Author Archives: Hari

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.

The Entrepreneurs Equation

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According to statistics, there are more than 50 Lakh businesses starting each year around the Globe. 3 out of 4 Businesses do not take off.

In a 10,000 people organisation, there is 1 CEO, 6-10 CXO’s and the top tier management is not more than 10% of the workforce.

This is tremendous pressure.

It becomes very important for the Entrepreneur and an aspiring employee to make their lives and career’s successful.

What is the Equation to be successful?

S = P + EI + 2A + D

Patience – Success comes only with being patient with yourself, people around and the situations. Each day is a struggle and it requires enormous energy to be patient. We as humans usually react to situations, but it does not help. Practicing to have a cool head is the only mantra / parameter to be successful.

Practice being patient with everything around you.

Emotional Intelligence has many parameters. According to statistics,90% of success comes through managing Emotions – Be it anger, frustration, low times or stressed times, you need to manage the emotion. It comes with practice and this practice needs to become a habit.

Over last few years, I am trying to manage my emotions. Have struggled but developed one habit – I write each time I am frustrated or irritated. This writing has helped me in handling myself better.

Aptitude is the approach. For every situation, there is a positive and negative reaction we can have. Building the ability to think positive is building good aptitude. When we build this attribute, the world we operate in changes.

Attitude is our ability to our ability to think. We have good feelings and also the negative feelings. Building our thinking ability to look at any situation/person positively makes us healthier and happier. When we are happier, we can think better; when we can think better, the outcomes are much more impactful.

Determination is the key. The willing fullness to put in all the efforts to execute/achieve is what makes the outcome. In sanskrit, there is a line – Determination (Sankalp) is more important than a thought/belief.

Success = Patience + Emotional Intelligence + Aptitude + Attitude + Determination

Managing Product Portfolio

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Start by reading this article based on what you do. You can be an Entrepreneur, a Team Member or Corporate Personnel.

Product Management is not today’s terminology. It has been in existence since the beginning of mankind. What happened is that the scale and magnitude of Product Management has changed since its inception.

Either you are having your own startup or Managing a team in a corporate setting, or you are a Team member wanting to excel; in today’s context it is very important to understand the big picture and operate in such a way that you create a differentiation for yourself.

With my experience and learning’s, I found Luis Gallardo‘s Six R’s is a very practical approach to Product Management in today’s context.

– Reason
– Revenue
– Rousers
– Reputation
– Relationship
– Resilience

Reason – As a Product Manager you need to understand the big picture of the Product you are developing. Your end user, Vision, Mission and what problem you are solving.

Revenue – Without understanding the revenue model of your Product, you cannot do justice. And when you understand the revenue model, you not only get better at bringing your product to life, you also are better equipped to handle the down-times.

Rousers – A key acumen of Product Management. You as the Product Leader, must understand and align your team’s thinking abilities to match that of your organisation. When you do this, you inspire them to take action and build credibility and commitment to the Product.

Reputation – In other words Perception. We like it or not, we live in a perceptive world. For every thing we do we have a positive and negative perception coming at us. As a Product Manager, it is very important to understand and manage the reputation. You should be equipped to be receptive and manage Reputation to better deliver.

Relationship – Managing Relationships is the way of life – be it at home, work or society. The better you manage people around, the better is the quality of life. Look at all the successful people in the world, they prioritised people. Only then you win. There is nothing in this world which you can achieve alone. Accept the fact, downsize ego and look at how the results are. They will be addictive.

Resilience – The outcome of all the above 5 R’s. You will have success, you will have downtime’s and you will have devastating times. What makes you is the ability to learn during all these times, get accustomed to the situation and time. Utilise your success times to plan for the downtime’s. During downtime’s, prepare for the success.

All of us want to win, but only a few of us prepare to win.

Inclusive Entrepreneurship

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Entrepreneurship is just not about idea and Execution, but also about inclusiveness.

We need to understand that there are other people around us. What ever we do, it is for them (yes, we will also benefit from the solution).

When I talk to entrepreneurs/startup enthusiasts and colleagues. Most of the time the common thing I get to hear is for whatever they wish to do, they have competition or someone else wants to take the credit. Who does not have? All of us compete to live our life.

When you have a startup/ an idea at work, look around and see who are the competitors and who are trying to solve similar problems. Talk to them and see if your idea can be “included” in theirs, or you can “include” their idea in yours. It is not simple, but it does not hurt to Ask.

Our Ideas are different from others. But, there will be a similarity somewhere. Try to identify the point and explore on it.

The next question which arises is – If there is no competition, how will we get better at what we do? I do agree, but in today’s world, being together gives scope for solving in a larger scale.

I am not advocating that you should not have your own idea and take it forward, all what I am saying is when idea’s collaborate, it solves bigger problems and also both the parties mutually benefit.

I have one example – India Post. Can anyone beat their network? For instance, India Posts cover 25,000 Pin Codes in the Country and even the largest Courier service only reaches to 10,000.

Amazon, FlipKart and SnapDeal are doing their Pilot with India Posts to enhance their reach.

This is what I am referring to in inclusiveness. When you include, you win.

Are you a true Interpreter?

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Interpretation is a crucial aspect. Understanding the situation is more important and the Interpretation coming from that understanding determines the success or failure of the conversation.

Recently, I attended a talk. During the talk, the speaker was speaking on the benefits of Asking and how many times do you ask. She provided many examples and asked the audience for their experiences in asking. One participant was very clear that there is no absolute result in asking and he does not believe asking is an important in solving any problems. When the presenter asked if he can substantiate what he said, he said “I believe so.”

What happens when we go with our belief’s is that we get struck to our experiences. There more than 6 Billion people on this plant and quite surely, one or the other would have experienced what we are going through right now and the kind of problem we wish to solve. Depending on the experience the person has, he/she would provide an insight to what the ‘probable’ result would be; but they are not sure.

According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, Interpretation is a story or description that is different in some way from another person’s story or description.

When starting a conversation with anyone – be it family, boss, colleague or in a meeting, what usually happens is that we go with certain thoughts/assumptions on the topic to be discussed and when the conversation starts, we tend to go by what we are thinking. However, this is not the way it needs to be handled. We need to listen, understand the other persons perspective and then take the conversation forward.

This is easier said than done. I have been trying to practice this over the last year and to be quite honest, it has been really tough. However, as I continued my practice, I am seeing the joy of the outcome of conversations.

To Interpret is easy, to understand is tough.

Becoming Successful

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Recently, I tweeted “if you want to become a Billionaire, help others become Millionaires”. Over the days I started thinking about it a little more seriously.

In true sense, it translates to “to become successful, help others become successful”.


Is this tough? Not all all. What we need to change is our thought process. In traditional thinking, why should I help anyone? First let me get there and then I will help them. True.


But a little more thinking into it will answer the question. Instead of focusing on ‘getting there’ and then helping others, why don’t we go there ‘together’? This very thought will change the complete picture.


Successful people are inclusive. When you include people around you, they will stand by you and help you get to your destination even if there are roadblocks.


The new time someone starting something, give them a helping hand and help them become successful; in return you have become successful.