Product

Traditional Media Has Itself To Blame For Its Downfall

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Millennials don’t read newspapers and magazines. That bodes ill for the future of traditional media. As though such threats caused by generational shifts are not lethal enough, traditional media is hurting itself even further with its lax attitude and casual behavior. Here are some ways by which traditional media is hurtling towards its downfall. Can’t … Read more

Don’t Go Global Without Cracking The Value Proposition For Foreign Markets

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We regularly come across founders of software companies who have achieved a certain degree of success in India and now wish to take their product global. This is a perfectly sensible strategy because overseas markets are extremely lucrative. But many of these “export initiatives” flounder. Because what works here does not work there. UPI is … Read more

How Brands Can Leverage The Eternal Disconnect Between Want & Like

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In Want v. Like: Decoding The Eternal Disconnect In Consumer Behavior, we saw a couple of examples of  the eternal disconnect between what consumers say they want and what they actually like. We also speculated on the root cause of this conflict.  In this follow on post, we’ll examine the implications of the want-versus-like disconnect … Read more

How Does Turn By Turn Navigation Work?

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A turn-by-turn navigation system is a combination of hardware and software that provides an automobile driver with one or more motorable routes between Point A and Point B on the surface of the earth. Sold as a dedicated satnav system or as an integral part of a smartphone, it comprises the following building blocks: GPS. … Read more

All Payments Are Not Equal – Retail Payments Primer

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This is a slightly edited version of my answer to the following question on Quora: I had a similar experience recently. I scanned the Merchant’s QR code at a restaurant with my PayTM app. PayTM asked me to link my bank account to complete the payment via UPI. I refused to do so because I wanted … Read more

Is Scalability A Bogey Created By Hardware Industry?

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A friend recently asked me the following question via Twitter: @s_ketharaman Thoughts? I am not so sure since infra is still not scaling. https://t.co/vDi1zHZynB — Gopinath Pandalai (@gopibella) April 28, 2020 I read the linked HBR article on Blockchain technologies and replied as follows: Many mobile payments use cases I never thought could go digital … Read more

Dr. Batra’s – A Sanitizer That Will Outlive The Virus

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The Co-Founder of Druva, the Pune-based cloud data protection software provider, once narrated the story of how his company broke into NASA. Its sales team was pursuing the prestigious American space administration agency for months with the usual sales approach spanning demo, proof-of-concepts, requirement study, and so on, but didn’t get much joy. Apparently, the … Read more

How Does Google Maps Know Traffic Conditions In Realtime?

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When I was in Germany in the early 2000s, all my questions about distance would receive answers in terms of time. That too, under two conditions, namely, without traffic and with traffic. For example, if I asked a customer, “how far is your office from Munich airport”, the typical answer would be, “one and a … Read more

Why Does Cross Selling Fail?

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In my last post on cross-selling entitled Cross Selling Is Hard, we had seen several cross-selling flops by majors. In each case, a company that is wildly successful in one product category attempts to cross-sell a new product to its existing customers and achieves very little success. In some cases, the lack of success is … Read more