Curious Log

  • The Winning Way by Harsha and Anita Bhogle – Summary

    I have tried to be a keen sportsman and strongly believe that one can learn a lot by playing sports. It teaches you how to lose, how to come back and fight. One learns that sometimes you play to win and what it takes to build a real team. Reading Harsha & Anita Bhogle’s the Winning Way…

  • Decisions, smart decisions and implemented decisions

    Reports suggest an adult makes on an average 35000 decisions every day. Wow ! That’s surely a lot of processing for our brains. Maybe some of these decisions are so minor, that we do not even recognize the exact moment we made them. Still its these decisions which allow us to thrive in our chosen…

  • Who owns the customer experience

    I have been a regular and very loyal customer of Flipkart. They have a neat UI, collection is great, prices are good and they manage deliveries very well. While shopping for books last week I was shown a recommendation for “The Chariots of the Gods” a book whose introduction/teaser looked exciting. Needless to say I…

  • Consumer pitches for payment solutions

    Any new payment solution seeks to change the consumer behavior in a significant way and hence tries to ride on one or multiple triggers. These triggers are the reasons why a consumer would prefer our payment option over all the others at the moment-of-truth. I do not want to carry cash/cards/bulky wallet This feels really…

  • CSE – Custom Search Engine – Bing’s Opportunity

    Recently Microsoft shared some UK market specific data, wherein they highlighted how Bing has managed to gain traction and bring Google’s share of the pie below the 90% mark. One can only begin to imagine the kind of uphill task Bing product and sales teams must be looking at. But, its also a time for…

  • Obsessing over finer details

    I have heard way too many stories about how some of the most iconic brands were built by obsessing over details, by ensuring that the customer was kept at the center of it all. And I am sure that this has over the years been documented, researched and made its way into the board rooms…

  • Building a brand’s buzz through conversations

    Baat karne se baat banti hai ! In today’s connected world, conversations are the key for a brand’s buzz . Its no longer sufficient for brands to just advertise, and inform about their awesome products and services. They need to do way more. Brands today need  a better way to engage with their end customers. To…

  • rBus wants to bring affordable happy commutes to our cities

    Meet Siddharth aka svs. A guy who loves to code. A graduate from IIM B who didn’t quite enjoy the Investment Banking world. A music lover who built a core-banking system equivalent for MFIs- as an open source. An idea, which aspires to make city dwellers stay happy after those tough daily commutes-rBus. You can…

  • Banking to Dairy Farming | Interview Part 2 – Vigyan Gadodia

    Part 2 of the Interview with Vigyan Gadodia of Sahaj Group. See part 1 here. Explain in more detail, why dairy farming? Also, why the need to be in production? Why not just milk-distribution?  Vigyan: Dairy farming offers the following key advantages: On standalone basis it is a profitable activity for a farmer. It is…

  • Vigyan Gadodia From Banking to Dairy Farming

    What prompts a graduate from IIT/IIM , excelling at a banking career to move base to rural India. To start his business studies afresh in some really challenging circumstances ? What challenges does one face in the drastic transition from a city based-corporate-salaried role to a rural-startup-entrepenurial one ? Get some insights into these questions…

  • Customer Complaints and Social Media

    Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social platforms have provided an immense tool in the hands of the consumers. Suddenly the lone voice of the consumer, can get magnified if it resonates with a significant number of people – some from her own network, some who discover her woes and views through the sheer virality of…

  • Next Phase of Search Engine Wars

    A close friend of mine, just started his own venture after spending over a decade in the banking industry. He still goes to his venture’s web site by going to Google first and then typing his venture’s name in the search bar. No he is not doing it for some convoluted SEO impact. This is…

  • If everyone treated us like our mobile operators

    TataDoCoMos recent ad campaigns have been very powerful, to say the least. Kudos to the agency and the marketing teams who could communicate and highlight the pain-points so well. I saw the ad recently and it brought back some recent experiences with the biggest brand of them all – Airtel.  I have done my share…

  • Where’s the Cupid in our Education System

    I was reading this incredible story yday and Dandu bhai’s one line stuck a chord with me – I realized for the first time what it meant to understand concepts and solve problems using first principles (and not by memorizing) I was immediately back in 1993 when I was getting introduced to the concepts of…

  • Offline to online

    Offline + online connect, was and remains an interesting area for internet innovation – simply because in our real-lives we consume most brands, products and services (remove information from this list for a moment) in an offline heavy way. The real challenge that most brands face is that while these “offline consumers” are heavy consumers…

  • The Digital Insurer

    Going Digital is no longer a choice that insurers have, its something they need to do and now. What insurers need to understand is how to embrace digital in their individual markets and what goals to strive for in each phase of the roll-out. Given below is a collection of articles & essays I have…

  • Next phase of digital marketplaces

    Internet adoption has seen the evolution of some usual suspects across most geographies and one of the key category is that of Digital Marketplaces. A portal which successfully brings together the supply and demand side forces together.  In India we have seen the growth of such marketplaces for jobs (Naukri, Monster etc) , marriages (Bharatmatrimony),…

  • Corporate Culture Localization

    Many global companies have adopted an approach of customizing their products to suit the local needs. McDonalds came up with some Indian burgers to suit the desi palate, Suvidha was Citibank’s experiment at serving the unique Indian market, General Motors shifted the driving wheel from left to right (and forgot to move the wiper and…