Types of EV batteries

 

How to improve gut health !!

 

This is shared by an Indian doctor !! 

Basic funda is to eat atleast 30 different plant products every week. This is very much possible if you eat 4-6 different curries /dal in a week with our Indian diet. 

Indian Inequality

 

Two maps which striked me a lot on how Income and Govt spend inequality are there in India. 

I really hope the states of UP, Bihar, MP buckle up and make people productive !! 

Feb 2024 - Interesting things

 

How India has been urbanising . A clear expansion on cities like Delhi, Hyderabad , Jaipur etc. 

It is said that eating food of 30+ different plants is good for gut health. 

Electoral Bonds - Biggest scam of this time

 

January 2024 recommendations

 

I decided to list down the things i liked and would like to recommend to others. It may be podcast, youtube videos, Movies , Songs and writeups. 

Movies : 

I had some good free time this month due to holidays and less work. I liked Salaar,Irugupatru, Hi Nanna, Mission Impossible Dead reckoning,  How is it for a Monday(Telugu- English) , Awe (Telugu). 

In Salaar, Prabhas got one of the best role for him which utilizes his cutout (i like how he is named that too in that movie for a while :P ) and the Kateramma fight was brilliantly executed , the high of Shreya Reddy shouting on top of her lungs screaming "Salaar Devaratha Raisaar" are some peak points, for me and Prashant Neel is probably the best SSR school topper now in India .

Irugupatru deals with married couples , so may be not everyones cup of tea but i liked how simplistic the topic was dealt. Hi Nanna, kudos to Nani for doing it and director Shoryuv for ensuring an emotional movie had enough high points to be hooked to . I watched Mission Impossible so that its checked off my the list and it was fun and as expected. 

One movie which i liked how a acquintance of mine , Sripal Sama executed and made such a wonderful film called " How is it for a Monday" , intertwining Telugu customs , Telugu NRIs and a very very good message . I even tried to nod like Kaushik ghantasala in that "Nenu Nasagaadina " scene quite a few times. 

Awe was another movie wanted to watch since long time and i now understand why it was so highly critically rated . Brilliantly made right from start to end with enough cues to keep hooked and some loose ends too. 

Music :

I am now hooked to Guntur Kaaram (Dum Masala, Mawa enthaina) and Hi Nanna albums . 

Podcast: 

Iam now commuting to office more due to new rules and have more time to finish pending podcast episodes. 

My favorite Telugu podcast "harivillu" by Nag Vasireddy where he is back with a review of 2023 movies with guest Yaswant Aluru. I am mind blown by the analysis and thoughts of Yaswanth and out of those 23 movies discussed, i had similar thoughts about 20 movies. 

I am a fan of Amit Varma podcast and i finished the KP Krishnan's one (probably the longest one i heard till now ) which is just great for anyone to understand the inner workings of a govt servant. Another one of India's pension crisis where as usual Ajay Shah keeps you hooked on to the subject. Another one with Pritika Hingaroni on citi planning . Lately, i think iam getting more interesting in cities planning and public safety. 

I heard couple of episodes from Ideas of India by Sruthi Rajagopalan , the year 2023 in review, Rahul sagar on hidden 19th century India  ( where he discusses some interesting things about how Indian monarchs did public policy in British Raj and lot more on Madhav Rao, the Diwan of Travancore ) and listened to a bit of Alain Bertaud episode too where he discusses some interesting points of city planning) . 

As usual , i finished Decoding Democracy episodes as soon as they are out. This is a treasure for every folk out there interested to public policy. Available on Spotify and Amazon too .

And finished all pending episodes of Morgan Housel podcast. I do think i am reading the book at free of cost.

I noticed that my org has now tied up with linkedin learning and also has some good book summaries available. 

On Youtube, i started watching Eco India series by scroll Link  . I do think we are getting over scared on Climate Crisis and doing so less on mitigation front. And Along with Waning Antibiotic resistance and Plastics, Climate Crisis will change lives so soon that when it hits the fan, we will be in a pandemic . 

I was so much fascinated by credit card and became a junkie recently that i started exploring credit cards for no particular reason, more on that later. 

Paytm payments bank going down has impacted me a lot and currently in mitigation efforts. 

I ordered a new fastag from ICICI and it arrived . 

I changed my UPI credit card linkage to Phonepe ( It already gave me decent cashback for this linkage than paytm ever gave me ). 

I am in process of changing my mutual fund auto pay mandates to my ICICI account . 

I am now looking for a digital account and if you have any suggestions, please do let me know. As of now, i am looking at Kotak 811(suggested by a friend) and Jupiter app ( Federal bank- i liked the jupiter app and their philosophy)  

Credit card comparison - India

 

Annual Budget 2022 - India - Environment and Climate Change

 

There are some really good steps that are being taken and fund allocated in this year's budget by our Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman. 

Listing down some of them :

1. Proposal to launch a Hydrogen Energy Mission in 2021-22 for generating hydrogen from green power sources.

2. Proposal to provide additional capital infusion of Rs 1,000 crores to Solar Energy Corporation of India and Rs 1,500 crores to Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency.

3. Creation of Energy Service Company (ESCO) business model to facilitate capacity building and awareness for energy audits, performance contracts, and common measurement & verification protocol.

4. An amount of Rs. 2,217 crores for 42 urban centres with a million-plus population has been set aside for tackling air pollution.

5. To reduce the carbon intensity of the country the finance minister has proposed the issuance of sovereign green bonds as a part of government’s borrowing programme. This will bring in much needed funding into the country for its public sector. Private capital will now have to increase their funding as well to meet the net zero challenge.

6. Proposal to bring a battery swapping policy.

7. Action plans for ten sectors such as electronic waste, end-of-life vehicles, used oil waste, and toxic & hazardous industrial waste.

8. 19,500 cr allocation for PLI manufacture of solar PV modules.

9.Promotion of greener public transport through special mobility zones with zero fossil fuel policy.

10.Thermal Power Plants are mandated to use 5-7% biomass pallets

Best credit card in India for daily use (IMO)

 There are multiple credit cards out there in market and most of them provide benefits which are not for common man utility . If you are looking for best one for airline miles or best for providing lounge access , this is not for you; Please excuse. This is not a promotion or paid post but an effort to provide better information to viewers.

The recommendation is based on daily usage of a middle class family using supermarkets, e-commerce , fuel usage ,bill payments ,annual fee and customer service. 

The first one is the new American Express SmartEarn™ Credit Card , which has some exciting bonus for utilizing multiple times  in a month, very good reward plans with multiple e-commerce platforms offering rewards at 5x for every 50 Rs spent and 10x on Flipkart and Uber . No fuel charge with Hpcl outlets and a waiver of annual charge on 40k spend in an year. Not to mention American Express has an impeccable customer service team and awesome dispute resolution mechanism. (The author doesnt own it yet).

The Second one is the ICICI AmazonPay Visa credit card which the author holds and is a recommendation if you use Amazon atleast decently enough. It provides 5% cashback on non-emi Amazon spend for Prime members , 2% of Amazon pay usage for bill payments or checkouts on any available app, 1% for all other non-fuel spends . The best part is there is no annual charge and rewards get added to your Amazon account every month and no other redemption process is required. I cant recommend this enough.

If you have a good recommendation, please share it in comments .

Telugu app for E-books , audio books, podcasts and more

 If you are Telugu Literary lover and would like to explore more on e-books,stories , audio books and podcasts , there i no better app than " Dasubhashitam " .

Link for ios Appstore download : https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dasubhashitam-telugu-audiobook/id1319854474

Link for Android playstore download : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dasubhashitam&hl=en_US 

App to discover deals on cards you hold

Often we get swarmed with credit card and debit card offers which are in noway need of the hour and then when the times comes, we dont remember there exists an offer and we could have save some bucks.  We wish we know if there are any deals which only pertains to the cards we hold and make our purchases accordingly. 

I recently came across an app called "Russh" available on both ios App Store and Google Play store. It doesnt ask much details from you except your mobile number and it doesnt take any card details. No, this is not a paid post . If you are the developer of this app reading this, you letting you know that you got a fan . 

ios AppStore Link : https://apps.apple.com/us/app/russh/id1471083101

Google PlayStore Link : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.russh&hl=en_IN

Best option to store images and videos on cloud

 As the title says, this post will give you the best option to store photos and videos online on cloud.

My options are best known online organisations which are reputable.

Google, Microsoft, Amazon,Apple, Box, Dropbox.

Amazon :

Amazon in US gives everyone unlimited storage to images and 5GB for videos for every prime account. Additional storage can be bought at 2$ -100GB , 7$ - 1TB per month. This is not available in India.

Apple:

Apple gives 5GB of free storage for everyone. Additional storage can be purchased at INR 75 for 50GB every month , INR 219 for 200GB every month , INR 749 for 2TB every month . 

Google:

Google gives everyone around 15GB of space which includes your email , photos and Drive.Usually this is sufficient for some people if you want only the important photos and videos on cloud. I use this one as of now and this blogpost was an extension of my research on what to do in future.

Additional storage can be bought at 130 INR/Month for 100GB , 210 INR/month for 200GB,  650 INR /month for 2TB and Google also mentions some additional perks with this subscription. Good thing this storage can be shared across family. To buy , use the link One Google.

Microsoft :

Microsoft OneDrive gives 5GB storage by default . For an additional storage of 100GB per month, one needs to pay 123 INR per month . There are other options to increase the storage to 1000GB and that comes with office365 subscription costing around 4200 INR per year and a family version of 6000GB for 5300 INR per year.Link 

Box :

Box is on a higher end cost wise and would cost around 785 INR per month for 100GB , after its initial 10GB of free spac.

DropBox:

Dropbox is also on higher end with 2000GB of space for $10 dollar per month , 3000 GB for $16.5 per month. 

So, effectively, for 100GB  , cost is 130 Rs for Google, 123 RS for Microsoft, 150 Rs for Apple per month. The advantages with Google is that data storage can be shared across family and its easy to upload images and videos via Photos App.

Websites of the Week Nov 30

Did u ever feel like a having a on the go playlist for youtube videos .
So , here it is http://youtubelister.com/

This is one interesting website i found , a social network for drivers
http://www.passingremarks.com/  . As per website, you can pass a remark on any road-user: anytime, anywhere. All you need is their number plate.

If you are an avid traveller, Govt of India has developed an website and app to create your personal itineraries  http://www.tripigator.com/home

Irctc has also created a mobile app that work flawless 
Android  : IRCTC 
Windows : IRCTC
Blackberry : IRCTC

Ixigo mobile app has a PNR status tracker . App

Take a visual journey through different facets of #India -view 350+ #documentaries, also in foreign languages, at Indiandiplomacy - YouTube

They say it's pretty hard to be creative in a quiet space so here's a solution Coffitivity - Increase Your Creativity!

Quora post for the week ;
Quora Spotlight - India

Websites of the Week - Sep 13

Hello , Welcome Back !!!

Jammu and Kashmir is reeling under heavy floods and a natural calamity which was unprecedented in last 60 days. You can generously donate here at PM relief fund and help in rescue and restoration activites. And kudos to Army for all its efforts , almost rescuing 1.5 lakh people.

India Flooding Situation Reports and needs of the affected communities can be viewed at Corporate Disaster Resource Network (CDRN): Disaster and Emergency Management India, DRR

Whenever you are in doubt in what should you read next ,  check out http://whatshouldireadnext.com type in the last book you liked/read and it generates similar book recommendations!

For some light hearted moments from our Indian movies and their poetic translation Paagal Subtitle

For those daft moments when you forget the entire English language in one instant phraseup* - find the right words

 And finally for sachin and cricket fans, a blog with videos of all of Sachin's 99 centuries (barring 10)  Enjoy. Sachin's Centuries

For Apple freaks, The evolution of iMac: 1998 to 2013 ~ Apple (India) - iMac - Design

Do follow my Quora blog which lists out awesome content on India .

Websites of the week - India special

Welcome Back !!!

India has just completed a successful medal run at Commonwealth games and please consider helping other Indian athletes by sponsoring their olympic gold quest.

If  you have booked a wait listed train ticket , you can hop on to this website and get an insight on your chances on getting ticket confirmed .

confrmtkt  and trainman are the websites in this space now . 

Check your vehicle pending challans/offenses registered by Hyderabad traffic police here 

Track Indian Monsoon rainfall at our Met Department website 

Who knows RBI also has some fun games listed on its website. Check out yourselves here

Interested in some awesome infograms and data visualisations on Indian electons and etc , check out here 

If you are interested in Interesting Indian content on Quora , please do follow Quora Spotlight blog , curated by yours truly .

Websites of the week

Welcome Back !!! Long Time !!!

India is experiencing its every 5 year political Olympics and the nation is poised to move on to the next step of democracy. And that’s why this week its India Special.

If you are Ilayaraja fan like me, this blog gives you an interesting insights into the Raja sir creations.

http://switchme.in/ is probably the most underrated website and this helps people to switch between Home loans accounts, Mobile numbers and electricity connections and saves tons of money for Indians J We are hard bargainers.

http://smartmumbaikar.com/  is one drive pooling platform specially for Mumbai and hope things like these decrease our traffic woes.

Rail Travel Tip: While travelling by train,if there is NO fan/light/security SMS on 8121281212 from a running train with train #,bogie #, nature of complaint

If you are still struggling to learn Kannada even after spending couple of years there , http://www.kannadabaruthe.com/ should be your go to site.

A catchy interactive game developed by UNICEF provides clarity on the status of sanitation across the globe. http://www.unicef.org/toilets4all

Quora thread for this week :

What are some unknown/interesting Indian election facts?

Android app of the week :

How about you are paid for viewing ads  on your phone lock screen . This app does that .

And will end with this political jibe :) Abki Baar.......

The Next Internet – Healthcare, Education, Governance

Internet has changed the way we connect, the way we communicate and the way we share .
Internet has changed the way we express, the way we entertain and the way we get enlightened.
Internet has changed the way we explore, the way we experience and the way we enjoy the world.
Now its time to move on to the next level and see whats going to be changed with this Internet communications.
Internet is already disrupting these three spheres of our life and this is going to be big in coming days.

• Healthcare
• Education
• Governance

If there is one aspect of life, which even after spending billions and billions into technology, we are still unable to cope up to the challenge, its Healthcare.
We are making huge progress in Biosciences and creating an enormous impact by curing the most deadly diseases on the planet. Internet will help these fruits to be available for all. A patient in Africa can connect with a doctor in India or a doctor in United states and get treated with the help of telemedicine or e-medicine facilities. Internet is helping to get more people to access to healthcare and decrease the costs of healthcare in various countries. Some internet startups are trying to disrupt the Complex US healthcare system and this is another list of startups in SanFrancisco.

“In rural Bangladesh, 90 percent of births occur outside hospitals. A mobile-notification system alerts clinics to dispatch nurse–midwife teams, who are now present in 89 percent of births. In China, a public–private partnership created a cardiovascular-monitoring system that allows patients to self-administer electrocardiograms and transmit data to specialists in Beijing, who can suggest treatments by phone. At New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, a venture with General Electric uses smart tags to track the flow of hundreds of patients, treatments, and medical assets in real time. The hospital estimates it could potentially treat 10,000 more patients each year as a result and generate $120 million in savings and revenues over several years.” – McKinsey Quarterly Report.

There are internet startups in India which ease the pain of various healthcare related tangles ranging from  getting a doctor appointment ,to advise on symptoms , to have a discussion with doctors ,to buy pharmacy online, to buy healthcare products online and much more . Complete list can be found here .Working in a healthcare organization , it is exciting to know what progress can be possible.

Education is the only solution to elevate people out of poverty and there are at least 20- 30 % of world population with very low income levels and cannot afford a meal day .To make education accessible for all and available for all, Internet plays a key role. Khan Academy is pioneering in flattening the education field .Anyone who has access to Internet can be educated . Right now, the growth of  MOOC courses which started offering free online education is super successful. Coursera , Udacity and edX are complementing the school/college education and also helping people gain free knowledge.Everyone , even a PHD should try these out.

There are internet platforms offering tutoring services, offering textbook rentals, offering test preparation services, consolidating video lectures,providing virtual classrooms and most importantly developing educational games . Some exciting list is here and the possibilities are endless. Students now have the entire knowledge at their fingers thanks to Wikipedia and Google. The tablet revolution is turning the tide of how education is perceived  and is disrupting the Education landscape in a way that was never imagined , equalising the Education advantage across the world. Social platforms like Linkedin enables to connect professionals like never before and engage more.
India is not far behind this revolution, though there is a lot to pickup the race and there are some exciting internet platforms striving for the change.

Finally, the most important change that just started is the way how governments perform their Governance.

Obama has successfully used the Internet trends to maximize his victory chances and projects like CodeforAmerica are changing the landscape on how internet can be put to public use. Almost all the government agencies in many countries have online grievance redressal systems and are used effectively for tracking the people issues.Many governments are already using the Web to improve services and reduce waste. Governments can also use IT to better engage citizens, as South Korea has done with its e-People site, which helps citizens send online civil petitions for policy changes or reports of corruption. Our next world leaders are moving to the internet for their political aspirations and be more reachable to their electoral franchise. Media , now a days takes almost any news and issues from the buzz on SocialMedia and which in turn shapes the political discourse of a country.Its widely acknowledged that Facebook and Twitter played a major role in Arab Spring . Technology is transforming and bringing a new wave of democracy in Africa.

In India, we have internet platforms like PRS legislative  documenting the legislative procedure and is bringing the complex constitutional process to common man.Andhra Pradesh has pioneered in e-governance initiatives helping citizens bringing government functions to his doorstep  .Almost every state government is pursuing e governance initiatives and trying to bring transparency. Open Data initiatives are catching up in India and Govt of India has officially announced open data platform.Some government agencies are active on SocialMedia are resolving queries.And very recently the main political parties have taken their battle to the internet sphere with mocking websites. Almost every news channel takes the issues which are on buzz on SocialMedia and on internet. Major political parties now have  digital campaign management teams. It is estimated that SocialMedia plays major role in election outcomes in India, in the coming general Elections.

!!! The world is flattening more , Thanks to Internet.

You can  follow me onTwitter , Facebook and on Quora

Websites of the Week - Jun 30

Welcome back !!
What an awesome weather it is in India with onset of Monsoon and Sunday Mornings at this time are filled with a semi bright Sun with a rustic rainy smell. But there are thousands of Indians who were stuck in a natural disaster and many of them are coming back home after a week of survival struggle..

First of all, a heart filled Salute to Indian Army for their daring, dashing, successful efforts in relocating 70 thousand people from the flashfloods of Uttarakhand, a northern state in India.You can follow Indian Army on Twitter and on Facebook.
Uttarakhand is a state completely dependent on tourism and this disaster will take back the state atleast 10-15 years back.The cost that require for this comeback would be mindboggling.
Please donate generously to Indian Prime Minister relief fund here and other NGOs like Goonj who are actively involved in this operation.

Coming back to technical stuff, Gmail new email interface is really useful to filter out the important emails and iam actually spending more time on email now. A tip to use it better, you can Go to the next tab with ` and go to the previous tab with ~ .

Continuing on the tips, have you ever wondered what are the two tick marks (Right symbols)  at the end of every whatsapp message . If its one mark, it means the message has been delivered to Whatsapp server and if its two , the message has been delivered to the receiver. And if you are slightly irritated by the 'Last Online' feature on whatsapp , you can always allow the messages to load without opening whatsapp and then turn off data connection and then view and respond back and close it. Then turn on the whatsapp . Last online time will not be updated :)

Do me a  favour and search for "241543903" in Google Images :)  .Noticed something ..? Yes, its one of the google easter egg and you will see all the images with people keeping their heads inside refrigerators.

Have you ever been disappointed that you are unable to print a pdf because of some restrictions on that pdf document , this website FreeMyPdf  should mostly resolve your issue.

Do you want to know what all Twitter accounts are verified. Hop on this twitter account Verified and check the twitter accounts its following ;They all are twitter verified accounts.

This is one amazing blogpost . Check out yourselves and appreciate the effort.

Android App of the Week : Plan B . Dont panic if you have lost your android phone, you can install this app even after loosing it and get to know its whereabouts  (Disclaimer: Not tested).

Quora Thread of the Week:    Fathers Day was couple of weeks back but its not never too late to appreciate parents and take their advice. Get to know some brilliant advice of fathers to various Quorans at

What is the best advice your father ever gave you? 

May your Happiness increase like Indian Petrol prices, may your sorrows fall like Indian Rupee and May your joy fill your heart like corruption in India. !!!  You can  follow me on Twitter and on Facebook 

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Websites of the Week - Startup India Special

With the recent sucess of Just Dial IPO , Webengage 10k customers and very recent successful exit of Redbus.in , Indian Tech startups are back on the spotlight. These successes have put the faith back in hearts of  tons of Indian Startups that there is indeed a bright light at the end of tunnel..

First, to know the best curated daily updates about Indian startups, Subscribe to  Unitechy News letter . This is curated and sent by ApruvaChaudhary of MediaNama

To know the  hottest startups in town , hop on to  500.co which funds some rockstar startups worldwide (There are around 10 Indian startups in this recent incubation)  and Morpheous is its Indian Counterpart incubator and accelerator.

If you are a 'wantreprenuer' (Yes, there is a word for people like us )  , you must take this Online Coursera course ( Startup Engineering ) being delivered by Quora superstar Balaji Vishwanathan  .

If you have already STARTed , you must see this nice slideshare deck of Indias Angel investors prepared by Yourstory.in folks.

If you want to be a part of this Indian Startup conversations, be a part of this google group ( HeadStart Network )  . NASSCOM , India's software association, has just recently announced its 1000 startups initiative and even though the dates are ended, the learning resources on this website are great.

This Android App gives you daily updates of Indian Startups, Yourstory.in

And finally, Quora threads for this week :
Which are the hottest startups in India? 
Which Indian technology companies are doing the most interesting projects?

Bonus:  If you are not sure when to START, where to START, how to START and most importantly WHAT to start ..Read this and this .

Just pump out your nerves with this TED talk of Elon Musk, the man who is pushing the horizons of tech and is like the Dravid of Cricket, if Steve jobs is Sachin ; Nadal of Tennis , if Steve Jobs is Federer.

PS - If you have an idea, let me know , i believe we can work  :)

--
Vamsi
Startup Connoisseur