Category: General Thinking

  • Demonetisation is a lost opportunity for digital payment providers

    The move made by Modi to Demonetise 86% of the notes in circulation might be a move that was triggered with various interests in mind. The one thing that it has undoubtedly made many Indians do it use digital payments. I was speaking the other day to one of the managers at National Payments Corporation…

  • Demonetisation – Why has no rich man committed suicide?

    Before we get into the details of Demonetisation and the how and what of it, I think some basic understanding of economics is very important. Economics is a vast subject based on the study of the relationship between man and money. Humans behave in a rather irrational manner and economics tries to put structure to…

  • Speed, Trust and Belief

    The other day I was driving out of town. It took me about 45 minutes to do 15 Kms inside of Bangalore at 4 AM. There was no traffic on the road. Once I got out of the city though, I was able to drive a lot faster and covered the next 200 Kms in…

  • Zoomo – The beauty of PR

    Have you ever heard how the PR folks are excellent spin doctors, this is precisely the story of Zoomo. The PR guys made martyrs out of a suicidal group. In India, they wanted to create a platform for used car sales. Selling used cars is probably a staple business in most countries. You have to…

  • Transportation is being disrupted

    Shots fired – Transportation is about to be disrupted and millions are about to loose their jobs. I have maintained for a long time that the next big wave from the perspective of making money is going to be transportation. Or as I more broadly like to call it #MovingAtoms (things and people; on earth…

  • Speed is exaggerated

    There is an excessive amount of focus on speed, when it comes to building startups. One of the advices that is often provided to startups is to get out of the blocks really fast. The #FailFast philosophy has probably pushed more startups towards failure than towards success. If you were building a house, would you…

  • Optimism

    Disappointment and Optimism are two sides of the same coin. Disappointment is a result of expectation not being met and expectations are a result of positivity. Children cry often because they are optimistic. They have a sense of loss when they don’t get something. As we grow older this unbounded optimism dies; we just call…

  • Yahoo! – The Upside

    A lot of ink has been spilt on the many mistakes made by Yahoo. How the company refused to buy Google or Facebook when the opportunity existed. Yahoo might in fact be a story of many missed opportunities. But those misses did not really define the failure. Yahoo failed because of a series of poor…

  • VR Vs AR, which way is the battle headed?

    The paradigms of computing are changing. In the past 3 decades, computers changed the way in which we have been communicating and carrying out day to day activities. Over the past 10 years, the mobile revolution swept the world and has for better or for worse changed the way which we interact with the world…

  • Costs we incur without knowing

    This is an image I took today morning at ITPL, Whitefield. This security guard was protected by sand bags and all. I have had the privilege of going to the ‘Madras Sappers’ campus in Bangalore which is a military establishment and there is no sentinel in place there once you pass the gate. Truth be…