carton-flow Racking

2. Cantilever Racking

3. Coil Racking 

MultiTier Racking:

Multi-Tier Racking is suitable for large stocks of items that have small unit sizes. Using multi-tier racking we can capitalize on vertical space. The major concern includes the lightweight items that are picked and organized manually. It is flexible as the number of tiers depends on the number of items. We should pay attention to the weights limits and ceiling to rack height guidelines while adding new tiers. 

Mezzanine Flooring:

Mezzanine flooring is used as a space-saving storage option. It involves the construction of a structured floor over the main warehouse floor. This is one of the most expensive storage options in the market.

Cost Factors in Storage:

Rental and/or amortization: The Nature of the cost will depend on whether the warehouse is owned by the company or leased to a third party.

Financing: Capital required to invest in a warehouse.

Repairs and maintenance: Cost of the warehouse maintenance such as painting, insulating, paved floor repairs, building improvements.

Insurance: Ordinarily, a company protects its warehouse building against accidents or losses such as fires, floods, earthquakes

Taxes: Taxes related to the building, such as the property tax, water tax etc.

Regards,

VB

Loud Dream - A Stationery Tale

 Hello Everyone,

I would like to share with you all about my loud dream. From childhood, one thing that had kept me motivated is my handwriting. It might sound so trivial to many but it means a lot to me. You might think about why it is so? Please have a look at the video below.

Watch this space for more interesting stories !!!

VISUME - Video Resume

Hello Everyone,

Its good to be back with a new idea that can make your profile more valuable - Visume. 

Visume is basically the video format of your CV. For the majority of workers out there, a video resume seems like a scary prospect. But when you’ve been job hunting for a while, you start to yearn for ways to stand out, a simple solution for bottling your x-factor and dousing your potential employer in it.

A video resume should show off your undefinable qualities and make an impression. It should convey the strengths you can’t put on a resume, qualities such as warmth, clear communication, charisma, humor, and your off-the-cuff chatter. The importance of visume was told by our Prasad sir and I have tried my best to do a visume. Please let me know your feedback. 

Watch this space for more interesting posts.

Regards,

V

MahaMandi 2020 - Video

I am very happy to present to you our video on "Tirunelveli Halwa". This video is to support our MahaMandi 2020's theme of "Vocal for the Local". I would like to give the credits of this video to our beloved Professor Prasad who is constantly inspiring us to do many things to expand our capabilities.

Please do like and subscribe to our youtube channel for exciting updates on MahaMandi.

#MahaMandi2020 #MiG #Nitie #DigitalIndia 

Consulting Chat with Nikhil Kulkarni

We had a guest lecture today at NITIE in our business communication class delivered by one of our alumni, Mr. Nikhil Kulkarni also the co-founder of Darwin Tech; a travel technology startup working on products for the leisure holiday market. He has also previously worked with KPMG for more than 10 years before venturing out as an entrepreneur. This was an amazing and insightful session organized by our Professor, T.Prasad sir. It was a great learning opportunity.

The lecture was based below pointers

• Business Communication in consulting
• The Pyramid Principle
• Creating Impact - Tips and tricks
• Creating a 'Personal Brand' - why, how, when?

Business Communication:

He talked about how communication makes up 80% of our work and how as our career progresses, relationships also become more and more important. He explained how the business proposals are presented using PowerPoints and Word documents. As the world and business evolve, specialists are increasingly in demand. Expert consultants continually face the challenge of making their extensive knowledge of complicated concepts understandable to their clients.

The Pyramid Principle

The Pyramid Principle advocates that ideas in writing should always form a pyramid under a single thought. Our Structure of Communication should follow a sequence of communication from Introduction to Conclusion. 

Creating Impact

The way we communicate with others is such a habitual part of us that we rarely stop and think about it. This translates into business communication too. Organizations, after all, aren’t faceless entities, but groups of real people.

Creating a 'Personal Brand'

Creating a personal brand can be a daunting, mythical task. And one of the easiest ways to get lost in the process is to not know where to start. Using the statistics, images, relevant quotes, and more engaging activities would set you apart. 

The above-mentioned principles and ideologies will help shape our individuality in the ocean of minds. Craving an image for us in society is very essential to uphold our personality.

#BusinessCommunication

#MahaMandi2020

#Nitie