The Branded and Gilded Life

Sales guys are a species. The guys who keep businesses going. Sales training is about building relationships with clients and the rush that comes from achieving targets. So, does data have any role to play apart from recording the number of calls within the CRM and tracking progress? Apparently it does. A company called Gong did an experiment. It used AI to analyse over 25000 sales calls. The conv...

When it comes to sales data, it's usually about the quantities sold and the locations where the purchase happened. Financial data is about how much was deposited, withdrawn or transferred from a given account. Practically all our data systems are built around transactions, making things easy to track or account for. But there's very little around choice and how we arrive at it. That evidence is st...

Hearing aids are advertised as being invisible. But the problems don't stop there. There's the social stigma that people with hearing loss have to deal with. Which seems strange because vision loss is perfectly acceptable. And so are spectacles Baldness and the gradual loss of hearing with age are seen differently. The problem extends to costs as well. Good hearing aids cost as much as a top flags...

Swipe left. Or right. And get a match in minutes. This one feature has helped Tinder grow exponentially in online dating Making it ridiculously easy to decide on a whim if you liked a person at first glance. That tapped into a deeply held belief. Love, or at least like at first sight. It's what built momentum for Tinder. Giving it as many as 7.5 million swipes a day in India. The UX made you belie...

Recently, MKBHD (Marques Brownlee) interviewed Mark Zuckerberg on YouTube. YouTube's Creator of the Decade and the man who unleashed social media on the world had a chat. And what was the conversation about? What's next in tech. Obviously. The striking point? Both of them spoke about creating reality through technology. Zuckerberg thought that while screens have vastly improved over the years, wha...

In a distracted world, power shifts to the ones who are not. While the rest run around multitasking and being busy, they practice stillness. They do what most of us can't. Dig deep and make connections between concepts at a fundamental level. Read the fine print and point out where the problems will arise They shut out the trivial And pursue what is consequential They live in an alternative realit...

………. Two short stories.  Of great highs and great lows. In Season 5, Sushil Kumar from Bihar won the Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) bumper prize. Lady Luck shepherded him through phone calls, and then into the Top 10, and finally through 15 questions that won him Rs. 5 crores, ($1 million in 2011) After that, she thought he would manage. But he managed to burn through the entire jackpot in less than...

Most of us can recognise about 20% of the people we meet later. Go out of our circle of friends and family to acquaintances and we struggle to recall people we've met even a few months earlier. There's also this strange context based facial recognition. We see the lift man in his uniform every day but see him on the street and we have to jog our memory. Just 1% of the world's people have a unique...

Who am I? What do I want from life? These are questions that catch us off guard. The movies on this theme are about trips without a plan. Going wherever life takes you. And coming back to what you've always known. Somehow, you are supposed to find the answers in the interim. It seemed pointless - the kind of thing that people do when they're rich and parents are indulgent. Today, I was listening t...

Do teachers teach you? Or do you learn from them? There's a difference. Experience is a mentor. Luck is a mentor Knowledge is a mentor. Anything or anyone who changes your world view is a mentor. Once you realise that, you'll find a whole lineup. And the question to ask is not who can be my mentor But what I want to learn. A meme can be a mentor. A quote on a website can change your point of view...

Back in the day, there were only a few places when you had to prove your identity before entry. The internet has made it a daily requirement. You log into your email. Your bank account. Ecommerce sites. Ticket booking sites. Your messenger account. Your social media handles. I'm sure you can think of more Sure, most of us have automated it by saving login credentials. But when you change phones or...

Statues or art pieces had to be installed. Not software. Why did a formless creation adopt such a 'heavy' term? Most of us have no idea what goes on inside of our computers. Or the operating system, for that matter. Where does the system operate?  Software developers are probably shaking their heads. It's just a set of instructions to be executed. Why do they have to be executed? Because they are...

Parents consult astrologers, invoke the gods they believe in and name their child for life. In school, one quirk of behavior, one careless remark and they're stuck with another memorable one There was this spindly guy in class blessed with terrific metabolism. He just wouldn't put on weight. But he looked like a stick figure on whom clothes had been draped. Naturally, he was named 'Kaddi', the Kan...

Is that what you do when internal company emails hit your inbox? Or ignore them because they not important to you? A webinar invite. An external speaker session. New client wins. Or the launch of new training skills. They remain unread. You've got work to do. Your senses are tuned to respond to emails from your immediate boss. Or from clients you handle. That's super important. The rest can wait....

When you start out with an education or a degree, your largest asset is time.  You've got nearly four decades of it. Experience is probably at zero because you're starting off. As you add years on the job, you spend time freely, even recklessly. But it cannot be regained. Experience as an asset has to replace all the time you spend. It should increase in value exponentially, faster than the time y...

We may not be aware of it but we're literally creating historyAs we interact with members of our family, friends, and associates, we're building a trail of messages every minuteTime stamped and backed up to servers for years. There's an old saying that history is written by the victors. Not after WhatsApp became the staple diet! With over 400 million Indians on the app interacting everyday, it is...

Well, that one blew up quickly. And what was behind the scenes in gaming moved center stage. Apple collects a toll of 30% on all the apps purchased at its store.  Obviously developers aren't happy to part with a hefty amount for every sale. But they had no choice.  The business is worth $550 billion for Apple. And just like that, the battle lines were drawn. EPIC is the game developer behind Fortn...

Original concept by Gaping Void It's just dots scattered across space. Until you see the connections. And then, it's impossible to go back to where you were. Information is about making sense from data around us. Knowing what a dish contains is different from being able to make it. Or a scientist explaining what gravity means in relation to our understanding Knowledge is about connecting points lo...

If it shows up fast, people will stop to take a look. If it doesn't, they will leave, never to return. So, how do you increase site speed? Start with a good web hosting service. Yes it's basic. Like people who don't understand how critical it is to control and renew business domain names A website put up in 2010 or earlier is long past it's expiry date. Worse, it tells potential prospects you're o...

Frank was a barista at a coffee shop. And his lady customers kept asking for used coffee grounds. He thought it was for their potted plants but it turned out the secret was a face cream scrub. Apparently the caffeine had a glowing effect on skin texture. Intrigued and enthused, he went on to create an entire product line Signed up models to demonstrate a new skin care range And instead of merely g...

It is a scenic shot of Amsterdam. A cycle parked across a canal. Even if you spent time staring at it, you won't find anything remarkable. Except that IKEA has sold nearly 500,000 prints of the photo People across countries seemed drawn to it. It's displayed on restaurant walls. supermarkets, bars. And in homes - living rooms, bedrooms, lounges… So, what makes this photograph magnetic to such a wi...

The local doorbell you pick up in a store in India offers you a choice of tunes. The good old ding dong, or something fancier if you really want music every time your doorbell rings. So, who would think that putting a camera into a doorbell helps? Here's where it gets interesting. The camera in the video doorbell connects to your wi-fi and you can see who the visitor is on your phone app. No need...

The early remote toy cars in the 1970s were great fun. They were big, with cutting edge radio technology and so expensive, only adults could afford them. Companies manufacturing them thought exactly like we do today. Add more features and you'll get more customers. And keep raising the price. What's not so intuitive is to figure out how to make expensive technology cheap. Until an engineer working...

Instagram has been around for a decade. A good time to look back and see why it overtook other picture sharing sites of the time It wasn't the pretty interface alone that did the job The founders were very clear about the problems they were solving. Back in 2010 mobile cameras took terrible pictures. Filters were a beautiful way to camouflage the poor quality. Uploads had to be optimised -  it too...

Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash Why would a globally known brand spend this incredible amount of money? Amazon was the largest single advertiser in the US over the past year. Overtaking the Cokes, the P&Gs and the GE's That works out to $19 million a day. There are millions of companies the world over with a lower annual turnover. Most of the spend is automated. Has to be. Even of you want...