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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Historically, all content was created for a bundle.
The bundle, as seen for magazines and newspapers, was designed keeping in mind, a dual-revenue stream, one, albeit larger from ads and the other from readers. In the case of newspapers, the bundle also presumed some degree of exclusivity of readership (read monopoly) and thereby the need to cater to a wide range of customers.
Thanks to the high profitability that these …
I have a colleague who uses twitter in the most peculiar way. He only tweets @-replies to brands with whom he has a service grouse, in an attempt to get them to respond faster. He has pioneered an interesting use case for twitter as a ‘public’ email service.
Twitter as a ‘Public’ Email Service
This is not something that could have been visualized by anyone at twitter when it was …
Indian advertising is badly in need of well-written books (or memoirs) by industry leaders, sharing their account of the evolution of the industry and sharing insights into advertising & marketing.
Pandeymonium, by Piyush Pandey, is not that book.
It will probably do ok in sales. Piyush Pandey is a well-known figure, possibly the best-known figure in Indian advertising, and there should be enough curiosity about the book to …
A few months back The New York Times wrote about a waiter who became a data scientist, upping his earnings from $20,000 to well over $100,000. There are other examples in the story too, such as the barista who became a coding instructor, and the English major who became an appmaker. The transformations were courtesy coding bootcamps or immersion programs. These are institutions such as Hackreactor or General Assembly…
One little-known fact about Silicon Valley darlings Uber and Airbnb (and many others) for lay folks is how little of the underlying tech platform they directly control, and how much is really hacked together cleverly using public APIs (application programme interface).
Uber uses Google Maps, Twilio (SMS notifications), SendGrid (e-mails), and Braintree (payments) to make the magic happen. Airbnb, too, uses SendGrid, Twilio, and Braintree.
Hacking (or cobbling) together the …
Written a day after the Umpqua Community College shootings.
From whatever I have read about the U.S., there is virtually zero chance of rewriting the 2nd amendment.
We know Mike Bloomberg has plans. Sure Bloomberg is worth $37b and if he goes all out, it may make some impact. But I am really sceptical. Many Americans love their guns, and attitudes are unlikely to change soon. So what should …
