Monthly Archives: January 2016

Quality Vs Quantity

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You decided to take up running. When you start any running plan, the first thing you need to decide on is the Distance you run or the Timing. Any plan starts with the distance and over the period of time, you begin to start looking at the timing.

When you start working, you first begin by learning the work and over the period of time you become expert at what you do.

When I started this year, I have clearly determined that to improve my quality of writing, I need to start writing. When I started writing over ten years ago, I began by writing off and on. I practiced. Over the years, I realised that my Quality did not get to the level I anticipated. So, this year I thought I should write more frequently and focus and practice writing. I am still not where I want to be, but still I keep pushing myself. I am sure over the period of time, I will get the quality I am satisfied with.

When you begin any thing in life, focus on the practice, and over the period of time, you will meet the quality standards.

Invention Vs Innovation

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Invention can happen with a single person, but it takes a long time and lot of efforts for that to become an Innovation.

Charles Babbage was the first person who invented the programmable computer in the earlier 19th Century. The following years and decades transformed the whole meaning and design of the Computer.

What we are dealing with today is the transformation of the Inventions to Innovations which can reach people and make lives much better.

Innovations deal with identifying solutions to problems in simplistic manner. There might be an existing solution, but if we can better that up, it is Innovation.

Inventions happen vary rare, and even if they happen, it takes a long time for them to come into light.

What should we focus on – Invention or Innovation?

Innovation. Chain of innovations can lead to an invention.

Market Opener’s

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The key problems in this world are solved. Other not so high priority problems have undergone various iterations and almost settled now. The remaining problems are left for us to be solved.

Today’s innovations are mostly focused on enhancing usability and bringing technology more closer to people.

Each of us have varied definitions of Innovation. In their book on Innovation: 5 Disciplines for Creating what Customers want, authors Curtis R Carlson & William W. Wilmot summarize Innovation as the process of creating, producing and delivering value to what customer wants in the marketplace.

This absolutely stands good for today’s Innovations.

When we look at technology adoptions around the globe, each region/country has its own limitations and opportunities. Certain markets are mature and others are far behind. Can we truly bring the Innovations from the mature markets to the beginner markets? It might not work straight forward, but will create opportunity for competition. When there is competition, market slowly opens up.

The first true e-Commerse market place for India has been FlipKart. Slowly competition came up, and today, India is a mature market for e-Commerse. One company gave opportunity to many others – Amazon, Urban Ladder, PepperFry, Big Basket are just to name a few who are delivering anything and everything to the Indian consumer.

HealthCare is also opening up. With the painstaking effort’s of startup’s like Practo HealthTech market has opened up. Today, we have more than 200 startup’s focusing in the Healthcare space in various segments – Healthcare e-Commerse, Appointment bookings, Home Care, Searching for Doctors and Hospitals, maintaining Health records, Wellness, Specialized care etc.

In a country like India, opening a market might be easier said than done. What we need to work for is the acceptance of the solution. Breaking the barrier for customers to accept and engage themselves is the key; along with the Government regulations to “enable” the innovation and take it closer to people.

When the Aadhar Card (UID Project) came into existence, it is not made mandatory. Even today it is not, but for most of the important needs – Gas connection, Opening Bank account, applying for Passport etc, if you have an Aadhar Number, it becomes more easier. What happened here? Even though it is not mandatory, organizations have started to embrace this. In the similar way, technology needs to be accepted by hospitals and Doctors. This will pave way for acceptance in using technology in HealthCare.

This is a tough nut to crack. The approach of HealthCare startups has been to provide solutions to customer. When customers start using, Hospitals and Doctors might also start using. This approach will work, but will need commitment to understand the true needs of the customer and doctors to make this work.

A long way to go, but definitely I am being optimistic.

Kokoro

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Destiny favors the prepared in Body, Mind and Spirit.

We tend to start our journey with an objective in mind. We do various analysis and design a way to accomplish the task. At times we Succeed, at times we fail. We take the learnings from both of the outcomes and go forward.

What is important is just not the action, but conviction from the heart. More than hard work and determination to accomplish something, it is the feeling in the heart which plays a bigger role. You believe you can accomplish, you can. If you do not believe and you do not listen to your heart, you cannot.

When we have an idea, the usual tendency is to ask people around and go with what they feel. In this process, we forget out feeling. Listen to your heart. Apart from being a component of your body, the heart has a feeling and this is called Kokoro. Listen to it and you can do wonders.

Kokoro for the Japanese is the feeling of the Heart.

Set your goal

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When we start our careers we have varied goals (at least most of us) and over the period of time we tend to develop setting our goals and this is not wrong.

Before having an generalised approach towards life, we need to be very clear on what is the ultimate objective is? It can be anything, but the one aspect is very important. This one goal changes the way we deal with problems and helps develop the solution.

Gandhiji was just a practicing lawyer in South Africa. He was against racial discrimination and all that he fought was that. Later when he came to India, his objective remained the same (remove discrimination) and he continued his fight against the British for the same. What happened next is history.

Steve Jobs was always obsessed by perfection to the detail in the designs. When he started Apple and during his stint at Pixar and later back at Apple, the outcomes of his efforts are beautiful and user friendly products. His goal has always been perfection to detail.

The key attribute to success is we need to have a goal and we need to make that our DNA.

Unless we stand for something, we fall for everything – Rev. Chaplin

Change

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Life is full of changes and the biggest fear we have is accepting it. We like it or don’t, life will change and it will make us accept it.

Change is an every day situation for Entrepreneurs and Professionals. When we resist change, it challenges us and while facing that challenge we tend to make disastrous decisions.

What is Change and how do we embrace it?

There are many definitions of change. For making change powerful, let us define it as to transform. Transformation is good and it should always happen in the positive side.

You identified a pain point and wanted to solve it. The solution starts with what is in your mind and over the period of time, with inputs from consumers and investors, you better the solutions. This is change and it is transformation to your solution.

Over a year and half ago, I lost my mother. Everything stalled for a moment. Life became boring. Loosing a parent is the worst we can face. It took me over six months to at least get over my loss. I didn’t know what to do. Over the period of time, I only told myself, if my mom is with me right now, would she like how I am dealing with things? When ever I felt a ‘No’, I changed my approach.

You are having a wonderful career and everything is going well, suddenly there are changes in the organisation – the leadership changed or you took up a new role. One should always be ready to manage/handle the change which will make you successful.

Success never comes to people who do not embrace change. It is the way of life. The more we accept it in mind and body, the more easier is becomes to deal with yourself. Many enterprises and many careers collapse only because of the inability to accept change.

So, the next time there is a change, welcome it, embrace it and take a positive stride. It is worth it.

5 things we can learn from Sankranthi

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Sankranthi is a very auspicious festival for people of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and also celebrated by all the Hindu’s across the world.

It is the first harvesting festival of the year. We celebrate the festival for 3 days (some celebrate 4 days too). Day One is Bhogi where you put up bon fire early morning. Day 2 is Sankranthi, where you celebrate with all family around and Day 3 is Kanumu, where you relax and spend time with family. According to me, here are top 5 things we can learn from the festival.

Discarding the Old – The world has progressed much more in the last 10 years than in the last 100 years. It is very important for us to keep revisiting and discarding older ideas and change our thought process from time to time.

Keep away the evil – Any kind of evil is not good. For every positive thought, there is negative thought. To be successful, having positive thoughts is very important and this comes only with practice. Successful people never think negative.

What you sow is what you reap – Habit is the most powerful thing in this world. One habit can change everything we perceive and see. Developing positive thinking and optimistic approach to problem solving, keeping negative thoughts away are all the habits which you want to sow. In farming, there are famine times, there are times when there is excess water and there are times when the farmer does not get the returns as he expected. Keeping all these things aside, he pushes to cultivate and bring out fantastic crop. Harvest good thoughts and you will only see positive returns even though you run into tough times along the way.

Togetherness – Family time is important and so as Team time. Once a while, it is very important to spend time with team members and colleagues. It builds the bonding between individuals and this increases the productivity. Spending time with family makes you feel wanted and cared for. This is what fuels us to do what we do. Spending time with family and team is very important in achieving what we pursue. So, make time for them.

New Beginnings – When you begin new task, always begin new. Learning from the mistakes is different from brooding from the past. Identify what went right and what went wrong the last time, device a strategy to incorporate learning’s from the past mistakes into the new approach. But, always start New.

Is your idea ready for Market? 

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When ever you have an idea, the first question you get to hear Is if the Market Mature for this type of service?

It takes a lot of strength and energy for educating the consumer with the new idea. Many a times, the market might not be mature enough to accept a solution, but as Innovators, we need to push for market readiness.

Look at Rolls Royce, Ferrari, Lamborghini etc. Is India a mature model for them to setup their shop? Rolls Royce has been in India for a very long time now.

When Starbucks entered the Chinese market, it took them a decade to be accepted into the tea drinking nation.

What we need as entrepreneurs is persistence and success comes to those who can articulate their idea to novices. That is the deal breaker.

Market Differentiation

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What happens to Movie streaming services in India – Box.TV, Spuul, BIGFlix, YouTube, Eros Now, MyPlex, Mavshack since Netflix arrived?

What is that which has motivated Netflix to come? They do not have a big database of Indian films. They will take time add Regional films to their database and since I signed up during the first few days, I also know they do not have all their TV Shows available for India.

The tablet/broadband penetration in India is also not quite encouraging at the moment. According to DazeInfo, India will have 18 Million tablets int he next 3 years. We can count on the smartphone users (which is currently at around 500 Million), but how many are going to stream movies while on the move?

What is the Market Differentiation? – The differentiation between others to make your offering valuable.

For products like Starbucks, Netflix and a host of others who will be coming to India, two things will be the key – Technology and Price. Definitely Customer service and the Experience will also play a role.

In emerging markets, market maturity will play a role, but not to that extent. At times, big players come to expand their operations and have a pie in the market share. This will be good to the end user. When the choice increases, competitors provide more options. When the consumer has more options, Quality of offerings go up. It will be a continuous Innovation cycle to be on the top.

Having a large number of consumers is also a Market Differentiator.

Are you doing well?

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Few months ago, a company in US raised their minimum wage to $70,000. Everyone is happy, but two of them quit.

What happened? They quit because others not so deserving colleagues have got a rise. For them, what was important is that they both should be treated differently than others for the contribution they bring to the team/company. But, the organization was thinking different.

Most of the time in our lives, we live by comparing ourselves to others and on the way we forget what actually we need. We tend to look around in the competitive world and push ourselves to achieve what others do and not what we want.

There were two instances which stand out in my life and I am very thankful they happened.

One – During my school days, there was a tremendous pressure for either becoming an Engineer / Doctor. I took a different path. I don’t know why it happened, but it happened. I was clear on one thing – I wanted to work with Computers and that fascinated me.

Two – When I came to Bangalore looking out for a job, I unexpectedly got an offer from the Testing Company. I spoke to my family and friends and most of them suggested that I keep trying and get into development. Somewhere in my heart, I was not too convinced. I sat down and thought to myself as to what I wanted to become. I went with the not so frequented path, and I thank God for making me do that.

Many of us go through these situations, all I am wanting to share is that go with what your heart says. Stop comparing/look at others. Out intuition gives us the answer and when we go with that, we sure will achieve what we truly wish and that will complement our skills. When we compare with others, we are actually not utilizing our skills, but trying to copy someone else.

Doing well and going great are not different things. When you do well, you do great.