My Take:

This was a fantastic freewheeling talk session hosted by Nikhil Kamat of Zerodha. Zerodha is a highly profitable decacorn startup / company in India making stock trading in India a bliss.

Vinod Khosla, needs no introduction as he one of those great VCs and Entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley, much like Andreesen Horowitz, Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel and others

I found this talk session quite impactful as he touches on a variety of domains and how they are going to be impacted by AI.

Here is my key takeaways:

1. 80% of 80% of all jobs: Khosla predicts that AI will be able to perform 80% of 80% of all jobs very soon. This is huge prediction and I believe that this will be quite true by 2030. The implications to economy, jobs, society and the way of living is massive. The implementation of this new paradigm across countries will certainly take time. I am going to give in another 10yrs or more, so by 2040 or 2050, the world is going to be very very different that what it is now. Todays jobs, todays economics, todays ways of business operations, todays ways of politics is going to be disrupted big time. Its both exciting and scary as well. In order to survive and thrive, the next key takeaway becomes critical

2. Learning to Learn: “Change is the only permanent thing in the world”. This is one key, pivotal trait my big brother had taught me at very young age and this has proven super useful for me in my personal career. I have also been a generalist. Although I have core expertise in certain domains, I am excited to learn new things and curious to always “know more” , across a variety of domains. Although many of friends have gone deep on specialization and I have seen them do fantastically well in their careers, I can relate how AI is coming for them. I am shocked and at the same time pleasantly surprised that “jack of all trades” is the way forward.

3. Income Redistribution: I concur with Vinod Khosla and strongly believe that wealth gap is going to grow exponentially high in the near future. This is because a lot more day-to-day activities can be automated by software, robotics, AI - tech in general. The activities that are require “mass employment” are the ones that ripe for disruption due to increasing automation opportunities and cost benefits. For example Call Center jobs, IT services jobs, Digital Marketing Jobs, Warehouse fulfillment jobs - most of them are now up for grabs for automation by the new power hose of AI and Robotics. Given this inevitability, if we extend timeline to forecast, there is going to mass unemployment of general labour as we know it today. It will become a govt compulsion to redistribute wealth to the common man or in some form or the other - provide their basic necessities for free. The book Economic Singularity by Calum Chance talks about Universal Basic Income and whole lot of interesting topics quite lucidly. The book was written in 2016 and I read this book in 2020. I found the book to be super informative, but never in my wildest dream , I thought this Economic Singularity would be set closer than ever in 2025!!

What are you thoughts on the impact of AI and Vinod’s thoughts? Please do comment.

Below the AI generated summary for the entire 1-hour talk to be consumed in 5 minutes.

AI Generated Summary:

• AI's Impact on Jobs: Khosla predicts that AI will be able to perform 80% of 80% of all jobs within the next 3-5 years, and within 10-15 years, there will be virtually no human job that AI cannot do almost as well or better, with some regulatory exceptions (e.g., heart surgeons).

• The Importance of Learning to Learn: Given the rapid pace of change, Khosla emphasizes that the single most important skill is "the ability to learn." Individuals should optimize their careers for flexibility rather than specialization, as professions will constantly evolve or become obsolete.

• Skepticism vs. Innovation: Khosla believes that skeptics, who focus on why things won't work, never achieve the impossible. He advocates for an optimistic approach, imagining what's possible, especially with technology, and then working relentlessly to make it happen.

• Challenging the Status Quo: Throughout his life, Khosla has demonstrated a tendency to "not accept things as they were," whether starting a computer programming club at IIT Delhi, a biomedical engineering program, or companies like Sun Microsystems and Juniper. He encourages actively making desired changes happen rather than waiting for "them" to do it.

• Persistence and Vision: Khosla attributes his success to "persistence, sort of passion for a vision and then persistence through being kicked in the shins many many times." He prioritizes using his brain to solve "hard problems that nobody else will work on," especially those that can have a "large impact" and reinvent societal infrastructure with technology.

• Urbanization and AI: Khosla advocates for "deurbanization" as a better policy for countries like India, envisioning smaller, localized cities (around 1-2 million people) that leverage technology for services, allowing people to live closer to their hometowns and communities.

• AI's Potential for Free Services: He believes AI can make many services "almost free" for everyone, including education (with free AI tutors), medical expertise, legal services, and wealth advisory. This could lead to a "deflationary economy" where the cost of essential services dramatically decreases.

• Entrepreneurial Opportunities in the AI Era: For entrepreneurs, Khosla advises focusing on applying AI to "obsolete the service either in cost or in performance or in quality that somebody's providing without AI." He emphasizes strategic thinking, long-term vision, and excellent team building as crucial differentiators.

• Optimism Despite Challenges: While acknowledging the likelihood of an AI valuation bubble and that most investments will fail, Khosla remains optimistic about the "global transformation" driven by AI, seeing it as creating more opportunities than ever before for entrepreneurs.

• The Future of IT Services: He predicts that "software IT services will mostly disappear," meaning they will radically transform, and incumbent companies will need to make radical adjustments rather than incremental ones to survive.

• Crypto and Blockchain: Khosla differentiates between cryptocurrency and blockchain. While acknowledging the speculative and often illegal uses of cryptocurrency, he sees significant potential for blockchain in areas like stable coins (advocating for a government-issued stable coin in India), distributed trust networks, software contracts, and automatic financial settlements.

• Income Redistribution: Khosla believes that "some form of income redistribution by 2050 will be absolutely essential everywhere in the world" due to AI's impact on employment and wealth creation.

This podcast features Peter Deng, a highly impactful product leader who has worked at OpenAI, Instagram, Uber, and Facebook. He shares his insights and experiences, offering unique perspectives on product development and leadership.

My key Takeaways:

1. "In six months, if I'm telling you what to do, I've hired the wrong person.": This was spot on for me. This is almost exactly I operate and what I say to my colleagues as well. I am more interested in equipping the hire to be independent, self-managed and self-initiated than they asking me for help or suggestions after the probation period. Having this metric and operational goal sets a high bar on nut just hiring, but on the work ethics within the team / org.

2. "Sometimes your product actually doesn't matter.": This was again spot on for me. I have personally witnessed so many projects that take forever to ship / complete because of a variety of nitpicking requests from a variety of stakeholders that in the end almost never matters to the actual customers. Colors, font, themes, pixel alignment of buttons, all those are nice to haves but not must haves. There is huge difference between these two. These features, are also almost never one way doors, they can be easily revisited once the primary goal - customer satisfaction / traction - has been achieved.

3. Hiring the right person for the team rather their skillset: This was very interesting learning for me. In addition to always hiring someone with strong skillset (raising the bar in hiring), he mentioned how it is important to align the new hire with the team goals & requirements. So hiring is not just at individual scope but at a higher level needs with the global scope. This was an interesting point

4. Not All successful companies were not founded from ground breaking technology innovations: This was so illuminating for as I have had this notion as well, but couldn’t put the finger on it and Peter Dang said it nicely. Google might have been a true genius company due to breakthrough innovation, but many others like Facebook became big and successful through continuous innovation and learning from customers

AI Assisted Summary:

On Success in Building Products

"You have to plan your chess moves out in advance. You have to really think before you act and build systems that are going to let you go sustainably faster."

Peter emphasizes the importance of strategic foresight and building scalable systems for sustainable growth.

Counterintuitive Lessons

"Sometimes your product actually doesn't matter." At Uber, he learned that factors like price and ETA often outweigh the app's design features in user experience.

He also highlights that many successful tech companies weren't built on groundbreaking technology, but rather on hard work and iteration, leveraging existing technology to meet human needs.

The Impact of AI on Education

Peter predicts a significant transformation in education due to AI. He shares a mind-blowing anecdote about his nine-year-old son creating a custom GPT to generate sentences with every letter of the alphabet, illustrating the potential for AI to rewire young minds and change how we approach learning. "I can already see his brain rewiring."

He believes the ability to ask the right questions will become a key differentiator in the future, similar to how calculators shifted the focus of math from calculation to higher-level problem-solving.

The Power of Language

Peter stresses the importance of precise language in product development and leadership. He believes language directly impacts thought processes and that careful word choice is crucial for clear communication and effective product design. "Language actually affects the way you think."

Building and Scaling Products

Peter advises against the "move fast and break things" mentality when scaling a product. He advocates for strategic planning and building robust systems to support sustainable growth. "Sometimes you have to go slow to go fast."

He emphasizes the importance of data-driven decision-making and building growth teams to gain insights and improve product development.

Building AI Startups

For AI startups, Peter suggests focusing on creating proprietary data flywheels and crafting exceptional user experiences that integrate seamlessly into users' workflows. He uses Granola as an example of a product that excels in user experience and product craft.

The Role of Product at AI Companies

At companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, the product team plays a crucial role in fine-tuning models and creating user-friendly interfaces that unlock the potential of advanced AI. Close collaboration between product and research teams is essential.

Hiring Practices

Peter shares two key principles for hiring:

• "In six months, if I'm telling you what to do, I've hired the wrong person." This emphasizes the importance of hiring self-sufficient individuals who can take initiative and ownership.

• Prioritizing growth mindset. He uses a specific interview question to assess candidates' self-reflection and openness to feedback.

He also describes five archetypes of product managers: Consumer PM, Growth PM, Business/GMP PM, Platform PM, and Research PM, highlighting the diversity of skills and perspectives within the product management field.

Management Style

Peter emphasizes the importance of helping team members lean into their strengths and create a balanced team with diverse skill sets. He shares a simple yet powerful phrase – "Say you'll do the thing, do the thing, say you did the thing" – for effective communication and management.

Lessons from Failure

Peter discusses the failure of Instagram's Bolt app, highlighting the importance of learning from failures and adapting strategies. "It ain't a loss, it's a lesson."

Conclusion

Peter's insights offer valuable lessons for product leaders at all levels, emphasizing the importance of strategic thinking, data-driven decision-making, building strong teams, and embracing continuous learning.

My Take

I am an avid listener to Lenny’s Podcast as his guest line up and the discussions are very engaging + insightful. Top of the line.

As I try to navigate the founder mode in me + as a Techie Entrepreneur — Sales has always been a black box, not a scary one but more a mysterious black box.

This podcast was very insightful and clarified a bunch of things for me. My key takeaways are as follows:

1. Pivotal Importance of Founder Led Sales: I had long underestimated the significance of founder led sales. In retrospect, some of the reasons my past mis-adventures in startup stints can also be attributed to bad sales strategy & execution. Coming from this perspective, Jen’s point resonated with me quickly on the importance of founder led sales in the initial days. Driving growth through sales team is a problem after achieving PMF or enough traction - perhaps a year later and definitely not in the first year.

2. Being Vulnerable: As a founder, talking to and acquiring your first customers is more about being open to brutal feedback, being vulnerable to allow the customer to give candid and brutal feedback. While this needs a thick skin to digest, this is also a great strategy for clients to open up and give insightful feedbacks

3. Zeroing In: Narrowing your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and figuring out the Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy to acquire them is crucial. This is very important for startup as they have limited resources and limited time to go after. Having a high conversion / signup in the early stages is a good sign that we have indeed done a good job at zeroing in.

What are your key takeaways?

Introduction

This episode dives deep into the tactical aspects of sales, particularly focusing on Founder-led sales. Many early-stage founders struggle by applying late-stage sales advice prematurely. The core message is that in the early stages, the founder is the product.

What is Founder-Led Sales?

Founder-led sales is that initial crucial stage where a startup secures its first customers. It's vital because in the early days, before brand recognition, a robust marketing engine, or many references, the founder's expertise and vision become the primary selling point. The founder possesses unique insights and experience, often unseen by the market. Founder-led sales is about aligning the founder's vision with market reality.

Why Founder-Led Sales is Crucial

Jen Abel highlights three key advantages of founder-led sales:

• Founders are the visionaries; no one can articulate the vision better.

• The founder's position within the startup hierarchy gives them unique credibility.

• Founders possess the ability to discern subtle cues and insights during conversations that a salesperson might miss. These "budding moments" are goldmines for refining the sales approach and achieving product-market fit.

It also brings accountability closer to the pulse of the business, preventing the game of telephone that can distort messaging.

The Sales Cycle: Steps and Tactics

The traditional sales cycle, according to Jen, involves several key stages:

1. Intro call

2. Second call (potentially a demo)

3. Third call (proposal/deeper demo)

4. Fourth call (feedback/co-authoring)

5. Fifth call (procurement)

6. Post-procurement (signature)

Each call has a specific goal, guided by the buyer's process.

Getting Prospects to Engage

The biggest challenge is often getting prospects to pay attention. Jen emphasizes these key components for effective outreach:

• Relevancy: Clearly demonstrate why the message is relevant to the recipient's role.

• Differentiation/Counterintuitive Approach: Say something surprising or that challenges conventional thinking.

• Problem Focus: Highlight the problem you're solving, not just the solution.

• Conciseness: Keep the message short, ideally three to four sentences, avoiding scrolling on mobile.

An example email opening line: "0-to-1 sales talent does exist—that's why I want to have a conversation with you."

Conversion rates depend on win rates: high win rates allow for lower conversion rates.

When a problem is truly felt by the market, people will respond.

Identifying Product-Market Fit

Differentiating between a product problem versus a sales problem requires careful observation. Jen suggests that companies that started with a market problem (identifying a pain point and then building a solution) often achieve product-market fit faster, although their upside might be somewhat capped. Companies starting with a technical insight and then searching for a market often have higher upside but take longer to find product-market fit.

Finding Leads

Jen recommends starting with a manual approach before investing in sales tools. Identify 30 potential prospects and craft thoughtful, personalized messages. This process helps refine your understanding of ideal customer profiles. Only after this initial manual phase should you consider leveraging sales tools.

The First Sales Call: Vulnerability and Learning

During the initial call, Jen advises founders to be open and vulnerable about their stage, openly acknowledging that they are learning. This fosters trust and encourages honest feedback. "Founder-led sales is not about revenue on day one; it's about learning as fast as humanly possible."

The goal is to understand the prospect's perspective and pain points, not necessarily to close the deal immediately. The focus should be on discovering the "aha" moment for the prospect.

Signs of a Strong Opportunity

Key indicators of a promising opportunity include:

• A growing and widening problem

• The prospect is actively measuring or managing the problem

• The prospect has tried and failed to solve the problem

The prospect's active involvement in finding solutions and bringing others into the conversation signals strong potential.

Co-Authoring the Scope of Work

In the early stages, co-creating the scope of work with prospects transforms them into guides, accelerating learning. This strategy helps determine buyer maturity:

• If they lack existing processes, you may need to sell a service first to educate them.

• Timebox services engagements to 90-day increments to avoid becoming bogged down.

This service component demonstrates intent, provides revenue, allows logo usage, and sets the stage for future technology sales.

Navigating Procurement Process in Enterprises

Selling to procurement requires a different approach. Simplify your messaging, avoid jargon, and emphasize differentiation. Make procurement's job easy by proactively providing necessary materials. Clearly define what you do and don't do to avoid being classified as high risk. Consider truncating contracts into technology and service components. Don't start work until payment is secured through finance.

Pricing and Discounting

Avoid discounting unless the prospect requests it, then ask them to justify the request. Discounts can be appropriate if the prospect offers something substantial in return (e.g., becoming a reference).

Choosing Your Target Market (SMB vs. Enterprise)

The decision to focus on SMB or Enterprise should align with your product and your team's capabilities and preferences. Consider the long-term implications for yourself and your team.

Overcoming Sales Challenges

The most common Pitfall is mis-qualification of leads. It's crucial to ensure you're targeting the right people with the right message. The sales process should ideally be fun and invigorating for the buyer.

The Power of Belief, Speech by Simon Sinek

My Take:

It was fascinating to listen to Simon Sinek to talk about optimism and believing in one’s self at every point of time. I am also super thrilled to kick start this new series of blogs that I have been planning to write for sometime now.

I have a 3 major takeaways from listening this speech from Simon Sinek.

1. Embracing Possibility: Optimism and believing optimistically isn’t about evidence, it is about carrying a posture, operating with an attitude that says - “I am going to figure it out” . Everybody has issues and problems. There are always lot of hurdles than opportunities in life, but all that matters is all about figuring out that one opportunity to make things work! Rest will follow.

2. Programming Your Mind: It is the subconscious story that we tell our mind that changes the ambience and sequence of events that lead up to figuring out things when faced with challenges. Positivity will lead to positive outcomes. Pessimism, Negativity and “dead locking” oneself will lead to nothing but…

3. The Power of Movement: Theory is one level, experience is at a whole different level. Theory is important to understand & reason, but nothing beats getting sh*t done! The more you do, the more you get stuff done. The more you get stuff done, the better you get at “figuring things out”. Gaining Momentum is not a just metaphor but actual science!

Hope you like the Kumba AI Co Authored summary of the 30 min video to 5 min reading below

Summary Co-authored by AI

The way we choose to believe is deeply powerful, shaping almost everything we do. It influences how we interact with the world, from our body language to how we address challenges. Belief isn't about evidence; it's about carrying a posture, an attitude that says, "I'm going to act as if things are going to work out, even when there's no proof yet." This mindset shapes behavior more than circumstances ever could.

Two people facing the same challenge will respond differently based on their belief. One might hesitate, second-guess, and avoid, while the other leans in, asks questions, and adapts. It's not about intelligence or talent; it's about the decision in their mind: "This will work out. I just need to keep moving." This belief fuels persistence, clarity, and progress.

Beyond Realism: Embracing Possibility

We're often told to be realistic, but realism shouldn't mean resignation. When people say "be realistic," they often mean "don't expect too much," which is a trap. Lowering expectations to match our fears limits our actions, preventing us from trying, exploring, and innovating. Belief isn't naive; it's strategic, the foundation of initiative.

Top performers across fields operate from a deep belief in their capabilities. They act first; confidence follows action. Confidence is built, not born, and belief allows you to take that first step, to act without guarantees.

A Story of Transformation

The speaker shares a story of someone navigating a difficult career transition. After job loss and uncertainty, this individual shifted their mindset. "I'm going to treat this like the best thing that ever happened to me, even though it doesn't feel like that yet." This simple statement changed everything. Through proactive networking and a positive attitude, they secured a perfect role. It wasn't luck; it was belief.

The Power of Acting "As If"

Acting as if everything works out leads to decisions based on possibility, not fear. It doesn't mean ignoring fear, but not letting it dictate choices. You learn to trust the process, your resilience, and believe the next step will lead somewhere worth going. There's a quiet power in moving forward without certainty; it's magnetic and attracts others.

When you behave as if everything always works out, it often does – not because the universe bends to your will, but because your belief leads to better outcomes. You show up, persist, listen, and experiment more. It's not magic; it's behavior rooted in belief.

Rewriting Your Story

We all carry stories about ourselves, some written by others. But you get to rewrite the story. You get to decide what belief you carry into the world. This belief will shape how you move and how the world responds. Acting "as if" isn't arrogance or delusion; it's grounded optimism – a commitment to finding a way through, learning, growing, and becoming stronger.

The people who inspire us kept going when things didn't make sense, choosing belief in the face of uncertainty. The most important decision isn't what you do, it's what you believe; belief shapes behavior, and behavior shapes outcomes.

The Biology of Belief

We are all storytellers, and our brains believe the stories we tell ourselves – not because they're true, but because they're familiar. This is biological; our brains are wired for narrative and constantly seek coherence. Two people can experience the same situation and interpret it completely differently. The difference isn't the situation; it's the story. The story comes first; behavior follows.

If our story is negative, our brain seeks proof to validate it. The good news is we can change the filter; we can tell a new story. We can choose to act as if everything works out, not because of evidence, but to give our brain a better target.

Perspective and a New Story

This isn't about blind positivity or ignoring problems; it's about perspective. It's choosing a story that empowers us to move forward, even when the path is unclear. A new story leads the brain to seek better answers, becoming curious and creative instead of defensive and defeated.

The speaker shares another example of someone who reframed their story of repeated failure. By shifting their narrative, they approached challenges differently and eventually found success. The brain believes the voice it hears most often—our own voice.

Programming Your Mind

When we choose to act as if things always work out, we're not pretending; we're programming. We give our minds a framework to respond with strength, not fear. This changes how we handle criticism and rejection. The brain gets a job: find the good, the lesson, and the way forward. We often underestimate our power over our mindset.

Belief doesn't follow evidence; it creates it. When we believe things work out, we act in ways that align with that belief, becoming more open, building trust, and persevering longer.

Becoming Your Own Leader

Great leaders help us see a version of the story where we matter and progress is possible. We can become our own leaders by choosing the narrative we feed our minds. Is today a threat or an opportunity? A roadblock or a stepping stone? The brain will follow our lead and believe what we repeat.

Optimism isn't naive; it's disciplined thinking, a choice to see what's possible, even when it feels impossible. Pessimism and cynicism are easy, but optimism requires a conscious choice and continuous effort. You build optimism by training your mind to search for hope and solutions.

Disciplined Optimism: Holding Two Truths

Leaders who embody optimism don't do so with arrogance or false cheer, but with a calm presence. Optimism is about finding meaning in the hard, choosing purpose over panic. It's about holding two truths at once: that things are hard and that things are still moving forward.

See failures as feedback, not the end. Mindset isn't automatic; it's built and strengthened with use. Real growth happens in the unknown, the waiting, the "not yet." Optimism is a lifeline, not a liability; it's refusing to let fear shape your spirit.

Action Creates Evidence

Hope is where strategy begins. Without hope, there's no reason to plan or try. Optimism lights the fuse, making something worth pursuing. When we act from this place, we do better work and become more resilient.

When you act as if everything works out, you're choosing disciplined optimism, trusting yourself to learn and grow. Optimism isn't the absence of doubt; it's what you return to after doubt. It puts you in motion and keeps you open.

The Power of Movement

Clarity rarely comes before action; we often need to move before we find the evidence. The path reveals itself through motion. Certainty isn't a starting point; it's an outcome, showing up after taking steps into the unknown. Belief grows from action; each step gives us something real to stand on.

Acting "as if" isn't fake confidence; it's choosing to behave in alignment with the desired outcome. Imagine standing at the edge of a foggy path; every step reveals more. Movement makes the future visible. Waiting doesn't produce new data; it strengthens doubt.

Building Momentum Through Action

Readiness is not a prerequisite; it's a byproduct of action. Each action builds internal evidence: "I can handle this. I'm stronger than I thought." The speaker shares a story of a woman who overcame procrastination by taking small steps, ultimately leading to success.

Momentum is built through consistent, intentional steps, not giant leaps. Each step adds weight to the belief that what you want is possible. Action is the engine; confidence is the outcome.

Contagious Optimism and Unseen Leadership

Operating from the assumption that things are unfolding in your favor brings a different energy into the room. People feel it, trust it, and often join you. Disciplined action includes reflection and strategy, but it's forward-moving. You can course-correct as you go.

The moments we're most proud of didn't begin with certainty; they began with risk. What gave those moments meaning wasn't the outcome; it was the choice to act. Action creates evidence, and that evidence won't come before you move.

Becoming the Evidence

When you act as if everything works out, you're practicing faith in your future and choosing courage over certainty. You're not gambling; you're building the foundation for the life you want. Move not because you're fearless, but because you're becoming the kind of person who no longer waits for permission.

Every time we push through resistance, we're doing it for those watching, providing proof that it's possible. You become the evidence someone else needs to believe. You give permission to others who are wondering if they can do it too.

Leading with Evidence

Leadership is about demonstration, not authority or status. When someone takes the first leap, it lowers the psychological cost for everyone else. Leadership begins with the decision to become your own evidence, acting in alignment with your beliefs before you have all the results.

The speaker shares a story of a leader who transformed a broken team by consistently showing up, listening, and acting, creating a new narrative of possibility. This is leading with evidence – becoming the person who brings courage into the room by how you carry yourself.

The Weight of Unseen Leadership

People are watching, especially those closest to you. They're looking for you to be real, to try, to fail, and get back up. It's not about having a title; it's about consistency in values and belief. When you live like things always work out, you develop quiet authority; people lean in because you're not pretending; you're practicing.

Unseen leadership happens in the conversations no one hears, the late nights, and the doubts. This kind of leadership shapes culture and builds lasting trust. Your discipline, mindset, and resilience can light the way for someone else.

Creating Ripple Effects

Ask yourself: what kind of evidence am I becoming? What story does my life tell? What permission do I give others? Whether you realize it or not, you are becoming someone's reason to believe. You're shaping what others think is possible.

Living from the assumption that things are working in your favor brings hope, not ego. It's about service, responsibility, and legacy. The way you live becomes part of someone else's story. Keep showing up, believing, and building, not just for your goals, but for everyone still learning how to believe. You're creating ripple effects, and that impact begins the moment you decide to be the evidence you once needed.

I have been fortunate to work in both a big corporates and done my time in the startup world. My first startup, as you can imagine, from a garage. Not any garage but my living room… my living room as an international student doing graduate study in New York in a 10ft X 10ft room in a 6 bedroom ghost house built in the 1960s … where 10 of us stayed.. and where every foot step crackles through the hallways in the sub-zero cold winter days! Perhaps “Garage Startups” have a jinx to it! :-)

The first startup, I & a bunch of our college friends, kickstarted — https://www.behindwoods.com/

While I was only associated with this venture for only three years initially, the site / startup is among the leading online media outlets in India and is being well run by my college buddies.

Post graduate study, I was fortunate to work for Amazon for 14+yrs, bouncing about in 4 different orgs within Amazon and then finally hanging the boots with Amazon to jump all-in to my own startup Sigaram Tech (second innings).

At Sigaram Tech, After 2.5yrs of wearing multiple hats, going hither and tither to every block and talking with a variety of people at every level from diverse walks of life, the last lighting & thunder to strike our nascent startup was the COVID Pandemic!! Being in the food-tech space, this was an ELE — Extinction Level Event (Deep Impact). As entrepreneurs always do, we hustled, we pivoted and morphed into something else that can salvage some of the tech that we’ve built so far. The startup is afloat, and working towards a light at the end of tunnel, thanks to the indomitable faith and spirit of the current team!

At the end of 2020, I decided to part ways and take up a full time employment to both , pay for my bills, and to not be a burden to the startup itself. After a bumpy 9 months stint at AJIO.com as a the Vice President of E-Commerce Platform , relocated to Dubai as CTO of Namshi.com and exciting to be part of its growth story. Post Namshi's acquisition by Noon, I moved and currently working as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Hyke.ai, part of Axiom group for the last 2+yrs.

Having worked at a large, innovative, power house like Amazon, having ruffled with two startups in my career, and having worked at leadership positions at three large corporate houses, I am writing this blog about — Important Pillars to build a strong successful business — to shed some learnings / retrospectives / insights from my professional experience. HTH — Hope This Helps!

The Air:

Being a techie, I made the classic textbook mistake of not appreciating the importance of Sales and Marketing. In both my startups — marketing, branding, & sales were mostly an afterthought and not meticulously planned and internalized from the get go. In retrospect, I can admit that this was a huge mistake.

No matter how good, how perfect or how pristine your product , your solution is — you are not solving the problem that you set forth to solve for your customers — if you do not market it to the world, if you do not build a recognizable brand that pops up on potential customers hindsight, if you do not “sell” your product to your “customers”

As you can imagine, an Entrepreneur / Startup , kicks off with the identification of a key pain-point that the founders want to solve and that which they believe is common pain point to many. Thus extrapolating that they can make a business out of it, if there were able to sell their solution (Product) to the “many” people who have the same pain point (Market). Thus sales is all about selling your product to the right set of customers — and hence the whole Product Market Fit (PMF) galore!

The PMF doesn’t happen automatically. The PMF isn’t happenstance as some might think. PMF doesn’t work out of magic.

It takes a lot of marketing, branding, and selling to get the word out. It takes a lot of marketing to make your product known to the world, to your customers. It takes a lot of selling to attract your customers and lot of relationship building to retain your existing customers.

The Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) varies a lot based on type of product, type of industry , and type of business you are in. Customer Retention Rate (CRR) is even more important to grow and retain your existing customers.

Attracting new customers for your product, retaining and growing your existing loyal customer base is the underlying fuel, the “Air”, that is paramount to any startup and businesses at any stage. Without the Air element, startups and businesses alike risk choking to death. Sales, Branding, & Marketing are the indispensable oxygen — the Air component — for sustaining life of a startup & mature business alike.

A lot of startups and businesses do also get this right part right, about sales and marketing. I have seen both early stage startup and growing startups sometimes doing an amazing job at branding, marketing and spending that extra CAC to register in the minds of their customers. This is a great early win.

Spending money to acquire customers is probably a necessity in the early days for many startups & businesses. Examples are abound plentiful. Taxi aggregators like Uber & Lyft, food delivery startups like Doordash, Zomato, Swiggy, E-Commerce startups like Myntra, Flipkart, Snapdeal, and a whole gamut of startups in the last decade have trampled on this path of “paying forward, digging into their wallets to acquire customers”. Deep discounting, multiple offers, wallet credits, free services, partnerships, value added services at deep discounts, are some strategies employed that weigh heavy on the bank balances but do give attractive topline growth numbers.

The holy grail, end-of-tunnel, hypothesis is that these customers will at some point payback bigtime and stay loyal that can propel the startup to even higher growths and profits!

While these are great early win strategies, these tend to fizzle out quite rapidly if the underlying “mote” or “differentiator” factor isn’t sticky enough. Transforming from a growth startup to building & running a sustainable business needs investments and focus on multiple dimensions, IMHO

The Muscle:

The Tokyo Olympics isn’t far behind us and as in the Olympics the one who runs faster, jumps higher, lifts heavier, throws farther, smashes more — gets to be the winner. All of these winners have at least one thing in common to be a “leg up than the pack” — more muscle, more power. For businesses in the 21st digital century, the race is on full-throttle in every imaginable dimension.

For a startup, this is where the 10X rule kicks in

The rule is pretty simple, if your product isn’t 10 times better, it will be hard to sell in a crowded market. You won’t be able to differentiate your product from existing solutions, plus customers won’t be willing to pay switching costs unless they’re getting a huge benefit.

This famous rule presented by Peter Thiel in his revolutionary book “Zero To One” is quite simple rule and seems perfectly logical.

Simply said, for startups & businesses to continuously “win the race” — transitively win the customers, win the sales pipeline, win the customer retention game — it has to offer a vastly superior product than the rest of the pack!

In the post COVID pandemic era, it cannot be more obvious than ever before that — almost every other company out there is either already a core tech company or is / wants to be a tech enabled company in one way or the other. This in part due to the irrefutable realization, even more so now, that technology is the muscle that powers & helps deliver the efficiency, the disruption, the “superior product” that customers can begin to love & stay loyal.

Just imagine, Google’s Search market share is 80%+ and it has been so since its inception 20+yrs ago. Amazon is THE dominant E-Commerce player for more than 20yrs. Facebook is THE dominant Social Media players for the longest period. AWS is THE dominant Cloud Services provider. Nvidia is zooming past its legacy counterpart Intel in market share because of its superior chip technology even though Intel has been around for 30+yrs more than Nvidia. Apple iPhone is THE largest mobile phone business that no one could even have imagined a decade ago and in this transformation, Apple has trampled upon a huge list of legacy counterparts who were dominant before , but nowhere to be found now, primarily because Apple had superior technology than others. Not to mention Tesla, now valued at about $1 Trillion , which is more than sum of all the 5 of worlds major automakers’ market cap put together.

Its just not with the biggie stalwarts alone, look at Uber trampling over legacy Taxi industry in a matter a few years, HubSpot winning the digital marketing software landscape, Wayfair winning the furniture Ecommerce vertical, and much more.

A lot of startups and businesses, while they may start off with big bang, tend to fizzle out as they lose track of nurturing & building the Muscle component for them to thrive and succeed in the competitive landscape.

In 2024, in the dawn of AI Revolution, technology keeps changing almost everyday. It takes a lot of effort, investment, dedicated focus to keep up with the changing times, changing technology.

A strong technology team is a crucial and decisive component of any startup and large businesses alike today. Just like offense is the best form of defense, staying ahead of the curve in technology is the best form ensuring the survival and success of any business today. A lot of older startups, traditional businesses fail to come to terms with this eventuality and go stingy on tech, which sooner than later backfires big time!

The AI revolution that kicked off with 2023 with Chat GPT comes with real, solid productivity improvements. It is by no means perfect, but just like Cloud Tech grown powerful & ubiquitous over the last decade, AI will surely only reach ubiquity much sooner than any other phenomenon in the history of tech.

It would be a blunder if corporations, business do not build the AI muscle and leverage its machinery prowess.

The Rhythm:

OK, I have got the Air (Sales) , the Muscle (Tech) — what more do I need?

Now that we have loaded up fuel tank(Air a.k.a Sales) for the car and packed with much needed horsepower (Muscle a.k.a Tech ), we need to ensure that the car is good for a long smooth ride!

The whole point of starting a business / startup company is to ensure that , after the initial humps and bumps, the business keeps running for longer periods giving handsome returns much more than initially invested. Why would anyone risk their career, fortune, sleepless nights and all the insecurity in starting off a new venture, when they could work for a well paying day job or go do something else?

There can be as many of 30,000+ auto parts — the nuts, bolts, IC engines, pumps and etc — that make up a simple car. The cars of the 21st century probably has even more parts with all the sensors, digital telemetry and more. All these thousands of parts need to work in tandem and alignment for a smooth ride.

Similarly, the company, business is all about the team. No one person can build a billion dollar company. No one person can wear 100+ hats all at the same time and do it efficiently. There are leaders of course. There are geospatial, epoch spatial heros , of course for sure. But there its never a ONE person company that can do it all. Its always the best team wins!

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts “ — Aristotle

Aristotle’s age old wisdom of cannot but be more applicable here.

The startup, company, business with the strongest team has a distinctive competitive advantage.

A great culture becomes the glue that binds and aligns the entire team into a singular focus. A great corporate working culture sets the tone for positivity, collaboration, self-esteem, diligence, and effectively delivers better results. A great corporate culture sets the rhythm for achieving the company’s vision and encourages the team to uphold the mission dearly voluntarily.

The culture of the company is like the “ether” that has the potential to permeate into everyone soul & thoughts that pays back in multiples, if done correctly with utmost sincerity.

Getting the rhythm of the company, getting the company culture is the real hard nut to crack, among the three!

Having worked at Amazon for 14+yrs, yes I am partial to Amazon’s work culture, which I have shed some light in my other blog — No Mercy, No Malice, Amazon’s Tech Culture!

I am sure, I have heard many positive things about all the tech biggies Google, Amazon, Facebook (Meta), Twitter, Microsoft, Netflix and all of the 21st century internet / software companies.

I have also seen quite a lot of startups, companies, businesses, completely screwing up work culture and have had to pay costly repercussions.

Conclusion:

I strongly believe that in this 21st Digital Century, in the coming decade of AI, many of the old corporate policies, culture are outdated and need to consider full reboot / relook from ground up.

I strongly believe Sales, Technology & Culture are three indispensable pillars of corporate & business growth in this digital century!

I don’t think you can take one and leave the other, I believe each of these three are indispensable by in itself and together as pack as well.

What do you think? What your thoughts on pillars of growth for corporate in this day and age?

You could have the best of the team, but still fall short. History is lined with great many examples and the tech industry is no different— Yahoo.com, AOL.com, Nokia, Kodak, Blackberry and more.

Strong leadership coupled with a strong team delivers the difference, In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)

AI Revolution:

The year 2023 started with a big-bang on AI with the launch of Chat GPT from Open AI. Generative AI quickly became the common parlance / hot buzz topic of the general population and even more so with the tech community.

While the term “Artificial Intelligence / AI" was coined more than five decades ago and while there has been slow but steady progress in the underlying technology itself, it is evident that the seminal paper on “pretrained transformers" in 2017 from the researchers at Google / Deep Mind proved to be the much needed booster to skyrocket the advancements in AI to the next level.

It is almost certain by now, according to many industry experts, that this is the beginning of a new era much like the Industrial revolution of early 20th century and Internet revolution in the 1990s

30yrs ago, almost none of the businesses had a online presence. 20yrs ago, a majority of the businesses had some online presence. 10yrs ago, a vast majority of business had both a website and social media presence to establish their brand. In 2024, its is basically a mistake if the a business, any business, does not have an active presence & brand identity online.

AI is going to be like that in 10, 20, 30yrs from now!

Almost every business will be compelled, due to market dynamics, to adopt AI in their day-to-day operations, products & services. In 10yrs time, it will only be a mistake not to leverage the power of AI!

It is in this context, that it is important to leverage the power of AI in operating and growing every business of the 21st century. It is important, now more than ever, to have strong leadership team with AI & technology acumen to steer the business for sustained growth.

Common Org Structures:

I am sure many have seen the below comical depiction of org structures in some of the biggest tech companies.

Beyond the fun part of it, there are quite a few org structure followed by some of the key tech and tech-enabled companies these days.

This Hubspot article has some nice details on them. This Forbes articles also goes in detail about some the most common org structures.

I started my career at Amazon and worked for 14yrs, had my own start up and then moved into Dubai almost 3 years ago as CTO for Namshi.com which is the largest fashion e-commerce company in UAE and the greater GCC. I have been in the Sr. management for 10+yrs and in the C-suite for 3+yrs. Here is my 2 cents about a strong org structure for Tech and Tech enabled medium to large companies. I am not focusing on startup team structure as its largely wearing multiple hats, hustling and bustling modus operandi.

Objectives:

Its important to define the objectives before we proceed with proposals.

• Clarity: The org structure needs to provide clarity in each leaders roles & responsibilities, ownership scope, chain of command and decision making authority.

• Efficiency: The org structure needs to reduce bureaucracy, increase productivity of each product line & each team, by clearly scoping the ownership boundaries. It is important the org structure matches the skillset and nature of work to bring about the efficiency in day-to-day execution.

• Alignment: The org structure needs to ultimately align with the 5 year / 10 year vision of the company to achieve resonance or the multiplier effect or the “firing on all cylinders” phenomenon

Org Structure Proposal:

Chief Executive Officer (CEO):

I believe this role is quite evident. CEO is the ultimate captain of the ship. CEO needs to set the broad vision of the company, needs to define the values and culture of the company, needs to set clear targets and goals for the business. The CEO reports to the Chairman and the Board of Directors depending the company structure, if it is public, private, or VC funded etc.

Chief Business Officer (CBO) / Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) / Chief Revenue Officer (CRO):

The names differ slightly based on the company preference, orientation and company’s domain practices, but they are essentially the same - the CBO is responsible for business development and bringing in the revenue. The KPI are around revenue numbers and sales targets.

Chief Marketing Officer (CMO):

It is often debated if the marketing department should be part of the business development unit as many of the KPIs overlap. It is true that the Marketing team and Business Development team need to work very closely and almost tied to the hip with each other. However IMHO, these serve two strategically different purpose. One of the key KPI of marketing team is build the “brand identity”. Just imagine the Nike’s advertisements and their positioning or the Apple’s brand positioning. Branding is a lot about creativity. Marketing is lot about numbers. The Marketing team as a whole have the supreme & complex charter of pushing the numbers with creativity.

Chief of Human Resources (CHR) / Chief People Officer / Chief of Staffing:

Once again, I believe the role is quite evident. CHR owns employee benefits, their well being and other company benefit structure. In many IT services based companies or traditional companies, the HR department assumes huge significance with the authority that it dictates on several day-to-day operations. This can create unnecessary bureaucracy and relegating decision makers not being the subject matter experts, which only creates inefficiencies.

Chief Legal Officer (CLO):

Every company, be it small , medium , or large requires a strong Legal team. With the ever changing laws and ever changing business dynamics, it is important to respect the “law of the land” and ensure full compliance in daily operations.

Chief Finance Officer (CFO):

Managing working capital, maintaining book of accounts, ledgers, financial projections, managing account receivables (AR), tax reporting & compliance - all are complex but mandatory requirements of a successful business. The finance team with a strong leader is key to streamline this vertical.

Chief Operations Officer (COO):

Ecommerce companies, Supply Chain companies, and ground operations heavy companies will be greatly benefit from having the Chief Operations Officer who can champion the complexity of ground operations. A pure SaaS company for example, would not benefit from having a COO.

Chief Technology Officer (CTO) / Chief Information Officer (CIO):

I wanted to cover this role in more details and hence kept it to the last.

The titles CTO and CIO can be lucratively similar but there is fine line between the two. Let me explain this with some examples.

For companies who core business and revenue segments are physical industries, such as - Real Estate, Hotels & Resorts, Restaurants, Shipping, Oil & Gas, Automobile Sales - the company requires technology to streamline and bring efficiency to their operations. The CIO is the right person for this group of organizations, IMHO.

The company is certainly tech enabled and requires a strong IT team to ensure operations are in order. However, it does not make business case for these companies to invest in developing new technologies, in developing new software, in developing new products that are highly tech focused. The company is better off using & deploying existing software solutions in the right way for the right use case to deliver the business goals. The product or service being offered and the end customer satisfaction is delivered by something other than software.

This by no means is simple or straightforward. This requires a highly technical leader, the CIO, to asses the business goals and plan out the tech infrastructure to be robust, scalable and flexible for the future business growth.

For E-Commerce companies, Fintech companies, mobile apps, Software as a Service (SaaS) companies, smart devices, data analytics companies - Software Tech is right front & center of the product & services being offered to the end customer. The tech delivers the products & services. In this group of organizations, the CTO role becomes important.

The success of the product is a key KPI for the CTO. The sophistication and robustness of the tech infrastructure is a key KPI for the CTO. The customer experience of the product is a key KPI for the CTO. Transitively, the business growth is also a shared KPI of the CTO.

With the ever increasing open source products, with ever increasing SaaS products that are close to solving a majority of essential business needs, the need to develop custom software application in-house becomes increasingly less likely and stitching together a suite of SaaS products to meet to build and deploy the end product seems more likely these days. IMHO, I think this is where role definitions of CTO & CIO overlap quite a bit.

Zooming Into Tech Department Org Structure:

Typically the CTO manages and owns a lot of the tech KPIs along with the product & business KPIs. With the accelerated revolution of AI , which is surely going to influence and impact almost every aspect of the product being built, it is important to have a dedicated focus on leveraging & weaving AI capabilities in to the product from day one.

Debate #1: Should The Product Team Report to CTO or CEO?

The answers is always - it depends - however for the tech centric companies such as mentioned before (e-com, fintech, SaaS, apps & etc.), it is important that Product and Tech teams fall under the umbrella / org division. CEO’s need to have strong tech & product acumen, but they are burdened to drive the business charter, the public relations charter and settings the company culture & more.

It is obvious that Product & Tech teams are tied to the hip. In fact pretty much all the teams in the above mentioned tech org chart needs to work very closely with each other to deliver quality product & services to the end customer.

You could have a person whose core expertise is in Tech & is comfortable wearing the product hat to lead as the CTO. You could have a person whose core expertise is in Product & is comfortable getting hands dirty with system architecture and tech jargons as the CPO. Either one will work.

IMHO, this is why I strongly believe that for most tech centric companies, the role needs to redefined as Chief Technology & Product Officer (CTPO) due to the duality and due to the inseparable accountability.

Debate #2: Do You need a separate Head of IT and CTO? Why can’t they be managed by the same person?

With the proliferation of software, cloud infra, connected devices which are not just laptops and mobile phone anymore, it is ever more important to have a strong, separate IT team to procure & manage them efficiently. Software licenses, negotiating with vendors on pricing and quotes, installation of software, installation of office premise hardware, LAN, WAN, Smart Devices are heavy task that require specialized skillset and capacity to have everything in order.

It is important that almost every medium to large business need to have a tech leader who is actively wearing the product hat for innovation. The internal corporate tech infrastructure needs its own leader , the head of IT. However it is important that the IT head reports and works with the CTO of the company to meet the business KPIs by ensuring the house is in order.

Debate #3: Does the Data team report to the head of Software or head of product?

From notepads, to Excel sheets, the Data engineering discipline has come a long way in sophistication and sheer tech complexity. Setting aside the AI component for a bit, just the Data Engineering disciple is tech heavy and requires a lot of sophistication and deep integration to get it right. Even though the immediate and day-to-day stakeholders might be the business & product folks, the skill set & activities of the data-team is best managed by the tech org, preferably reporting the CTO.

The Case For Head of AI:

The role “Chief of AI” / “Chief AI Strategist” / “Chief AI Officer” was trending a bit in 2023 in tune with the AI hype. IMHO I believe Chief Technology Officer is good as or even more empowering than Chief AI Officer.

AI is going to change the way products & services are going to be delivered very soon. There should be no doubt. Unless you are company like NVidia, Open AI, X.ai, Anthropic or Mistral, who are building the core LLMs, then its is more than likely that you are leveraging the AI capabilities to build , improvise , innovate on products & services for your customers. For that matter, there even a CTO in OpenAI, Mira Murati, who is doing an fantastic job in stretching the envelope of core AI tech. I feel that naming a role a Chief AI Officer more as a fad than anything.

In the technology org, just like there is head of software engineering, head of mobile apps, head of data, there is absolutely a need to have dedicated “Head of AI” in the tech org.

The AI technology landscape - LLMS, Agents, Fine Tuning, RAGs, Text To Speech (TTS), Image to Video, Text to Video, Text to Image - a lot more are rapidly evolving and open up a huge plethora of capabilities for innovation. It is important for a dedicated lead and dedicated, small team if you will, to keep abreast of these advances, digest them appropriately and translate their relevance for the business needs is going to huge differentiator in the rapid growth of the business. It is almost certain that the rate of adoption of AI capabilities is going to be the key for accelerated growth for the business.

I do not think the CTO will have all the time and resources to focus on leveraging AI, purely because the field is so dynamic and already vast. Hence the need for a dedicated, senior head of AI to be part of the core tech org.

One of the best example or inspiration is Dubai Govt appointing Head of AI in all its govt departments to boost leveraging more AI capabilities in its services.

Also, with the dedicated Head of AI, we have this wonderful opportunity to create and nurture the AI Flywheel in any business

The AI Flywheel:

Clearly we have heard a lot about the famous Amazon Flywheel. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos coined this term and is still a huge proponent of this flywheel concept, which has since been widely adopted, admired and benchmarked.

The AI capabilities have simplified & increased the velocity of building prototypes. AI has opened up huge opportunities for innovation by creatively leveraging the power of AI capabilities to build completely new products and quickly ship it for customer engagement and feedback. The already existing telemetry strategies can instrument customer’s micro interaction and gather valuable feedback instantly. This data collected can be fed into the product design through AI itself, rather than elaborate methods as earlier, and have the AI spit out recommended tweaks to make it even better. The updated product can be released to customers within a few weeks and iterated again.

This virtuous flywheel of rapid innovation, releasing MVPs and tweaking to improve has been pumped up with AI tools now. AI tools and technologies have opened a whole bunch of avenues for product innovation and delivery that was not possible just a couple of years ago.

Uber for example wouldn’t have existed if it was not for iPhone. TikTok wouldn’t have existed if it wasn’t for the mobile phones.

These are entirely new business & business models on top of mobility platforms.

AI is the iPhone moment for productivity increase and creative innovations.

It is a must for businesses to tap in to this AI Flywheel for sustained growth and edge out competition.

Math, in itself, is raw power. It is almost useless unless you apply it in Physics. Without Physics Math is just another pretty tool. Math's true horse power lies in the beauty of Physics.

Computer Science - Coding, AI, Cloud Computing - is much like Math . It is just raw power. Impressive coding is almost useless, unless you build a Product that actually solves customer needs or improves the status quo.

With the advent of AI, it is becoming even more evident and inevitable that impressive computer skills are ironically being replaced by the very same computers, read AI!

The true power of computer science, tech in general, lies in the beauty of the Product being built!

I strongly believe that in future, computer science skills will no longer be the differentiator, but a basic mandatory skillset, just like addition or any other Math.

It is the art and hustle of building a great Product, leveraging AI, that is going to take cake and eat it!

Just my 2 cents 🎉

hashtag#ai hashtag#computing hashtag#math hashtag#physics hashtag#future hashtag#learning

I have had paid subscriptions with Spotify, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music. I have also used all three of them in free versions as well for quite sometime.

I have never actually used Apple music consistently for long periods, but TBH, I have never liked the unnecessary complexity of iTunes.

Spotify:

The best feature of Spotify is that you can listen to it while jogging when the phone is locked, even in the free version. This got me hooked to Spotify for quite sometime.

I have honestly not heard a good set of ads on the Spotify app other than their own ads asking us to subscribe for Spotify Premium. Maybe perhaps Spotify has better ads in the US & Europe.

However, I think the biggest gripe I have is the lack of quality collection in terms of music albums especially for the Indian / regional languages. Its almost like 50% of the albums , even the popular ones are missing on Spotify.

When I tried the Premium membership in Spotify for $6 / AED 22 per month , I didn’t feel that it was worth it, just to skip the ads.

YouTube Music & YouTube:

I have now subscribed to YouTube + YouTube Music and this is amazingly worth every penny. The cost is similar to Spotify - $7 / AED 27 per month - but clearly the content on YouTube + YT Music far exceeds the richness and diversity of Spotify.

In addition to this YouTube has far more educational, news, and media content that Spotify.

In terms of music albums as well, almost all Indian and regional music is available on YouTube than in Spotify.

I also feel that YouTube recommendations are better than Spotify, so no real reason to actually sign up for Spotify Premium.

Amazon Music and Apple Music are bundled products and there is definitely going to be a definite audience set that will continue use it.

Given this I seriously question the viability of Spotify business in the midst of such strong competition

As of this July 2023, I am excited to move my personal site to Substack platform.

Earlier, I had this on Medium which was quite good as well, but substack seems more easier and comfortable to manage simple personal blog websites.

Main Reasons For the Switch:

• The redirection to custom domain was not smooth. The pages were both linked to the Medium.com domain and in my personal domain vmbharathi.net, so links keep bouncing between these two domain, not really good for SEO

• I found this one-time payment for custom domain settings in Substack more “sensible” than requiring a Monthly Premium membership in Medium to continue to use the custom domain. The total cost comes easily much lower

• I really like the default, standard, simple layout of Substack with multiple sections on the top-nav. Makes it easier for navigation. In Medium, this layout is not quite non-intuitive.

• Last but not the least, more of the good content seems to be flowing in Substack, so moving along with the crowd! :-)

Hope to continue to write at least 1 article every two weeks.

I am sure we’ve all heard of phrases like:

“when it clicks, it actually clicks..”

“When it rains, it pours ..”

Loosely in Physics, this phenomenon is called “resonance”

In the more recent tech & startup terms, this phenomenon is called “Product Market Fit” — the great PMF !

Barely 6 months ago, back in Oct 2022, the term ChatGPT or Generative AI was an arcade keyword or topic. As I write this, the Google Trends score is 100, representing “peak” or “highest” score for trending topics.

If this was not enough, we have had billions of dollars being invested, affected due to hot AI revolution that is almost pervasive now. From Microsoft’s $10 Billion investment / partnership with Open AI company to Google’s $100 Billion stock crash due to failed AI Demo .. and on & on.. we can go on!

The swift, unprecedented general adoption of AI and leveraging its Power in real world applications is something pleasantly un-imaginable for even the geek of geeks in the tech / startup worlds.

Web 3.0:

From wikipedia:

The term “Web3” was coined in 2014 by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, and the idea gained interest in 2021 from cryptocurrency enthusiasts, large technology companies, and venture capital firms.

Decentralization is one of the core tenet of Web 3.0. In Web 2.0, data / information is stored at a fixed location, generally on a single server or one business entity. With Web 3.0, because information would be found based on its content, it could be stored in multiple locations simultaneously and hence be decentralized. This would break down the massive databases currently held by internet giants like FB /Meta and Google and would hand greater control to users.

In order to enable “decentralization” and still be able to maintain integrity of data, privacy and all the shebang, the protocol needs “trustless”, “permissionless” and more like “peer-to-peer”. The new Web 3.0 differed greatly with the its older sibling of “peer-to-peer” networks (a.k.a Napster) with the underlying technology powering Web 3.0 , that is — Blockchain!

As I mentioned in my earlier blog post, Blockchain is great technology that just doesn’t have a viable use case, IMHO! Blockchain is so complex and perplexing even for the best of geeks. Any technology or process that is complex to use will be relegated to novelty and that of used for only academic purposes. IMHO blockchain in one such thing.

Blockchain gained super importance during the pandemic due to the meteoric rise of Cryptocurrencies, which as I had mentioned in my earlier blog post — is being relegated to novelty. NFT & Web 3.0 gained popularity as a tributary or side effect of crypto currency and blockchain popularity , with no real meat into it.

I predict that Web 3.0 companies — NFTs, Blockchain Gaming, and etc — will soon be relegated to novelty.

Web 4.0:

I am thinking and defining that - AI Generated Content by regular users to sift through and enrich the information on the Internet and use them to solve tangible real world needs & use cases is the age of Web 4.0

2023 kickstarted with a bang for the techies and geeks and entrepreneurs with the meteoric rise in popularity of AI, powered by inventions such as Chat GPT, Generative Image Models, and etc.

The time taken for Chat GPT to be acquiring 1 Million users is just 5 days when compared to the most popular of social media companies like Instagram, FB and other which took many months to acquire 1 Million users.

The power of AI and productization of AI by the Open AI company has been so good that , the “rocket science” par complex AI has been adopted by regular people so quickly.

AI products have clicked the resonance chord with the mass that we are already seeing tons of data generated by common users — both text and image and soon perhaps videos — with the help of the AI models.

The above office picture is not real! This is AI generated office design inspired by the design styles of Taj Mahal and modern amenities. This was released by Microsoft recently

Lawyers are using Chat GPT and more AI tools as Copilot for helping out reduce parking tickets court cases

GitHub is using AI Copilot to assist and help programmers write better code

Khan Academy has started using Chat GPT-4 to assist students to learn fundamental math & science concepts as copilot

Clearly the opportunities are limitless. 

The future to AI generated content and thus Web 4.0 looks shining bright !

Tesla has been on a tear, gaining massive market share, setting the car industry on fire ever since it launched its pioneering EV Car on the consumer market back. Tesla’s Model S sedan launch in 2012 was a super duper bumper hit with the consumers and immediately caught everyone attention and propelled Tesla to the limelight of both media & business spotlight.

Elon Musk instantly rose up the echelons as one among the greatest entrepreneurs & visionary of the century. Elon Musk has vigorous promoted and touted Tesla & the battery powered, carbon emission free, electric vehicle as a game changer in the fight against Global Warming and reducing dependency on Fossil Fuel.

There is absolutely no doubt that Elon Musk via Tesla “smacked on heads of the car industry & oil industry veterans” and brought everyone's attention to build “clean cars” and not pollute the air that all of us breathe.

There is absolutely no doubt that Elon Musk almost single handedly managed to influence almost the entire middle-east countries — including the great Saudi Arabia, UAE, & more — to loosen their grip on solely depending on oil for their future to looking at “alternatives”. This has actually been quite beneficial to the region, as currently in 2023, the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region which includes Saudi Arabia, UAE & others are the fastest growing economies with heavy investment in technology, new infrastructure, and scientific research in new / alternative sources of energy.

It couldn’t have been just a coincidence but a reckoning due to Tesla’s growing dominance. Bottom line, the strategic impact Tesla has had for the OPEC consortium & MENA region, cannot be undermined.

Lets look at the fundamentals:

Its quite known fact that US, China, India, UK and many developed countries in Europe are among the largest contributors to the Global Warming / greenhouse gas emission.

According to US Environment Protection Agency (EPA), almost 30% of the these greenhouse gases are from transportation, specifically cars

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transportation account for about 27 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, making it the largest contributor of U.S. GHG emissions. Between 1990 and 2020, GHG emissions in the transportation sector increased more in absolute terms than any other sector.

This is largely due to the fact that burning gas / petrol / diesel for the Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) that propels almost 100% of the cars, prior to Tesla & EV cars, releases harmful Greenhouse Gas (GHG) to the atmosphere polluting the environment. This is bad no doubt.

While the US govt had “wanted” to figure out an exit from this tricky conjecture, Elon Musk apparently thrusted himself into this equation, wanted to solve this for the better for all, meticulously & successfully innovated on the Electric Vehicle to launch Tesla.

While much of this history, Tesla and the array of EV companies have surely caught the interest of younger generation, Gen-Z and Alpha’s, by branding them as the “Emission Free / Clean Cars” to drive for the benefit of Global Warming and more.

OK great, now what are the raw materials required to build this awesome, clean batteries that power the EVs?

EV battery chemistries depend on five critical minerals whose domestic supply is potentially at risk for disruption: lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel, and graphite. The U.S. Geological Survey designated these and other minerals as “critical,” according to the methodology codified in the Energy Act of 2020

OK great, where do we go to extract these raw materials?

We started to get attracted, fantasized to the EV cars due to the fact the Fossil Fuels are, technically, 1) Limited in supplies and 2) They are harmful to global warming.

Lets look at first predicament:

How does global oil reserves compare to lithium and other raw material for EV cars?

We technically have enough oil reserves for another 50 years till 2070 say.

Now lets look at Lithium & EV raw material reserves:

According to World Economic Forum — https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-world-enough-lithium-resources/

The world could face lithium shortages by 2025, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says, while Credit Suisse thinks demand could treble between 2020 and 2025, meaning “supply would be stretched”.

About 2 billion EVs need to be on the road by 2050 for the world to hit net zero, the IEA says, but sales stood at just 6.6 million last year, and some carmakers are already selling out of EVs.

Lithium supply faces challenges not only from surging demand, but because resources are concentrated in a few places and over half of today’s production is in areas with high water stress.

Future developments with batteries or manufacturing methods could eventually alleviate some lithium shortages.

Basically we would run out of Lithium before Oil reserves deplete !!!

Sure there are some new interesting technology being developed that can produce more energy per battery, which can technically extend the depletion by a decade, that is still puts at 2050 or so when Lithium reserves will be depleted out of the face of Earth!

Second Claim: EV batteries are more friendly to Global Warming

There is no doubt that EV cars to do let out smoke while driving and pollute the air that you drive. However manufacturing the energy potent batteries in itself is quite unfriendly to the environment. There has been an increasing focus and voices from experts to double down on research and efficient tracking on the total net cost of mining — to — manufacturing the batteries

Taking a step back, EV’s are mining for Lithium & other rare-earth minerals, while ICE engines are mining for Oil. Both are just mining one mineral vs the other. Both are technically in “limited” quantity!!

Both Lithium & Oil are not infinite, renewable energy resources , but finite minerals mined from the crust of the Earth.

One might be a lesser evil than other at the moment, but both are just equally bad to the global warming equation on the overall.

The Flip Side:

I remember a time when the fuel efficiencies of cars were in the low single digits (5 km / liter or so) , when things changed all of a sudden with Obama‘s new Emission Control law — https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/business/19emissions.html

A new national standard that will create a car and light truck fleet in the United States that is almost 40 percent cleaner and more fuel-efficient by 2016 than it is today, with an average of 35.5 miles per gallon.

I can imagine that somewhere , some company is working on a revamp Internal Combustion Engine that is 10X more fuel efficient and emits near zero Greenhouse gas. I predict that someone will innovate on this in the next 3yrs, by 2026, and it will be a game changer for the car industry as we know it!

While EV might become a fancy at that point in future, the new ICE cars will continue to run on fossil fuel with much better fuel efficiency and emissions that net-net will be more eco-friendly that mining & manufacturing those lithium batteries.

The Longer Goal:

“We were promised flying cars…!!”

Think about it, the Star Wars back in 1970’s were bold enough to dream about flying cars. We have got Star Trek fiction where in most of the cars and vehicles are powered by some sort of an “LASER” or “Hydrogen” energy.

Hydrogen, Nuclear, Laser, Water, Solar , Magnetic — all these are mostly available in infinite quantities and turn out to be the true “renewable energy” sources.

It would be fantastic, if we could soon invent cars , buses and taxis powered by one of these truly renewable energy sources, getting rid of “mining” altogether.

I see a great lot of parallels between the craze and hype around Crypto to 3D Printing. Just almost exactly a decade ago in 2013, the buzz around 3D printing was similarly mesmerizing. The cost of printing 3D objects had come down by leaps & bounds. Barrier to entry was very low. The prediction was the every household is going to have a 3D printer just like dishwashers or inkjet printers. 3D printing was going to be the cornerstone of Industry 4.0 revolution. There were articles on Harvard Business Review (HBR), BCG, and all the major "think tanks". The market forecast were sky high, from less than $1 billion industry pre 2010 to north of $100 billion industry by 2017.. yada..yada..yada.. and right now in 2022, 3D printing surely has its niche, but the total market size is around $10B.

The think-tanks missed the predictions by 10X!!!  

Crypto seems only like a bigger & shinier fiasco than 3D printing! 

I actually jumped into trading Crypto, as many did during pandemic's "open season", and tried out NFT on OpenSea, games on Decenterland and few other major activities that you can do with Crypto. Even while being mildly active in this domain, I just couldn't connect the dots on many basic things, such as:

1) Is there any real use case of Crypto other than being a sophisticated "Loyalty Framework or Wallet Points"?

Foursquare and Yelp had this framework a long time ago and stackoverflow even to this day, has a pretty sophisticated "points system" to reward active users in their respectives ecosystems. This is similar to playing games in decenterland and winning crypto currencies as rewards. These crypto points can only be used in that ecosystem. Clearly I cannot go buy a burger with the crypto points in decenterland!! All the hundreds of *.coins - Litecoins, solana, papercoins and etc. can only be used, transacted in their individual ecosystems. Clearly, this is very very similar to cashback points on a credit card. How else is it different? at least with credit cards points, you can go buy a sandwich!!

2) Why make it geeky for the sake making it geeky??!!

Blockchain is excellent technology framework. Sure yes agreed. But do we really need it? Do we really need blockchain to do simple "loyalty wallets"?? is there no other alternative?? really?? Do we need to take an F16 to kill a mouse??!! do we need to the energy heavy, mathematically complex (superior!!) blockchain technology to solve for Loyalty Wallets??!! 

3) What is up with "mining bitcoins" ?

What is the actual, need to mine for acquring a Bitcoin? why all the hassle when technology is essentially supposed to simplify? why spend gazillion CPU energy to solve complex blockchain problem to mine a bitcoin. Fundamentally, if bitcoin was so important, shouldn't there be a better, simple way for common man to acquire it? 

4) What is up with - "only limited bitcoins" ?

What would happen all of a sudden a presumed founder of Bitcoin , Satoshi Nakamoto, wakes from dead and says - hey guys , look I have' got more bitcoin. Don't dig up just there.. but dig up (mine) here as well, there are more bitcoins here? where would the valuations be then?

5) Why is the alternative currency trading real world stock markets?

If bitcoin, crypto currency were truly an "alternative currency framework" , why the hell are they trading on stock markets backed by $$ ?? it is just bizzare! 

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO), I think the entire hype around cryptocurrency was sort of "crony capitalism" where-in a bunch rich dudes , a.k.a Elon Musk and bunch of his buddies in Silicon Valley & Wall Street , had put in some money in roulette of Cryto and wanted to make the most bank for the buck and decided to hype it like crazy. The pandemic lockdowns helped a lot in creating this buzz as most were confined to our homes only left to visualize the grandeur of tech & money in our imagination as marketed by these tech honchos sitting in their Bahama villas.... "well played... well played" all the ponzis! Crypto just exponentially in the last 5 yrs without even a much of legitimate, tangible use case. 

Clearly the ponzi scheme is withering out with the fall of array of Cryto currency startups, big and small. 

As Bill Gates said, "crypto and NFTs are ’100% based on greater fool theory’ " 

As Jamie Diamond Says, "Crypto is a decentralized Ponzi Scheme" 

The pitch for Cryptocurreny has always been about creating a alternative currency for the internet which is technology powered. When some of the biggest tech brains of the century and best financial experts, come out swinging that its is a "Ponzi Scheme" - it probably is!! 

I initially thought this was too harsh and perhaps there is some "soul" to the cryptocurrency industry. But after soo many dots not connecting, I agree that it is just a misplaced fallacy of "wanting" to build palaces on the air, with no real footing and no real, tangible need!! 

I strongly believe that the entire cryptocurrency industry will be relegated to Novelty and will still be used in Video Games, but nothing more. Crypto industry as such will continue to languish & diminish in the next 3ys and beyond, but perhaps not entirely vanish. 

The New Education Policy of India (NEP) has been in the headlines for about a week now and the buzz doesn’t seem to abate anytime soon.

There are quite a few arguments for the NEP , both for and against it

While the Prime Minister Mr. Modi has strongly batted for the NEP as revolutionary and much needed for the 21st century, there are of course critics looking it at the other way and casting seething doubts on the NEP as harbinger of “saffronisation” of education and commercialization of private education

While I am not expert on one way or the other, but although I am curious to know more about the much awaited and much needed revamp to our education system. So I took an easier, statistical and programmatically easier route of inferring , deciphering with — software code.

Lets take a closer look at the distribution of words in the 66 Page long, 45000+ worded New Education Policy document, which is thank fully publicly available to all — https://www.mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/NEP_Final_English_0.pdf

This is a pure statistical analysis with no omission or inclusion of any data.

The Process (Open To All):

The Process followed is very simple. I did the following steps:

• Convert the NEP PDF document to text document.

• Remove common words, also known “sight words” from the text.

• Wrote script (PHP) to Count of the number of occurrence of each and every word.

• Put them word count in excel and draw some graphs!

The NEP document in Text Format can be found here — https://github.com/siga-bharathi/data-analysis-scripts/blob/master/NEP.txt

And the script that I ran to do the statistical analysis of the words can be found open to all at — https://github.com/siga-bharathi/data-analysis-scripts/blob/master/nep-word-count.php

The raw output of the script on the NEP document is also publicly available at https://github.com/siga-bharathi/data-analysis-scripts/blob/master/NEP-Word-Count-Result.txt

Statistical Deep Dive:

Disclaimer: The statistical analysis is done purely by numbers and without any context of the applicability of the word. This is important to clarify as some words can mean different when used in different context. However, in a policy document such as NEP, the repeated use to any particular set of words — does have significance — and helps all of us to reflect on the thought process of the policy makers.

High Level Stats:

The New Education Policy (NEP) document is elaborate document covering quite a few items. I am greatly happy that the policy document has been public and is easily accessible to all. Kudos the govt and HRD ministry for this.

The final version of NEP document is 66 page long made out of about 45000+ words. Of this, the policy makers have used 4000+ unique words, obviously many words occurring multiple times throughout the doc.

The most used word is, as expected, Education which occurred 690 times in the NEP. There are many words that were just used once like enlightenment and accomplishment.

The average number of occurrences of a particular seems to hover about 8 times.

Top Ten Words:

As expected, the New Education Policy (NEP) focuses a lot on Education, School, Teachers and Students a lot. There is a also quite a bit of emphasis on “learning” as well. As Prime Minister Modi had vouched that this NEP stresses on “How To Think” , there is fair bit of stress and focus on learning & thinking.

India is country of multiple languages. The entire notion of India was born from the union of states which were in-turn grouped by languages spoken. Language is part and parcel of the very fabric of India. There is no walking away from it. Given this demographics and cultural significance, the word “Language” is clearly among the Top 5 Words used in the NEP document.

Top 50 Words in NEP:

The top 50 words are all over. This is even after gleaning the “sight” words from the word cloud. Its hard arrive at any particular inference. Some important take away in the stress on Quality, Culture, Universities, Development, Vocational among others

Importance to National & Cultural Values:

A particular take away from the top Ten Words being used in the NEP document is the focus on the word “National”. I think it would be fair to assume that there is higher focus on “nation”, with “nationalistic” approach.

For example if you compare the words related to Nation, Culture with Science & Technology — it is interesting to note that nation and culture has been used almost the numbers of time than Science & technology

As noted earlier, NEP has particular focus on nation, nation building, and emphasis on cultural values. The distribution of tradition, culture and Sanskrit language is along the same importance level, at least from the word count distribution.

Importance of Science & Technology

There is also a good emphasis on Science & Technology throughout the document.

My Quick Observation:

The NEP has been in the making for more 2 decades. Started well before the current BJP govt and it must have taken quite a lot of effort to get this policy to closure and set things in motion. Certainly big kudos to all the efforts.

This is the 21st century, for a highly debated policy like the NEP, which has high expectation of shaping the future of India in more than many ways — I would have like to see some futuristic visions and policies to that effect.

The policy seems to be more “nationalistic”, more parlaying with the current political trepidation, and solidifying on the “cultural” ethos on India and its history / culture.

My inference is based on juxtaposing and comparing the word clouds of some key words — that I have chosen to pick based on my judgement — which is certainly questionable and up for debate! :-)

Nevertheless, take a look at the graph below

I would have expected keywords like Science & technology were the leading word count, at least within this group.

As a matter of fact I would have expected Science, Technology, Digital, Internet, Think, and Innovation to be among the top 50 words used the NEP document.

I took the top 6 words that represent science & technology and compared it with top 6 words that represent Culture & Nation. If you had to sum up the word groups that represent science & technology — Science, Technology, Research, Knowledge, Philosophy, & Innovation — and compare it with the sum of words in the Nationalist Group — National, Culture, Sanskrit, Values, Tradition, & History — they are almost even. While I am glad that the science & tech word group eeks out a win by thin margin, I would have been even more happy if it were a thumping victory.

Summary:

This was fun weekend research for me . I hope all can agree that word cloud analysis, although not a thorough research & deep dive, is a not something to be taken lightly as well. I truly believe that word cloud gives a peek in to the thought process of the authors of the document and hence the policy makers.

Disclaimer: This was just a hobby side gig that I took up over the weekend. I am sure there can possibly more inferences from the word cloud. All are free to refer the openly available PHP script and the text of the NEP document and output of the script as well.

When I saw the news flash that pinterest will be soon launching or just launched the Buy Button on their boards along side their defacto “pinIT” — I was like.. its about time they launched it.. wasn’t very surprised and I guess not many were surprised as well.. as it seemed as the next logical step to err..well..monetize.

Although not widely popularized, as is usually..sometimes, Amazon launched Amazon Stream earlier this year with pinterest sort of layout and deviating greatly from Amazon’s standard shopping patterns at other sections of the site

These two products are direct competition for each other and it is going to be interesting to see who has the last laugh in this race to woo the Apparel shopping bandwagon. Although Amazon has proved to be omni-present, pioneer in the online shopping across a variety of categories.. Apparel and Fashion shopping is something that has eluded Amazon for quite sometime now. From its experiments on Endless.com, to MyHabbit.com, to ShopBob it has been a whirlwind ride.

Although recently Amazon has pumped in serious focus into Apparel with its Gateway pages almost always having some banner ad or other to do with Apparel shopping. Amazon also launched its own line of “Designer clothes”to take on the fact that some high-end fashion stores just don't want to list on Amazon for the mere noise and co-mingling with other not-so-saucy brands.

Pinterest had to pivot towards shopping as it was the best and perhaps the only sensible way to monetize (ads are good…but meh..from customer pain perspective). Earlier Pinterest started monetizing as Affiliates links and not sure why it did not leave it as is operating along side the buy buttons.

I am a dude and not the biggest user of Pinterest and probably I don’t get it..but i guess my trouble is “how do I differentiate a buy-button-pin vs a just pure pin-it” and i am not asking about the button (i do know they come different color and shape). As I understand the pin-in button appears on all posts..while the buy-button will show up along side in some of the posts. Wouldn’t that be confusing…?

My point is I am not sure the claims that “Pinterest buy button will win over Amazon’s stream” doesn’t necessary hold good and is not clear yet — how and if it will win over at all

My 2 cent prediction..

Pinterest will try to promote and make the buy button more ubiquitous and in those efforts learn more about shopping than just “pinning”. Pinterest will pivot to experiment new stuff around buy-button since i don’t believe as-is isn’t lucrative & simple enough

Amazon on similar lines will promote and experiment Stream and hopefully they revamp the entire site shopping experience

This coincidence, of sorts, piqued me and began to wonder if there was something like this, a cool new business model was brewing in the “Food Tech” industry. After E-Commerce, Fin-Tech, Ed-Tech and Food Tech have been the biggest startup headlines grabbers in India for the past decade or so now.

First Ever Tomato Ketchup was invented back in 1812

Food Tech is, by now, a common buzz word in the startup galore. If you take a step back and look at it, technology has played a prominent role in shaping food, agriculture and diet for more than a century, perhaps ever since the first Tomato Ketchup was invented back in 1812

Time flies fast, technology changes even faster and by 2019 we have a whole new meaning for “Food Tech”. In fact there are more than one, in fact tens, of meaning of what it means by “Food Tech”. From power drinks to healthy food processing units to “Fake Meat” to AI powered Smart Kitchen appliances to Food Delivery apps — all are tagged / branded as “Food Tech”.

To put it in perspective, one can say “Food Tech” is the worlds largest industry, with a loyal customer base of 7+ Billion people — everybody has got to eat.. :-)! The World Bank estimates that food and agriculture comprise about 10% of the global GDP, meaning that, food and agriculture would be valued at about $8 trillion globally based on the projected global GDP of $88 trillion for 2019.

Consumers today are juggling hectic work and personal lives, and demand convenience when it comes to their meals. Today, in India particularly, grocery ordering and delivery represents the largest food tech category. Meal ordering comprises the greatest number of privately held, venture-backed startups in food tech globally. 2018 was an exceptional year for food tech, with a record-breaking $16.9 billion in funding recorded. According to Crunchbase, the three biggest deals of the year included $1 billion for Swiggy, India’s leading online restaurant marketplace; $600 million for Instacart, a U.S. grocery delivery service; and $590 million for iFood, a Brazil-based restaurant marketplace.

While all this paints a rosy picture on one hand, then there is also this other side of story — with “All That Glitters Is Not Gold”

If you dig a little deeper, the traction numbers are pretty staggering.

Image credits to Inc42 / DataLabs. Merely copy pasting here.

By sheer numbers, Indians are gobbling up food and are quite interested in getting food delivered to the door steps. However, even with all these numbers the sky high, the unit economics aren’t that rosy for pretty much two key parties involved in this business — The Restaurant, The Delivery Aggregators and The Customer. As you can all imagine, clearly the customer has been the biggest beneficiary of this grand scheme of business.

But then, at what cost?

Image credit to Inc42 / Data Labs. Copy Pasting here with back reference links

The net profit margin increase for a standard restaurant operating an outlet is only between 3–5% although his top-line revenue growth has been 30–40%.

This huge asymmetry in earnings to revenue ration throws in cold water to the euphoria of “food delivery aggregators” among the industrious, hard-working restaurant owners.

It is not without reason, the recent #logout campaign had gained nationwide talking points and hogged media for a while that the well-funded startup had to get on table with the Restaurant Associations to hash it out amicably.

It is important to note that these delivery aggregators aren’t really basking in the glory of gold either. All of the startups are burning money like never before with every passing day. All of these food delivery startups have reported increasing quarterly losses with the increase in orders and expansion plans.

So where does all this money go anyway..??!

Where does all this money go anyway??!!

One Word — CAC or Customer Acquisition Cost.

CAC is the biggest source of dollar spend that each of the major players splurge to gain the attention of customers and to make them coming back again and again!

This essentially encompasses all from — marketing ads, steep discounts, to brand promotions, to exclusive deals with marquee restaurant brands.

And again the question remains — But at what cost?

If the two of three entities involved in business process isn’t benefiting, then the 800 pound gorilla in room is asking questions like — Is this for real? Is this going to work long term? Is this sustainable?

This almost begs the question — Can’t we do better? Isn’t there any other alternative to this?

It almost feels like there should be an alternative. I am not talking about alternative startup who would do this cheaper, bigger & better or leaner, but I am talking about perhaps a strategically different business model that can work out most, if not all, the edges of the 1.0 of Food Tech industry, which is currently in the limelight.

I am sure someone, somewhere is cooking something on these lines!

Building the Future Tech for B2B E-Commerce at Hyke & Axiom

The next decade of retail tech belongs to B2B E-Commerce.

Namshi is one of the biggest Fashion & Lifestyle E-Commerce Company in the MENA region. Started in 2012, Namshi – which means, moving forward – offers online fashion and beauty products

AJIO was the first e-commerce foray for RIL barely 5 yrs ago and now we have around 3+ e-commerce properties & businesses thriving and growing fast. The grand vision of Jio E-Commerce Platform Limited is to build a robust, scalable, highly distributed software platform for powering the next gen growth.

As always the goals are aggressive and work is even more challenging.

Software Product Startup with a strong focus on building scalable software platform applications that can be leveraged across multiple business verticals.

We are a bunch of motivated geeks and crazy innovative engineers sitting in a quaint locality @ Chennai and work smart-hard to build pioneering technology products

Joined as a Sr. Software Dev Manager, owning the Digital Payments Platform.

Essentially kick-started and managed the Digital Payments Experience team to grow from 5 member team to 27 member team that it is today. Great experience in launching 5 payments methods in 3 geographies - China, Japan, & India