Thinking of a media category I want to call ‘Nosumer Media’ (nosumer as short for no consumer). These could be books, podcasts, apps etc. They are created not for consumption as much as for the benefits from creating, or the pleasure of creating accruing to the creator.
Nosumer media creators are aware that it their creations are unlikely to be consumed (in large numbers), and have no overwhelming desire to …
One morning in October 2017, and I forget the exact date now, I came back from my crossfit workout to see a series of whatsapp messages from Karthik Reddy. Karthik, briefly an ex-boss of mine at The Times of India Group, had gone on to cofound Blume Ventures, a seed fund, which had evolved to emerge as a much-loved and well-regarded player in the Indian startup …
I haven’t been updating this website as frequently as I have hoped to. But those who follow me on twitter or linkedin, would know that I have been writing regularly, with all of it being published on other websites or publishing platforms.
Here are links to some recent writings of mine, in order of recency.
I wrote this for The Times of India in July 2019, about how first names convey social status and even class capital amongst middle castes in India today. Link to the Times of India post.
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A few years ago, in a Facebook post that is now offline, poet and activist Meena Kandasamy encouraged upper caste Indians to drop their surnames. These surnames, she said, had considerable caste capital …
I wrote a post, well over a couple of months back (mid-Feb ’19), on the challenges of becoming a universal app or product in India. The nature of the Indian market meant few startups would attain product-market fit (PMF) across the country. Increasingly, startups would strive to attain PMF in India1 Alpha, India1 or India2.
The article also covered a broad approach to move across different layers of the stack, …
I recently met the founders of a quasi-dating app enabling friend discovery via meeting strangers at events. We passed on them, primarily because while we could see that it had the potential to ‘take off’ in metros, or at least the affluent parts of our metros, we couldn’t see how it would work in India2 i.e., the non-english speaking less affluent India in Tier 2/3 cities, and thus expand to …
I maintain an excel sheet, since 2004, where I track the books I have read annually. This year I read only 13 books, my lowest count in all these years (2016 was the highest with 39 books). That said, one of the books I read this year, and perhaps enjoyed the most, was Sacred Games, which at 947 pages, is like 3 or even 4 books in one. So …
This was originally published in The New Indian Express.
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Around 20 years ago, my father, a South Indian working in a South Indian bank, received his obligatory North India posting to Delhi, something he and my mother had been dreading. Those first days in Delhi were incredibly trying, as my parents negotiated with plumbers, electricians, maids, milkmen and every person you interface to set up a home. Each of …
This was originally published in FactorDaily.
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Over the last few years, we have seen a new crop of attention harvesters spreading across Tier 2 and 3 India spurred by cheap smartphones and cheaper bandwidth. These are all mobile apps, some Indian-born such as Sharechat, Clip, and Roposo and some Chinese including Helo, TikTok, Vigo, Bigo, Kwai, and others. But all of them try to fashion an addictive feed …
I write a monthly column for The New Indian Express, a predominantly South Indian newspaper. My column titled Indo-Angliana looks at Indian society, business and culture through the prism of Indo-Anglians, the largely english-speaking, highly educated and largely upper caste Indians who dominate our markets, media and our minds.
My second column was on a concept I call ‘meritshifting’, where elite India is driving a redefinition of merit on subjective …