Embrace the Randomness

Embrace the Randomness !!!

Karoly Takacs, a Hungarian soldier, until 1938 had won all the National Championships and became the best pistol shooter of the country. He had aspired to make his shooting hand the best around the world. Karoly had started practicing for the upcoming 1940’s Olympic,aiming for a gold medal in pistol shooting. Unfortunately, during an army training, he met with an accident, and had lost his shooting arm. His dreams blurred for a while. Karoly had two options, either to lie down crying and finding out ways to run away from this unplanned failure, or to stick to his goals. No sooner did he accept the fact of losing his best arm, he started practicing with his “only arm”. Little did he know that his life had more to tackle, 1940’s Olympics were cancelled. So did the 1944’s Olympics. As he grew up, it was becoming difficult to compete with the new participants, due to his growing age. Finally, he won a gold medal in 1948 and then in 1952. He became the World’s first shooter to win 2 gold medals, owing to the fact that he was competing with his “only arm”. 

Was Karoly planned for this misfortune, this unplanned incident? Had he ever dreamt of this worst situation which would take him miles away from his dreams? Who should he blame? If Karoly would have wasted his time to rationalize this mishap, he wouldn’t be able to shift his focus for the next event. Losers have a list of reasons for them not being able to do a thing or two. On the contrary, the winners have only one reason to achieve that goal. Everyone has a master plan for their steps to success. But not everything happens as you have planned it.  It may happen that you would need to just change your plan, discard your plan, or sometimes not plan at all! 

“Someday everything would make perfect sense,'' is what we say to achieve peace with the situation we today are facing. “Just go with the flow” is what we make ourselves run along with the random changes in our lives. Challenges, struggles, failures, death, breakups, financial losses, hard to accept, isn’t it?. Sometimes it's even harder to blame someone else for the situation. Our conscious mind makes a tough struggle to “rationalize” everything that happens in life, in spite of how unpredictable and volatile life is.

One of the nice thoughts I came across,

“Rationalization is the device, that ego uses to keep up its perception of the world and all the identities and the judging patterns it has manufactured for us.”

It's hard to accept the failure, to accept that we are poor at a thing, to make ourselves understand that we can find another way out. “Rationalizing” is what we eventually do when we try to explain all the unexpected that happens to us.

“The exam was difficult, and lengthy”

“The situations were not appropriate for me to study”

“This job is not suitable for me”

“Other players have practiced for long”

We often accept the "positive randomness" without thinking too much. One line, “Well, I deserved it!” is enough for the explanation. But for a negative randomness, our ego needs a perfect story to live with all the randomness that it comes across. A story worth explaining to people(and ourselves) on behalf of our failure. This may sometimes be worth,  just to boost up your lost confidence. But, where the actual strength lies is in “acceptance”. 

       When I am sad, I melt in sadness. When I fail, I plan for the next steps to take. When I feel uncomfortable, I speak it out with someone who understands it. When I am down, I cry.  When I am happy, I dance. I embrace the randomness, and let my emotions flow. Its OK to not have a plan. Its OK to not just chase something and live in the present. Its OK to eat what falls in your plate. Its OK to break your knees when you fall. Its OK to lose a race. Its OK to just go with the flow. What builds is embracing the illogical, unexpected randomness of life.

When I comprehend the randomness, I believe that within me there is a small place with no words, no explanations. Deep down in my soul, a silent space where I embrace the beautiful relative entropy of the universe, with no reasoning for what Karma makes me do. 

I give away my efforts to rationalize my failure. I stop framing reasons to satisfy my ego, something to say to the public. Maybe this randomness would bring something really amazing for you. I embrace the “randomness”, do you?

-Miss. Urvi U. Mandge

Re-think and Re-frame

Rethink and Reframe

With the rise of each new dawn, new companies and startups bloom in the market. They thereby become a part of the existing cut-throat competition. Looked upon from a broader view, a company is nothing but a single functional unit that dedicatedly works on a specific task i.e.  either to offer a product or to deliver a service, these products and services aim at better ĺiving of a customer. 

Narrowing our vision down to working of a company, the jobs are divided into various departments namely Marketing and Sales, Development, Logistics, Accounting, Public relation, Human resource.etc. In this blog, we will specifically talk about Marketing and Technical development.  

When we peep inside these departments, we notice a slight change in the thought process of developers and marketers. Developers think that no company can exist without technological enhancement in execution of ideas. In contradiction to the same thought marketers think that if no audience is approached or convinced by us then there is no use of technology which is brought up developers.  

Here, we all need to rethink and reframe this ideology. So that the company will grow together in collaboration with both the departments. 

Is chasing market harder than developing new technology stuff or vice-versa?

• Chasing the market refers to entering or exiting an investment with the intention of profiting from an occurring development or trend. When investment comes in role then it basically depends on the investor, your ideation and can this idea evolve the world as Google, Swiggy, Ola etc did. 

• And developing new technology is simply solving a problem statement and depends on the knowledge your team has. As you yourself had chosen your job according to your interest,  no one can judge it as easier or harder. We cannot compare the work of marketer and developer.

Is there more workload on marketing or technical guys?

• If you are an expert or if you really have interest then nothing is difficult, because a job is difficult with respect to a person’s reference of judging it or your own excuses or obligations of mind which don’t let you work.

• You can also decrease the workload by hiring more employees in the appropriate team. The precaution to be taken care of is at the hiring time of the employee.

• On one hand if you hire too early, you will likely bring cash flow problems.

• On the other hand, if you hire too late then you will miss that critical market moment for the release of your project and you can’t accomplish your target. 

How can both marketers and developers work together?

• As marketers researches the market problem. So, developers can solve the problem by using technical solution or by analyzing the whole data to come up with solution. 

• As technical team delivers the results and also provides scope of any solution then marketers must give a deadline to bring clarity. So that they can attack or enter the market in that deadline and there will be no market losses.

                        

What will happen if both teams work together?

• However, managing proper workflow between two teams can deliver real, tangible improvements to company's results. Also, it helps the company know what’s being worked on at any given moment, highlight inefficiencies that needs improvement, and free up time and energy that can be devoted to core business activities and innovations.

At last, we would conclude by saying that if marketers and developers both work in a rhythm then the poem of a company will surely sound melodious. Whatever field you opt for, just do it with whole of your devotion and passion. 

Mr. Kalpesh Wadekar

Cyber-security : An unspoken reality

One person’s paranoia is another person’s engineering redundancy. If there’s one area where “overreacting” should be the norm, it’s in cybersecurity. Lets dig deeper into it.

The basic entity which matters most in any business is the security especially when it comes to the digital world. As in the current generation, people are becoming more techno-savvy, every new technology fascinates the people. But since the past decade, technology has evolved up to the mark, and it is still growing rapidly. This has given birth to cybercrimes in the society. Cybercrime is any criminal activity that involves a computer, networked device or a network. Most of the MNC’s are dealing with cybercrimes to maintain their reputation in the market. This is the reason to boost cybersecurity upto the mark. Data privacy being the most basic demand of today’s generation has to get the supporting hand of cybersecurity. Cybersecurity has became the reason for most of the employees to fill their empty stomachs. Every role within the IT industry has a security aspect present with it. You don’t need to be a cybersecurity expert to understand that this is a growth area.

Focusing on security as your primary role opens up a world of options for you. From security operations to risk assessments, to application security to investigations, to compliance to educator, there as many roles within cybersecurity as lines of code running in your browser. 

Though Cybersecurity is ruling the world, the other side of it is also getting cultivated. Security breach or the most peculiar term hacking has became the trending topic to explore for the youngsters. Hacking is always being considered as the wow factor in today’s youth. Hackers are more renowned than the person working in cybersecurity firm. Most of the movies are today pretending that hackers are actually the coolest personalities having a hell lot of tricks to hack. But coming to the fact that, its a blind supposition of youngsters, to get involved into security/hacking terminologies and become a pro geek hacker. Though hacking seems to be lenient, but practically implementing the hacks is quite difficult. Nowadays most of the tools and penetration testing operating systems makes it easier to experiment hack tricks. Penetration testing, is a practice to test a computer system, software or a network to find the weaknesses in it. The operating systems famous for penetration testing are parrot, kali linux, black arch, etc. Actual implementation of hacking requires pretty good knowledge of every core concept in IT like networking, operating system basics, database systems, system administration, etc.

Practically speaking, Cybersecurity can be considered as a prominent career option as it has unlimited growth. It’s a massive opportunity to stay engaged and challenged. If we consider today’s market, there is a mixture of all the technologies whereas security is like ‘Jack-of-all-trades’. Security professionals are allowed to work directly with the technologies and systems which they never dreamed of as cybersecurity has plenty of variety in it. In cybersecurity we rely on some tried-and-true principles, but the tactics can change day-by-day. There's always a new puzzle that needs to be solved. With each new wave of technology, new risks are created. Each situation is a unique puzzle and a new opportunity to rise to the challenge. So, rather than losing desire by working in other trades, it can be considered as an exciting proposition to choose a career in cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity has two main reasons for a strong career, i.e., no risk of unemployment and solid compensation. What else is required to choose a career? Start learning, keep learning. Everyday new challenge will be popping up and you will be exposed to a multitude of new people, situations, and opportunities which will make you better for tomorrow.

Mr. Aniket M. Lahamge

Artificial Intelligence: A new vision for Mankind

Artificial Intelligence is something that is going to redefine the world of information in the near future. But have we ever tried to figure out, what is the measure of this redefinition or upto what extent?

Let’s dive deep inside the meaning of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI is “to make machines mimic cognitive functions that humans associate with human mind i.e to make machines intelligent so that they can act intelligently!”, again the question rises how much intelligent? How can one judge the intelligence? Are these systems as intelligent as humans? If the computers can somehow solve real-world problems by improving on their own from the past experiences, they would be called “Intelligent”. Thus, the AI systems are more generic about having the ability to “think” and are more flexible. Intelligence, as we know, is the ability to acquire and apply the knowledge. Knowledge is the information acquired through experience. Experience is the knowledge gained through training. Summing the terms up, we get Artificial Intelligence as the “copy of something natural ‘WHO’ is capable of acquiring and applying the information it has gained through exposure.” A thin hairline difference in Human and Artificial Intelligence is machines need to be programmed to think intelligently which is indirectly done by humans.

What is the driving force of AI? What is the essence of AI? Is this a magic? A drastic change that the supreme has gifted humans… Its the beauty of Mathematics. Before being an AI expert we should understand the mathematics behind all these technological things. Nowadays, it has been noticed that students learn Computer Sciences and have least interest towards mathematics.They don’t even try to figure out the objectives behind learning that. The fact that, this world is operating on a concept called ‘Probability’. Whatever we do is nothing but increasing or decreasing our chances of success and failure. Probability is one of the important theories that govern AI. The other concepts include Linear Algebra, Calculus and Statistics. These concepts would be interesting if we try to connect them with base of Artificial Intelligence. 

The need for AI is to create expert systems which exhibit intelligent behavior with the capability to learn, demonstrate, explain and advice its users and to  help machines find solutions to complex problems like humans do and applying them as algorithms in a computer-friendly manner. Why is AI important to learn? AI automates repetitive learning and discovery through data. Instead of automating manual tasks, AI performs frequent, high-volume, computerized tasks reliably and without fatigue. AI adds intelligence to existing products. In most cases, AI will not be sold as an individual application. Rather, products you already use will be improved with AI capabilities. AI adapts through progressive learning algorithms to let the data do the programming. AI finds structure and regularities in data so that the algorithm acquires a skill: The algorithm becomes a classifier or a predictor. AI analyzes more and deeper data using neural networks that have many hidden layers. AI achieves incredible accuracy through deep neural networks – which was previously impossible. AI gets the most out of data. When algorithms are self-learning, the data itself can become intellectual property. The answers are in the data; you just have to apply AI to get them out.

Lastly talking about the applications of AI. AI is used in Gaming, Expert Systems, Natural Language Processing, Vision Systems, Speech Recognition, Intelligent Robots etc. Machine Learning, a field of study that gives computers the capability to learn based on experiences i.e.  without being explicitly programmed is a subset of  AI.

Based on the above facts, the perception that Artificial Intelligence will rule humans is definitely a myth. Surely, it has given some opportunities for humans to think differently and make use of this technology for their own benefits.

I urge everyone to be a part of this significant change in the IT Industry. Happy Learning!

                                                                                                                 - Mr. Unmesh Wadekar

Need of Personalization and thus Blooming of Startups

From the very birth of mankind, humans have worked towards making their life better and simpler. We have been developing things for  various purposes, which we can specifically call as "personalized things". The first personalized thing we can think of is the circular stone wheel. It reduced the overall cost of transportation and made human life simple. It was a kind of an innovation cum startup of the person who created it. Similarly, with every new thing coming in the market, it has some innovative idea behind it, a creative entity behind it. This is where entrepreneurship comes into the picture. It is nothing but learning the need of particular thing in a particular area - for a particular community - for a particular person, and creatively deriving one solution over it which leads to simplifying that problem and solving it in stipulated time. 

We thereby understand that, "need" is the root cause for every creation by mankind. Where there is a need there comes the solution. The need comes from a group or an individual's own perspective about a situation. Personalization is simply what an individual or group wants, needs, likes or loves. If someone observes the need and gives best solution to suffice it, then that solution may be called as the creation by humankind. The creative person who derived that solution can be called as an "Entrepreneur". For example, when we roam around in a supermarket, we come across various products which have bloomed as a consequence of the need of mankind until now. The only difference is, the person who took the initiative to think differently and come up with a solution.

In order to provide personalization to each entity-user, the entrepreneur has to understand the need, analyse it and then derive an apt  solution to suffice it. Understanding the need involves learning from the past experiences associated with individuals likings. Once the need is understood, an entrepreneur needs to figure out a solution over it. This process is sophisticatedly named as ‘data mining’  by the computer community. Amazon is a great example, which uses the technique when it comes to personalization. It uses purchase history and recommends purchases. It also uses personalization tokens and sends frequent emails to potential buyers. So does Facebook, it analyses the person’s interest according to the posts he likes and shares. In accordance with that, it decides the further solution to engage that person according to his need. This similarly applies to all social media and e-commerce sites like Twitter, Instagram, Flipkart, Myntra, and Snapdeal, etc. When it comes to what and when a person likes to eat, we can think of apps such as Zomato, Swiggy. This businesses are working towards personalizing the human food needs by providing a plethora of choices to a person with respect to food needs. It also provides a facility of ‘whenever’ and ‘wherever’, which seems to be the most important thing when it comes to personalization. 

All these  examples discussed till now aim at providing a creative solution to the problems of community in today’s fast paced era. As the needs of the world are changing every coming day, so do the solutions. It therefore creates a need for more and more creative minds to put in efforts to solve these ever growing needs of the community. These creative minds lead to establishing great startups of mankind. Thinking of the Indian market there are about 1.3 billion perspectives to every need, which eventually demands for numerous solutions thus giving rise to startups. These bloomed startups would not only flourish themselves, but also prosper humanity in every possible way. So, why to wait!! Let’s dive into it, trace the needs around and create ingenious solutions over it.

Best wishes for yours booming startup serving human needs. Kudos to prospering humanity!!!

ENTREPRENEURSHIP : An Ocean of Opportunities

“Entrepreneurship”, a word that fascinates almost half the portion of the young crowd around the world today, owing to its capacity to reshape economies and industries world wide. “Necessity is the mother of Invention”, as rightly said, can be considered as the major vision behind the overwhelming growth of entrepreneurship. Being a hot topic around the globe, entrepreneurship aims at studying the needs of the society, changing the need into a value added entity, garnishing it with innovation and  creativity, to transform it into something that people would be ready to pay for. 

Entrepreneurship is the need of the society today and in the days to come. It does not simply imply being able to start and manage your own  business, but it also helps the economy in many ways. It would help create larger opportunities for employment, support the country’s economy and also enhance the standard of living of the people. Even though  it has a bunch of influential benefits, entrepreneurship comes with its own ups and downs. It is not always easy to plot the needs of the society, manage the existing market and make your own firm stand in this vast world, being prepared for hurdles in  the future and then apart from everything, plan profits for yourself. It eventually needs a detailed observation, a planned and a hopeful mind, and some leadership qualities. Therefore, entrepreneurship is a sweet apple pie with a base of hopeful personality, icing of passion and garnished with knowledge. 

There has been an immense discussion whether these entrepreneurs are made or born? Someone who has a family business would simply learn from it and cultivate himself as an entrepreneur. On the other hand, someone who is a newbie to this world, but has all the apple cake ingredients can successfully qualify himself as an entrepreneur. What should matter for us now is how can we support the upliftment of these entrepreneurs, how can we motivate more crowd towards this revolutionary movement, how can we plan  educational sessions for the youngsters, so that someone who really aspires to be one of the entrepreneur, can get a chance to live his dreams. Government and universities should take efforts to help the students understand the relationship between entrepreneurship and our economic development which would in turn create a huge economic and social impact for the country. And then the bottom line is, more and more youngbies would get a chance to taste the sweet apple pie!!!

A perception that entrepreneurs are billionaires, drives the major attraction for all to opt for business and entrepreneurship. Is it false? No, it isn’t. Not all have become billionaires, but yes the ones who have achieved it, have not made it in a single night. What made them different?  They created value for themselves and their products. They have stretched their abilities, their superskills, their knowledge to an extent where it has started earning profits in return. How would an entrepreneur’s worlds be different from a corporate one? Corporate life is comfortable and easy-going. In a corporate life, you work for fixed hours a day for which you would earn a fixed benefit. You work for someone, to earn  them profit, and then somehow manage steady earnings for yourself. Corporate life has a steady and a linear growth path. Surely, you would be promoted and increase your earnings. But wait, if someday you feel like trying out something different in your work, would you be able to do it? Not all corporates allow to work according to your own will. But, entrepreneurship does.

What do you earn? Just becoming rich? If you aim at just becoming rich, wait, you should think before you have a step ahead. For setting up a business, you need a value. A value that people would be ready to pay for. Create value for your product and for yourself. When your client realizes your value, you earn money. It is the only reason why only ideas can’t be an instinct to start a business. It needs vision and creativity, to bring it into life. What else you would earn, apart from money? Job security? Oh, you are the job creator now. You would employ people. Can you work from home, or sit in the garden to work? Yes you can. Here you are your own boss. You wish to work just for 3 hours a day, you can (of course after your business is at its peak)!!! Entrepreneurship gives you an enthralling life. Each new day you have new plans. New risks to deal with. New people to meet. New techniques to learn. Even though it requires high on passion and perseverance, it maybe exciting for someone who wants to become his “own boss”. For someone who wants to stretch his abilities and superskills. For someone who wants to climb up mountains of new risks each new day. For someone who wants to learn new stuff, each new day. For someone who wants to create employment opportunities. For someone who doesn’t like an easy going life. 

It takes guts, to do something that the crowd would not aspire to do. What makes you unique, is something that you do, is unique. Do you want to stand out of the crowd? “Entrepreneurship” would surely be an opportunistic ocean for you.

                                   - Ms. Urvi U. Mandge.