How Does MY Telco Know That YOU Have Dialed A Wrong Number?

Callers are sometimes unable to reach me because My phone is outside coverage area I’ve switched off my phone I’m busy The network is congested. Until this recently, whenever this happened, callers heard a message from my mobile network operator saying they’ve dialed the wrong number. Naturally they wondered how the heck can MY mobile … Read more

Don’t Lose Deals By Belaboring Business Value – Case Study

In Don’t Lose Deals By Belaboring Business Value, I’d warned that B2B technology vendors risk losing a deal by belaboring business value all the time. In this post, I’ll describe my experience with a startup that failed to heed this warning, and lost the deal – and more – as a result. I was recently … Read more

Don’t Lose Deals By Belaboring Business Value

“Most B2B buyers only care about the value you bring to their business. They really do not care about your products.” When I read this line on LinkedIn, my first reaction was to reply back with the classical Little Feat line “Don’t Bogart That Joint. Pass It On.” I’ve no argument with the first sentence. … Read more

Secret Of Survival Of Bank Branches

From personal experience and anecdotal evidence, there’s no question that retail banking customers are increasingly moving to digital channels to conduct everyday banking transactions like balance inquiry, statement download, and so on. Notwithstanding the pronounced shift in customer preference to digital channels, bank branches are far from dead. In fact, according to some reports, they’re … Read more

Why Indian Customers Will Flee Abroad Before Indian Startups!

I was introduced to SINE (Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship), the technology incubator at my alma mater IIT Bombay, when I attended the Silver Jubilee Reunion of my Class of 85 in 2010. Since then, my exposure to Indian technology startups has increased. As a budding angel investor, I’ve lately begun to closely follow the … Read more

3 Ways To Find Hidden Pain Areas

There’s a growing realization among B2B technology marketers that positioning their products and services around technology is a fool’s errand. Even compared to a year or two ago, there’s a massive rise in vendors recasting technology offerings around alleviation of business pain areas. This is a great development. We’d like to take some credit for … Read more

Going From Card To COD

I’ve been buying stuff online since circa 1998 but a few recent events have taken the edge off my enthusiasm for ecommerce: Driven by VCs braying for profits, many Indian ecommerce players have moved from the traditional inventory model to the asset-light marketplace alternative. Thanks to my exposure to this model via eBay India several years ago, … Read more

Top 10 Blog Posts of 2014

Welcome to the first blog post of 2015! The Top 10 posts of 2014 were: #10: Big Pharma Turns To CEM For Cure #9: Did Google Acquire FeedBurner Minus The CAPTCHA? #8: How To Make Co-Creation Work? #7: Retail Is Barking Up The Wrong Tree Against Ecommerce #6: Does CX Really Drive Sales? #5: How To Lie With Big Data #4: Frictionless … Read more