Karmic cycle in play again

I keep coming back to these topics of Gratitude, Karma, Charity time and again. Actually these things keep you grounded when things are going well for you and lift you when you feel low.

Sometimes the universe has a way to send things your way for doing good. Today has been a very specific example. India had gone through a very tough period during the second wave of Covid between mid April to June this year. Quite a few people lost their lives and a lot of families were left without earning members in their families.

Through those time I had tried to do my little bit by doing some amount of charity.

Today it so happened that out of the blue I got a message on my mobile phone from one of the ‘Apps” called CRED that I use. Its an app that I have been using for a few years now and I had accumulated more than half a million points. While the App gives us an option to use the points to get different items on discount, somehow, I could not find any item in the recent past to utilise the points and they had just been accumulating.

Today I was just thinking randomly and this message came, where I could liquidate a hundred thousand points and feed 12 people. CRED has tied up with a NGO to feed victims of the Covid pandemic. This was like a God send. I didn’t have any use for the massive number of points that I had accumulated and they were going waste.

Now those same points can get used to do good. Amazing isn’t it. Something which was a waste for me, now gets utilised to feed people. I get the benefit of feeling good and also writing about it, while hopefully all those people get fed meals by this NGO.

I immediately liquidated 500000 points so that 60 people can be fed. if you have the intention to do good, the universe finds ways to help you get the capabilities to do good.

My father always said, you give a small thing in charity and God will find ways to give you many times over. I hope God keeps giving me the ability to keep doing good even more often.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Marketing – how individual biases play havoc

ego, Marketing, mindset

Individual biases influence on both sides of a transaction – the buying side and the selling side.

Today I will look primarily at the selling side of a transaction and how our individual biases tend to make a mess in a marketing activity.

A simple example could be the way our website should be organised. Depending on the kind of dispensation in the marketing team you could have a staid looking website or a very aggressive looking website. There is nothing wrong in either of these extremes or even in something in-between. The point that needs to be kept in mind is about – who is the customer you are targeting.

If you are targeting a mature audience and you present a staid looking website which is very functional , it might work very well. On the other hand a startup might create a very good user interface for the younger generation but the older generation is not able to get their arms around it.

Since we think the world sees everything the way we see something, these challenges arise. The way we see things is a function of our exposure, our biases, our mindset and our capabilities.

I have a personal bias against doing news paper advertisements. Its just my belief that our kind of business does not have a mass appeal and therefore a newspaper is not the best place to spend money. As a matter of fact you would have noticed this bias in some of the posts that I have put out earlier. Having said that this bias could also be limiting our growth because we have never tried to see its proof.

Another place I see this happening very frequently is summarily dismissing a segment of the market that may not buy. Again I will give my examples so that you know none of this is theoretical. Today itself I had one interaction where I was told that the hospitals are investing a lot of money in IT especially after Covid. I have had this personal bias that hospitals invest in medical equipment, in faciliies but only invest the basic minimum in IT and therefore we have not invested in that area.

Biases happen because of our experiences, so there’s nothing wrong, as long as we are willing to question them from time to time, it should not become an ego issue, otherwise we can lose on lots of opportunities.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

All roads lead to Rome

Decisions, History, Uncategorized

This is an old saying which we learnt in grade 5 or 6. And I am a little sheepish in claiming that I didn’t know the actual origin of this term.

At the height of the Roman Empire they had built about 13000 km of roads in the Gaul region(the Western European region) now part of France, Belgium etc. and about 4000km of what is now considered Britain and in other areas of Europe.

One of the core principles of the Roman doctrine was to build roads so that the Roman armies could move fast and was the reason for their undisputed might.

All the central or key roads used to terminate in Rome so that the transportation of the army from the central location to any direction was quick.

So why did I decide to look at the roads of the Roman Empire. It started because I was delving into railway line gauges- the width between the inner ends of the railway track.

Globally most railway tracks are built on what is called as standard gauge. In India we now follow what’s called the broad gauge network for all our railway lines. Initially we also followed the standard gauge or what was known in India as meter gauge.

We had to convert to broad gauge because the only way to carry a large population cost effectively in a developing country like India was to accommodate more people per journey.

So if there’s a broader track, you can have broader bogies and when you have broader bogies you can accommodate more people in a bogey.

However now most of our metro and high speed trains that are coming are coming with standard gauge. Which led me to research the size of the standard gauge -Its 4feet 8 and 1/2 inches. This is a very odd figure.

That led me to the history of the development of the standard gauge to Britain, in a town which had coal mines. Which had old remains of roads of the Roman Empire of that width.

Till then I didn’t know that the Roman Empire had extended all the way to Britain. Which made me research where else it had gone. And that brought me to the way the Empire had constructed its road network.

You see how a search for one item led me all the way back to an Empire which existed more than 3000 years back but which still impacts the diameter of the engine of the space shuttle – 4ft 8 and 1/2 inches.

Till next time time then look out, history impacts our decisions today.

Carpe Diem!!!

Serendipity – 2

Partners, Serendipity

A few months back towards end of January I had written a post on serendipity. Serendipity is defined as events which happen by chance in a happy or beneficial way , where you had not sought for or expected anything even remotely similar to what has happened.

I tend to think of serendipity also in parallel to chance and luck though they are technically different as per the literal meanings.

However I tend to believe that a lot of serendipity, chance or luck happens because you are “doing” things to get some result and then something totally unrelated happens and takes you in totally different direction which is even more beneficial. Most people – especially the “filmy” kind use this term with respect to romance. But I tend to see it happen so often in business that it ends up creating a completely new and beneficial set of opportunities.

I keep talking about seeking partnerships to help you build your go to market strategy in a low cost and high speed way. Last year we had done an event with a industry body in India. This event was targeted at the members of the industry body where we were seeking partnerships to go into that industry. We happened to put out the video we had created onto YouTube after the event.

Now see the sequence of serendipitous events which took place over the next 8-10 months.

One sales person of an OEM happened to see that video and connected to me via Linkedin and then contacted me. This conversation led us to build an application on top of the OEMs platform , which they were so amazed that they started giving us support to work further. Now this sales person also connected us to one of his other colleagues who asked us a question regarding the capabilities we had on another product of this OEM. At that point in time we had only a sketchy knowledge but because this sales person and the earlier one had suggested we invested in this new product and built a prototype from scratch.

Suddenly when we showed this prototype, all of a sudden there was “domino effect” or a “tipping point” such that not only was this OEM’s team taking us to prospective customers, but other partners in other geographies were also asking us on our capabilities in this area. To think about it, 3 months back we had no knowledge about this tool, and today we are talking to so many possible prospects.

All because one sales person happened to see our video on YouTube and decided to connect with me. I had no plans whatsoever of connecting with this OEM, even in my wildest dreams, but today we have so many proposals happening because of them.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!