Hello, I am Abhik

And this is my home on the internet. I write about the Digital Marketing | Startups | Travel in no particular order

[abhikb]

New York City views

[abhikb]

Day 1: New York City chronicles

After an almost 18 hours of travel, I landed in the great New York City at 5:15 PM on 21 May, Thursday almost 45 minutes after scheduled arrival. I’ve waited a long time to come to the city that almost everyone I know who has spent time here has told me it is the best ever. 

Landed and got into an Uber Tanaya had sent for me at JFK. Fairly quick exit: first expectation of JFK being a horrible experience was squashed right there. Had a pleasant conversation with the South Korean Uber driver about his life in New York as an immigrant of 10 years. It’s amazing how quickly we were able to relate on a certain level because we were both from another country. He said he wanted to travel through India one day (thanks Eat, Pray, Love, the Beatles and Bollywood). I told him the current temperature of Ahmedabad to which he exclaimed; expectedly. Yes. I was in the United States of America for sure. 

Reached Tanaya’s cosy little place in Astoria which wasn’t too far from the airport. Caught up a bit, had some amazing cookies and a cup of coffee and left before jet lag got the better of me. We were meeting some of my friends (Karan, Himanish and Roshni) in the village. 

We had dinner at a cosy Italian place in the East Village with a fairly passive aggressive owner. He didn’t like much the fact that we were having a good time catching up but a lot of time making the order. He was trying to be as polite about it as possible though.  After walking over to another dessert place, we walked around a bit more. Thoughts on my first day in New York City - it’s as crisp as it’s evening air on a cool, mid-May day. 

[abhikb]

The Bandhej E-commerce Story that could inspire you

The Bandhej online store garnered more than 1,000 visitors on day 1 and get their first order within hours. This is a case study in building an online community

Read my blog post on getting this national apparel retailer off the ground! 

[abhikb]

Everything I Own Fits In One Bag. Here's How (And Why)

The hows and whys of one bag living and its effect on life. #Reblog from Buffer blog (blog.bufferapp.com) written by Leo Widrich (@leowid)

[abhikb]

I traveled to Dubai recently, and making this trip ended a childhood string of imaginary projections of Dubai considering my Father has been making frequent trips on work there ever since I can remember. This city is crazy! I mean that to depict not the just the size and scale of the city, but also the time that it has taken to evolve into this maze of steel, glass and luxury.  Here are some of the misconceptions I had about Dubai that got cleared out with this trip: 1. Dubai is built on someone else’s money. I vaguely knew about this earlier, but Dubai has absolutely no oil and therefore none of the endless stream of cash that one associates with being geographically blessed with one of the world’s scarcest and most widely consumed resources.  It shows amazing vision on the Shaikh Mo’s part to have been able to do this at a time when a city like Abu Dhabi (which has an endless stream of oil money btw) is playing catch up to the branding ace that is Dubai.  2. It has some amazing golf courses. Don’t know how they manage to have a lush green golf course in the middle of a desert, but hey, they have a indoor ski slope here. So they probably didn't think much of creating some world class golf courses with loads of green pastures in the middle of the desert.  3. All those supercar cop car pictures that went viral on a few months ago were just a brilliant PR campaign. They got supercar companies to turn ONE car each into Police cars, and the whole world shared memes about ‘what Police cars in Dubai look like.’ Win.  I must qualify why I call it the ‘city on steroids’ - its because its absolutely magnificent display of what a young, thriving and rich city should be like. It has a vibrant in-flow of different cultures from both the East and West. However, it does make me question how sustainable it is as a lifestyle - both for the people and the city in the long run.  I guess time will tell. Until then, enjoy the party that is Dubai! 

[abhikb]

How Google Works (great deck)

Today we all live and work in the Internet Century, where technology is roiling the business landscape, and the pace of change is only accelerating. In their n…

Nothing resonates the ideas expressed here more than this: the person running the largest e-commerce company in the world started his career as a school teacher. Let's get started on building the future! 

[abhikb]

Just a trip to Cambodia and Vietnam

This is a memoir of my short trip to the fascinating countries of Cambodia and Vietnam. I hope to give you some pop hist…

[abhikb]

[abhikb]

How does Google Inbox help us organize better?

[abhikb]

Flipkart leads the way || Repost from Bonoboz

As the dust settles on the major business headline of the last fortnight, we're here to look what this really means for everyone. It's more than just the snazzy headline that the Indian ecosystem need AND deserves. Many different perspectives have poured in within the short week. Amazon is clearly as (if not more) bullish as Flipkart because they took less than 24 hours to announce a massive $2 billion investment of their own.  Kunal Bahl of Snapdeal has given his perspective of it Flipkart being overvalued. "Flipkart leads a $1 Billion round in venture capital" to become among the most valued venture-backed companies in the world. Before the naysayers swoop in to talk about the competition, big-pockets of Amazon and the 100 other challenges (many legitimate) that Flipkart still has to negotiate. But for just for a few minutes, it's worth soaking in what something like this means for Flipkart, and the ecosystem at large in India. Having a being involved in since 2011 (few months before Flipkart raised it's now meagre looking first-round), I want to share a little bit about what's happened the last 3.5 years from my perspective. Contrary to popular belief, Flipkart were NOT the first one's to venture into e-commerce in India In the first wave of the internet in India, many had tried to create the first e-commerce success story (read: Indiaplaza, Sify etc.). But they all but failed, and pretty miserably and without a sound. That round of the consumer internet went to the online travel companies (Cleartrip, Makemytrip), job portal (Naukri.com) and some marriage portals (shaadi.com, bharatmatrimony.com). Flipkart led the second wave and how! Here's the couple of things I think they did really well:

Go big or go home

They didn't see any value in growing organically when you're 'creating' a market. They raised money quickly, spent heavily on above-the-line marketing from the get-go. They reached out people who weren't shopping online, delivered a fantastic experience and got people talking about their services. Growth hacking both online and offline.

Logistics, logistics, logistics

Post acquiring/converting customers to buy online, Flipkart was quick to understand that the biggest bottleneck in the e-commerce experience in India was logistics. Late delivery, damaged goods on receipt, missing goods were all too often the norm in India. On top of that handling the return experience was extremely important to gaining the trust of customers to make shopping online the norm, rather than a one-off thing.

Culture, people and technology

The small yet telling sign, for me at least, was how good their bookmarks were right from the early days. It had become a thing - people waited to see what bookmark they got. They would take photos of it and share it on social media as well. To me it was a sign of a company geared towards customer excellence and taking care of the small things. Big thing was getting the book there is mint condition on time; small thing was letting the customer emotionally connect with your product. The other strain of culture was the bias (and a positive one) that they had towards technology. I would attribute some of this to the early exposure their Bay Area investors brought in with them.

"Move fast and break things"

They built out entire businesses like Payzippy from their existing funds and talent-poll. Ekart logistics is another spin-off that can be deemed big enough to be a logistics company in it's own right. But they haven't always got it right - key being that they had the gumption to shut it down the minute they thought something wasn't working. This is clear reference to the audio streaming/buying website that they had called Flyte. After giving a lot of good music for almost free for shy of 9 months, they shut down because of mounting license costs and didn't look back at it. Of course, it helps to have aggressive growth numbers to meet when you have investors in the game, but this strategy has helped them more than cost them. Failure is a part of the game, and they understand it.

Lastly, they raised a lot of money

And I mean this in the best way possible - irrespective of whether Flipkart fails or succeeds. No business model has been put through the scrutiny that the Flipkart's model has been and the founding team must have fought through numerous troughs of doubts - both internally and externally. They took something that wouldn't work at face-value in India (no online-payments, no reliable logistics, no organized distribution) and solved it. And convinced investors of this solution and dream. The ability to raise money almost at will to disrupt the entire retail industry, not just online, is in my books their biggest win. They gave themselves the opportunity to think of the bigger picture and execute at scale - which they did superbly well. I, for one, am in their corner - for what they did for startups and new businesses in India.

What this means for you

- It marks the official entry on online commerce and business in India. Ratan Tata considers e-commerce to be a good investment. Both Azim Premji and Narayan Murthy have their skin in the game. Reliance is rumoured to be working out a massive e-commerce play.

- This means the innovation may taper and make way for scale. Great news for those invested in this industry for a while.

- No matter what business you're in, start thinking of ways you're going to tackle the digital channel in. Does this mean fixing your website? Maybe building a community on Facebook? With scale becoming a reality in the country, people are going to start taking the internet seriously. Bigger numbers will purchase online (or if it's for B2B, start using the internet as a credible first source of information)

 Here's a repost of my work blog which can also be view here

[newyorker]

Today’s daily cartoon by Farley Katz.

[abhikb]

Surf in India

Surfing is slowly becoming one the things that I enjoy doing the most, although I am extremely clumsy at it still. Not only do I come from a country where surfing is unknown, let alone be popular, my hometown is at least 15 hours away (by train) to any respectable beach.  I thought I'd write a short post on my trip to the Shaka Surf Club in Kodi Bengre near Manipal, and tell you a little about the small but burgeoning surfing community in India.  I flew the first leg from Ahmedabad to Bombay, where I met up with my friend Karan, who planned the trip with me (and deserves a lot of credit for making it happen). We were taking the Mangalore express to Kodi Bengre which left Bombay at about 10 PM. We were due to reach at noon the next day. Important point to note here is that the station to get off at is Udupi.  We reached and hopped straight into a prepaid rickshaw that would take us to the village of Kodi Bengre, which was about 30 minutes away. The third friend coming with us was Vishal, who had arrived earlier in the day by an overnight bus from Bangalore. 

Now to get a little categorical:

- About Shaka Surf Club

The Shaka Surf Club is run by a really cool couple - Ishita and Tushar. They graduated from Manipal University nearby, and decided to follow their passion for surfing - one they developed while studying close by. Not only is it inspiring for two city kids to take the risk and follow what they love doing. Great respect for all the hurdles I am sure they had to cross to make this happen. Totally worth visiting.  - Surfing

Some of waves were actually quite decent. I am pretty sure we had some waves going to about 3.5 feet (which though seem small, and more than what one can ask for as novice surfers). The undercurrents were quite strong, and it made getting out there quite tough. 

At a personal level, I shifted to a much smaller board than what I had used on my earlier surfs. In retrospect, this might have been too early for me because I had a rough time.  I also felt like the waves broke quicker here than what I've seen in Sri Lanka and Maui. These things are seasonal of course, but this was my experience in mid March. 

- Food

The food was AMAZING! Manglorean fish curry with neer dosa and what not. Ate at some of the village joints, some of whom did not even have any lights. Turns out lanterns, moonlight, beach and awesome food make for good times :) -- My trip there was from noon Friday till noon Sunday. So that’s two full days - which can realistically get you 4 sessions (one session is 2 hrs). I got 3 of them. I have tried it twice before so some of the stuff was familiar, but the wave are still challenging (and fun).

You will have the option to stay there with; they have a camp site with tents. They charge 7k for 2 night, 3 days - with I think 3 sessions (each session is at Rs. 1,200) and meals included. My friends and I found that to be a little expensive for the budget we were on so we opted to stay at a Nature Cure center about 4k away. Its very basic accommodation, but its clean and workable since the only thing we did there was crash at night.

When you aren’t surfing, you’d mostly just chill at the camp site. Its nice and quiet. They are in the middle of a quaint fishing village, so there isn’t much else to do there. You could go to Manipal which is close by for a night out or something - they have pretty cool student joints.

[abhikb]

Harness the power of the crowd

This year saw the meteoric rise of Arvind Kejriwal. For many, he brings in a new brand of politics - non-corrupt and forthright. For me, his ascendancy also signals the coming of a far more revolutionary shift - the age of a truly participatory movement.

In a first for India, he successfully raised money for a mainstream political campaign from ordinary people all around the world in a clean, efficient and transparent way. Its not like crowd-funding is a new concept. However, from a technology perspective we are probably looking at the first time where crowd-funding, and adaptations of the concept, have the potential to disrupt more established institutions in politics and business. 

Take for instance the publishing industry. We are already at a stage where people can publish their own books and be read by people everywhere. No more are inspired authors limited by the ruthlessly competitive and subjective eye of the publisher. Does this mean publishers are useless? Absolutely not. Innovative publishing concepts like Bloody Good Book are spearheading change by embracing crowd-sourcing. They request people to upload their manuscripts online, and visitors of the website rate them in terms of potential. They then index a mix of visitor ratings and publishing expertise to pick and publish certain entries using their resources to market the book. 

Similar evolution happening in education. Look at a platform like Udacity; where people have the ability to create and offer courses to other people around the world and earn money for it. It is the perfect example of crowd-sourcing a skill or talent, and matching that with a group of people who are willing to pay to learn those skills. Technology enables this in a clean, non-clunky way by removing the barrier of heavy investment or infrastructure, making it a win-win situation for both. 

Same with transportation when one thinks of ideas such as Uber and ZipCar. In the space of hotels and renting places you have AirBnB. Its even happening with health with platforms like Healthtap getting traction. 

The power of the individual and the crowd has never looked more promising. From influencing legislation to publishing to business - we are truly entering a phase, enabled by technology, where the idea of democracy can spread to beyond just a system Government. 

[abhikb]

The Island of Sri Lanka

After a well considered process of elimination of short vacation destinations, my family and I had settled on going to the tiny island of Sri Lanka this November. I love traveling, and so I was quite excited from the very outset. 

It was only a 4-day trip - not long enough to go through the entire island, but long enough to give you a flavour of its culture and people. 

The first thing that you’ll notice about Sri Lanka is how amazingly clean it is. I found absolutely no litter on the roads, or the highways - people follow traffic rules likes they would anywhere abroad. No unnecessary honking. Given that India and Sri Lanka are only a few 100 kms apart, it was amazing to see similar looking terrain and people minus the filth and noise. Super stuff! 

We drove down the coast from Colombo to Bentota where we were planning to spend the most of our time. There’s a new expressway that’s recently been made which makes the drive quite easy. We were picked up by a great guy - Buddhika - who became our de-facto tour guide on our 2 hour drive down South. 

We reached our hotel and checked into our rooms. This hotel is a Geoffrey Bawa designed hotel and its beautiful. Now its going to be very difficult to visit Sri Lanka and not hear about Geoffrey Bawa - much more if your mother is an architect who loves his work. But more about him soon. 

Here are the top things I recommend you catch when you’re in Sri Lanka:

- Galle: Make the trip down to this charming, quaint town with a clear Portuguese hangover. Its cobbled streets and numerous vintage cars will transport you back in time - makes for a great few hours. Highly recommend grabbing a bite at the Galle Fort Hotel.

Galle Fort Hotel 

Galle

- Surfing at Hikkaduwa

I had heard of Sri Lanka being a very popular surf spot, so I knew from the very beginning that I wanted to catch some waves on this trip. The South-East coast of the island, more specifically Arugam Bay, is known for being the best spot on the island for surfers. This distinction is probably for expert surfers, and so for beginners like me, I landed up at the second best spot - Hikkaduwa. 

My brother and I headed out at around 8 AM with the help of two local surfers from the beach - Shehan and Damika. Complete chillers - I am convinced that if you surf everyday, it is exponentially more difficult for you to be an uptight person.

Tip: When you planning your surf-day-out, try and avoid the days after a full moon. The currents are much stronger, and makes it much more challenging. Upside - the waves are bigger and they break quicker too.

 - Lunuganga

It would be extremely difficult for one to come to Sri Lanka and not hear about Geoffrey Bawa. His influence as an architect pervades into Sri Lanka’s identity as a whole. 

Lunuganga (which means ‘salty river’) is Geoffrey Bawa’s weekend retreat garden. Managed by a trust after his demise in 2003, this estate is one of the most beautiful gardens that you will come across. The sheer depth of the tropical green foliage, and river that envelopes the estate, is rare. 

Its a little pricey, and while the guys who take you around are friendly, its not the best managed property. Be ready for a few delays, and some very ordinary sandwiches. If you’re into architecture and landscaping, its a must-visit. 

- Colombo

Spent only half a day in Colombo, but managed to visit some really great places in the time. 

The Gallery Cafe - great great food. Great atmosphere too - slightly on the expensive side but completely worth it. Make sure you leave enough room for the desserts. 

Barefoot - we stumbled upon this one by chance but were only left to wonder how we didn’t plan to make it here in the first place. Great store with lots of small things that you can pick up for the house and/or for your friends. Housed in an old colonial style villa in the heart of a fairly modern city, this store is quite charming. The back opens up to a cafe with a great ambience. 

Sri Lanka manages to deliver a short package in peace. The people are extremely friendly, the food is great and the place generally gives out a good positive vibe. You will be surrounded by natural beauty, and the weather (at the time of the year that we went in - November) is lovely. 4 days is a little tight - my guess is 6 days would be the perfect amount of time for this little island.

Parting sunset shot that Bentota put on for us on our last day there. Can’t wait to go back some day! 

[abhikb]

"Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory"

Albert Weitzer

[abhikb]

Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.

Hermann Hesse

[blakemasters]

Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 3 Notes Essay

[abhikb]

blakemasters:

Here is an essay version of my class notes from Class 3 of CS183: Startup. Errors and omissions are my own. Credit for good stuff is Peter’s entirely.  Please note that I actually missed this class (I was on my honeymoon!). Thanks to @erikpavia and @danrthompson for sending me their notes to work from.

CS183: Startup—Notes Essay—Value Systems

 The history of the ‘90s was in many ways the history of widespread confusion about the question of value. Valuations were psychosocial; value was driven by what people said it was. To avoid herd-like confusion of decades past, we need to try and figure out whether it’s possible to determine businesses’ objective value and, if it is, how to do it.

As we discussed back in Class 1, certain questions and frameworks can anchor our thinking about value. The questions are necessarily personal: What can I do? What do I think is valuable? What do I see others not doing? A good framework might map globalization and technology as the two great axes of the 21st century. Synthesizing all this together forges the higher-level question: What valuable company is nobody building? 

A somewhat different perspective on technology—going from 0 to 1, to revisit our earlier terminology—is the financial or economic one. Since that perspective can also shed considerable light on the value question, it’s worth covering in detail now.

Read More

TL;DR value is a combination of value captured, time, growth and cash.

Perfect competition is not always a good thing when trying to create value.

And lots more. Truth is this isn’t too long if you account for what you’ll learn.