FLEXCUBE has retained its leadership position as the world’s No.1 selling banking solution for 2006, for the fifth consecutive year. International Banking Systems (IBS),
UK, in its Annual Sales League tables for 2006, unveiled in
London on March 1, has ranked FLEXCUBE as the #1 Universal Banking Solution. Moreover, FLEXCUBE leads all other products, across all other categories, in terms of number of new wins for 2006. i-flex is the first company to have achieved the distinction of being ranked number 1 for five years in a row in the IBS Sales League tables.

Great going i-flex ..

Banking software product and service provider i-flex Solutions has reported a 57.1% y-o-y rise in net profit in the third quarter(Q3) ended December 31, 2006, reports Our Bureau. Net profit was Rs 91.05 crore against Rs 57.95 crore for the comparable period in FY06. Revenues were placed at Rs 395.56 crore(Rs 297.47 crore) translating to a 32.97% rise. On a consolidated basis, i-flex has seen its net profit at Rs 111.2 crore against Rs 48.2 crore indicating a growth of 130.7% while revenues were Rs 557.4 crore indicating a y-o-y growth of 44%. The contribution from non-Citigroup clients stood at 52% of while the product revenues rose by an impressive 52% y-o-y. Citigroup holds a controlling stake in i-flex. “We are witnessing a significant mindset change in the global financial industry with greater attention to the state of ageing core systems. The combined Oracle/i-flex force is already making a difference in winning several top tier names as customers,” said Rajesh Hukku, CMD, i-flex. “i-flex’s continued growth and success is a result of its proven ability to deliver end-to-end solutions that meets the real business needs of financial institutions around the world, addressing their most pressing concerns and arming them with competitive advantage,” said Mr R Ravisankar, CEO, international operations and business development, i-flex. “As the company is expanding global operations, we are judiciously investing in creating a highly responsive infrastructure to support growth,” said Deepak Ghaisas, CEO, India operations & CFO, i-flex. Incidentally, the contribution from non-Citigroup was placed at 52% of the revenues while the product revenues rose by an impressive 52% y-o-y. Overall i-flex added 42 new customers for the group taking the total number of customers to 723. The third quarter saw a gross addition of 989 employees taking the total staff strength of the group to 8,546 indicating a 28% y-o-y. The acquisition of Mantas brought in 25 relationships for i-flex of which 16 were new-name customers.

More snaps are coming soon…

Last weekend we went for trekking the abandoned railway line between ‘Donigal‘ to ‘Yadakumari‘. Donigal is a small station near by Sakleshpur (a town on the Bangalore-Mangalore highway). We were a group of seven people, all my college friends. We left from majestic bus stop ,
Bangalore around 11pm on Friday night and reached Sakleshpur in the early morning 4 am. After taking some refreshment we went to Donigal station and our trekking started from there. The initial part was good and easy then we came across series of bridges and tunnels. There are total 19 tunnels and some 25 bridges on the way. Some of the bridges are as high as 250 ft. the best part was that you walk and eat in between and the whole route is so green and calm that you will feel like staying there for hours. You may feel tired in between so, do carry some glucose, juicy fruits and lots of water. Ya having a torch is also a must bcoz without it you can’t get out of tunnels. There are some of tunnels which are as long as 500 meter. We walked whole day on an off and finally reached Yedukumari railway station by 3pm in the afternoon. Yadakumari is just a small railway station in the middle of the forest. All you get there is some accommodation to sleep in and off course natural chill water all time.Our plan was to take a short cut route from Yadakumari and reach the near by highway by evening and get back to Sakleshpur bus stop to catch the night bus for
Bangalore.But there started the real twist in the story, we started for the shortcut highway route and unfortunately got into a wrong direction and had to return back to Yadakumari station by sunset. Then we planed to stay back at Yadakumari station for the whole night and that was the worst part of the trek. The night was really chill and we had not planed for night stay there. Anyway somehow the darkness of night got over and in the morning we started again to reach highway but this time we had few other groups with us .The route to the highway is some 4 km from Yadakumari station. 1 km you skid down the forest shortcut and walk the other 3 KM on Jeep track. At the end of the road to the highway is a big river. Crossing the river was again the great fun though it is not a deep river but do not try this out at night. You can have a bath and some refreshment to feel charged again. After crossing the river we saw the Mangalore-Bangalore highway and got a bus for Bangalore in few minutes and by evening we reached Bangalore.Hey I forgot to mention about leeches near by water streams or marshy areas. Please watch out for them bcoz they are really gonna suck your blood if you ignore them.

Do take:

·        Food for everyone for a whole day Water, glucose, fruits.                                         

·         A torch for everyone, candle, match box.

·         Warm clothes – a good jacket will do.

·         Good pair of shoes.

·         A Digital Camera is must to capture the so much of beautiful surroundings. 

·         Salt to get rid of leeches.

Don’t take: Heavy baggage.

Best time to visit:

You can go round the year, but I suggest don’t go in rainy season.

It was really a nice experience at BarCamp,Bangalore 2.0 . sessions were really good and informative and all arrangement was proper.I really enjoyed each and every moment of organizing this event along with my other friends. i would also like to thank ThoughtWorks for their keen interest in supporting and sponsoring this event.

Some interesting sessions I attended

• Fixed Price, Off-shore and Agile Software Development: (How) does that work? – Marco Jansen ThoughtWorks.
• DIY HackDay – Logistics and Lessons [Jay Fichialos]
• Card Walls v/s Competitive Dancing – [Deven Tolia]
• Web 2.0 Business Models [Sowmya Karmali]
• How Innovators Connect – Sharing Experiences of Leading Silicon Valley Innovators (Rohit Agarwal )
• Building Ajax web applications using GWT
• Commute Easy – Car Pooling in Bangalore (www.CommuteEasy.com )
• SlideShare – Jon, CTO, SlideShare (http://www.slideshare.com )
• Activ by Sidu ,TW (http://www.inactiv.com )
• OneBigWeb by Harish (www.onebigweb.com )
• Stockhive by Yogi ,TW (www.stockhive.com )

BTW, here are all the pictures of the event at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/barcampbangalore2

Yes guys Barcamp Bangalore 2 is next weekend that is 2^nd and 3^rd Dec at Thoughtworks, on Airport road. Register quickly if you haven’t already.You can also get the glimpses of  the first BarCamp,Bangalore which happened in April, when around 150 people gathered into Yahoo’s office for a day for the various discussions.

Venue details:

ThoughtWorks Technologies (India) Pvt Ltd
2nd Floor, Tower C, Corporate Block, Diamond District,Airport Road,
Bangalore – 560 008, India
91 80 2508 9572,3,4
91 80 2508 9584

I got this list of books from ZeroToMillion.com and the list looked exhaustive and hence wanted to share this with all who are taking time to visit my blog:

Personal Development

 * Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
* The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven R. Covey
* Succeed and Grow Rich Through Persuasion by Napoleon Hill
* How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
* The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons by Napoleon Hill
* The Student Success Manifesto by Michael Simmons
* Secrets of the Young & Successful Jennifer Kushnell
* Soul of Money by Lynne Twist
* Unlimited Power by Anthony Robbins
* The Millionaire Mind by Thomas J. Stanley, Ph.D

Entrepreneurship

 * Zero to One Million by Ryan P. M. Allis
* Zero to IPO by David Smith
* Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
* Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing by Robert Kiyosaki
* New Venture Creation by Jeffrey Timmons
* Good to Great by Jim Collins
* The E-Myth by Michael Gerber
* The Young Entrepreneurs’Edge by Jennifer Kushnell
* The Young Entrepreneur’s Guide to Starting and Running a Business by Steve Mariotti
* The Portable MBA in Entrepreneurship by William D. Bygrave
* Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker
* Good to Great by Jim Collins
* At Work with Thomas Edison by Blain McCormick
* Multiple Streams of Income by Robert G. Allen
* On Entrepreneurship by Harvard Business Review
* Entrepreneurship.com by Tim Burns
* The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
* Fire in the Belly – an exploration of the entrepreneurial spirit by Yanky Fachler

Globalization & Economics

* The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas L. Friedman
* The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman
* The Commanding Heights by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw
* Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal by Ball and Dagger
* The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L Heilbroner
* Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets by John McMillan
* The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto
* Economics by Stanley and Brue
* Macroeconomics by N. Gregory Mankiw
* Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy by Joseph A. Schumpeter
* International Business by Charles W. H. Hill
* Against the Dead Hand by Brink Lindsey

Marketing

 * The Anatomy of Buzz by Emanuel Rosen
* The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
* Obtaining a #1 Ranking in the Search Engines by Ryan Allis
* What Clients Love by Harry Beckwith
* Building Thousands of Links to Your Site by Ryan Allis
* Net Results 2 by Rick E. Bruner
* Protégé Training Program by Jay Abraham
* Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
* Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
* Guerilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson
* Principles of Marketing by Kotler and Armstrong

Hi people.

If you are new to BarCamps then read here first and join the mailing list for the discussions. Currently I am staying@Bangalore, the silicon valley of India. The first BarCamp@Bangalore was organized in the month of April, 06. But unfortunately I was not there at the gathering. After the event one of my friends told me about the Geeks gathering sponsored by Yahoo and Riya.It sound very interesting to me and I thought to attend it next time and from there my quest started with BarCamps. Now I am one of Crew member of BarCamp,Bangalore-2 and we are working for the execution of next BarCamp in Bangalore on 2^nd and 3^rd Dec.

I must say it’s a great platform to express your ideas /innovation and at the same time you can get many new and great ideas from other participants as well. You can get to know lot of new technology insight around by the end of the event. It’s also a great place for many of starters to discuss and promote their latest business venture. BarCamps are simply for the geeks, by the geeks and from the geeks.

Official Links
http://Barcamp.org

http://www.barcampbangalore.org
http://Barcamp.org/BarCampBangalore
http://Barcamp.org/BarCampBangalore-2

Interesting links

Dummies guide for organizing a BarCamp in your city

Look this space for more updates ….

Happy Camping!!!!!

India has emerged as the fourth biggest home to the best small companies in Asia with as many as 23 domestic firms finding place in a list of ‘200 best under-billion companies’ prepared by the Forbes magazine.
In a development that marks growing recognition for India Inc — including small companies and not just the corporate giants and IT majors, India has been ranked ahead of countries like Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand.
Three Indian firms — Great Eastern Shipping, Cipla and Sesa Goa have also managed to make to the top-25 of the “Asia’s 200 Best Under Billion” list published in the latest Asia edition of the business magazine.

Taiwan leads the tally with as many as 31 companies, followed by China with 30 entries and Australia with 27 companies on the list. The list include 11 companies each from Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand, five from Indonesia, 19 each from Japan and Singapore, eight from Malaysia, three from Pakistan and one each from New Zealand and Sri Lanka.

Domestic shipping firm, GE Shipping has been ranked as the third most profitable entity on the list with a net income of 193 million dollars, followed by pharma major Cipla at 9th position with net income of 136 million dollars in the overall Asia list.

Sesa Goa has been ranked at 20th position with net income of 108 million dollar. Hong Kong-based China Merchants Holdings tops the list with a profit of 305 million dollar, followed by Australia’s Oil Search at second position with profit of 193 million dollars.

In terms of sales, Bharat Forge and Asian paints have been ranked at 12th and 13th position, followed by Cipla at the 14th rank across Asia.

Cipla also finds place in the magazine’s top-ten market value companies among all 200 firms mentioned in the list. It has been ranked at fourth position in this league with a market-value of 4.37 billion dollar, followed by i-flex solutions at 12th rank with a market value of 2.42 billion dollar, Bharat Forge and Dabur India at 24th and 25th positions respectively.

All the 23 Indian companies on the list include: Asian Paints, Bajaj Hindustan, Balkrishna Industries, Balrampur Chini Mills, Bharat Forge, Cadila Healthcare, Carborundum Universal, Cipla, Dabur India, Essel Propack, FDC India, GE Shipping, Grindwell Norton India, i-flex solutions, JB Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals India, Kirloskar Oil Engines, Maharashtra Seamless, Mastek, Pantaloon Retail, Punjab Tractors, Rolta India, Sesa Goa and Thermax.

The magazine said not all companies in Asia were feeding the region’s export machine with many in Japan and India selling products to their domestic markets.

Forbes cited the example of Mumbai-based retailer Pantaloon, which sells everything from cell phones to saris.

The list is considerably dominated by manufacturing companies. With Asian factories churning out so much of the world’s clothing, furniture and electronics, it’s no surprise that manufacturers have a strong presence on the list, the magazine said.

It could soon be raining jobs in India’s booming information technology sector, with the merger of French IT consultant, Capgemini and Kanbay International set to create over 23,000 new jobs in the next four years.

The deal to buy out Kanbay, an IT services company that is listed in the US but operates mostly out of India, would be unlike regular mergers and acquisitions as far as job layoffs are concerned.

In fact, Capgemini which has 6,000 employees at present hopes that the proposed merger would create a multinational behemoth with a workforce of about 35,000 employees in India by 2010.

The India head count of Capgemini, which on Thursday signed an agreement to acquire Nasdaq-listed Kanbay for about $1.25 billion, would increase from 6,000 to about 12,000 by the end of this year.

Currently, Kanbay has a workforce of over 5,000 in India, which represents a large chunk of its worldwide headcount of 6,900 employees.

No layoffs are expected following the merger, as the US as well as Indian operations of the two companies are spread across different cities. Moreover, Kanbay is more focused on financial services segment as compared to Capgemini, industry experts said.

The deal would also make Capgemini the largest MNC in the Indian IT services space in terms of Indian head count percentage ahead of giants like IBM, Accenture and Electronic Data Systems.

The company would become the third largest in terms of the total number of employees in the country after IBM (20,000) and Accenture (12,500), while excluding the employees in their BPO operations.