The Tail.re storyline — highlighting entrepreneurial lessons of 2016

Tail.re, a 2015-founded startup, is, as its name suggests, trying to disrupt the consumable retail space. It seeks to do this with an intelligent auto-replenishment platform that enables you to automate the purchase of products you use regularly, such as coffee, printer ink, and detergent. And the ones piloting this never-on-autopilot startup flight are co-founders CEO Pranjal Y. Kumar and COO Arjun Rungta.

Learnings from 2016

Arjun told YourStory, ”2016 saw this bubble burst, taking down some of the well-funded names in the ecosystem. Tail.re feels itself lucky not to have followed the same synthetic growth approach, and 2016 just proved to be a great testimony for us.”

Arjun added, “Another pivotal thing for Tail.re during 2016 was the growth of our team, and by growth, we don't mean size. The individualised focus and responsibilities have helped our team members mature. Even during these times of high attrition, we have retained top talent within the company and look forward to attracting new members in the next few months.”

Key milestones achieved in 2016

Pranjal explained, “In a modest attempt to help people during adverse times post demonetisation, Tail.re enabled platform tailmill.com with a service where the company actually home-delivered hard cash to its users. Tail.re re-calibrated it's demand prediction algorithms in order to suit Tailmill's requirement to predict available cash-in-hand on any given day. This enabled Tailmill to pioneer the redistribution of cash, collecting it from deliveries and delivering that cash to other users.”

Tail.re storyline

*Click here to view complete Tail.re Storyline*

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2017/01/tail-re-storyline/

Meet the man who is the talk of the e-town: Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Flipkart’s brand new CEO

It is two days before Kalyan Krishnamurthy’s 45th birthday – but the only “bash” that he could be bothered to put together is that of Flipkart’s competitors. He is tasked with staging the Indian e-commerce giant’s victory in a race where formidable internet players are closing in, faster than ever.

In a major management reshuffle – something that is becoming a bit of a habit at the giant – Kalyan, who was roped in just seven months ago to head sales de facto- marketplace, retail and advertising businesses, has now been asked to assume the top spot of CEO. Binny Bansal, his predecessor, graduates to heading Flipkart Group – the alliance of Jabong, Myntra, Flipkart, PhonePe, and Ekart.

Kalyan holds an MBA degree from Asian Institute of Management, the Philippines, and another MBA in Finance from UIUC College of Business, Illinois (US). They say he is Lee Fixel’s trump card, his right-hand man. As the former MD and Director of Finance and Portfolio Companies at Tiger Global Management LLC, this is not the first time he was sought out by Flipkart to run the show. For a year and a half starting May 2013, he served as the Interim CFO at Flipkart Online Services Pvt. Ltd.

He brought with him his sharp acumen in the dynamics of e-commerce, having served as the Director of Financial Planning and Analysis at eBay Asia-Pacific and Country Finance Director (South-East Asia, Hong Kong) at eBay prior to joining Tiger. He has also clocked stints at Procter & Gamble, in a supply chain finance position, and Sunshine Teahouse Pvt. Ltd.

Kalyan is known to play the longest games of hide-and-seek with the media and is hard to track down – in keeping with the ways of most of his colleagues back at Tiger.

An entrepreneur who knows Kalyan and the Bansals, however, says, "That had better change. As CEO, he will have to talk to the media and be more open."

Yet, anybody who has worked with him, at any level, be it a subordinate or a senior, vouches for his people skills. During his first stint at Flipkart, the workforce was taken by his sense of interest, involvement, and accountability with even the lowest level of workings.

However, he was never too cautious with the whip, and took some tough calls to make at least four tricky executive-level firings. These risks, however, instilled a deeper sense of accountability in the 30,000-strong internal taskforce at India’s highest valued internet player, which was said to have gotten complacent.

He was also tasked with undoing the blemishes that the first Big Billion Days (BBD) left on the company, again under his own regime in 2014, by churning out a more foolproof third edition in 2016. He did succeed, if surpassing the sales of arch-rival Amazon in sale-season is an indicator. Forced by his commitment to the annual flagship event, Kalyan had joined Twitter in November 2016, only to make all of 11 tweets, each surrounding the workings of Flipkart's Big Billion Days.

"Kalyan is a fantastic numbers person. He is also extremely perceptive. He can see a person and know instinctively whether that person will be good for the job," says a source not wanting to be named. They were part of a portfolio company of Tiger, and have worked closely with Kalyan.

This time around, he is tasked with strengthening the mother ship, which has encountered tempests, even if one doesn’t benchmark its performance against the competition. After all, it was devalued from $15 billion to $5.5 billion in multiple markdowns last year.

Media and social media conjecture suggests that he was brought onboard to take on Amazon head on – even though Flipkart still commands more market share, albeit marginally, in India’s $15 billion e-commerce industry, the gap is ever decreasing. People also haven’t missed the fact that he is but an outsider, and that for the first time, an Indian unicorn will be run by someone who is not a founder. Whether it was a case of strategic headhunting and placing the right man in the right job, or an instance of investors losing confidence in the founders and stepping in to right the wrongs is anybody’s guess at this stage.

"When I came in in 2013, it was agreed that I would go back. There was no big reason behind it. This is a different chapter. I'm here to stay and put my head down and work," he had told TOI in a December interview, before he was appointed CEO.

Flipkart decided to combine a number of verticals under Kalyan; within a few months of him coming onboard in June, private label, marketplace, marketing, and customer experience product were all asked to report to Kalyan. So, even as Kalyan is to report to Binny on paper, inside sources revealed, as reported by this article in Mint, that he is his own boss and answers directly to the board.

As of now, Flipkart continues to lose tens of millions of dollars every month. Popular consumer feedback suggests that there are gaps when it comes to their customer service, after-sales service and returns and refund policies. Hence, one can infer that their priorities are skewed and that their customer acquisition strategy, at a time when India is still appeasing its billions to adopt digital, is hardly up to the mark.

This, however, happens to be an area that Amazon is rather overtly gunning at and might prove to be the reason for the turn of tables in this gripping great Indian startup story.

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2017/01/kalyan-krishnamurthy-flipkart/

Backed by Narayana Murthy, students of RV College of Engineering build solar-powered car

It was a self-study seminar on solar-powered systems that inspired a few like minded students of Bengaluru’s R V College of Engineering to initiate the building of what they hoped would be an advanced solar car. In September 2013, the RVCE Solar Car Team was started with this express goal.

RVCE Solar Car Team

The team today consists of 30 students from across four different departments of RVCE – Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical and Computer Science engineering. The team also comprises of four divisions, namely Mechanical, Electrical and Electronics, Logistics, and Sponsorship and Marketing.

“The main objective of our team is to promote the use of solar energy in transportation sector and drive research and innovation into solar technology. We design, build and race highly efficient solar cars in Solar Challenges held across the globe. We also conduct various events that apprise the cause to school students and local communities. We were the only team from India to take part in the World Solar Challenge 2015,” says Akhil Mukundan, one of the members of the team.

The team has created over 25 industry-academia collaborations to build its solar car, which include names like Mahindra Reva, Schneider Electric, Keysight Technologies, IFM, Vicor, Hindalco, 3M, HHV Solar, SanE and Altair.

In May 2015, the team began manufacturing its car, Soleblaze, starting with work on the aluminum chassis, carbon fiber body and silicon solar panels, and completed the process in September 2015 with the integration of electrical components and circuitry. The car was even showcased at the campus of IT giant Infosys, and received funding and personal guidance from company Co-founder Narayana Murthy.

What’s there in the solar car?

The solar car comprises features like Ackermann steering geometry, lithium ion batteries, a solar collector, a motor and telemetry. A Battery Management System is also incorporated so that cells aren't operated outside the nominal ranges.

The Solar Collector collects the solar irradiation and converts it into electrical energy through the use of photovoltaic (PV) cells.

Soleblaze built by RVCE Solar Car Team

The motor converts electrical energy into the rotational energy used to run the car. Telemetry collects data from multiple sensors in the car, processes the required information onboard, and transmits the required data to or the internet.

The sponsors of RVCE Solar Car Team include the likes of Infosys, TCS, SunEdison, Wipro, SunPower, HHV Solar, National Instruments, IFM, Mahindra Reva, Altair, Molex and Schneider Electric.

“Racing car Soleblaze is the first prototype built by the RVCE Solar Car Team. It was built by our founding team from scratch. The vehicle coverts solar energy into electrical energy through the use of the cells, which helps run the motor. The energy can also be stored in a lithium ion battery that is connected to the motor (an in hub Mitsuba brushless DC motor). We have also incorporated a telemetry system that helps transmit data via the cloud,” says Akhil.

He further added that the team is also working on incorporating data analytics into the solar car in the near future.

Building the base

The team initially started out by pitching the idea to sponsors, without any financial assistance. “A press release with a miniature model helped us reach out to likeminded people and thus provided the initial push. Raising funds of such a large magnitude without a strong foundation and managing other subdivisions such as logistics, fabrication and design was a tedious task,” says Akhil.

The solar cells of Soleblaze are procured from SunPower, and the vehicle is made up of carbon fiber. The motor and batteries are procured from Mitsuba Corp.

The team is mentored by Chetan Maini, founder of Mahindra Reva, and Narayana Murthy. The project’s guides are Dr M S Krupashankara, Dr Mahendra Kumar and the Principal of R V College of Engineering, Dr K N Subramanya. Akhil emphasised that the college helped the team considerably, from the basics of each sub-system to procuring materials.

Cost involved in the car

According to Akhil, the projected cost of the car is Rs 1,07,00,000. They have four different categories of sponsorship - Title Sponsorship costs Rs 30 lakh, Platinum Sponsorhip Rs 10 lakh, Gold Sponsorship Rs 5 lakh, and Silver Sponsorship Rs 2.5 lakh. Akhil says that the advisory board consists of top experts from college who established strong industry-academia support to facilitate the manufacturing and marketing of the car and the project.

This solar car by RVCE Solar Car Team is not the only project that unleashed the power of youth community in India. ISRO (Indian Space Research Prganization) last year has launched a nanosatellite developed by 250 students of PES University in Bengaluru. The name of the satellite is PISAT which can take picture of the earth from space.

When asked about the date of completion of the project, Akhil says that the timeline depends on various constraints, such as the logistics of the components that are usually procured from countries like China, Japan and the US. Moreover, the customs clearance is a very tedious and time consuming process. The price of the car once commercialised depends on various factors, such as the material used, the efficiency of the solar cells and method of encapsulation, to name a few.

RVCE Solar Car Team

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Reference : https://yourstory.com/2017/01/rvce-solar-car/

She was born in America, but felt like she had to give back to the women of Gujarat

While it is now rare to see people house a sense of community with their family’s hometowns, what’s even more uncommon is seeing people who harbour gratitude towards them. But for New York-based social and serial entrepreneur Megha Desai, when the time came to give thanks to the elements, communities, and institutions that made them, the path was strikingly lucid.

Megha Desai

The road not taken

Growing up in suburban Massachusetts, 37-year-old Megha was training in Indian Classical Hindustani singing one day, and taking ski lessons the next. She then went to university in NYC. Her first-ever job was in politics, which also sparked her interest in communications, leading to a switch in fields — from politics to advertising. Her father, who was an entrepreneur and one of the founding charter members of TiE ( TIE-Atlantic at the time) dragged her along to act as the secretary at some of their first few meetings, planting the entrepreneurial streak in her.

However, about 12 years into her career, she realised she was meant to do more with her life, and that her volunteer work with her family at the Desai Foundation, which they had crafted together, was the missing piece.

It was actually on a family vacation in Peru that the idea for the Desai Foundation really started to come to life. The whole family had climbed Machu Picchu and ended up in a discussion on family, legacy, evolution, and how all of those things collide. “So we started a foundation composed of all of those things: community, culture, health, and education. That was 10 years ago. We started by just writing a few cheques to causes we cared about, and three years ago, we decided to become a public foundation. That's what we're continuing to build,” she says.

Teaching a man how to fish

From a community perspective, they knew they wanted to operate within the communities that have moulded their journeys — Gujarat, where her parents are from; Boston, where they grew up, and New York, the place Megha ultimately chose to call home. “We chose to focus on women and children because women are the backbone of society. When you empower women, you're empowering an entire community. And children are the future,” she explains.

They believe strongly that development comes from within communities, so they simply provide the tools and training for people to improve their own lives and the community at large. “If you go to our operating villages in Gujarat, you'll find that most people we're serving have no idea who we are, nor do they recognise the Desai Foundation name. We're proud of that. We tap the resources closest to the people we're serving, and that's really the only way to have a lasting impact,” she states.

A deeper dive into a couple of their programmes:

Since 66 percent of girls in India skip school when they're on their periods, they instated a sanitary napkin programme that not only employs women but also provides their communities access to sanitary pads. The Desai Foundation will be able to provide jobs for 30–35 women across three regions in Gujarat, ultimately reaching 2,50,000 women and girls. The project provides women and girls with valuable health resources while empowering women with entrepreneurial skills.

Columbia University and IIT Gandhinagar’s Community Impact: At Columbia in NYC, there is a student-run programme which uses the students as volunteers to serve the community in which the university resides, namely, the underprivileged sections of Morningside Heights, Harlem, and Washington Heights. There are 900 students a year that serve up to 9,000 people. Inspired by this model at Columbia, they helped forge a similar model, NYASA, with the team of students at IIT Gandhinagar in Gujarat, creating a social initiative benefiting local communities through health camps, workshops, and computer classes that teach technical skills to the youth. “As it is a newer programme, our numbers are modest, but growing rapidly, and the possibilities are endless. We are working not only to continue serving the population around IITGN but also to bring these students beyond local communities to inspire our other regions like Balsar, Valsad, Navsari, Talangpur, and beyond,” says Megha.

Their sewing programmes are also hugely impactful. A three-month vocational sewing class for 40 women that costs around Rs. 60,000, can secure them employment at local textile companies, where they stitch garments such as salwar suits, churidars, blouses, and dresses. These jobs pay them nearly Rs. 3000 a month in salaries collectively. Over the course of a year, that results in a million rupees in salaries for the women who take the jobs, of which 90 percent is reinvested in communities. “So, we can literally turn Rs. 60,000 into a million” says Megha, adding, “But what’s amazing is the camaraderie and dignity it gives these women, many of whom didn’t finish school. Beyond the money, we think this is the true value of the programme.”

Their Bal Mela health camps serve up to 2,000 young children at each of their four current project sites in Untdi, Talangpur, Kharel, and Palaj. These life-saving camps provide basic services such as checkups for general, eye, and dental health as well as for diabetes; distribute medicine, spectacles, and other resources; promote awareness through health education; and particularly address the health concerns of women and children. These camps have created four lakh beneficiaries so far.

They have also opened ’science schools’ named ‘Lok Vidhyalay School of Math and Science’, serving 13 villages in rural Gujarat. Besides that, the organisation also works in the area of prenatal care to protect young mothers and children

A new dharma

MSD was a bit of an accident. Megha had quit a traditional advertising job and was plotting her next move but the 2008 recession made it a terrible time to be job-hunting in the United States. “While I was looking for a job, a few of my entrepreneurial and creative friends asked me to help them with projects they were launching. These small projects turned into a bit of a revenue stream. I eventually went back to a full-time advertising job but left in 2010, knowing that I needed to revisit this ‘side project’ from two years prior,” she recalls.

That is what led to MSD, which is, ‘Marketing. Strategy. Dharma.,’ her marketing company established in 2011 to help startups and impact brands connect better with their brand, their audience, and with other companies through strategic partnerships. “We are an affordable company that knows what it is like to start your own venture and to work in the social good sector,” she says of their ideology. Over the years, they have associated with NPR, HP, the TV show Project Runway, Universal Pictures, General Assembly, ONE.org, Starwood Capital, and more.

And when her work with MSD and the Desai Foundation collides, she feels most alive.

As of three years ago, they have shifted from a family foundation to a public one, meaning their funding now needs to come from external sources. “Fundraising is always a challenge, and an art that we will continue to learn,” she says. Their achievements of the last three years, however, are validation that they’re doing something right. They claim to have impacted over 3,00,000 lives in the US and India.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2017/01/megha-desai/

10 times when less is more

“You might do serious damage to your brain,” my 14 year old told me. She is my nutritionist.

I tried a three day fast. I drank only water and had no food or anything else.

On the first day I was hungry but I watched TV at night to distract me and then I fell asleep early.

Falling asleep is a great way to fast. By the time I had woken up I hadn’t eaten in 36 hours. Then I tried to go through the rest of the day. This was yesterday.

Around noon I had trouble standing. When I stood I would see yellow lights everywhere. Yellow lights, in a traffic situation, mean things are about to change. Means you might have to STOP soon.

Sometimes the yellow was so bright I’d fall into a wall and hold on. Then I’d slide down.

I had read that going on a three day fast is perfect. That maybe you could get mental clarity from cleaning out all the toxins.

Maybe this is true. But at 46 hours the worst thing of all happened.

I logged onto the computer, specifically onto the place where I play chess online.

I lost about 20 games in a row for the first time in my life. I decided I needed to eat.

I had salmon. I had avocado. I had some nuts. Fast over.

I tried it. It was an experiment. Did it work? Did it not work? I don’t know. It was something I just tried. If you don’t try things, you don’t have experiences.

Thinking about things is not experience. Doing things is experience.

About ten months ago I threw out all my belongings. I gave up the apartments I was renting. I had someone go there and throw everything out.

I gave up my diploma, my books, my dishes, my beds, my sheets, my desks. My 40 year old comic book collection, my computers, my collected animated cels from the 70s TV show “I Dream of Jeannie.”

I gave up my original drawing of the seven dwarfs from the animator of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” I threw out my diploma.

“But you worked so hard for it,” my friend told me.

“I’ve worked a lot harder for other things,” I said. Ditch it.

I gave up everything that the prior James could say, “This is mine.” I was left with two outfits. A computer. A phone. I turned off all email from my phone and deleted all apps except Kindle.

I wasn’t being minimalist. I just didn’t want those things anymore. I wanted to be like a newborn baby again.

There’s a bestselling book about “tidying up” that says, “hold up each object close to your heart and keep the things you love and throw out the things you no longer love.”

This is a stupid idea. Why are there objects you love and other objects you don’t love? They are just objects.

I got rid of everything.

But then I found that I had many more things to give up.

Someone insulted me. I got angry at him. Now I had to give up anger.

Another person I had bad memories about that would come up almost every morning.

I had to give up those bad memories. Another time I was thinking about money. How much money will I make in my lifetime? I wonder this in the shower.

I had to give up thinking about money. I might die tomorrow. And then what? And worrying about money never made me any money.

The most common question people asked me after I threw everything away was, “Do you feel more free now,”

I want to say “Yes.” Yes, the burdens of objects no longer chain me to the Earth.

But it isn’t true. I didn’t feel more free. I just had no belongings or place to live.

I no longer had my Dr. McCoy doll sitting next to my computer. I no longer had my hand-carved Go board. Or the original sketch used to pitch the 60s cartoon, “Underdog.”

I no longer had an address.

But none of these things were freeing. But it was a starting point. And since then, every day I try to be more free. to find the spots where less is more.

10 things where LESS IS MORE:

A) Arguing.

When someone wants to argue with me, I take a pass. I remind myself of this:

My dad had a stroke while arguing and he never woke up again even though he was in bed with his eyes open for almost two more years.
B) Investing.

Warren Buffett says, “The first rule of investing is don’t lose money.” Then he says, “The second rule of investing is…don’t forget rule #1”.

The best way to avoid losing money is to realize you don’t have to invest. You and I work hard for money. Don’t give it to the people who try to scam us every day.

I pick my spots carefully. I used to invest in and out of the markets all day long. I’d feel every heart beat. Now I don’t. Now I take a walk and my heart does what it will. I don’t need to feel it.
C) People you love.

“Love everybody” is good advice. Fine. But this is a bit abstract. It’s not really practical.

I actually love very few people. I gave up on loving everyone. That’s a lot of people to care for.

My first priority is to my kids. And my friends who are closest to me. These are people I love and will do anything for.

After that, I am very curious about everyone else. Is this someone I can love? I prefer that question to the statement, “I love you” about people I don’t know,

Starting with curiosity is, for me, better than starting with love.
D) Work.

When you rest, you rejuvenate. You get more creative. You have more ideas. You read more and learn more and observe more and more time to get curious about people you might love.

These are all good things.

I work a couple of hours a day on writing, reading, and podcasting. But I can’t even call those things “work” because I love doing them.

It took me 40 years to realize this.

One thing I always remember: Anataly Karpov, who was World Chess Champion from 1975 – 1984 was asked how long he studied chess each day.

He said, “At MOST, three hours a day.” The rest of the time he spends with family, or playing tennis, or studying languages.

And that’s the best player in the world.

Why is everyone working more than three hours. For those of us not the best in the world, maybe one or two hours a day is enough.

The lion doesn’t hunt for food all day. He stretches out in the sun. He closes his eyes. Maybe she dreams of planets and lovers and blackness.
E) Education.

I went to college. I went to graduate school. I took 100s of tests to prove everything I was learning. I failed the last three of those 100s. And was thrown out of “learning.”

I use zero of it now. Zero.

Here’s what you need to know in each subject.

The MAXIMUM you need to learn to be good at 99% of things in life:

Math: basic probability and statistics that you can do in your head. For instance, know that 1/3 of 10,000 is 3,333 (roughly).

English: Learn how to read. Because later you might like reading and reading will make you a better writer.

Note that whenever you read a book, you might remember 1-2% of it. If you read lots of books that will add up. But no pressure to remember more.

History: A two page outline of the history of the planet. Because all the books are biased.

And then later they get rewritten.

Much later in life you might want to, for fun, explore those biases and read books about it.

Three good history books I think are worth reading:
“Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari
“The Evolution of Everything” by Matt Ridley
“Wonderland” by Steve Johnson

Science: Nothing. You don’t even really need to know that the Earth is flat. If you want to be a scientist then learn more science.

Sometimes science is fun. I like reading science fiction.

Art: I don’t know. I never learned art. I’m only starting to appreciate it and read about it now. I’m 48.

In the past few weeks I went to The Broad museum in LA and The Whitney in NYC. Fascinating!

So now I am reading books to learn more. But I’ve never learned about art before because I had no interest.

If you try to teach people with no interest, they won’t learn.

To this day, at every conference I speak at, nobody can tell me the birthdate of Charlemagne within 500 years.

Go ahead, guess right now!
G) Food.

If you eat a lot, your cells get inflamed and this is the cause of every disease known to man.

This doesn’t mean fast (see above). Our ancestors ate at random times. They didn’t stuff their faces with processed sugars 21 three -course meals a week.
H) Fears.

I’m afraid my kids will get hurt. I’m afraid to go broke. I’m afraid whatever woman I am dating will cheat on me. I’m afraid people I work with hate me.

Or…not.

When has a fear solved a problem for me?

Some would say, “fear is motivating”. Don’t be stupid.

Being smart should motivate me. Not trying to avoid some insecurity or fear.
I) Yes.

A “Yes” takes time.

If I lose $1000 I can always make it back (hopefully). But if I lose five minutes, I can NEVER make it back.

This doesn’t mean never say “yes”. But figure out how many more “Yesses” you have in life.

By the time you are 30, maybe you’ll only have time to make 10-20 new good friends in your life.

Make sure you say “Yes” very carefully to new friends. You only have 10 Yesses left.

Same for books, loves, meetings, coffees, everything. Same thing for the messages you send on a phone. To the people you are curious about.
J) Lists.

You can listen to this list. Or not. I might eventually start owning things again. Or I might change my mind about anything above.

It doesn’t matter.THE ONLY THING I WANT MORE OF:

True joy is infectious. It’s contagious. It’s a virus.

If you always do the things you enjoy then other people will become excited about them, excited about you, excited about the ideas you have

If you want to have impact on the future, bring as much joy as possible to the present.

I wasn’t enjoying fasting. So I ate a dead fish and some plants pulled out of the ground.

And then I won some chess games and watched some TV, went to the bathroom, slept eight hours.

And the next day I wrote this article. I said “Yes” to this. To you.What are other things where “less is more?”

Maybe: medicine, talking, the middle aisles in a supermarket, drug laws, romantic intrigue, gossip, etc.

Maybe even words in article I write.

Love, James.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2017/01/10-times-when-less-is-more/

Maybe a pilgrimage can save your life…

Kamal was totally lost. His father had died. His job over. His relationship gone. He felt adrift, depressed, broken.

He was so lost he wandered the world trying to find his way back.

Twenty years later he wrote the novel about what happened “Rebirth.”

The novel is about how he discovered for himself the ancient art of the pilgrimage. How to be a wanderer.

How to be lost in a world with too much GPS raining down.

Would a pilgrimage, a wandering, solve his problems?

I read Kamal’s book. The book comes out today. I had him on my podcast (also out today). I wanted to find out how even in our daily lives we can go on a pilgrimage.

Even if I’m in a cubicle, can I break free, can I become a wanderer.

Sometimes I also feel stuck. But I don’t want to go away for months at a time. I want a pilgrimage in my life right now!

From what I can gather from reading the book, “Rebirth,” and talking with Kamal, a pilgrimage has several parts:

Listen to the FULL interview with Kamal Ravikant here

A) Seeking an answer

Something happened. Something confusing. Something that wasn’t in the plan.

You have to get off the regular path. Try a new one. Try one that takes a bit of courage and discipline. To meet stranger along the way

B) It takes time

I’m not a believer that you have to go to a far location.

But take time for yourself each day to do something you’ve never done before. Think about things you never thought about before.

Find the places in your life that you never looked before. They are there every day. The pilgrimage awaits.

Do a dare you never would have dared to before.

C) Struggle

Maybe some people find life easy. I don’t.

Life is filled with worries about money, about relationships, about (for me) kids, about decisions, about the people who hate you, who annoy you, who scare you. Anxieties, regrets.

Every pilgrimage begins with the struggle. And every journey is a struggle.

The struggle doesn’t stop. It just changes. It changes into one where you are lost to one where you have vision.

Where the struggle is not being trapped in the vision of others but for the unique impact that you want to create.

D) Benefits of a pilgrimage:

You see more clearly: Everything you see on a pilgrimage is different from “normal life”. Enjoy them. Learn from it. Even a single day, a single meeting, can be a pilgrimage. What is your takeaway from it.

You meet people. I like to pretend everyone has a fortune cookie to give me. A little bit stale, a little bit crunchy, with a folded message inside. Read it.

There’s an end. We’ve made pilgrimages too easy. We can go to a museum and see 2000 works of art.

It used to be that people would travel a 1000 miles to see one painting hanging up in a chapel. Then you can really appreciate what you see.

The more you appreciate the people, the things, the emotions around you, the more you are a pilgrim.

Come back changed. A pilgrim doesn’t just fly a plane from LA to NY. A pilgrim changes because of the journey. You do that by using your senses: listen more, see more, taste more, observe more.

The convenience of modern society comes at a price. It’s too difficult now to be a pilgrim because everything is two taps away on our phone.

There is an “otherness” to being disconnected for a bit. To search. To wander.

And finally, to give up looking. To surrender to the results.

It’s freeing to give up, even for a few minutes, everything you ever knew. To become a Wanderer.

To look around and see everything as if it were new.

“Rebirth,” by Kamal Ravikant, got me thinking about these things. He went on his pilgrimage. He met people. He went on an adventure, a journey, and reading his book showed me how.

I need to leave. To struggle. To find an answer.

And then to completely give up all hope of ever finding one. To find again the beauty of being completely lost.

If I get lost enough, maybe I can find something worth looking for.

Listen to my full conversation with Kamal here:

Timestamps:

Years ago, I learned from Kamal you can self-publish your own book and it doesn’t have to be 200 pages. It can be 10 pages, it can be 40 pages. You can write a short book, right now and have it published in a week. It’s possible. I’ve seen it. Hear how Kamal did it [6:20]

Kamal says, “If you want to learn life lessons, but want to do it really quickly go…” do this (listen at [15:42]

“Everyone’s interesting,” Kamal says. He explains how to make the most interesting parts of you come alive [23:00]

“What should someone do when it feels like everything’s falling apart?” Kamal’s told me how to deal with fear and how to move forward [24:30]

Kamal talked to a monk. He asked him, “How do you find peace?” The monk said, “Easy question, huh?” “If I’m going to ask a question, that’s the question,” Kamal said. The monk gave him three answers. And I didn’t understand. I kept asking, “What do you mean? What does that mean?” He kept explaining, and I learned the number one philosophy for a peaceful life. Kamal lives by this rule. I struggle with it. You can try it. Hear it [48:40]

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2017/01/pilgrimage-can-save-your-life/

Alternate therapy can heal better, says Healclinic

Healclinic allows clients to shortlist practitioners based on multiple parameters such as experience, type of therapy, and gender. A Healclinic counsellor also recommends a practitioner and handholds the client till the end of the treatment.

When you’re suffering from a disease, multiple visits to the doctor only add to your woes. Having medical professionals who can handhold you with the alternate therapy remotely using the medium of video might be a relief.

Deepti and Vishal Arora founded Healclinic in December 2015. The husband and wife duo came up with the idea when one of their close relatives who was suffering from an autoimmune disorder and was not responding to conventional medicines developed severe side effects.

Healclinic Team

However, when an alternative treatment approach was suggested by a friend, finalising one credible practitioner involved a prolonged search and several meetings.

Healclinic was bootstrapped with their own personal savings. “In the past six months, we have worked with over 50 clients and have over 200 practitioners empanelled with us. We are growing by 25–30 percent month on month,” says Deepti, who, having worked at Citi, HDFC Life and Xchanging, comes with over a decade of corporate experience. She has done her MBA from the University of Mumbai.

Vishal brings over 18 years of experience in sales, marketing, and management consulting.

Empanelling practitioners, creating a structure and ensuring professionalism on the supply side, and educating and converting clients to use alternate therapy remotely using the medium of video cumulatively posed challenges for them at the beginning.

Getting the first client

Luckily, they got an enquiry to provide online yoga treatment when they took part in an event abroad. After understanding the client requirement, they identified the right practitioner, convinced her to do an online consultation, conducted sample sessions with her, helped her install Wi-Fi at her place, and started the sessions.

A contented Deepti said, “The results were so spectacular that the client has been referring all her friends in her community in her country to us.”

She added that a large majority of practitioners who are empanelled with Healclinic have started receiving enquiries from prospective clients from different parts of the world. A couple of practitioners who provide healing online through the video platform have been able to grow their income by over 100 percent.

Healclinic allows clients to shortlist practitioners based on multiple parameters such as experience, type of therapy, and gender. A Healclinic counsellor also recommends a practitioner and handholds the client till the end of the treatment.

The task does not end here. The counsellor even keeps in touch with the client after the conclusion of treatment so as to monitor the progress. Based on the health challenges and client requirements, Healclinic also designs customised treatment plans. The plans, which cost between Rs 1,000 and a lakh are charged based on the severity of the health issues.

“Since we offer customised treatment plans, the package price depends on the severity of the health condition, number of sessions needed, and combination of therapies being utilised,” says Deepti.

Cash inflow

Healclinic generates revenue from online healthcare packages and commission on the online sale of natural and holistic products. Currently, the startup conducts 25 consultations every month.

As a part of the online healthcare packages, the practitioners offer more than 30 non-conventional therapies.

The online platform offers holistic products across various categories like apparel, Ayurveda products, nutritional supplements, aroma oils, rudraksha, and skin and hair care. The startup adds more products and brands every week.

“Overall margins for online consulting and e-commerce put together have been in the range of 15–20 percent,” says Deepti.

Based out of Bengaluru, Healclinic currently has a team of 10 employees and has offices in Mumbai and New Delhi. Their clients are now spread across India, Southeast Asia, Australia, and North America. Going forward, the startup is planning to have integrated clinics and use wearables to provide preventive healthcare and early detection of illnesses. Deepti anticipates Healclinic’s revenue to be in the range of Rs 1.5–2 crore for the next fiscal year.

Though considered a traditional healthcare system, Ayurvedic medicines and treatment go hand-in-hand with modern allopathic treatments. Major players like Dabur, Baidyanath, Zandu, Himalaya Drug Company, Charak Pharmaceuticals, Vicco Laboratories, and Emami Group have been thriving, in the Indian Ayurveda industry.

One of the frontrunners in the industry is Patanjali Ayurved. Started in 2006, Patanjali, with its wide range of products, has already hit Rs 5,000 crore and aims to touch Rs 7,000 crore by FY 2016-17.

According to an Exim Bank Report, the Indian herbal industry is estimated to be around Rs 4,205 crore with the export of Ayurvedic medicines and herbal products being worth Rs 440 crore. The industry has the potential to scale up to Rs 7,000 crore by 2020.

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2016/12/healclinic/

Touch, shake, drag, swirl ads –MCanvas bids adieu to banner ads with this new wave in mobile advertising

Reports surfacing in late 2014 suggested that banner viewability on mobile was under 27 percent. Out of those, 86 percent are simply ignored, because the user’s brains tune them out. Another report suggested that over 60 percent of the clicks on mobile banners are accidental. Imagine the wasted resources behind that! Now, when you put your marketer’s cap on, you will realise that the banner does not even give you enough real estate or creative flexibility to tell your brand story. Plus, you’re putting your brand’s burgeoning message in a box that is not only criminal to your cause, but also something that consumers detest so much that they’re installing ad blockers. It was thus time to bring a paradigm shift in the mobile ad space, decided “Madmen” Lavin Punjabi, Vishal Rupani, and Nikunj Soni.

Developing an Affinity for Ad

Lavin and Vishal, and Nikunj, all in their thirties, were coworkers and buddies at Directi’s Skenzo. And when Lavin left Directi to setup Affinity as an advertising network in 2006, Vishal and Nikunj didn’t hesitate to trust his vision, and got on board, and are now part of the leadership team at Affinity. The three have thus been working together for over eight years, dealing with the daily ups and downs of the adtech business, and have established a Domain Parking network, PPC Network and a Display network.

In 2014, they studied the alarming statistics about the engagement of banner ads, and put their heads together once again to address the mobile ad monetisation problem for their publisher clients. Upon reviewing the state of the industry, they learnt that the biggest source of revenue was banners, but our senses and sensibilities have been numbed to these intrusive presences.

“That was our cue. We wanted to make mobile ads the way millennials would like them. Let’s create ‘storytelling ads for millennials,’” says Lavin. That’s how we began our journey. And when they decided to fill this gap in the mobile advertising space, their investors were kind enough to infuse more capital to fund this idea, saving them a lot of time in getting it up and running under the umbrella of Affinity.

A more vibrant canvas

Coining the name mCanvas for this brand new entity, the platform empowers brands to tell more effective stories. The ads appear on article pages when users are consuming content. They appear in a polite, non-intrusive manner - in two formats, 'scrollers' and 'stickers,' and prompt you to engage. As soon as the user engages, they are led into the brand story using mobile sensors (motion, touch, location, compass, etc.) and features (haptic, camera, microphone, calendar, etc.). The ads are engaging, purely initiated on user choice, and allows users to rate ads on a 5-point rating scale.

For example, for one of India's leading jewellery brands, their in-house creative studio created an augmented reality ad. Users were encouraged to take a selfie and drag and drop various nose pins on the selfie to understand how they would each look. One could even share the selfie on social media to get their friend's opinions. “Compare all of this with a static traditional banner that the brand would otherwise use and users would ignore or accidentally click on,” Lavin notes.

Now creating the ads is one thing, but where will these ads show up? For that, Mcavas partnered up with the largest names in content publishing in the country - The Times group, The Hindu, India Today, specialty websites like SanjeevKapoor, MomJunction, StyleCrazeand a few others. Mcanvas pays the publishers a revenue share of what the advertisers pay them.

“Now technically, that would make us a network. We used this business model to start and prove that the business adds value to the ecosystem. In the next six months, we aim to become an open exchange (for rich storytelling ads), facilitating transactions between advertisers and publishers with complete transparency on pricing,” says Lavin, clarifying.

Paradigm shifts all the way

Advertisers typically pay in CPM - Cost Per 1,000 impressions, or CPC - Cost Per Click. But, Lavin feels that these models are flawed. “Paying on CPM means that 73 percent of your budget is paid for banners, which are not viewable. Paying on CPC means that 60 percent of your budget is wasted on accidental clicks. To solve this problem, we created a new metric called Cost Per Engagement, where the advertiser only pays when we engage a user on mobile for over three seconds,” he explains.

They started out officially in October 2014 by building all the relevant pieces of tech – until they grappled with a crucial decision: building for mobile web or mobile apps. At that time mobile app was huge and most ad budgets were allocated to mobile app. “We knew that the best environment for our storytelling ads was on article pages. But, most article pages were on mobile web. We decided to put our bets on mobile web and built our tech around that,” he says.

In the first month, they ran dummy campaigns for brands and paid the publisher partners out of their own funds. The first few campaigns set the foundation and answered the fundamental question about its engagement power - for engage, they did! 57x higher than standard mobile banner ads, claims Lavin.

Impressions and engagements

They now sold their concept to a few brands and agencies, shipped a 'quick and dirty’ piece of code to publish a pilot with the content partners by January 2015.

By February 2015, they got their first paid campaign. There on out, it’s been a constant improvement cycle on the product - from targeting, cross device compatibility, sensor integrations into creatives, responsive ads, UX. “Big data analytics kept feeding us answers to what consumers wanted,” he explains.

“It’s an enormous task to get a Rs 1,500-crore market to take note that one of the biggest spends has some holes in it. But we’re fortunate that we have been able to speak to decision makers at various brands and sway their opinions,” he explains.

A milestone in their journey was getting telecom major Idea on board, just a year after they started. They came up with the idea of incorporating a live slot game into the ad, allowing users to win and share data packages. The campaign delivered stunning results and also helped the brand win an award.

Up and up

They now reach out to over 60 million connected, mobile content-consuming Indians. And from selling one lakh engagements in the first quarter, they are now in their eighth quarter selling over a 10 lakh. Consumers have rated their ads 4/5 on an average, and have been spending between 10 to 30 seconds on them.

By the end of this year, they will have clocked Rs 5 crore in total sales revenue.

The market size in India is Rs 1500 crore, and is expected to grow to Rs 9,500 crore by 2020. They are benchmarking themselves against international names like Celtra, Kargo and Opera MediaWorks.

Plans to scale up include enabling the programmatic buying and selling of this inventory via their own marketplace. And on the supply side, the team intends to give the publishers access to a marketplace, which allows them to control pricing and the ads that show up on their sites.

Apart from that, they have signed a partnership with IAS media in Dubai, which will take their business to the GCC market.

Reference : https://yourstory.com/2016/12/mcanvas/

The Zoomcar storyline — highlighting entrepreneurial lessons of 2016

“You don’t have to be rich to travel well.” – Eugene Fodor

Zoomcar thoroughly pays testament to this saying. Founded in 2012 by David Back and Greg Moran, Zoomcar has come a long way, allowing you to easily hire a self drive car in India.

2016, year in review and milestones reached:

This year, Zoomcar closed $25 million in a Series B investment round. Ford Smart Mobility LLC, a subsidiary of Ford Motor Company, led the round, alongside existing investors Sequoia Capital, Nokia Growth Partners (NGP), Venture Souq, Cyber Carrier and Empire Angels.

Zoomcar expanded its services in several cities, including Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Delhi NCR, Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Mumbai, Mysore, Pune and Vizag, while adding new cars, new vehicle pickup points and home delivery options for consumer convenience.

Well into its fourth year of operations, Zoomcar has witnessed a growing demand from across India, and has doubled bookings in the past year, with a fleet of nearly 2,500 cars, over 75 percent occupancy and two million app downloads. Over 80 percent of the company’s bookings occur on the mobile app, and its users have traveled over 120 million kms to more than 50,000 destinations across the country. In the next three to six months, Zoomcar plans to expand product lines, and will expand from the current 14 Indian cities to over 25 cities countries.

Learnings from 2016:

Greg Moran, CEO and Co-Founder, Zoomcar, told YourStory, “This time round, we had a real business that was really scaling; we really understand the customers’ needs, We’re still learning, but we have our business model and direction locked down. When you’ve got to scale up a company, you’ve got idea risk, market risk and global economic risk, and then you’ve got execution risks. Car ownership can be a major drain given the initial cost of the vehicle, leasing, financing, insurance, parking, fuel, taxes, and other expenses. So, Zoomcar built ZAP to enable people to share their cars. Zoomcar is building platforms that connect people, enabling them to drive economic value from assets they own and connecting them with others that are interested in accessing, renting, or benefitting from those assets. With ZAP, a customer who buys a new car can enjoy driving it, and while they aren’t using it, can earn money from it. The car can be shared with verified Zoomcar customers: community members, office colleagues, friends and perhaps the next door neighbor who waters your plants while you are on vacation!”

He further added, “A speeding alert system enabled via an in-car ‘smart device’ helps the company monitor the speed of its vehicles in real-time and penalise over-speeding customers to promote safer driving behaviour. With the recent advent of novel Bluetooth-based hardware tied to the OBD (on board diagnostics) port, Zoomcar monitors the driver performance by assessing braking, steering, fuel efficiency, and much more. This intelligence is then pushed back to the driver in real-time to ensure the individual drives safer for the rest of his trip. Thus, penalties can be imposed on customers exhibiting certain types of rash behaviour, like inappropriate clutch riding or harsh acceleration. This system helps Zoomcar leverage objective criteria to rate drivers, thereby improving driver/passenger safety and the overall health of the vehicle. Despite these proactive technology and operations measures taken by many of these new age self-drive companies, the reality is that both the state and central governments lag greatly in doing their respective parts. This is where the next great leap forward within road safety will hopefully come from in the months and years ahead.”

Reference:https://yourstory.com/2016/12/zoomcar-storyline/