Why People Overestimate Change In Two Years

Bill Gates had once famously remarked, “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten”. Having witnessed the first part of this statement coming true with so many technologies – biometrics, e-grocery and mobile payments to name a few – … Read more

Mobile OTP: Cyanide Or Caffeine For Online Payments?

I recently received an SMS from one of my credit card issuing banks informing me about the following change in procedure for using its credit cards online: With immediate effect, for each online transaction on your BANK1 Credit Card, an OTP (One Time Password) will be sent via SMS to your registered mobile number. In … Read more

Five Ways to Stimulate Electronic Payments (Hint: Discouraging Cheques Is Not One Of Them)

The number of times the words “should” and “charge” appear in this article titled “RBI WANTS TO DISCOURAGE USE OF CHEQUES” got me wondering if “negative reinforcement” is seen as the only way to wean people away from their time-worn habit of using cheques and move them to electronic payments. For the uninitiated, RBI, or … Read more

LBTR360 Featured As Top 10 Android App By Computerworld

We’re happy to announce that Computerworld has named our LBS app Location Based Task Reminder (LBTR360) as a Top 10 Android app in the to do list category. Click here to read the full Computerworld report. As explained in greater detail here, LBTR360 is a reusable, LBS mobile app framework using which we develop custom … Read more

How Long Can Malls Remain Open If Stores Inside Them Keep Closing Down?

How Long Can Malls Remain Open If Stores Inside Them Keep Closing Down? Short Answer: Forever. Now for the long version. As I highlighted in Retail Winners & Losers Amidst Skyrocketing Real Estate Costs, many stores are unable to survive on the face of skyrocketing real estate costs. Although this post focused largely on standalone … Read more

Banks Have Nothing To Fear From TELCOs

In my op-ed article titled “Impact of Regulation on Financial Services Providers” published in the August 2012 issue of The Journal of Internet Banking & Commerce, I’d argued that banks don’t have much to fear from the slew of financial products launched by non-banking financial services providers. Many career bankers averred that they heaved a … Read more

Ten Ways – Er, Only One Way – To Slash SMS Costs

In Whither Cross-Selling And Upselling With eBills And eStatements?, I’d written about how I got hit by exorbitant SMS costs and how I solved this problem by ordering an SMS Pack that gave me 1,000 SMSs for only INR 35 per month. Things were fine for a few months. Then, suddenly, I again received a biggish … Read more