Kollur - Hyderabad

Writing after a long time... this time about an area in Hyderabad . In my opinion, this area will see a rapid development .

Kollur  is a village in Telangana state and is very close to the financial district ( home to IT companies with almost 200K employees and growing rapidly) .

Kollur is just 20 min away from the Financial district , well connected by ORR, Service road which will be the main commuting routes in near future. 

This area has 3 prestigious schools Gaudium by Aurobindo Pharma, Samashti by Nagarajuna Group and Open Minds by Yash Birla group.

Given the close proximity to the Employment zone, School Zone and the best in class connectivity ( preferre route in future) , this small village is witnessing huge real estate activity already and gives an affordable choice of residential plots/villas/fats.

This area is pretty close to Nallagandla, one of the most sought after residential areas by IT community and also very near to Tellapur. Recent revival of the 100 Acre techno park in Tellapur will add more buzz to this small , beautiful and peaceful village.

Read my posts on other areas of hyd : Alkapoor Township  , Gachibowli

Financial Planning - Part II

In continuation to the Financial Planning - Part I , here Iam covering the first aspect of the financial planning.

1) Contingency Fund ( The First and Foremost Important)

Once an individual starts earning , He/She starts experiencing a certain lifestyle and this lifestyle keeps  changing  in accordance with the changes in their income .

In addition,earning  individuals get into commitments like home loan,car loan , personal loan etc .

Adding to this, any family responsibilities like child education , Elderly parents' care and social expectations adds to regular cash outflow.

This leads to a situation - where he may get a lot of income but majority of it is a must for his status-quo.

Given this scenario, what happens if an individual's regular income is stopped for a short/long period for many possible reasons like - Loss of job/Business , long term health problems , taking break etc..
none of these reasons can be ruled out and majority of the people in working/earning age experience one or more of these at some point of time .

Any of these situations, put a lot of pressure on the individual and if there is a financial problem associated to this, it will be a very tough situation to come out . The individual can not focus on getting back to earning as he will be pulled into the financial problems. Also, this may force to draw from long term plans affecting one's retirement plan etc.

What can be done to tide over these situations ?

As per the experts of Financial Planning, it is always suggested to keep track of monthly outflow of cash for 'all must to have ' things. lets say this amount is 'MMC' -' Monthly Must To Have Cash' ( this is my own word :) )

Once this amount is known - multiply it with 4 ( 4 X 'MMC') and then add a buffer of 20% (.8MMC)  to it. So the total is - 4.8 X 'MMC'.

The action item is to build a contingency fund of 4.8 MMC from the income .

Questions arise - should I keep this money idle? Am i not losing the income this money may generate if I invest in so and so ?

while these may sound relevant questions, by spending some amount of time one can find investment avenues , where they an park this contingency fund for good returns.

options like  Liquid Mutual funds can be explored- Better than Bank interest ( Depends on mkt, though) any time access to the fund , can be with drawn in 2 days.

The Sustainability Activists

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.” ― Mahatma Gandhi.

In the changed world , let me replace the world Man with human being , to avoid any feminist attack on Mahatma :) . Iam sure he does not mean it is only for a man , but he meant this for all humanity.

If we Think over, world was not facing any serious environment issues at the time when Mr.Gandhi has said this, but being the visionary he is, he would have got a sense of where the world is heading . 

During this week, I came across Two very special people who are working towards a green ,healthy , sustainable planet.  

One is working at the origin of the food chain with farmers to create a sustainable agriculture practice. The aim of  his mission is to make farmer independent of third party ( seed vendors,fertilizer/pesticide vendors, Creditors etc.. ) and focus on his farming without any worry and produce healthy food grains/fruits for a healthy society.

Iam an active member of a team called 'ECO Team' in my current organisation  and happened to be an audience to the session by Mr. GV Ramanjaneyulu from Centre for sustainable agriculture . I have given a brief description here  .

The other person is Mr.Shubhendu Sharma from an organization called Afforestt . This is not an in person experience but have come across his website , his TED Talk, INK Talk and Interview .

I was mentioning abt Mr. Ramanjaneyulu's session with my family . We were discussing on the options to start a low cost/zero cost farm related activity in our small piece of land and then chanced upon Mr.Shubhendu's work.

My immediate reaction was - Respect. The work he has done ( By 2013, Planted more than 36000 trees in 2.5 years ) and the words he use to describe and promote urban forests and the big picture he sees not for himself but for the world. Hope They are doing good in terms of the business and creating lot many forests. 

His work is aimed at creating a mini forest in any piece of land size equal to or greater than 1000 sq.ft. Benefits of this compared any lawn/garden plants

- 3 Time more greenery 

- 3 Times more CO2 absorption 

- Increased bio diversity ( he creates the forest with local species) 

- Half of the water requirement

- Increased water level

Wish best of luck to Mr.Shubhendu and Mr.GV Ramanjaneyulu in their mission and hope more and more people start practicing their methods .

Picture from the Free pictures gallery @ Pixabay.com . Many thanks to the people at pixabay for their efforts. 

Financial Planning - Part I

In the current scenario, with uncertain careers and increasing cost of living, Financial planning for every individual is very very important to lead a Happy Life.

while every one agrees that Financial planning is important, the awareness in India is at a very dismal level and increasing only recently.

What aspects should a Financial plan cover?

1) Contingency fund ( the first and foremost important) 

2) Insurance ( Life and Health insurance for self and Family) 

3) Saving ( save first and spend later ) 

4) Define your needs/goals ( Home,Car,Vacation,Child education, elderly parents' care, Retirement,Estate Planning etc..)

5) Invest your savings in line with your goals

6) Track and change course where required

Thanks to Pixabay.com for free image of a happy family used in above diagram. People who give away any thing ( money/time/food/cloths/creations like this picture) are surely contributing to the betterment of the society at large . My Best wishes to the people at Pixabay.com

Iam planning to write a separate blog on each of the 6 aspects mentioned above.

Today's Interesting News - 25 April 2015

2 Indians Awarded for Saving Toddler Dangling From Balcony in Singapore :

Two Indian nationals in Singapore have been hailed as heroes and commended for saving a dangling toddler stuck between the rails on a parapet of a second floor apartment block. Hats off to them and good luck to the kid .

Bengaluru's Chinnaswamy Stadium Goes Solar, Aims to Generate 1.3 Megawatt Power : As if to celebrate the earth day, Chinnaswamy stadium gone solar . Happy to see multiple news and events happening on solar front. Each of this contributions make a huge impact on the economy of India , environment of the world . Will write my opinion in detail in a later blog .

Weekend Special : Happiest countries in the World  : Switzerland,Iceland and Denmark take the top three places in the list and you can visit the link on CNN for the complete list and also to know why they are the happiest countries. I always , get a thought that can we have a same scale for the entire world to measure the happiness/best place to live etc.. with so many different kids of people, different cultures,different needs , how can we define the happiness/best place to live etc? I will write on that some time later.

Sustainability

As part of EarthDay activities, ECO team in our office has arranged a session on Sustainable Agriculture by Mr.GV Ramanjaneyulu from CSA ( Center for sustainable Agriculture) 

Came across startling facts about the problems faced by farmers in India , the struggles they go through in farming ( from seed collection , pesticide collection) water problems .

CSA is doing a commendable work in areas related to agriculture

1) Support the farmers with methods of agriculture without pesticides
2) Work with govt in making policy changes towards sustainable agriculture
3) Spread awareness among all to use pesticide free food

They have many farms running with pesticide free method of farming and open for visit by anybody on prior appointment.

Also, he explained the amount of water required for producing one kg of each food and explained how we can contribute to the world by just changing the eating patterns/habits .

Source : http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jan/10/how-much-water-food-production-waste

Foodstuff	Quantity	Water consumption, litres
Chocolate	1 kg	17,196
Beef	1 kg	15,415
Sheep Meat	1 kg	10,412
Pork	1 kg	5,988
Butter	1 kg	5,553
Chicken meat	1 kg	4,325
Cheese	1 kg	3,178
Olives	1 kg	3,025
Rice	1 kg	2,497
Cotton	1 @ 250g	2,495
Pasta (dry)	1 kg	1,849
Bread	1 kg	1,608
Pizza	1 unit	1,239
Apple	1 kg	822
Banana	1 kg	790
Potatoes	1 kg	287
Milk	1 x 250ml glass	255
Cabbage	1 kg	237
Tomato	1 kg	214
Egg	1	196
Wine	1 x 250ml glass	109
Beer	1 x 250ml glass	74
Tea	1 x 250 ml cup	27
Source: IME

Today's Interesting News - 23 Apr 2015

In an interesting development, while the Residential Project Launches  in large cities across India are down by 50%, there is a huge surge in the project launches in hyderabad. Good sign for India's youngest state .Wish this continues and brings back the glory of Hyderabad. The number of units launched in Hyderabad is just 30% lower than Bangalore now.. wish Hyd beats Bangalore sooner:)

AP's new capital to have a massive man made lake , Twice the size of Iconic Hussain Sagar in Hyderabad : What ever may be the reason behind this move, happy to know that a large water body is being created after a very long time in human history . Best wishes for the new capital and wish it thrives on all aspects and will not become like existing cities in India where basic necessities - good roads, drinking water , smooth travel are big luxury.

While the large Oil companies across the world are brain storming on the strategies to beat the oil price slump - TATAs, India's most respected Business house have come up with a Solar car prototype which can reach a max of 60KMPH

On this earth day, lets learn some good habits from this lady , who lives a zero waste life . The waste/trash she generates in half year is much lesser than the waste generated in half day by most people . Hats off  Ms.Shreeves : Hear you go