NOĒSIS

Enterprise and Quest towards reducing friction

Customer loyalty is a result of reduced friction. All successful enterprises (for profit or non-profit) are in the business of reducing friction that a customer faces in the process of accessing products or services required by the customer. Friction, that arises during pre-product acquisition as well as post product acquisition phases, needs to be reduced…
Models of Charity

On a different planet called Vrithpi, two models of welfare for lower income Households (HH) were observed. Govt Led and Private Sector led. Which of the two (explained below) do you think is better? (The currency on that planet is called Rx) Model 1 (Govt): In some rural locations, under the ONREGA scheme of the…
MUDRA Bank – How will it help?

First things first, a regulator cum re-financier (market player) is bad design. Period. It leads to moral hazard where the regulator will shape policy to grow only its business. Yes, refinance is business. But I hear that MUDRA Bank is expected to be a regulator and financier of microfinance institutions and micro-enterprises. Why? The only other entity…
Whose responsibility is it to make one “job-ready”?

The industry cribs all the time that Indian education doesn’t produce enough job-ready people. I wonder, is it the responsibility of the schools/colleges to make one job ready by training them on specific tasks? Or is it the school/college’s responsibility to provide the students with the general tools and knowledge of theories and practices that will…
Will the on-demand economy lead to skewed availability of essential services?

On- demand economy businesses (like say über, Elance, etc) do the great thing of connecting idle resources with those who need them, whenever they need them and all of this at a reduced or nil search cost. So, on-demand economy platforms/marketplaces enable better utilisation of resources and improve overall efficiencies. While most people normally prize certainty of…
Credit Scoring Vs Personalised Lending

In India, all banks have internal credit scoring models and it has not helped them in lending to SMEs. Two key reasons why banks (formal lending institutions) do not lend to SMEs in India area.) Lack of information on actual profitability/cash flows. No official documented evidence of income can be found. This is primarily in…
Food Wastage: Challenges for India

A FAO study throws up interesting numbers on food wastage across the world and splits up food wastage per capita into supply chain losses and consumer level losses. For developed countries, consumer level wastage is alarming but for countries like India, the supply chain level wastage is alarming because of the volume of food losses…
Will de-listing of Fruits & Vegetables from APMC Act affect price?

Recently, the Indian Central Government requested all State Governments to delist fruits and vegetables from the Agriculture Produce Market Committees Act (APMC Act). This was to address rising price in fruits and vegetables. I was trying to understand how this would affect things going forward. A basic analysis of what I think is going to happen…