Thought Garage

I heard that the margins in Medical retailing are quite higher owing to multiple layers and even Doctors that prescribe a medicine gets their own commissions. But I never had a clue of how much the effective total margin would be for the whole distribution chain. While I was searching for multi-vitamin capsules sold in India for a price comparison and hit the page at Ind-Swift Healthcare  where the firm mentioned the MSRP and price to super stockist (or the first level distribution as per my understanding). The prices vary for different items. Injectable are the lowest, where MSRP is just about 50-100% higher than the super stockist price. But when it comes to tablets and capsules, the margins are as high as 1000% to 1200% and some nutrients are still higher. Can't believe? Check for youself here :  IndSwift No wonder, Doctors always prescribe a certain medication for a variety of choices.

This post was published from my iphone using the new wordpress app on iPhone. App is pretty cool, though very elementary.

When a sprinter runs the race and win a gold medal despite a whole bunch of odds, but misses the commentators expectations by 1/100th of a second, who is wrong? The commentator? or the athlete? Who should get punished? Do we respect the athlete for his/her performance or based on how commentators view the whole event? In the wall street, always, the athlete gets punished. Even when they miss, Analysts continue to sell their reports and analysis, by writing why companies did not meet their expectations. What a spin? Does every investor in Wall Street do their own due diligence and trade stocks or do so based on TV Shows and projections from salaried Analysts that write reports. When Analysts forecasts are not met, why media always points to the company and say the company failed. Why don't they even doubt the analyst's report that report missed the projections. Company Results: Google net income grew by 35% to $1.25.  Wall Street Reaction: Google, You missed my projections, ...

Its very funny to look at job advertisements for Software Developers, particularly in the enterprise. Many times those requirements look like are actually written by completely non-technical business managers, who have no clue about what they really need. And its quite shocking that many IT consultants garnish their resumes to fit to that profile. They get short listed, interviewed and selected to work on those projects. Something, I have been trying hard to understand, but so far, clearly running out of luck. See a sample requirement I just received: The requirement says they need an experienced IT Professional with 10 years of solid IT development experience with the following skill set: "Development Life Cycle, C++, Oracle (SQL & PL/SQL), Java (JDK 1.4/1.5), J2EE , Servlets, JSP, JDeveloper, Client/Server, Intranet, Internet, Multi tier enterprise applications, CVS, UNIX, Oracle Application Server, Twiki, Windows & Unix OS, JDBC, HTML, UML, XML, XSLT, HTML, XMLSpy ...

Here is a snappy does of Startup Wisdom. Excellent analysis on UI. After reading this article, I looked around in my car, what kind of UI the car designers created that made driving so fun and effortless. They definitely looked at pragmatics rather than naive or new user. Once the glamour is gone, the pragmatics is what keeps user sticky. I can't believe, there are 500-600 startups coming up every year in India? Learning from "bad" UI Following fashion and the status quo is easy. Thinking about your users’ lives and creating something practical is much harder. The Future of the Startup Workforce : OnDemand Talent? So according to one entity’s claim, there are 800 startups in Bangalore. I know that as part of tracking startups, we see an average of about 500 - 600 new startups coming up every year, and these are just in the Technology space, and product focused. The early days: How 37signals built buzz out of the gate When 37signals first started out, we didn’t m...

I am pretty sure, this franchise based promotion of a game will workout in India too. Since Basketball needs very minimal infrastructure, quite smaller grounds, I guess it fits better to Indian environment.  The N.B. A. is planning to introduce basketball to India and expand its global reach into a country with a soaring economy and a growing appetite for Western tastes. Source: N.B.A. Believes India Could Be Next China

A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all” - Anonymous. Few notable thoughts that are worth sharing and spreading. India, the superstar Think India presents India as a balanced, open vista where everything can be a success owing to democratic outlook, intelligent and educated manpower, and high end manufacturing strength. The authors paint a factual picture of the current economy with its high points as well as baggage of the economic and social gains that are making India a substantial economic power to be reckoned with. It analyses the current scenario and extrapolates as to how and why India could or would be an economic superstar. Indian outsourcers gaining global share: Gartner According to Gartner, the top six Indian offshore service providers, including Satyam, Wipro, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Cognizant and HCL Technologies, accounted for 2.4% of the total worldwide IT servic...

Its just amazingly vivid, how a failure can help you grow. I love it. Here are a few excerpts. At the link below you can watch a video and download the MP3 as well. J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement : Harvard Magazine J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association. Few excerpts: "There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you" "failure meant a stripping away of the inessential." "some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default. " " Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by p...