Faiz Shaikh's Blog

There is a lot of talk about excelling and fulfilling our potential. But how does one use this potential to get ahead? One of my favorite examples of such situations are movies like ‘Back to the Future’. There was a time when our imagination exceeded our grasp. When we thought of a future, we thought of flying cars, self-fitting shoes, dynamic waiter bots, etc. Where do we stand in the line of these imaginations? We have these, but not in the exact sense of the imagined idea.

Somewhere along the line we stopped imagining ideas and transformations and started imagining features. In a consumption-driven world, our breakthroughs have the shortest life-span in history. Previously, a life of successful innovation could earn you immortality in history. But now, an equally innovative life would barely qualify you for a footnote. We are too focused on creating extravagance (read: iPhone X) rather than creating qualified and lasting applications of technology.

The day isn’t far when there would be Nobel Prizes given out for the best mobile app.

To put it in simple terms, in my view, we are stuck in mediocrity and sustenance. Even in our lives, we move day-to-day, week-to-week, and year-to-year towards a commitment of earning as much as we can spend. As a species, it’s time we regressed to simple times when we dreamed, we created, and we marveled. Not the time of now where we research, we market, we marvel, and then we create.

How does this non-sequitur rant fit in the average daily life? It’s, again, very simple.

Open Your Mind to the Possibilities of Imagination

We must inspire our minds to once again lift our imaginations beyond our grasp. User engagement, design, and interface is all fair and great, but how are we using these enhanced features to drive progress? We need to open our mind to the overarching potential of the applications of our technology. If social media and interactions are a hit, we should use it to create a discourse and train our youth. If transport aggregation is bearing fruit, then rather than setting up premium services, we should partner with global governments to assist with disaster relief. Collective networking through these aggregated cars can create a self-sensing traffic control system. We have the capacity and the technology, it’s just that we don’t know how to monetize it, and hence it’s set aside.

Daily Tip: We should search for deep insights and applications within our work. It might be a sales call, but we need to open our mind to the possibility of pushing it to a collaboration. We must actively think in terms of applications and progress.

Observe and Boost Your Perception

Get up early in the morning, meditate or exercise. Observe your surroundings. If you are home, look at the things you have around you. Your phone, your television, your table, your clock, your door, and furthermore. Have you given a thought to the functionalities of any of these simple or complex machines? How do they work? We know what to do with a phone, but do we what happens within its structure? Do we care how it’s processor functions and structures data? We are used to taking technology and utilities for granted. We assume someone will make our work easier, eventually, in some way or the other. It might be networking, or simply playing. There is always an easier way to do it. But we forget, that by taking the easier way, we are missing out on the learning the harder way gave us.

Daily Tip: Interacting with your surroundings. Ask questions. Keep learning. Keep trying to find out how things work, and why they are what they are. The more you observe, the more you absorb, the more you learn, the more you perceive, the more you aspire, and even more, do you imagine. Eventually, your imagination would exceed your daily grasp, guiding you to greatness.

Apply Whatever You Learn

There are times when we realize that we have enough information and insight about a specific topic. We all reach that stage. We consider ourselves subject matter experts, even mavericks of industries. But then what?

“Can we go to the next level, please?”

What lies beyond our knowledge and our intelligence? Application! One of my greatest fears is that when I pass on (not validating or denying heaven or hell) and reach a divine judgment, I would be questioned about my abilities. When I was so gifted, why didn’t I do anything with it? Why did I waste it? Therefore, every day I make it a point to create something new, to apply my knowledge to make something unique. Just like writing this article. If this article helps someone and makes them think, that would be a good application of my mind.

We get stuck on what’s working and what’s great ‘right now’. But the world doesn’t exist in the present, it exists in the future. You lived your present when you prepared for it in the past. Now, in the present, you are creating your future every minute. We need to raise our level and take our mind to the next level.

Daily Tip: Active Learning. Don’t just learn to learn. Learn in terms of applications. When you learn something new or think of an innovation, simultaneously think of its multiple applications. Make a mental map of everything (or every person) your thought or idea could affect. Create a plan for yourself from ideation to execution, and then push yourself to realize it.

It’s our responsibility to ensure that our children are proud of the world we leave for them. Would it merely be a world full of consumables, or would it be a world of wonderment and delight?

7 Must-Knows for any Entrepreneur Starting-up

Having an idea and running with it, is the central focal point of being an entrepreneur. It is essentially what sets an entrepreneur apart from the rest. We all have thoughts, some are ground-breaking. However, we never execute them to the extent where they become breakthroughs. Perhaps due to a lack of will or a lack of vision, we tend to give up on these ideas before they bear fruits.

The first thing one should know when building on a startup is that no idea is a ‘bad-idea’.

The second thing one should know is to filter out all such non-breakthrough-generating ideas.

1. Create Your ‘Ground-Breaking’ Idea

So, you have your ground-breaking idea. Now how do you begin to transform this idea into a breakthrough? First, make sure your idea IS ‘ground-breaking’. One thing you cannot have at the beginning of your entrepreneurship journey (or ever), is to be complacent. Many startups stumble at this point.

They create a ‘ground-breaking’ idea but fail to create the proper market fit for it.

The concept or product should solve a real-world problem. There is no point in structuring a solution that even your target audience finds hard to comprehend. More importantly, as suggested, the value-add should be clear and concise.

2. Unleash the Potential of Your Founding Team

With an idea, the other essential part of your business is the team. You need people who have the talent, caliber, and hunger to crave success, validation, and glory in their lives. We all want these things but some of us have the explicit desire to rush towards them at super speed. If you visualize the eventual growth and prosperity of your business, you should channelize that energy into your team.

Entering any market is tough, you must grow at double the speed just to catch up with the preset players.

Sometimes it just comes down to ‘who-wants-it more’.

As a leader, you must unleash this need to be the best from within your team. Each founding team member would leave a strong mark on how your business functions from there on. Choose wisely and direct with perfection.

3. Test it Thoroughly! Test Your Solution Across Multiple Stakeholders

Identify multiple (unique) use cases for each of your features. Each use case has their own pattern and style of usage. Collate the information from all stakeholders to track the most optimized usage pattern and then streamline that as a pillar style on which other usage patterns can wrap around.

Each stakeholder would have their own insights. These insights, at each market spurt, is like gold-dust. Always test, and test thoroughly. Each speck of information or insight would help you better your solution. Think about each use case and the feasibility of your solution within those constraints. Therefore, comprehensive is a word we use a lot in feature and product development.

Remember, any stone unturned at testing phase would eventually become a large boulder requiring considerable efforts to rectify.

Similarly, each minute aspect covered at testing would speed up the go-to-market time and eventually add to your value and differentiation as compared to competitors.

4. Choose Your Mentors Wisely

As a leader, you must be decisive, assertive, motivated, and inspiring. To be all this at all times, you need to, from time-to-time, look to your mentors for wisdom. This is where your choice for a mentor could mean a significant push towards growth, or random circumventing strategies that waste time and money. Choose your mentors wisely as they would guide you when there is a need. This choice is extremely relative as a mentor would have a different effect on one person as compared to another.

Your mentor should be able to push you to realize your whole potential.

5. Know Your Market Well and Respond to its Demands

Along with having comprehensive testing for your solutions and infusing ambition, wonder, & desire in your team, you must know your market and your competitors completely. Any information gap here might turn into a sudden impediment while your solution is live for your clients.

You must comb over each insight you gained and validate it through multiple sources.

Even when you launch your solution, always keep an ear open for any insight that you could flag as an adaptive change. The quicker you pick up on this, the more time you have to implement the necessary changes. Furthermore, the more such market insights you gather, the higher is the potential for reinvention within your solution.

6. Ride Through the Growth Inflection Point (Test the Extent of Your Risk Appetite)

Assuming that the first version of your solution was well received (and if this assumption is correct, you are one of a lucky few), you must assess the potential for growth and risk. There is a clear balance that needs to be set here. Growth vs Risk. Victory goes to the valiant, but so does the crashes. There is always a risk when you move at high speeds. But you need to know which routes to take. Calculated risks are the name of the game. Assess each risk point to understand their cost-benefit ratio and then take an impartial decision about the same.

There will be a point where you would hit a growth inflection point when you become self-sustaining and your risks smoothen out and diversify. Know that point.

Don’t take a post-inflection risk in your pre-inflection days, and vice-versa.

7. Don’t Look Back, Other Than to Learn

Embrace Your Achievement, With Humility. Escape the struggling mentality and accept the new challenge of being an industry leader. The industry expects you to set the standards, go ahead and charge up your company to consistently perform at that level and exceed those standards.

Now you know the mindset you must follow to be successful. But you should keep this mind, the more you grow, the higher would be the industry expectations from you. So, always keep learning, growing, and achieving. The industry, then, would follow you.

When this happens, you know you have effectively transformed from an entrepreneur into a thought leader.

Previously published on my LinkedIn Pulse.

The year made news with big consolidation of Uber Eats within Zomato. Why should this acquisition of Uber Eats (where Uber took in 10% of Zomato in exchange – at $3.5 billion overall value) matter to us?

Some say it was because we are a discount-driven market. Is this a fair assessment? Companies like Amazon, Flipkart, even Reliance Jio are burning money to gain a significant hold on the market. It’s all or nothing. The old marketing and consumer behavior logic dictate that we create demand through sweepstakes, push out the competition with discounts or service standards, etc. It’s all about making and remaking the market.

There are three factors to this so-called ‘discount-driven market’.

1. Scale and depth – India has become the ‘Golden bird – Sone ki Chidiya’ once again. First it was the spices. Now it’s the youth. We were the suppliers then. We are the consumers now. Companies view this as an untapped zone with millions of potential new customers being added every month or week.

451 million monthly active Internet users (March 2019)  – that’s India, in second position, after China. The internet and smartphone user penetration has opened up opportunities in retail, food delivery, home services, and all types of entertainment.

Its unyielding growth has bought global companies put up billions in India. The consumption patterns are consistent and healthy. They keep moving or extending across demographics, in terms of age, gender, etc. The bell-curve is spreading and rising.

The icing is growing and successful middle-class achievers. This adds an inherent or intrinsic aspiration value and disposable income.

2. Competition – Since the market is ripe for the taking, companies come-up with layered and structured solutions. Either they pack their offerings with assets and values, or they strip it down to make it worth more – ‘for each paise on the rupee’. Companies like Amazon went the first way. Companies like Reliance Jio (and all others in the broadband wars) went the second way.

At the end of the day, it’s an equation. You put in x amount for y months to reach a point where the results move over the lovely ‘inflection point’. Let’s call this estimated market share value to be z. So as long is xy

3. Replicability – India is unique marketplace. It’s a compliment in terms of our unity and culture. Even though we seem diverse and (sometimes) at odds with each other. At a base level, we are quite similar. Religion or language, we share similar values and drives.

This helps companies and marketers to ride on or capture common needs quickly. Even a seemingly niche need could be potential scaled-up to a generic level (with the right placement). That’s why an average Indian smartphone has at least one app for every basic and niche need. The consumption, and its replicability, is almost universal.

So if it’s such a ripe market, where do companies like Uber Eats go wrong? Here are some Myths some of us readily accept.

1. Myth – India is a discount-driven economy



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Everyone loves discounts. It’s a time-tested tactic. However, if a multi-billion dollar valued company pins all their hopes on this single aspect, then they can’t blame the target audience.

India is ‘not’ an exclusively discount-driven economy. We are terribly loyal to brands, just look at craze of some of our films. We have value-driven and not discount-driven. It’s just the marketers (especially social-media) that tend to take the short-cut for higher engagement with discounts.

It’s not the market’s fault that it became so desirable for anyone and everyone in the world. Since the Indian market is spoilt for choice, and since the backlog of competition keeps piling up, the companies get in a hyper-FOMO. It’s pure and basic game theory.

Indians are just making hay till the sun shines. Give us good and consistent value, we would respond.

2. Myth – India is emotion-driven, not intelligence-driven



[image error]Taj Mahal and the ‘Great Indian Stereotype’

It’s totally wrong and extremely irresponsible to extrapolate ‘sensitive’ to emotions to ‘ driven’ by emotions. Not by a long shot. India, right now, is far more adaptable in terms of technology, concepts and experiences than any other (top market) nations.

The learning curve is short, almost non-existent. It doesn’t matter which demographic you are targeting. Whatever you throw at them, they’ll turn around and say, you got more? Or in Captain America’s words – ‘I can do this all day’.

[image error]Captain America – Civil War

This is the core problem which makes an ‘Uber Eats’ throw in their towel. Remember elusive, ‘Inflection point’. In a graph this is the point where the slope of the curve substantially changes, ideally from a convex to concave moving upwards.

[image error]Take-off at ‘inflection point – Image source – Marketing Insider

As per the aforementioned equation, xy

This means that the ‘advantage’ or ‘edge’ you thought you had wouldn’t last for more than a few months. Pretty soon, the market would make it the new norm and you would be at the same point you started from (in terms of market share). You need to move fast, building on your work continuously.

For example, mega-e-commerce sales were a novelty once, a long time back. Now they are so normal, people take it as a fact of state and life.

3. Myth – India decides and buys as the world buys

This is something that not many would accept. The phrase goes, think global act local. However, it doesn’t show in the actions of anyone. What’s the point of an Alexa in Indian life? Companies consider India as an extended market to the United States of America. It’s not.

If a company can’t understand the basic decision patterns of the Indian market, they shouldn’t complain if they lose on it. In recent memory, the only company that successfully cracked it was awarded likewise. Paytm. The company solved a very basic problem, without the fanfare of the world, and the market gulped it up.

Don’t bring in global products and try to fool us to buy them. We would buy them, but you won’t make much of a difference. Come here and develop solutions to the local problems.

The other major drawback is that very few companies understand how a household spends money. That’s why a DMart is successful where other stationary retailers fall by the wayside. Indians diligently plan their monthly budget. They are more than one decision partners. They give a brand some breathing space, as a trial, before they switch to another. It’s a very empirical process. Almost like business to business (b2b) procurement. Value-driven and smart.

Where did Uber Eats fail? Not in many places.



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They had a good plan with good focus on value. They became unintended victims of an unforgiving market. The ‘inflection point’ kept moving ahead till a point where they (food delivery companies) have burned more $3 billion to sustain or capture a decent share. The point, however keeps moving due to fast and insatiable adoption rates. Zomato and Swiggy are stagnating in valuation with investors keeping their burned hands safe. Ola dipped in the food delivery, twice, market to fail.

In a way it’s good as Uber faced heavy losses in the past year. It’s important for them to not cut corners within their primary business.

What’s the takeaway?

The Indian market is a siren song. It’s sweet and enticing. But only the brave and fast dare move close. At its core –  it’s very tough.

If a company, Indian or global wants to win here, then India should be awarded a complete entity in terms of marketing, business development, and most importantly, product development. Don’t, simply, have your CEOs visit us once a year. If it’s not your focus, it would stop you dead in your tracks. 

References for stats:

LivemintYourStoryEconomic TimesBizEnglish (cover image)

“If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.”

Came across this raw and hitting idea online, tracked it back to an Andrew Lewis who’s become famous with it, being mass-retweeted.

If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold.

— Andrew Lewis (@andlewis) September 13, 2010

It’s not a unique thought, we all know it. But the articulation made it extremely relatable and easy to remember. In a world where distractions are a business, it’s nice to find such simple sentences that hit home and transform into heuristics.

I went a step deeper and found this video published back in 1973 by Richard Serra. It’s become established art, being hosted by MoMA on their website.

“The product of Television, Commercial Television, is the Audience.
Television delivers people to an advertiser.
There is no such thing as mass media in the United States except for television.
Mass media means that a medium can deliver masses of people.
Commercial television delivers 20 million people a minute.
In commercial broadcasting the viewer pays for the privilege of having himself sold.
It is the consumer who is consumed.
You are the product of t.v.
You are delivered to the advertiser, who is the customer.
He consumes you.
The viewer is not responsible for programming——
You are the end product.
You are the end product delivered En Masse to the advertiser.
You are the product of t.v.”

Darting back from the time to now. ‘Consumers is being consumed’ rings disappointingly true even now. Watch the entire video to see how Richard extends his concepts to news and the entire media state. The entire encapsulation in a sarcastic television outlook adds incredible flavor, and forewarning.

It’s just a point of quiet contemplation, for someone to absorb or reject the given proposition. But, nevertheless its important to know what the outside-in view of our world is.

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Growing up, there was a time when I wrote to my distant relatives. Went over to the local post office to send it out. It was an exciting experience. Even the later part of waiting for the ‘possible’ reply was thrilling. It was a neat moment wrapped in a little envelope. It was quite convenient for the time, something my parents kept highlighting. In their day, even getting the word out through telegram was a process. I felt happy about the time I lived in.

And now, this. It took a generation for communication to reach a week’s long wait for a letter. Now it seems like the time-to-something keeps reducing every 2 years. Everything is instantaneous. It is perplexing how something as desirable and fictional as the speed of delivery has become a dire need.

So, going back to the point…

…where I used to wait a week for a response, there were some things that were noteworthy. Since it wasn’t a two-way communique, I used to be creative in writing a sort of monologue. Writing those letters gave me perspective about my own life. We were always ‘fine’ in our letters. It was a magical time. I suppose there were letters exchanged among other people that weren’t so joyful. But there still kept the wonder alive.

Wonder when the person would receive the letter, wonder when they would write back, wonder what it would be. This wonder filled me with excitement. Excitement and longing, the basic ingredients of desire. More often than not, the wait was justly rewarded.

Now, we take the wait as a thing of the past. It’s not. It’s a part of human nature. The only wait right now is used by top marketing companies to build up excitement before a launch. But even that is sometimes fueled by frenzy, frenzy from a collective. The wait is agony, not pure and exciting. Rewards then have to work a very tight line. Even when they are positive, they tend to be fleeting.

It was bound to happen.

We have a lot of tech but not much to do with it. We may be content, but we are told we shouldn’t be. Patience is no longer a virtue. Impatience is celebrated. We want instant coffee, instant rides, instant payments, instant access to everything that we want, instant food or product deliveries, instant validation, instant redressals. Everything is ‘needed’ instantly. Impatience, in a consumer-driven world, is taken as a right.

It’s not just the consumers. Companies are impatient to the point that they are no longer any real developments. What’s the big difference between a smartphone you bought last year to what you have bought now? Companies don’t want to spend too much time making great products, they want to play on consumer impatience. They are banking on it.

Is the consumer really impatient? We are. At least on the outer layer.

Ever heard of the phrase, ‘in a New York Minute’?

Johnny Carson once said a New York Minute was the time it took a driver to honk behind you when the traffic light goes green. Relatable isn’t it? A New York Minute is the time we wish for every possibility, every challenge, every task, and every opportunity placed in front of us, to fully resolve.

We are all running, and we are told to run faster. We believe, if we don’t we will be left behind. The city streets are then just a race track where people are competing against one another. It’s not out of malice. They would occasionally stop by to help a person in need. But they would get back to running, making up for lost time.

It’s all fine up till now. Yes, life sometimes is a race for everyone and we must run to get where we want. But the impatience of the current generation, or for that matter, everyone in this era, is direr than that. We don’t really know where we are running to. We are conditioned to run without a clear destination.

We run to earn, we earn to spend.

We want to be the richest people, but we really don’t know what we want to do with it. We want the biggest houses, we want the best gadgets, we want all the amenities derived out a flawed system which runs on itself. Some of the luxuries we yearn for are totally nonsensical.

When I was young, I wanted to be an astrophysicist, but I hated the math. Soon I realized that it’s the unsolved mysteries up in space I loved. So, I became a writer. I went after it and now every work day is fulfilling. I am not running. I just write as it comes. And even when I run, it’s after an idea, a thought, even a branding relation (as I tell brand stories for a living). I don’t run to get a new iPhone or the latest shoes. I was and am insulated to the impatience out there. But I don’t know how long that would last. Lack of impatience now is cause for social banishment.

A New York Minute. It’s the time it takes between the manifestation of our desires and the sudden impatience we get to have it right at that moment. There’s no wait time. It’s conditioned in us now.

Instant gratification is dangerous to the concept of evolution.

The wait, the nurturing of our desires gave us control over our thoughts and emotions. Waiting develops character and personality. That’s the part in our society which I believe is worst hit. Impatience has made character development a rarity.

As a people, we would always search for aspiring character traits, but since impatience has redressed our standards to the lowest historical points, we assume many deceiving character traits as positive, just because they are easily emulated. Gone are the true role models, we are all Beiberians, trolling Instagram for hashtags that make us feel relevant as we run.

—

Is it really that bad? If you skimmed to the end, I will leave an analogy here, so it makes more sense.

When you take animals out of their natural habitat, condition them to jump through hoops for treats, that’s the world they will come to know and understand. When you put them back in the wild, they won’t survive. They didn’t develop the necessary skills.

That’s what is it with us now. The instant gratification we have become so used to, addicted to, has subjugated our instincts and intellect. How many of us can make it our own without this nonsensical system of validations around us? It’s time to unplug, to wake up.

—

If you didn’t skim through, there’s still hope for humanity. Wake up as many people as you can and perhaps the next generation would have a fighting chance.

Posted on BizReport by Kristina Knight

Thought there has been some clapback against social media in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in the spring, most consumers continue to go to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others for their news, fun family/friend pictures, and in many cases to find new product information. That, in part, is why Facebook and Instagram are key for brands needing the help of influencers.

New data out from CPC Strategy finds that two social networks, in particular, are key for brand engagement: Facebook and Instagram. Their 2018 Influencer Marketing Report found that most consumers (70%) say they are “most likely” to hear about new products or services from posts on Facebook; just over 10% say the same about Instagram. Facebook and Instagram lead the way for consumers looking for new products. What’s more nearly half (40%) of those surveyed say they “cannot tell” if posts are sponsored or not, which can be helpful because while many people scroll past blatant ads, if the posts don’t look like ads consumers are more likely to engage rather than scroll.

“If our Influencer Marketing study had one underlying theme, it’s that Facebook is the king of Influencer Marketing, and Instagram the Queen,” said Nii Ahene, COO and co-founder of CPC Strategy. “Nearly 70% of our survey respondents claimed they’re more likely to hear about new products, services, and events on Facebook than anywhere else. And the most impressive part? Users know they’ll see streams of products and events in their feeds, and they’re coming back for more – making Facebook (and Instagram, coming in at 11%) the prime location to invest in influencer marketing.”

So, do influencers need to be celebrities? Not according to the report, which found that about 80% of consumers feel influencers are simply social media users with many followers who promote goods/services through their social media channels. Researchers also found that about half (44%) of those surveyed “are open to” recommendations made by influencers.

Just under one-third (28%) said paid promotions are “out of place” in social media news feeds.

The full CPC Strategy report can be accessed here.

 

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Softbank agreed to sell its whole stake at Flipkart (21%) fetching in around $4 billion, up from its initial $2.5 billion investment in the e-commerce giant. What does this mean for the e-commerce landscape in one of the fastest growing global markets?

E-commerce in India is set to hit $64 billion by 2020 and $200 billion by 2026. Experts suggest that it would surpass the United States as the second largest e-commerce market by 2034. This e-commerce push would also boost the Internet economy to $250 million by 2020, doubling its current value. Internet users would increase more than 70% to reach 829 million by 2021, carried by mostly Urban users and fueled by a fast-growing rural base.

The scenario is enough to tempt the best of them. Tencent is said it would hold on its Flipkart share even after the Walmart deal with hopes that the valuation would increase much further. But more importantly, it’s a foot-in for them in this growing economy.

Softbank is likely to pump their surplus earnings into Paytm Mall, further opening the market. A recent study found that Amazon India is valued at $16 billion with possibility growth to $70 billion by 2027 (gross merchandise value).

The report by Citi’s senior analyst Mark May and Hao Yan said, “We believe the India e-commerce market will grow at a 21% CAGR over the next 10 years to $202 billion, that Amazon could capture 35% of this market and that the company could generate more than $10 billion in revenue and nearly $1.5 billion in FCF (free cash flow) by 2027,”

These figures are more satisfactory than exciting since Amazon pumped in about a $1 billion in the Indian e-commerce market.

What to expect as an e-commerce consumer?

The key to making all this interest and investments valuable is to capture as much of the market as possible. One way to do this is to cut prices and give heavy discounts. The sales events have worked well across the globe. But it’s not just about the pricing. These stalwarts have realized that the South Asian markets have matured. Consumers are looking for better and consistent delivery experience.

It’s about quality value for money purchases delivered in a timely and pleasant manner. The solution to this is quality order fulfillment driven by tech-enabled logistics. Amazon has upped its total fulfillment centers in India to 67 and increasing its storage capacity by 1.5 times. Flipkart opened a state-of-the-art fulfillment center to scale its own delivery experience.

What lies at the crux here is simple. Discounts might bring in the consumers, but logistics optimization would keep them. Discounts are a double-edged sword as the value created isn’t sustainable. Consumers might just shift to the next big player giving the bigger discount. Moreover, they would be disheartened and disillusioned when their discounted orders come to them in a shabby manner. Great delivery experience is what would make them keep on coming back. It’s the only way that these players can sustain in the system for a long time.

The problem is that logistics is often a cost-guzzler. It takes up about 14% of the total cost of the goods. Unplanned and surprising fluctuations in logistics movement can have a huge impact on the cost structure. It’s critical to not just scale logistics, but to optimize it. When companies know exactly which routes and schedules work best for them giving them highest efficiency, lowest costs, and fastest deliveries, it brings in consistency and dependability. It also gives them more confidence to plan their discounts well.

A closing thought, we know that faster deliveries are the norm, but how fast is fast? It won’t take time for same-day deliveries to become a necessity, and then two-hour ones. To walk with the times and customer expectations, logistics optimization is necessary. If not now, then it might be too late.

There is a lot of talk about excelling and fulfilling our potential. But how does one use this potential to get ahead? One of my favorite examples of such situations are movies like ‘Back to the Future’. There was a time when our imagination exceeded our grasp. When we thought of a future, we thought of flying cars, self-fitting shoes, dynamic waiter bots, etc. Where do we stand in the line of these imaginations? We have these, but not in the exact sense of the imagined idea.

Somewhere along the line we stopped imagining ideas and transformations and started imagining features. In a consumption-driven world, our breakthroughs have the shortest life-span in history. Previously, a life of successful innovation could earn you immortality in history. But now, an equally innovative life would barely qualify you for a footnote. We are too focused on creating extravagance (read: iPhone X) rather than creating qualified and lasting applications of technology.

The day isn’t far when there would be Nobel Prizes given out for the best mobile app.

To put it in simple terms, in my view, we are stuck in mediocrity and sustenance. Even in our lives, we move day-to-day, week-to-week, and year-to-year towards a commitment of earning as much as we can spend. As a species, it’s time we regressed to simple times when we dreamed, we created, and we marveled. Not the time of now where we research, we market, we marvel, and then we create.

How does this non-sequitur rant fit in the average daily life? It’s, again, very simple.

Open Your Mind to the Possibilities of Imagination

We must inspire our minds to once again lift our imaginations beyond our grasp. User engagement, design, and interface is all fair and great, but how are we using these enhanced features to drive progress? We need to open our mind to the overarching potential of the applications of our technology. If social media and interactions are a hit, we should use it to create a discourse and train our youth. If transport aggregation is bearing fruit, then rather than setting up premium services, we should partner with global governments to assist with disaster relief. Collective networking through these aggregated cars can create a self-sensing traffic control system. We have the capacity and the technology, it’s just that we don’t know how to monetize it, and hence it’s set aside.

Daily Tip: We should search for deep insights and applications within our work. It might be a sales call, but we need to open our mind to the possibility of pushing it to a collaboration. We must actively think in terms of applications and progress.

Observe and Boost Your Perception

Get up early in the morning, meditate or exercise. Observe your surroundings. If you are home, look at the things you have around you. Your phone, your television, your table, your clock, your door, and furthermore. Have you given a thought to the functionalities of any of these simple or complex machines? How do they work? We know what to do with a phone, but do we what happens within its structure? Do we care how it’s processor functions and structures data? We are used to taking technology and utilities for granted. We assume someone will make our work easier, eventually, in some way or the other. It might be networking, or simply playing. There is always an easier way to do it. But we forget, that by taking the easier way, we are missing out on the learning the harder way gave us.

Daily Tip: Interacting with your surroundings. Ask questions. Keep learning. Keep trying to find out how things work, and why they are what they are. The more you observe, the more you absorb, the more you learn, the more you perceive, the more you aspire, and even more, do you imagine. Eventually, your imagination would exceed your daily grasp, guiding you to greatness.

Apply Whatever You Learn

There are times when we realize that we have enough information and insight about a specific topic. We all reach that stage. We consider ourselves subject matter experts, even mavericks of industries. But then what?

“Can we go to the next level, please?”

What lies beyond our knowledge and our intelligence? Application! One of my greatest fears is that when I pass on (not validating or denying heaven or hell) and reach a divine judgment, I would be questioned about my abilities. When I was so gifted, why didn’t I do anything with it? Why did I waste it? Therefore, every day I make it a point to create something new, to apply my knowledge to make something unique. Just like writing this article. If this article helps someone and makes them think, that would be a good application of my mind.

We get stuck on what’s working and what’s great ‘right now’. But the world doesn’t exist in the present, it exists in the future. You lived your present when you prepared for it in the past. Now, in the present, you are creating your future every minute. We need to raise our level and take our mind to the next level.

Daily Tip: Active Learning. Don’t just learn to learn. Learn in terms of applications. When you learn something new or think of an innovation, simultaneously think of its multiple applications. Make a mental map of everything (or every person) your thought or idea could affect. Create a plan for yourself from ideation to execution, and then push yourself to realize it.

It’s our responsibility to ensure that our children are proud of the world we leave for them. Would it merely be a world full of consumables, or would it be a world of wonderment and delight?

7 Must-Knows for any Entrepreneur Starting-up

Having an idea and running with it, is the central focal point of being an entrepreneur. It is essentially what sets an entrepreneur apart from the rest. We all have thoughts, some are ground-breaking. However, we never execute them to the extent where they become breakthroughs. Perhaps due to a lack of will or a lack of vision, we tend to give up on these ideas before they bear fruits.

The first thing one should know when building on a startup is that no idea is a ‘bad-idea’.

The second thing one should know is to filter out all such non-breakthrough-generating ideas.

 

1. Create Your ‘Ground-Breaking’ Idea

So, you have your ground-breaking idea. Now how do you begin to transform this idea into a breakthrough? First, make sure your idea IS ‘ground-breaking’. One thing you cannot have at the beginning of your entrepreneurship journey (or ever), is to be complacent. Many startups stumble at this point.

They create a ‘ground-breaking’ idea but fail to create the proper market fit for it.

The concept or product should solve a real-world problem. There is no point in structuring a solution that even your target audience finds hard to comprehend. More importantly, as suggested, the value-add should be clear and concise.

2. Unleash the Potential of Your Founding Team

With an idea, the other essential part of your business is the team. You need people who have the talent, caliber, and hunger to crave success, validation, and glory in their lives. We all want these things but some of us have the explicit desire to rush towards them at super speed. If you visualize the eventual growth and prosperity of your business, you should channelize that energy into your team.

Entering any market is tough, you must grow at double the speed just to catch up with the preset players.

Sometimes it just comes down to ‘who-wants-it more’.

As a leader, you must unleash this need to be the best from within your team. Each founding team member would leave a strong mark on how your business functions from there on. Choose wisely and direct with perfection.

3. Test it Thoroughly! Test Your Solution Across Multiple Stakeholders

Identify multiple (unique) use cases for each of your features. Each use case has their own pattern and style of usage. Collate the information from all stakeholders to track the most optimized usage pattern and then streamline that as a pillar style on which other usage patterns can wrap around.

Each stakeholder would have their own insights. These insights, at each market spurt, is like gold-dust. Always test, and test thoroughly. Each speck of information or insight would help you better your solution. Think about each use case and the feasibility of your solution within those constraints. Therefore, comprehensive is a word we use a lot in feature and product development.

Remember, any stone unturned at testing phase would eventually become a large boulder requiring considerable efforts to rectify.

Similarly, each minute aspect covered at testing would speed up the go-to-market time and eventually add to your value and differentiation as compared to competitors.

4. Choose Your Mentors Wisely

As a leader, you must be decisive, assertive, motivated, and inspiring. To be all this at all times, you need to, from time-to-time, look to your mentors for wisdom. This is where your choice for a mentor could mean a significant push towards growth, or random circumventing strategies that waste time and money. Choose your mentors wisely as they would guide you when there is a need. This choice is extremely relative as a mentor would have a different effect on one person as compared to another.

Your mentor should be able to push you to realize your whole potential.

5. Know Your Market Well and Respond to its Demands

Along with having comprehensive testing for your solutions and infusing ambition, wonder, & desire in your team, you must know your market and your competitors completely. Any information gap here might turn into a sudden impediment while your solution is live for your clients.

You must comb over each insight you gained and validate it through multiple sources.

Even when you launch your solution, always keep an ear open for any insight that you could flag as an adaptive change. The quicker you pick up on this, the more time you have to implement the necessary changes. Furthermore, the more such market insights you gather, the higher is the potential for reinvention within your solution.

6. Ride Through the Growth Inflection Point (Test the Extent of Your Risk Appetite)

Assuming that the first version of your solution was well received (and if this assumption is correct, you are one of a lucky few), you must assess the potential for growth and risk. There is a clear balance that needs to be set here. Growth vs Risk. Victory goes to the valiant, but so does the crashes. There is always a risk when you move at high speeds. But you need to know which routes to take. Calculated risks are the name of the game. Assess each risk point to understand their cost-benefit ratio and then take an impartial decision about the same.

There will be a point where you would hit a growth inflection point when you become self-sustaining and your risks smoothen out and diversify. Know that point.

Don’t take a post-inflection risk in your pre-inflection days, and vice-versa.

7. Don’t Look Back, Other Than to Learn

Embrace Your Achievement, With Humility. Escape the struggling mentality and accept the new challenge of being an industry leader. The industry expects you to set the standards, go ahead and charge up your company to consistently perform at that level and exceed those standards.

 

Now you know the mindset you must follow to be successful. But you should keep this mind, the more you grow, the higher would be the industry expectations from you. So, always keep learning, growing, and achieving. The industry, then, would follow you.

When this happens, you know you have effectively transformed from an entrepreneur into a thought leader.

 

Previously published on my LinkedIn Pulse.

Multilayered characters and an organic storyline.

Watching the rushes of the latest Avengers: Infinity Wars, I am compelled to ask the tough question. Is it going to live up to the hype? It’s been building up over countless years through the efforts of hundreds, even thousands, of individuals. It has inspired many, many people and has turned old stories into latest legends.

These are the new symbols, the new heroes, the new ideals, the new beliefs, and the new movement. The reception and commentary around Black Panther is nothing short of awakening. A not-embarrassed-non-apologetic rendition of some of the oldest cultures was refreshing. At least within the domain of cinema, the world believes that anything is possible through sheer will and fortitude.

This still doesn’t answer the question; will it live up to the hype?

The expectation is that it would. It sure would. The reason it would is that the elements and characters have grown to such an extent that there are now multiple permutations of interactions among themselves. It is extremely hard for things to not make sense in Infinity Wars unless the Guardians just stumble into conversations with Tony and Thor and are not seen for the rest of the movie. There is not much to lose as the audience is waiting to simply experience grandeur as has been delivered before.

 

So why didn’t Justice League work?

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It didn’t because there was a lack of purpose and meaning to anything they did. Everyone wants to save the world, yes. But it can’t be the sole connector and motivator for a team of such epic proportions. Justice League was like a bunch of kids coming together to play Avengers. There were no layers or depth in any of the characters. They even diminished Diana to a restricted two-dimensional shell, and that’s just bad.

Back to the question in the title of this piece, are you an Avenger or are you the Justice League?

Has your potential been proven over a period of time, creating a wide following and promise where people have become used to superior quality each time you make a move? Has the past successes and achievements become a matter of fact and history, laurels on which you can no longer rest. Have you consistently built yourself into a savior and hero who always does the right thing at the right time? You might be the unsung Hawkeye who keep on trying and doing his or her duty amongst stalwarts, knowing that they are still making a difference. You might be the Black Widow who takes up responsibly despite being aware of physical and mental restrictions. You might be Steve Rogers who knows only to work and perform with a pure soul and noble heart. You might be Tony, who stands up to save campaigns and has the vision to know where things went wrong.

Know your potential and talent, don’t assume it! 

The idea is that the promise of your potential is not under your own control, but you are ready for the challenge, come what may. You know that people would again get used to your success and expect even greater things, with little regard to how such expectations would affect or change you. You still dust yourself off and keep raising standards as you keep working and performing. The hero they need but may not deserve.

Ironically, at this point, it’s important to look at the other side. Do you have so much promise that it simply overwhelms everyone involved? Age-old legends, heroes across generations, but still you don’t know if you are perfect. With Batman and Superman, characters that are so overarching that you don’t need to build them anymore. Do you feel entitled to success? Feel that you deserve it simply because of your pedigree? Does your own potential cut you off from your audience to an extent that your work seems like a disconnected indulgence of hope and ambition without any clear vision or purpose?

These are a lot of words, but you know where your work lies. Have you proven yourself in the world like Nikola Tesla or are you an Edison? Are you a Google or are you Apple? Are you Elon Musk, or are you Travis Kalanick? There are many examples of such gulfs in quality and promise in the world. You must know where you stand to get ahead. Know yourself, know your potential, and then go out and realize it. The world will come to you.