Benedict Evans, tech blogger and VC with a16z, recently had an interesting series of tweets, polling his followers about their perception of various industry facts, such as android devices vs iOS devices, in an attempt to contrast the polled results with reality. One of the polls was about perceptions of Amazon’s share of the U.S. Consumer print book market.
What Should Twitter Do?
Twitter recently announced its Q1 2016 results. While its revenue grew by 36% to ~$600m, and losses halved to ~$80m, the numbers didn’t impress Wall Street analysts or tech pundits. After all, revenue growth is slowing, audience numbers are barely moving and there are newer more exciting kids (snapchat, medium etc) on the block. The stock dropped as much as 13% on the news, and is now trading at its …
Why India Needs Online Private Universities
An open letter to Mr T S R Subramanian & fellow committee members drafting the New Education Policy
Dear Mr Subramanian & fellow panelists
Congratulations on being appointed to the panel.
This is only the third time since independence, that an education policy is being drafted. The previous policies, be it the Education Policy of 1968 that resulted in the 10+2+3 system of education that we follow today, or the …
Sunil Khilnani’s ‘The Idea of India’ – A Review
Reading Sunil Khilnani’s Idea of India nearly two decades after its original appearance to considerable acclaim, and nearly fifteen years after I purchased a copy (yes, I have waited that long to read it!) I am struck by
- the insights packed into this slim book (just 200-odd pages)
- the quality of his prose, specifically how artfully he weaves phrases together to create magical sentences, or even a para or two
I Read 28 Books in 2015
Of these 28 books that I read in 2015, three-fourths were non-fiction. The average page-length was 377 pages. Over a third of these were books written in 2015, and all but two were written in the last 7 years.
I know all this, because I have been keeping tracking of the books that I read, rather obsessively for over a decade now. Every year, at the beginning of the year, …
Adblockers, Superdistributors and Unusual Publishers: A Look Back at 2015
Let’s face it: 2015 wasn’t really a great year for media companies. From television majors that saw cord-cutting making a sharp dent in their valuations to online players that saw the looming threat from ad-blocking impacting the flow of advertising dollars, there hasn’t been too much good news this year.
And if we take news media – the smaller subset of the media industry that we call home – then …
Kashyap Deorah’s ‘The Golden Tap’ – A Review
I first met Kashyap Deorah sometime late ’08 in Gloria Jeans Coffee in Bandra. We were introduced by Sudhir Sitapati, a junior of mine from IIMA, and a then-advisor to Kashyap’s Chaupaati Bazaar. I was then in the Brand Capital division of Times Group, and the conversation likely revolved around our funding model and whether it made sense for Chaupaati to access it (It didn’t).
We lost touch subsequently, though …
Ryan Craig’s ‘College Disrupted’ – a review
University Ventures (UV) is one of the rare creatures of the VC/PE investment universe; a fund that claims to be the “only investment firm focused exclusively on the global higher education sector”. UV has made some interesting investments over the years, riding the current wave of technology-led transformation in one of the most stodgy sections of the economy. Underlying these plays is a strong and well-defined investment philosophy, expressed in …
How Many Engineers Does India Produce?
I recently came across a post on the migration patterns of engineering students from India to the U.S. It is authored by Dr Rahul Choudaha & Megha Roy from WES Research, well-regarded for their research around international education. The post said that 5.4m engineers are enrolled in undergraduate education, citing Planning Commission data. This implies that about a fourth of this, barring drop-outs and failures, graduate annually.
Assuming a drop-out …
Why Did Amazon Launch a Physical Bookstore?
Earlier this month, Amazon’s opening of a physical store created a fair bit of buzz online. Most observers found it puzzling. Why, after disrupting and demolishing the physical bookstore – as evidenced by the closing of Borders, and crippling of Barnes & Noble – would Amazon want to launch a physical bookstore themselves?
Now, Amazon is an extraordinary company, and its founder Jeff Bezos, is known for thinking really long-term …