Are these terms are alien to you ?

Don’t worry, Khelostocks has hosted a number of Trading Tutorials that help investors to learn the basics of trading. Khelostocks gives explanation to niche market terms that helps evolving investor to understand the market lingo. It also facilitates clients to ask their queries and doubts.

How it works:

Every client, on signing up, is provided with “virtual” one million rupees. Market data is streamed on a real time basis into the Khelostocks systems from National Stock Exchange (NSE) for 400 companies listed.

A user can place buy or sell order on both intraday and delivery basis in the Khelostocks trading systems using the virtual cash provided to him. Order can be placed at both limit and market rates. Now as the desired trading rate by the client is reached in the spot market his outstanding order is materialized and client becomes an owner or seller of the script as the case may be.

• As long as the order remains outstanding in the Khelostocks order book, corresponding margin is blocked for the Client. On buy trade, money is deducted from his cash assets and in case of a sell trade money is credited to his cash assets. Client’s net profit, loss and net assets are updated to his Account summary. Hence the client is playing with real time stock values and trading techniques but with virtual money.

Other Features:

• Khelostocks allows trading in top Indian stocks on the spot market rates.
• To help traders to make a head start, khelostocks provide them with daily Market Outlook and intraday as well as delivery based Stock Tips.
• gives easy to use Streamer, Get Quotes and Stocks Calls facility.
• gives explanation to niche market terms that helps evolving investor to understand the market lingo. It also facilitates clients to ask their queries and doubts.
• has an exclusive News Room that provides the latest business and market news from various sources at one place.
• provides a unique investor forum which is an exclusive platform for traders to exchange views and explore new strategies.

About the founders of KheloStocks:

Khelostocks.com has been developed by group of three guys: Akhil, Sameer and Vivek. All three of them are IIT Delhi Grads working in the software industry and developing khelostocks in their free time. They seem to have lot of plans for khelostocks and are looking for funding as well. Contact them

I am sure everybody in Bangalore has been to the Corner House ice cream parlours and also had the very famous mouth-watering DBC (Death By Chocolate). But few know about this hidden dessert parlour called Painted Platters in Koramangala, Bangalore.

Here, each plate used to serve the desserts is spray painted with chocolate paint and comes decorated with witty messages like “You can never make a crab walk straight” (on our plates), “My reality check has bounced,” “If there’s a will, I want to be in it,” etc.. Hence the name, Painted Platters.

Painted Platters was founded by Joe Manavalan of Oberoi Hotels. Joe’s passion for food and desserts (especially the presentation of it) is palpable from the article on Hindu:

Style, the visual appeal of food, is important because it is the first impression. To be a good stylist, you’ve to know your food well. It is like architecture, where the architect has to know the materials well. “The right side of a plate (like the right hand page of a book/newspaper) is the high visibility one. So, put the main or most colourful item there. I also use odd numbers regarding food articles on a plate or chairs for a table, number of colours in the food, interior décor of restaurants and whereever there is mix and match.”

[Image above: the very unique menu printed on cds]

The must try desserts here are Mississipi Mudpie (a favorite of mine), Champagne & Berry Mousse, Cherry & White Wine Mousse, Dark & White Chocolate Sushi, Apple Pie and Mango Mousse.. Its also priced quite reasonably at around Rs. 100, which make them a must try, if you are around Koramangala.

[Image above: champagne and berry mousse]

I found the ambiance to be just right too, with very good light music playing in the background. But all this only adds to the very yummy desserts (see the photos, but obviously you need to taste them and find the melting in your mouth to really appreciate them)

[Image above: new york baked cheese cake]

Address: 1st B Main Road, 7th Block, Koramangala, Bangalore (near Adyar Ananda Bhavan and opposite The legend)

FYI, there is another Painted Platters at Jayanagar too. I’ve heard that the first one at Indiranagar is closed now.

For more info: good detailed articles on Hindu and Hindu Business Line.

[Image above: Printo's flagship store in Koramangala, Bangalore]

The nice-looking (good logo) store in Koramangala with an aptly named printo (simple and well communicating name) aroused my curiosity to check-out what the store was all about. On entering the store, I was quite impressed by the BPO kindoff ambiance (with youngsters) behind the counter on their respective terminals. Anyways, my excuse to be there was a simple color printout for a project report. I was totally surprised when the sales person brought up a form on the terminal and started filling up an online form where she needed to fill my name and contact details (whhyyy.. I just needed a simple single print). Then I was given a choice of paper size (reasonable question) and various paper types (which reminded me of selecting a Cappuccino, Macchiato, Chococinno or Espresso at a coffee day). When I asked for the price, I was told she would have to look it up (how tough is it to remember that ??). On enquiring, I was told that the price varied with the number of pages (ah !! that way). Then, she fired the print and it took about 10 mins for the printer to warm up before it printed out my precious page. The quality was very good actually, no complaints there. Then it was time for the billing and I thought, there would be no more surprises. But like true printing professionals, the lady pulled out an adobe software for the bill and kinda checked it for something (alignment/formatting maybe) and fired a print.

It was quite a first experience, but a look around made me realize that this is a store for more specialized needs (like to print business cards, invitation cards, greeting cards, calendars, photo albums, stickers, certificates, brochures, annual reports, presentations, training manuals and posters). Woww.. quite an offering. This place must be heaven for people who are into personalized stuff like calendars with your friend’s photos, stickers for your sports teams, personalized festival greeting cards etc.. Maybe, this will catch up with the general public and corporates. But definitely not for a regular single-page printout

A look at their website printo.in throws up more surprises.

Look at the board members:

Sridar Iyengar
President, TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) & Ex-CEO, KPMG;
Currently serves on the boards of ICICI, Rediff and Infosys, among others.

Pravin Gandhi
Co-founder Hinditron & Partner, Infinity Ventures & Seed Fund;
Also serves on the boards of Mindtree, Microland and a few other large IT firms.

Naresh Malhotra
CEO, Café Coffee Day (India’s largest F&B retail chain)

Raju Venkatraman
President & COO, ICICI OneSource

These entrepreneurial biggies must have come together surely after seeing a big opportunity here. The Hindu article says the Printo estimate for the domestic printing and documenting market is a whopping Rs. 15500 crores (which now lies with the largely disorganized brick and mortar printing firms). Does Printo want to pocket a big pie of this ? It surely has major plans like 200 stores by 2009 and radical new-ideas like “online document storage” and a “distribute and print” offering. Yet to see it working though.

Or on the other hand is it just a rip-off idea from US’s Kinkos (similar color combination too . Actually, nothing wrong with that, as long as they can make it work in India.

Anyways, I had to pay Rs. 20 for the single page color printout (which falls to 14, 12 and 8 with increasing number of pages)