Category: bengaluru

Lenovo A6000+ review

Given that I now own an iPhone 6 plus, the next search was to find something useful as a second standby phone. After spending 30s and 40s of thousands on phones, there was an era where phones suddenly started costing 20s of thousands.

With the advent of Xiaomi, people like Lenovo and Samsung faced such a wrath on pricing that they even went to the extent of reduced profits, or even sometimes sacking employees to make good the loss on business somehow. The mobile phone market only got hotter with the introduction of newer – cheaper and equally powered – qualcomm snapdragon series of chipsets at a very sweet pricing of lower than 10000 bucks. So suddenly the need to spend anything more than this price for a good android phone effectively vanished.

As I was busy checking out what I would get at about this price, which suited what I needed, I rummaged through lots of phones on flipkart and Amazon. Primarily my needs for a standby phone were these things in no particular order

  • Very Good battery life
  • 4G sim trays if possible keeping it bit future proof
  • decent screen if not the most sharpest
  • lightweight phone and display of about 4.5+ inches in size
  • Average camera – this wasnt the purpose for me to buy
  • Though service was important I could forego that at the cost of the phone itself
  • Reasonable audio, as my purpose was not this as well

One fine day I chanced upon the Lenovo A6000+ at my friends cube at office. After playing around with it, the next moment I ordered it on a special deal price of about 1000 bucks off on flipkart app. This means, instead of the regular 7200 bucks, I got the phone at 6200 bucks.

When I received the phone, I could not but feel very good about everything that the phone had to offer for that price. I am not a big fan of Lenovo. This was because of my previous bad experience on buying a Lenovo K-900 which I detailed out on this blog. You can read more about that here.

First off when I opened the package, it was simple to open, package contents were easy to notice and understand without even a manual, and I could easily fit the micro sim cards along with memory card and battery without a fuss. Charging it was child’s play as well and nothing special from what used to be before.

Here are some of the positive things about this phone I would like to highlight about the Lenovo A6000+

  • Very lightweight even with the battery
  • 4G sim card support for both sims – very futureproof
  • Screen is quite sharp for the price
  • The VIBE User interface is an amazing joy to use on android – I love the way the icons look and feel and its very modern for my kind of liking
  • Its just the right size for every hand and effortless to carry around
  • Screen protector was included which means no going to the shop just for this
  • I did not want a back cover for this phone as it was a standby phone for me. I guess you may not need it as well
  • Fast boot mode in lenovo simply rocks
  • Clear audio due to dolby compliance
  • Amazing battery life – almost 3-4 days if you keep data switched off, easily a full day on continous data usage – particularly google maps which consumes lots of battery
  • Easily removable back panel making it easy to access sim cards and memory card – though its not hot swappable which is not a big minus point

Every phone built to some price will have its negatives, and the Lenovo A6000+ is not an exception. So here they are:

  • Audio is not loud enough – this was the same grouse in my earlier K-900 and so also here.
  • Call volume cannot be increased beyond a point and in noisy environments this phone is just not suitable to use at all
  • Some people may find the phone too plasticky on all corners and at the back
  • No backlighting for the three android soft keys at the bottom of the phone – this is a major slip for me since you have to press they keys with more of intuition than anything of accuracy
  • The volume sliders and power button are easily accessible but they just dont have that feel to them as you find on other more expensive phones
  • Average camera – remember you are not paying for great optics here so this is the best what you can expect !! 

(iphone 6 plus taken by Lenovo A6000+)

The one single selling point for me as far as this phone is concerned is the FAST BOOT mode that lenovo has put into the software. Rather it is emulating PC bootups by saving last memory status to flash storage and booting off from there the next time.

Whichever way the implementation has been done, I would say the lenovo boots up in just 2 seconds on fast boot. Yes you read it right – 2 seconds !! This is the single most important thing I have noticed as an improvement across all android phones in recent years. Simply mind blowing.

The camera is average – its not the greatest but you could live with images taken off this phone as readability is still clear. I am not expecting low light shots to be great on this phone either. If you are looking for a great camera – look elsewhere like Apple, not lenovo.

So does this phone justify the 6000 rupee price tag? – Heck, absolutely yes. Lenovo has provided brilliant value for money – or rather they have been forced to rethink on pricing by newer players such as Xiaomi who are determined to give them a run for their money. But Lenovo has clearly jumped back into the game and for good. The upcoming Lenovo k3 note is surely going to be yet another example of how good a phone can get for as low as about 11000 bucks. Yes, we already had the Xiaomi Redmi note for much lesser – by almost 40%, but then at 3GB ram the lenovo k3 note will kick some serious ass. The brilliant looking user interface only means better usability and the rather large battery and screen would only produce more fireworks.

For the budget conscious consumer the A6000+ is a very good buy offering some great usability experience, good battery backup, reasonable camera, future ready 4G sim slots and expandable memory and all this in an extremely lightweight shell. Look no further – swipe that credit card now!

Is the Satechi Portable Humidifier really so good? Read to find out

I have been researching portable humidifiers since sometime now and brands like Air-o-Swiss, satechi, and few other unknown and relatively cheap brands are littered all over Amazon. Deciding to plunge into buying one of them, with a cost of about Rs.1500 bucks or a little under $30, I checked out Amazon and froze on the Satechi Portable humidifier.

Here is a very brief and specific review of the item I finally purchased.

Purpose

  • The intent of the purchase was to see if the humidifier made any difference to my nostrils feeling stuffy in the transition between winter to summer in Bangalore
  • I wanted something cheap but of acceptable quality
  • I wanted something portable too as it was mainly meant for my office cubicle

This was brought in by my friend who travelled to India. My expectation from this unit was that it would throw a lot of fumes in and around my cube. However this unit just sprays a single jet of fumes which do not seem to make any difference after about an hour of usage. It has an auto cut off as well which automatically swithces the unit off in case you are not around after a while.

The filter itself needs to be changed often which is a bigger pain. It is good if you have a severe blocked nose and need some relief. But other than that for the amount, its hardly anything useful considering there is a lot of maintenance on it like replacing filters or changing water once in a while etc.

Renault Lodgy First Look

I had the chance to visit the Renault showroom to have a first look at the newly launched Lodgy MUV. Though its a bit late and all the news websites and magazines have been going gaga over the Lodgy, I still want to mention a few things here that might make sense to read for you if you are wanting to invest on the Lodgy.

From a long time I have been following the Innova, and even have taken lots of trips in the Innova. Though it was a failure model elsewhere like in Indonesia, India was a different ball game for Toyota. They were, are and would be still riding high on the success of Innova simply due to the fact that there were no real contenders to the vehicle till now. As such the vehicle itself was quite practical and served large family needs pretty well.

Maruti tried hard with the Ertiga which just passed off as a 5 seater with more luggage space rather than a seven seater, and the Honda mobilio is something I have already written about. They came close to being an Innova, but never really got there.

The only choices for space were the Xylo and the XUV500 and the former of the two is a real 7 seater. But then its not stylish, it has way too much body roll and its not really upmarket while on the road. Of course Tata has the safari and the Aria, but the Aria never really kicked off well even though it was a no nonsense vehicle in terms of practicality.

This is where Renault had a chance and they brought in the Lodgy. And they have taken time to address the basics first. SPACE. You know this word deserves capital letters for the Lodgy. I really mean it. Almost a decade of thinking about it by all other manufacturers and no one ever bothered to get it right. Renault did. And its evident in the reviews. Every single review never misses out mentioning the space. And I saw it for myself. First hand. The car can easily accomodate upto 7 adults and 1 kid. Or even 8 medium sized adults. Without the jostle for the space.

Now the rear bench always will be placed higher and is not a place to spend a 1000km worth of ride in. But then when you need to move people these things are expected. And these people would be more comfortable in a Lodgy as compared to a Mobilio is what I am trying to say. Its a genuine effort by Renault in creating the space that people look for with that kind of pricing (13-14.5 lacs OTR Bangalore) and they have nailed whats needed.

Now having said so much about space, when I pay upto 15 lacs for a car, I expect all the creature comforts it can ever offer. And the Renault does that in style. Except for climate control which is still a sore point but manageable. It has speed limiter, cruise control, height adjuster (basic version with three levels only), tilt steering, complete navigation based stereo system, 15” Alloy wheels, airbags, abs, leather seats, rear wiper, defogger, and whatever else matters most. Truly for this price, it is a complete package in all respects and leaves nothing much to complain. The difference in ground clearance between Renault Lodgy and Innova is just about 2 mm which should not be so much of a bother. Arguably the Innova surely looks more upmarket on the inside, but a full 4 lacs of money for just the engine of about 1000cc more, especially when both the engines provide similar power and torque figures is somewhat expensive in my opinion.

What is really good about the Lodgy is the accessibility to the rear seat. So many manufacturers have just made vehicles for the heck of it (the Ertiga being a case in point) but on one worked for the end customer but rather for their own profits. Even old people can easily get into the last seat in the Lodgy and thats why I adore this vehicle so much. With the rear bench being completely detachable, you can even put a bicycle into the Lodgy easily.

The overall look and feel inside the dashboard is not extremely great, but does not make you feel sorry for the time you sit in the car to drive it. I have not got a chance to test drive this car, but owning a Nissan Sunny and knowing that its the same engine in the Lodgy, its not hard for me to imagine what the ride would be like. Renault’s engines are one of the best in the world and you can only expect a ready for race engine when you buy one of their cars.

The windows of the Lodgy are really wide and make the cabin feel airy. Added to this there are rain sensing wipers, and auto sensing airconditioner which I presume will switch on if there are people in a row else not. Small innovation but big fuel saving. The seating height also is pretty good on this car and its almost at Innova levels which makes it easy to drive on the road. It is pretty long, longer than the Sunny too, so you may need to have a good amount of parking space in the house for this car.

All said and done, for the features it offers, and the price it commands, the Renault Lodgy is no doubt the LODGYCAL choice! Autocar magazine agreed with me 🙂

Video Intro to Malabar Ocean Front Resort and Spa, Nileshwar

I had earlier written a review of the Malabar Beach Front resort and Spa in Nileshwar for your reading. There is no justice to saying how good an experience is without showing a small video of the same. So in this post I present to you a video of the Resort facilities so you may experience it before deciding to go there.

I had also written yet another article on what can go wrong in planning journeys specific to going to this resort. You may wish to read that article here as well.

Does the Celerio really offer what it claims?

The ageing Tata Nano needs a refresh and our family has to now take a call on which car to go for given the limited budget and affordability at this point in time. This being a second car its purpose would be to only run it in and around home a few miles everyday.

(source: maruti suzuki celerio official website)

A call to Pratham motors in HSR Layout and a word with them on the interest in Celerio was enough for them to scramble a car for a test drive. The AMT (automated manual transmission) is lately catching the fancy of many Indian car buyers as well as automobile manufacturers. Maruti, Tata have taken early leads to jump into the business of making this transmission in order to woo two kinds of crowds – ladies who would otherwise find it difficult to drive a manual tranny car and the scores of individuals who are fed up commuting in a 2 to 3 hours gruelling traffic jam each day changing gears thousands of times.

The Celerio was the first of the bunch to sport the AMT, followed by Alto, and news of Wagon R jumping onto the same bandwagon. Tata however have cleverly put in an AMT only currently into their zest sedan, needless to say only on the top diesel variant retailing over 8 lacs ex-showroom. This cost would definitely put off a few prospective automatic car buyers.

(source: maruti suzuki celerio official website)

On the non AMT side, we do have many cars that already sport an automatic transmission including but not limited to the Maruti Ritz & Dzire, the Honda Amaze, Brio and the City, the Micra and Sunny from Nissan, etc. While these are pure automatics, the AMT is a different experiment to keep the mileage returned at almost that of a manual. While the CVTs like the micra are the most fun to drive, the AMTs are basically trying to address the mundane commute in a much better way.

A couple of pleasantries later, I let my wife drive the Celerio first after which I took to the wheel myself. There are basically two modes provided with respect to the automatic transmission. One is the fully automatic D-N-R mode where the car takes over what to do fully, and the other is the Manual (M) mode with + and – for upshifts of gear or downshifts. This mode must be enough to remind you of the fact that at heart these cars are still the manual ones, but the manufacturers have pulled off neatly the clutch handling part by automating that physical action of engaging or disengaging a clucth.

My drive was roughly about 2 to 3 kms with varying terrain: some smooth roads, few really bad speed breakers, and some roads with potholes. The first part was the fully automatic drive mode. The car picks up rather hesitatingly but settles down from first gear and the gears quickly move upto 2nd and 3rd thereon. The idea of this mode is to bring the car to the highest gear in the shortest time to conserve fuel on the drives. This is both good and bad. Good for the money saved, bad for the thrill lost of driving a manual car. With due respects to manual cars, I would not hinge on discussing those here. The only aim here is to let you know the comfort that AMTs aim to offer and evaluate whether the claims really make sense.

7-2014-Maruti-Suzuki-Celerio-Interior-Dashboard-AMT

(source: carblogindia.com)

The automatic mode is something I can term as a complete fuss free experience. Release the handbrake and you are all set to go. That’s it. Accelerate when you want, brake when you want and the car simply wont switch off. Wish granted and it performs great wherever you amble the car around. While moving from standstill since it picks up from 1st gear, all the way to 4th, its a smooth acceleration barring a momentary hesitation in second and third to lunge forward. Its not unbearable, and in my opinion not significant enough to delay you so much to get you frustrated (unlike the honda amaze automatic CVT).

While slowing down the car tends to remain in second gear most of the times unless you physically get it to a full stop where it would switch back to first gear. Now when you accelerate rather hard when its on second there is a certain vibration before the car settles down. This is rather annoying but I guess we have to live with this flaw for the remaining creature comforts of an automatic. Its just an overlooked aspect in my opinion and may be addressed in forthcoming revisions of the vehicle after customer feedback.

02celerio-interior

(source: mid-day.com)

Now the manual mode. Slide the lever to “M” or “D” on the go as you like. In “M” mode, the onus is on the driver to trip down (pull down the gear lever) each time a gear upshift is needed. For downshifts the level would be pulled upwards. This is more precise for me and its like driving a manual without the clutch pedal but with gear shifts 🙂 And the car can be made to listen to your whims of which gear you want to be on. One clever thing that you expected and is provided as a feature is that you only need to upshift while on the move. If you slow down the car downshifts by itself upto 1st gear. Smart.

autoshift
(source: motorbeam.com)

Even in the manual mode, the car tries to remain on second gear as much as possible. Not sure why this implementation was done this way, but that is how it is.

For the other bits that are worth liking about the Celerio now. Some colours are head turning in this car – I loved the green, red and blue specifically. The headlamp design, the indicators in the front are certain things that make the car look definitely good and modern enough. The rear seems in my opinion a bit disconnected from the whole frame, but its not totally worthless. The LXi version is for those who dont have money, and the VXi version is for those who have money but still dont get enough features for that money.

The difference is about 50000 bucks and for that money, you get power windows, wheel caps (yea we are still talking like its 1995), auto driver window down (I call this double click down), lots of chrome here and there, vanity mirrors (LXi owners wives would be an angry lot), rear parcel shelf (oh common maruti), 60-40 split seat (necessary in my opinion as a combination of passenger+luggage is possible at rear), central locks, and power windows. This feature set is worth paying the differential amount for in my opinion.

What the car is missing though is Airbags on AMT version which is a big minus (now you remember the indian dialogue “if i am driving slow i dont need airbags” 🙂 ). There is no stereo in either AMT version which is another minus. No seat covers, etc. The rear wiper is present which is much better than defogger. Another point is the gear indicator shows up on the console only in auto mode (wonder why!) if that really matters to you.

I don’t like manufacturers deliberately cutting down on the airbags just to make a model sell well. This shows the irresponsibility from their side on the lives of buyers. Even the impending rules from government for making airbags mandatory would mean they consider only the driver as a human being and provide a single airbag to satisfy the government. What I really hate is the either automatic or airbags choices which are really senseless and idiotic in the year 2015. I wish manufacturers use their heads more than just keep cash registers ringing by selling unsafe cars year on year. I wish someone puts up a petition challenging all this in a big way. For me an optional airbag facility would have made this an A+ car to drive. Unfortunately Maruti for their own reasons cut out that pleasure from buyers and dampened them for good.

So if I buy the car, I guess I’ll be one of those owners who’d have to tell anyone who asks “I am driving slowly why must I need an airbag?” to satisfy my foolishness of buying a car without these. The other way to ask this question is to say “I am willing to pay who is giving me airbags in this combination?” – that’s atleast a better proposition.

The space in Celerio is really commendable for a hatchback, and five people might be able to sit in peace. Overall I found the headroom, legroom and general comfort to be substantial for a car this size and Maruti has really worked on the space part and got this equation right on this car. Given Celerio is coming in with diesel, it would be a right spot that the company has got with respect to having its sales charts on fire. Not that it already hasn’t with whats available.

On bad roads the Celerio is a good boy and handles most bad-boy-road-humps with ease even when loaded upto 4 people and a kid. I really went on some seriously ugly humps and it didn’t bat an eyelid. The handling was good and the occupants did not complain or were thrown about much. I did find the pickup to be slightly less with AC on and 4 people loaded but I need to drive this car more to ascertain whether this is indeed a sore point or not. A 2km test drive was insufficient for me to understand this part. The window was slightly higher to my liking and kids would not be able to see out if they are on the rear seat. The Hyundai i20 is like that and there are some cars such as these which have deep seating which is both good and bad. The driver maybe able to feel the pinch with this kind of seating.

There is no seat height adjust or steering tilt which is really sad as I am pretty sure providing that feature is not going to cost Maruti a bomb. These are mainly missed out to keep that differentiation in sales and in my opinion these are really stupid moves to say the least.

In summary the Celerio is a likeable car for the way it handles, and the space. Sprucing up the feature list can make it the next Wagon R for the next decade or so. The AMT is a breeze and its a no brainer for new drivers. Five adults would be comfortable on this vehicle and on long drives it surely would be much appreciated for the cruises it can offer. The hill holding capability is not yet tested by me but I did see that on a sloping section of road, the car did not move backwards on releasing the brakes which means there is some sort of implementation to prevent that.

The LXi at the time of writing sells in Bangalore at 5.3 OTR and the VXi at 5.8 OTR. The recommendation is to go for VXi as the features are much better. All the colours are nice to look at and Maruti’s service assurance should keep 90% of the customers happy with any purchase you do through them.

There can be many things told about the car, but experiencing an AMT in action is a totally different pleasure and I am sure you would not have any complaints on that front. Until the next car review, this is Srikanth from the Bangalore blog signing off for now.

The CET condurum

There has been a recent decision by the government of Karnataka to abolish the Common entrance exam for private colleges and also remove any cap on the maximum fees that can be charged by these private colleges. However to mitigate the possible consequences the government also states that there would be a governing committee or ombudsman to decide what fee the colleges can charge based upon their location, infrastructure, coaching and course (You can read the full news report here

Everyone who has studied in Karnataka for their entire life or atleast from high school would perhaps know how much of a game changer the CET exam was. Even during the early 90’s this exam was the most coveted exam which brought in a sense of academic discipline among both students from Karnataka and other states. Though one had the potential to clear the IInd PUC exam, that was no reason to say the same person could match up against the CET exam with similar potential.

Take my case in point. I am from the ICSE stream for high school. With an 86% and above in my Xth board exams, there was still a feeling in me that my state syllabus bretheren were much ahead of me in terms of sheer marks scored. After switching to the state syllabus for my pre-university college, the sheer amount of coaching I received from one of the most experienced teachers from Bright Academy and my equal willingess to put in the same hard work from my end saw me top my college and score close to the 20th rank in the entire state. While this was just half the story, the coaching for the CET exam was a challenge in itself owing to the fact that the exam was 2 months away and we had to learn up what mattered by putting in a year’s worth of hard work in two months.

It was not the question of whether someone cleared the CET or not. It was the question of whether someone had the right focus, the right aim and understood the challenge of time in front of us. More than the students, it was so challenging for the teacher to optimize the opportunity to bring out the best in students in the right amount of time – what we call smart studying/working rather than hard work today.

The CET itself was a mixed bag of luck for each student as it was an outright pressure which made everyone tense on the day of the exam. It was not about the technical complexity. It was about negative marking, it was about wasting time on the one hard question than on the 5 easy questions. It was about focus and hitting the target that mattered. As a person who was confident of getting a rank between 1 & 100, the day of the exam changed all that confidence in me to revise my guidance (!). Owing to the fact of twists appearing in the form of more questions from Ist PUC syllabus a span of 10 extra questions that were unexpected, changed the fate for me to now provide a new expectation of being numerically below the 500 rank mark.

A rank of 483 showed how much one could be precise about his performance. CET was about bringing the best to the forefront. It was a show of might. A show of dedication. A result of suspense. An atmosphere of tension. A feeling of euphoria. A nail biting finish of the counselling. A sinking feeling of the fact that an engieering or medical seat had been secured. A family union after the whole episode. A feeling of 12 years worth of hard work, and more specifically 5 real years of hard work showing results. A sense of pride of having achieved something for what the parents stood for. For having educated you with their sweat of hard work.

Cut to the present day situation. More and more private colleges mushrooming day after day. From 10 to 26 to perhaps a 100 or even more. The chaos was already in the making. And it only got cemented so well that the private colleges association now had more teeth to demand anything and everything from the government. The last nail in the coffin being fee structure control.

Coming to the government’s latest stand on grading colleges based on :

Location: So what the government seems to be saying is that colleges which are easily accessible score more? Now in today’s situation does it mean a college in Jalahalli which is accessible in 30 mins from byappanahalli scores more than a reputed college in Basavanagudi which takes 2 hours by bus to reach?

Infrastructure: Alright, makes sense. But how do you quantify what infrastructure means? Labs? Cabs? Cafeteria? Library? What exactly?

Courses: Again we seem to be treading the wrong path here. Is it the number of courses or the kind of courses? Are these going to be measured on how industry specific they are? How industry relevant they are in today’s situation? How much in tune they are with the way education is organized abroad?

Coaching: I’m not sure how to write about this or what to write about this. Roughly about 30% of the lecturers have no freaking idea what they are teaching. While the remaining 70% are really good, its impossible to grade a college on just the kind of teaching done given the attrition rate of the lecturers every single year.

Veerappa Moily’s soft protest against changing the CET regime is very legitimate. Not because he started it. Because of the kind of control it weilded and shaped today’s industry that you see in Bangalore today. The kind of organized education that it brought about for what Karnataka is famous for.

To me its not about the poor who will be marginalized. Its about the rich who would be made poorer. Arbitrary fee structure increase is the last kind of favour any college needs from the government to start growing into automous currency monsters. An engineering degree that costed 20000 bucks way back in 1995 is now costing about 6 lakh+ in 2013. while this rate increase justifies against inflation, imagine the next three years fee structure. Are you able to guess where this is leading to?

I am predicting a four fold increase in this cost. Upto 25 lakh for a payment seat. Notwithstanding the fact that management seats are being auctioned anywhere between half a crore to more than 1 crore in both the engineering and medical segments. Assuming one spends half a crore on an engineering seat it takes anywhere between 15-25 years of meticulous hard work and growth in the software industry to even get anywhere close to earning back that amount. Given the kind of industry irrelevant subjects on offer this money spent is not even going to be of any worth.

Of course the colleges want to invest more money by charging students higher fee to maintain some standards within themselves. But if you are with me in understanding how building bye-laws worked and the Akrama-Sakrama scheme, you would know that this situation under discussion is no different from growing into an academic racket with similar dimensions and irreversibility few years down the line.

By the way is anyone looking at the way the schools are mushrooming with their own fee structures without a proper ombudsman? Your guess is as good as mine.

While every country is striving to make education free until high school and bringing the focus back into developing individuals to a higher level of performance, our education system is weaning towards a dangerous path laden with high unaffordable fee structures which only promotes growth of those people with money. This will eventually widen not only the urban-rural gap, but now widen an already mushrooming urban-urban gap in the education system.

If a doctor pays up 1 crore to get a seat and doesnt study well, you can imagine the guarantee for the set of patients that go under his knife! Similarly if an engineer pays up half a crore and doesnt study well, you can imagine how relevant what he studied would be for the industry. Thankfully the industry lobby is different from the college lobby. They select candidates based on how relevant the candidate is. Not how much a college in which he studied has been graded by the government.

If not anything else this will only start making the industry more aware that they need to start looking at the merit in candidates rather than the grade of the college in which he studied (as given by the government) in future. Its about time the companies start looking at visiting all educational campuses irrespective of their industry or academic standing. In three years time, a meritorious candidate could be well studying in a college which hardly people know of, which is hardly accessible, but might have the right amount of coaching and a more relevant course offering.

Bye Bye UVCE, RV, BMS, PESIT & MS Ramaiah.

KHB announces auction notification for 1st phase of suryanagar

-auction date is on 08-JANUARY-2013 at 11:30 AM.
-The auction location is at KHB suryanagar phase-1 office in khb suryanagar itself.
-The minimum stipulated recommended starting price is pegged at a rather steep Rs.2000 per sq.ft.
-These properties are sold at as-is-where-is basis. The initial fee for participating in the auction is Rs.50000 per site.
– DD or cash must be taken in the name of Commissioner, KHB, bangalore
– those unsuccessful would be refunded the amount after auction
– those winning the auction shall pay 25% of the amount along with 2 passport photos
– tokens will be provided at 10am. those coming later than 11:30 shall be disquaified from the auction
– if the winner does not provide 25% of the amount within 24 hours he shall lose 50000 without any reasons assigned
– Within 60 days the remaining 75% shall be paid
– in case this is not paid, bidder/winner shall lose the 25% as well
– the KHB reserves the right to cancel auctions without assigning any reasons for any of the sites published
– the winners are expected to register their sites with their own funds
– any alterations found in the stipulated dimensions shall be finalized by KHB and the bidders are bound by the same.

For more information contact 080-27804400, 9740335386 & 9980869439.

 

Tags: bangalore, bengaluru, khb, suryanagar, auction, january, real estate, land, plots, apartments

ICICI bank to provide social banking through Facebook in 2012

According to an email received, ICICI bank is set to usher in banking via Facebook in the year 2012. It is not exactly clear what or how they intend to do it. But for starters they are planning to include a page of their own for you to like on Facebook.

Here is an except of the plan:

As we step into 2012, we re-affirm our commitment to continue offering you superior banking services in line with our philosophy of ‘Khayaal Aapka’. We are pleased to inform you that ICICI Bank will soon be present on Facebook. The ICICI Bank page will include a one-of-its kind ‘Your Bank Account’ app through which you can access your bank account information while on Facebook. You can also choose to ‘Like’ our page and get updates on exclusive offers.

It is only known at this point that they will provide an app which will let you interact with the bank backend. But given the number of security loopholes in Facebook or any other social application/website so far, this in my opinion is only a recipe for minor disasters on average users who are already being lured by useless offers and mails.

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The phenomenon – part one

I always wanted to pen down this story, but time was at premium. It finally finds its way into this blog. This is not a story of a place. Its an article about the phenomenon called Koramangala and my gratitude for a chance to breathe, live and loathe it.

The year was 1983. But we were living in 1682. The mood wasn’t exactly one of jubilation but more of an urgency. An urgency to find a place which we could call our own, in anticipation of a family which would shortly burst at its seams. With many siblings of my father yet to be married, there was never a perfect time for this shift. Our then rented home 1682, in Rajajinagar had a reason to be vacated. With burgeoning rental demands, and for reasons beyond my comprehension when I was just six, and with pressure from everyone around, we had to vacate the place.

Koramangala was neither in the city, nor was a village. At best it wasn’t even lands that belonged to the rich and powerful Reddys those days. It was more of unexplored forest, which BDA decided to tame in the name of site allotments. My father had been allotted a site for five thousand rupees. Five thousand was like a current day fifty lakh figure to him with his rather abysmal salary levels and the last thing he could do was cough up this amount for the property. He had two choices – Koramangala and Indiranagar. While he could somehow locate the former, he was afraid to go to the latter area !! 🙂

After a lot of discussion and math crunching all the brothers decided to pitch in for the house so that my dad could enable the change in life. This in my opinion was the beginning and end of a joint family. The beginning was one of happiness and the seeds for the end were being sown not withstanding my oblivion about it.

The nearest  bus stop to Koramangala those days (80’s era) was can-you-believe-it Diary Circle which is a good 3-4 kms away. I would say its good for a heart patient as such, but for the good-for-nothing health freaks that we are, this was way too much. This also is the sole reason why my dad and grandpa are living/lived a healthy life. They walked this distance at least for a couple to three years before the phenomenon started happening. With just six houses for the entire eight blocks of Koramangala, this was nowhere near a phenomenon in the making.

From there what happened until now is the phenomenon.