Tuesday 21 February 2017


Impact of Ownership Structure on Financial Performance in India


Family businesses since ancient times are base for building a nation due to their contribution towards the GDP of a country and are also employment opportunities created by these . In a developing nation like India the majority of businesses are in the supreme control of the families. It has been estimated that 90% of the business in India is controlled & managed by families. From 'Mom and Pop' Kirana stores to large corporation, groups and SME's we can see the  family run businesses. Most of the giant business houses like Tatas, Ambanis, Birlas, Godrej, Wadias, Anil Aggarwal – Vedanta, Bajaj, Ruias, Ranbaxy  Munjals, Mahindra, Thapars, Mittals, Shaparji Paollonji, Jindals, Adanis, Times of India and many more are all controlled by families. The role of family and the head of the family is quite important in India.  Many researches have been carried out to study the performance of family business & across the world  superiority in performance of family business has been noticed  but in actually  there is  not much significant difference between the performance of both the groups of companies whether we talk in terms of Net Worth, Capital Employed or  Long Term funds.  In terms of liquidity position both the groups of company almost stood at par & There is no significant difference  in terms of current and liquid ratio. However the only  significant difference is in terms of interest coverage and Financial Charge Coverage ratio. Position of non-family business is much risky in these previousy mentioned criterion as compared to family business.Also in India the position and condition of family business is quite competitive as against non-family business. They have reached at par with public limited companies and state owned companies. The family business mainly need to improve in terms of NPM, DE i.e use of leverage, and investment in terms of current assets.

Ms. Meenakshi Chopra
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Management Studies

Sunday 12 February 2017

Mobile Apps-Boon and Bane

In recent years, there has been a tremendous growth in the use of mobile phones across the globe. Users are using mobile phones for different purposes. Users want to perform most of their tasks through a mobile phone for shopping, tickets booking etc. According to ITU approx. 77% of the world’s population is online using mobile devices. So this is the reason that most of the companies are opting mobile applications/apps for their business growth. Mobile applications are software applications and developed to run on different devices like Smartphone’s, tablets and other mobile devices.

Companies are providing their mobile apps in play store/App store and a user can download the same from that source. Some of the most popular stores are Apple’s App Store, Google Play, and Windows phone store. According to statista.com there are more than 2.2 million apps in google play store and two billion apps in the apple’s play store.  It is expected that by 2020, 189 billion U.S. dollars revenue would be generated by mobile apps. There are a number of advantages of using mobile apps like Bus/Train/Airplane/ tickets booking there nohassles in booking tickets using a mobile app.

There is no need to stand in long queues in cinema halls. No need to go to shopping for your favorite book, movie or other accessories. No need to go to your bank for transferring fund, or for any other bank services etc. So we can use mobile apps for all types of services. There are many other advantages of mobile apps like a better user experience, worldwide access, client secure login, easy installation, easy update etc. This is the main reason why companies are putting more emphasis on mobile marketing through apps.


So far we have analyzed various advantages of mobiles apps but on the other side, it has many disadvantages as well. Students are concentrating more on games or messaging apps. It may be a situation that after some years we do not know any of our neighbors, yes we do know them only if they are talking to us through some mobile apps. We are trying to do everything from our mobile without any physical efforts thus we are becoming lazy and obese. On a very serious note by using a mobile app, indirectly we are making our private/sensitive information public. Companies are using this information for their personal benefits. Some companies also sell this data to other countries to have profits. Many times mobile applications are being hacked by hackers of other countries.  There are some more points on which we should give some emphasis as far as mobile apps are concern. So think before installing any mobile app.

Mr. Pramod Pandey
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Management Studies

Monday 6 February 2017

Security issues: A major concern with the Growing Dependency and Usage of Big Data concepts

With the advent of technology in present era all most all organizations, large and small enterprises, private companies, almost all sectors whether Government organizations, private organizations, sector related to healthcare, airlines industry, sensors, Education sectors, Sales and marketing department of almost all companies, various government projects of digital era are using the booming technology related to big data and working rigorously on big data project.

Demonetization is the current source which has generated humongous amount of data. Analytical engineers are working day and night to know the facts and details of black money defaulters. If analytics are not applied on the data on time, data becomes stale. Presently the data is generated by three explosions; cloud Computing Explosions, Data Explosions, and Conversion Explosion.  This exploded data is stored in large repositories which are also increasing every second where Data is stored in peta-bytes, zeta bytes.

Big Data Systems: Big data systems can store very large amounts of data; can manage that data across many systems; and provide some facility for data queries, data consistency, and systems management.

The challenge is not to manage a boatload of data – many platforms can do that. And it’s not just about analysis of very large data sets. Various data management platforms provide the capability to analyze large amounts of data, but their cost and complexity make them non-viable for most applications. The big data revolution is not about new thresholds of scalability for storage and analysis.

Big Data as an specific Technology:

Big Data as a specific technology is not any Hadoop HDFS or Lustre or Google GFS or shard storage system. It is more than managing big data sets. It is not a Map Reduce cluster as its more than how you query large data sets.

Big data is an application with all combined traits of different technologies together which attracts developers, data managers and large scale data analysts. It’s a collection of plethora of cost effective technologies with different attributes and capabilities, works together to give effective and result oriented results.

Big data as any data repository is able to handles large amounts of data stored in distributed and redundant storage. It can perform parallel task processing and easily accessible as a commercial or open source product. It is extensible with basic capabilities which can be augmented and altered easily. Big data revolution is basically built on three pillars, big, cheap and easy data management which enhances its ability to scale data store at greatly reduced cost and analyse data easily, effectively in a faster manner with all complex data type. It provides all characteristics which are not available with traditional databases.

Hadoop Framework: The big data systems uses Hadoop framework i.e. most big data systems actually use one or more Hadoop components, and extend some or all of its basic functionality. The components of Hadoop Framework can be explained through its working and divided into 5 layers:

Layer 1: Data Storage: HDFS
Layer 2: Data Processing: Map Reduce
Layer 3: Task and Resource Management: YARN
Layer 4: Data Access: PIG
Layer 5: Orchestration: HBase

The Hadoop framework is much like a LAMP stack. Normally these pieces are grouped together, but you can mix and match, or add onto the stack, as needed. For example, there are optional data access services like Sqoop and Hive. Lustre, GFS, and GPFS are data storage alternatives to HDFS. Or you can extend HDFS functionality with tools like Scribe. The entire stack can be configured and extended as needed. As this new technology enables all to collect, manage and analyze their data lying in humongous amount in the repositories and take better and efficient decision for their betterment and growth. It has significantly changed the nature of analytics from descriptive analytics to Disruptive Analytics to Predictive Analytics so that this humongous data can be leveraged in global business to improve its economy. As the technology is benefiting the company in terms of growth prospects the repositories are stuffed with sensitive data which emerges the issues of security. It is a matter of big concern as all sensitive information of companies or individuals are stored in repositories which can be misused and can promote to fraudulent. Lots of demographic information of individuals is also stored in big repositories under UIDAI scheme. At the same time as individuals adhaar number is linked with various govt schemes provided for citizens, data is laundering freely. If a small human stupidity get take lace due to unawareness, it’s very easy to get victim.

With the increased adoption of cloud based, web based and mobile based applications sensitive data has become accessible from different types of platforms easily. Especially these platforms are highly vulnerable to hacking, especially if they are low-cost or free.

Hackers and crackers are keeping their eyes on this flow of data, anytime by any means they can catch your personal information and can do all malicious attacks, frauds and can perform mischievous activities which can harm personally or financially. This is the reason the protection of private and confidential information gains more and more attention. Big Data Security is the most highly ranked priority in the IT strategies, in case of big data the way data is exploding protection of information is of crucial importance. Hence we can say a lack of data security can lead to great financial losses and reputational damage for a company. In case of continuously exploding big data losses due to poor IT security can exceed even the worst expectations.

Challenges of Big Data Security:

·         Single level protection in most distributed systems
·         Evolvement of NoSQL without security feature
·         Requirement of additional security measures in automated data transfer
·         Validation of information received, whether it remains trustworthy and accurate.
·         Mining personal information without asking user permission or notifying them.
·         Lack of division of different level of confidentially within the company.
·         Lack of routine audits to be performed on Big Data.
·         Inconsistent monitor and track of origin of big data.

Antivirus industry is working together and continuously from years to deal with malicious attacks and to provide maximum gains. The big data security can be improved by focusing on application Security, rather than device security, should keep isolated devices and servers containing critical data, by introducing real time security information and event management, by providing reactive and proactive protection.

Ms. Arpana Chaturvedi
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Information Technology
What is Good Teaching?

 “A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.” — Horace Mann

“They may forget what you said but they will never forget how you made them feel.” – Carol Buchner

“The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.” — Kahlil Gibran

Books, Journals and Accessories like Computer, White / Black boards, LCD  projectors, etc. apart from  a serene environment  are integral part of teaching.

All students must have  had hundreds of teachers in their lifetimes and a very few of these teachers they would remember as being exceptionally good. What are the qualities that combine to create an excellent, memorable teacher? Why do some teachers inspire students to work three times harder than they normally would, while others inspire students to avoid their classes ? Why do students learn more from some teachers than others?

 Four essential qualities that distinguish exceptional teachers based on  an experiment asking the students to identify the qualities they feel most important for a good teacher is identified as core areas.

  • Knowledge – Knowledge of the subject is a pre-requisite. You must be an expert in your field-both theoretical and practical –preferably with an industry interface and experience.
  • Communication skills - ability to communicate the knowledge and expertise to students in a simple and receptive fashion. Give students an answer and they can solve one problem, but show students the techniques needed to find the answer for themselves and they can  become self-sufficient in the field. Knowledge is worthless unless it is delivered to the students in a form they can understand.
  • Interest – Good teachers are able to generate interest in the subject they are discussing with clarity avoiding any ambiguity. Good teachers work hard to make their material relevant, realistic, practical and exciting.
  • Respect – Good teachers have a deep-seated concern and respect for the students in the classroom.
Conclusion

“The mediocre teacher tells.  The good teacher explains.  The superior teacher demonstrates.  The great teacher inspires”.  ~William Arthur Ward

When one strive and work to become a good teacher to create a good class, without these four core qualities, good teaching will just not take place. The positive seeds teachers plant in their students keep on growing throughout their lives.

“The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book”.  ~Author Unknown

“What a teacher writes on the blackboard of life can never be erased”.  ~Author Unknown

“A good teacher is like a candle – it consumes itself to light the way for others”.  ~Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, translated from Turkish



Prof. Bhushan Manchanda
Associate Professor & Head Corporate Affairs
Department of Management Studies