KotakJifi Indiblogger Meet : Now Experience banking via Social Media

I was waiting from a long time for an Indiblogger meet in Mumbai and when the KotakJifi meet was announced I quickly hopped on to it. What added to the excitement was it was first meet to be organised simultaneously across Mumbai, Bangalore & Delhi.

Informed all my blogger friends as I was so eager to meet them.
Agenda for the meet was the launch of new service by Kotak Mahindra Bank called Jifi.
Venue was Cafe Zoe in Lower Parel. It was an afternoon meet, commencing from 12 p.m. till 4.

It was a fresh Sunday morning!!
As planned I was going to meet Stephen, Monica & Vikrant at Andheri Station from where we were supposed to start for Cafe Zoe.
As usual everyone was on time expect Stephen who made us wait for half hour. I was so wanting to kill him for that along with Monica but we controlled our instincts.
Renu called to accompany and we had one more member added to our gang.

After reaching Lower Parel we walked our way to Cafe Zoe. Many veteran bloggers who were regular at Indimeets had already booked their seats. But we were eyeing the other members of our gang Karan, Rohan, Tapobrata, Vaisakhi, Deepti & Fatima. After scanning the complete venue we finally found them sitting at the upper floor. We walked upstairs and smiling faces greeted us.
It is so much fun when the complete gang is together.
Leg pulling, complementing each other's attire and clicking pics started in no time.

Our host for the day Anoop from Indiblogger announced free drinks and in no time bar was flooded with people, everyone wanting to get their booze first.
After all were settled with their drinks , twitter contest made its way.
It was simple, click a selfie with most no of people in it and walk away with vouchers & goodies.

Anoop as usual was a great host who kept us entertaining till the secret chief guest took his position.
We were shown different videos and this time "Hudd Hudd" was replaced by the lyrics that were coming on the TV. We enjoyed cheering every word loud and with full passion & intensity.

Next we had to guess the chief guest's name. There were lots of wild guesses ranging from Actors to even Cricketers. Finally no one could guess the name correctly and our excitement reached a different level altogether.

When he finally appeared on the podium everyone was cheering for non other than Mr Chetan Bhagat.
He started with promotion of movie "2 States" which is adaptation of his novel by same name.
Next we were provided insides about Jifi through presentations & Videos.
Finally he introduced, Mr Manian, Country head for consumer banking at Kotak Mahindra.
We were asked to tweet our questions regarding Jifi which he was going to answer.

The live streaming of event in Mumbai was made available to the bloggers in Bangalore & Delhi.
After the Q&A round we headed for lunch. There were not many options in veg which disappointed me specially.

After lunch Anoop announced another tweeter contest called Kotak Premier league where all were divided into 6 groups. Each group had to tweet about Jifi, how the experience of connecting banking with social media was different. We fell into group 6. Unfortunately we couldn't win but our friends won SPA vouchers.

Another Superb Indiblogger meet concluded successfully and not the forget the awesome Tees that were given by the Indi team at the end.

Lets now explore Jifi
1. Kotak Jifi bank account is not a traditional bank account but a new age socially & digitally synchronized account. It's a new age social banking which lets you do everything with your account just my being on social media.

2. Facebook & Twitter are the new platforms for anywhere-anytime access to your bank account and hassle-less transactions. You just need to be on facebook to open a brand new Jifi account.

3. You can receive banking account updates via twitter & refer friends via Facebook.
4. So having more friends on FB is so beneficial for me as every referral earns me reward points.
    Also every time you like or comment on Facebook you get reward points.
    You transact online and you get more reward points.
    The more you are social the more you earn points.
    This loyalty points can be used in shopping, entertainment activities like movies & dinning purposes.

5.  No minimum balance, no tension. As kotak Jifi account comes with no minimum balance feature it
     allows you to shop & dine without giving a second thought about your balance.
6.  Kotak Money Watch -:
     Do you want a feature that keeps track of your expenditure as you spend a lot on shopping and
     other activities, then money watch is for you.
     You can connect your bank accounts to it and see the net worth, calculate taxes & keep track of all
     the expenses and bills.
7.  Balance above Rs 25,000 is converted into term deposit.
     Now this is an add on. No minimum deposit was a special feature which gets integrated with this,
     adding on to your money.
8. Platinum Debit Card -:
   With your Jifi account comes the Platinum debit card which is packed with lot of features.
    Every time you do shopping or online transactions you earn points and can easily redeem them.

So everything on your Jifi account is just a tweet away.
I am hooked to this idea of social banking and feels that Kotak Jifi account is more a youngster like me.
I would recommend to definitely get ours or become my friend on FB and I will send you the invite..:)
Till next meet CYA..TC

     

Inspiring youth to vote for Indian General Elections using Social Apps

The current Loksabha elections are nearing in and with that the excitement of selecting a new government is also increasing manifold…
Ohh Really !!! My friend Palak asked me.

Do you really think youth is interested in watching political leaders, listening to their speeches and pondering on the manifesto or policies of different political parties? If yes than dude please wake up. In today’s world youth is interested in watching models and heroines in one piece dancing on item numbers. They love listening to the foul language that is used in reality shows like roadies and big boss. Who is going to ponder upon a political party manifesto until and unless it also includes a menu containing sexy names of multi cuisines.

How do you expect that youth will take out time to vote when it is damn busy in playing games on facebook, tweeting for contests and watching movies.

I could easily sense the sarcasm in her words, but her points were quite valid.
Votes of educated youth were not at par as compared to those by illiterate junta which was the main vote bank of the political parties.

But the youth is not completely at fault, a major role is also of the technologically unsound system of voting in India.

If a person has to move out of his hometown for higher studies or job that there is no surety that he will be there to cast his vote during the time of election.
So it is the voting system that needs to be changed so that a citizen of India sitting anywhere can vote at the time of elections.

The time has come when online voting needs to be introduced at full pace in India.

There will be two ways of voting
1. The traditional one which is followed currently
2. Online voting.

There are 2 ways by which Online voting can be introduced
A. By creating a voting App.
B. Hosting a website where you can go and cast your vote.

In both the cases we will have 2 stages of validation.
In step one you will enter your 12 digit unique identification number which is there on the Aadhar card as the username. This will help you identify as a person.
In the next step we will be having biometric authentication in terms of retina scanning or finger print matching. The sample will be matched with the one which is already present in the Aadhar’s database. If it matches correctly than you are eligible to cast your vote.

But it has to be popularized and made accessible to all.
The best way is to put it where the youth spends most of their time, the social apps.

We can make a page on FB, handle on twitter, group on Whatsapp and WeChat where all the details on how, when and where to vote is given.

Political parties, Brands and NGO’s can be encouraged to come up with contests based on the general elections on facebook, twitter and other social media applications.

Some of the contests can be like
1. Person who casts his vote fastest and attaches the screenshot of the same wins a iPhone.
2. Every person who casts a vote will win some goodies.
3. Most Witty tweets can be given prizes. In such contests we can have hash tags like
    #GeneralElectionsIndia, #VoteIndia #YouthShouldVote.

We can have games where you can hit arrows, throw bombs or even eggs on the pictures of
political leaders who are fully covered in scams.
The person with maximum points will win something everyday.

Also we can have games like Parliamentvilla , Political Empire.
In Parliamenvilla who will be able to form your own government and govern the whole country.
You will be given a particular amount and those funds you can use to carry out your policies.
The whole purpose will be to increase the GDP, per capita income and exports of India.

Political empire will be a multiplayer game where everyone can form his/her own government, introduce manifestos and policies, use their own names and symbol for the their party.
Finally elections will happen where you have to fight hard to make your party win and form a government.

If youth will not get inspired by all this than I will only show them 2 pics which will surely make them rethink.

                It's time to wake up and vote for your rights.

                               Vote youth of India vote...
            Vote for your opportunities, happiness and dreams.