Akshay Gokalgandhi

We all know what E-commerce is today and for those who did’t 2020 has familiarised them with the same. The past few years have seen a surge in the usage of online platforms for shopping due to several factors such as convenience and also easy accessibility, just to state a few.  Everything seems to be available online. Right from electronics, gadgets, apparels and jewellery to even vegetables. There is a website or application for it all. Easy return and exchange policies, great design of websites to assist in search of the right product and just the fact of being able to sit in the comfort of our homes makes this shopping style such a hit. The past year however, in specific, has proven to be an even greater boon to the e-commerce industries. Over 2 Billion people shopped online in 2020 (Statista.com) . With a global pandemic and forced social distancing norms, most brands have been forced to go digital to steer clear of running out of business. Pandemic or no pandemic, we are all ...

  Marketing is the strategic art of selling a product to a target audience encompassing various tools and gimmicks. Marketing is like the backbone of any industry. You may have excellent products and services at excellent prices and excellent durability but the advantages of all the above are nullified if you don’t have the right strategy to lure the target audience into buying the product. This tool can also be powerful enough to sky rocket the sales of an average product if strategized in the right manner. At the end of the day, it all boils down to a lot of planning, strategy and research.         The past year has been a rather testing one. It’s been a year of changes in several aspects all around the globe and these changes have somewhat gotten us all together in a rather strange way. Industries and businesses have either seen the last of their days in the markets or blossomed with excessive demand. Marketing has a lot to do with this to...

Blockchain in daily life With the rise and advent of bitcoin and various other cryptocurrencies, everyone is sure that blockchain is going to be the next big thing. Its use is not only limited to cryptocurrencies. It has a wide area of applications which is going to be useful to us in some of the other ways in our day to day routine. Capital Markets Capital market is a market in which buyers and sellers engage in buying and selling of bonds, shares, securities. The various implementations of blockchain in capital markets are Credit Derivatives - Credit derivatives transfer loan risk to a third party. This is a huge market. This market has a very complex post-trade process that will benefit from cost reductions and efficiencies from the successful implementation of DLT. Cash Equities Clearing -Using DLT for clearing and settlement can accelerate settlement cycles, optimize management of capital and risk. Repurchase Agreements -Repurchase agreements, where one side se...

Future of Cryptocurrency The recent cryptocurrency boom and it’s parent technology- blockchain is hard to overlook. Though this technology is breaking different historical thresholds, have you ever wondered what will be the future scope of cryptocurrencies ? Where will be it 5 years down the line? Future of Cryptocurrency By far, we know that bitcoin is a decentralised ledger which uses peer to peer technology and is free from any central authority. This makes it different from fiat currency. Currently, the worth of any cryptocurrency depends on what investors can shell for it at this point of time. Also, if a crypto exchange shuts down, clients with existing crypto balances have no recourse to get them back. This is what the current scenario says. Let us look at some facts and figures by a few crypto enthusiasts Famous Venture capitalist Tim Draper predicts that bitcoin will reach $250,000 by 2021. He had earlier predicted that it would reach $10,000 by 2017. He p...

Something very important we all need to know is everyone has a potential to be a Leader but not everyone wants to be a Leader! The success of any firm depends on the success of the leadership. The job of the leader is not to produce results; it actually is a by-product of the right leadership. The actual job of a leader is to nurture their team. It is really important for people to work in ways here they can look up to people for advice and be dependent on them for personal growth. A leader cannot simply fire people for underperformance or nonperformance. The team they have is their team. They either chose it or they either inherited it. If they chose the team and a member doesn’t perform, it is the leader's fault. Either he chose a wrong fit or most commonly he chose a member who had potential but failed to guide them right! And if the leader says they inherited the team, well the leader in that position before saw the same potential and hence it is still their fault. I...

We all know about bitcoin-the buzzword of 2017.It has gathered some serious attention along with bitcoin throughout the world and it is the most trending topic on the internet. Now let us see how blockchain revolutionizes a business completely.Following are a handful of advantages of blockchain. 1. Efficiency In Blockchain all the transactions are done directly in between two parties without any involvement of the third party, so transactions take place quickly. Since it is capable to manage ‘smart contracts’ and commercial actions automatically it directly streamlines all processes and remove the cost and time from the transaction . By using blockchain we can make a stock market decentralized . Efforts have already begun towards the same . The Japan exchange group uses blockchain as it’s primary trading component. 2. Fewer intermediaries Since blockchain is a decentralized network , we don’t need a middleman or a third party . This reduces the cost of operation to a great extent ...

Bitcoin 101 Do you ever wish that the stash of cash, which you own in an online rummy or poker game were real? Bitcoin , is the topic of this course and is a paperless currency that is a peer-to-peer payment system. In simple terms , we can say that bitcoin is a digital currency or a form of online cash. It was outlined by a programmer apparently called by the name Satashi Nakamoto in 2008, in a paper published and built in 2009. What are Bitcoins? Bitcoins are like currency that can be exchanged for value. The only difference is that this currency is digital. No one can touch and feel it, but it can be exchanged with a few clicks. Who controls Bitcoins? No one controls Bitcoins. Bitcoins are a use case of the Blockchain technology. Like no one controls the email which a result of internet . A set of developers work on the technology to keep improving it. How do you set value to Bitcoins? Like any other commodity, the value of a Bitcoin is set by Demand and sup...

What is Blockchain ? We all know about the topic trending in the market i.e the bitcoin . With so many conversations around it, have you ever wondered about the underlying technology or the driving force behind bitcoins. It is blockchain , the driving force behind the trending technology. What is blockchain ? Let us understand it with the help of an example.We all know about tom and jerry and their age old rivalry.Tom wishes to end the rivalry so he decides to send a cube of cheese to jerry.He can’t do it on his own as there is a chance of fight.So he decides to give it to Alice and tells her the entire scenario.But the question arises is how much trustworthy Alice is??The second question arises is will the cube of cheese be delivered without any cut/ commission by Alice.To overcome this traditional setbacks,we can use digital cheese.But this digital cheese will lead to double cost as we need to maintain multiple records. Digital cheese blockchain comes into picture ...

Blockchain put to use for Humanity! The world is at war! In-spite of various global leaders mentioning that the world is now going to be at peace and the war is officially over, it doesn’t seem so. Terrorist organisations keep flourishing and the governments keep battling with them. The people who suffer or get crushed in these situations are the local populations of those zones. In the recent Syrian crisis we saw many countries opening up their hearts and welcome refugees from these war affected regions. But who are these refugees? Can anyone identify an engineer amongst them or can anyone identify the doctor? Do these refugees lose their identities along with their homes, their money and their livelihood and unfortunately even families sometimes? Not only them, there are so many other individuals like kids who get trafficked , people affected by natural calamities, homeless or the mentally weak individuals, who lose their identities in various situations.   ...