My problem with Twitter feeds of Indian VC’s & Investors.

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India is turning into a startups hub with the amount of fund flowing in from US/Japan/China and other countries.  Some of the startups got an early exit making VCs & founders rich.  Anyways, this post is not about funding scene in India. It is all about these investors and VC’s who are glorifying portfolios in twitter timelines.

The Problem with this

  1. Thumping new funding round for portfolio is no guarantee for portfolio turning into Unicorn.
  2. Your tweets put other founders in portfolio under some kind of pressure who are in raising boat and as a result instead of building business all they think about is raising round.
  3. You turn into a RT/Tweeting exercise portfolio instead of sharing your wisdom with the followers who are looking up to you for useful suggestions and advices.
  4. Some of these same founders whom you have been glorifying get egotistical and even start playing hardball with you as you are no more a majority stakeholder in it. So you basically gave an ego boost to them. We keep hearing such stories on regular basis.
  5. VCs job is to mentor, teach and inspire. It’s not making portfolio fund announcements or press releases. Do you similarly tweet when one of the founders leave your portfolio company or one of your company dies?

My Suggestion

  1. Keep a separate twitter feed which is meant for catering portfolio related announcements.
  2. Ask all your followers to visit that feed for all kinds of PR, funding, merger, announcement deals for your portfolio.
  3. We are looking forward to learn from you and your timeline. You are supposed to inspire us, share your thoughts, not portfolio announcements.

Encounter with Indian Ocean

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Before

Saturday I along with Archit & Krishna went for Indian Ocean concert, Shastry you get all the credits for letting me know about this buddy. 😀

I am a big fan of Indian Ocean and on record this was first time in my life i attended any live concert. Apology if I am hurting someone but my prejudice has always been that  live concerts are all about alcohol/weed/women & BS.  I was not wrong because even at this concert I witnessed the same.

It was great interacting with the old folks Rahul Ram and Amit Kilam [Member of Indian Ocean Band], I was not sure if  i should go and say hello to them because of my fucked up experience with Manoj Bajpayee at Patna airport.  Rahul/Amit were so down to earth and yes we had good conversation for over 10-15 mins, unlike others I preferred not taking any pics with them. I am fucking tired of my friends taking selfies with folks/celebs and sharing it on social media.

The whole environment was eccentric and to my surprise a lot many attendees were lead singers and guitarists from small/local bands. They were attending the event to learn from it.

I am happy that they played all the numbers i been listening all these years from Bhor to kandisha. I wish them all the luck, BTW  sushmit has left the band & yes its sad. But as they say, SHOW must go on.

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Band in full swing, photo credit : Archit

They are coming with next album in 2017 & i am eagerly waiting for it.

 

Rest in peace Kalam Sir

The untimely demise of a great citizen, the people’s president is no more and I am deeply saddened with his demise.Dr. Abdul Kalam was India’s hero, a worthy scientist with indomitable spirit and an impeccable leader the nation was lucky to call President at one point of time. He carried out his duties of office with dignity and reverence, respect to all and worked towards the upliftment of the country in the field of science. He has adorned many revering titles such as the Bharat Ratna, the Missile Man and India’s Ex-President among others. He loved teaching and was passionate to bring about change for the youth, by the youth and preferred to be remembered as a “Teacher”. His infectious warmth and loving nature saw the whole nation mourning his loss. Was it irony or just fate?, that his final moments came while delivering a lecture to young students in Shillong.  India will surely miss this great man, a proud Indian and one we got to call People’s President during our lifetime.


“Apj abdul kalam” by Kannan Shanmugam studio,Main Road, Kollam – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

If you are curious about why he is so incredibly popular, and why his loss has the nation mourning, you have to read some of the books he wrote to clearly understand his vision. My advice to the youth who were fortunate to get to know him during their life, follow his advice, it will make a difference to this nation.

My Take On An EMI Free Life

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My good friend Sridhar and I dined out for lunch at a Mangalorean restaurant. We liked the place, the food and service was amicable. At lunch, we discussed technology, professions, family and life in general. It was a good meetup.

Today’s post is to discuss the one thing we examined closely. The topic was just  how our life is turning into a mundane, robotic machine where almost everyone is thriving on loans, paying EMI’s and surviving the luxuries of the day.

My take and the same is what I mentioned to Sridhar is that I would love to lead an EMI free life which he was quick to dispute was almost impossible in today’s day and age. He says that once you get married you have to invest in buying a house/car, take care of your kids needs along with several responsibilities and during that time money is hard to come by and so it is a wise option to take out a loan.

So here I am writing this blog challenging  myself that even when I get married I will continue to lead a loan free life, which I believe is also stress free. The purpose of this blog is to measure out if I will someday lose out on my bet. 🙂

My dear friend Sridhar, so here I am, as per our conversation, the blog post is up. It also means that the clock is ticking for me.  I will definitely need some good luck. 😀

Startup Ideas #3

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In continuation with my previous post to share startup ideas that I would love to see flourish, here is my second post with more adept ideas that should become startups.

Startup Ideas For The Week:

  1. Beard stylist: The trend of gentlemen keeping a beard is not new. It will be great idea to have a shop where anyone can walk in and get the perfect style fit for his beard.
  2. Fashion Designer on an app: With advance technology and increased purchasing power anyone can have his/her own personal designer/stylist simply in the form of an app. The app should have something like a video conferencing option recommending what to wear and how to style oneself.
  3. Adding Dating as reward for buying via e-commerce site : Imagine if you have an ecommerce website which connects you to a blind date on your buying preferences and wishlists. So in simple terms Amazon+Tinder+Facebook= Dating App.
  4. Connecting street sellers in hyperlocal: Everyone is talking about next boom, the hyperlocal delivery. As a result of which a lot of street sellers are bearing the brunt.Imagine an app connecting your local grocer via s simple application with payment options. This way these app driven organizations won’t be competing with brick & mortar shops but helping in making the local grocers life better.
  5. Tinder for Grandparents: It is like having a dating app with membership fees only for the elderly people. We should remember exclusivity increases value of the product.

These are my ideas for the week. I would love to hear back from you, I know some of these ideas may sound crazy but what benefits some could also be a waste for another, hence choose wisely.

 

OpenStack 5th Birthday celebration Bangalore India.

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OpenStack itself has come a long way and the birthday celebrations witnessed over 40 enthusiastic participants. We spent most of the time discussing Openstack while answering intriguing questions about the project the development and the overall ecosystem. It was good to see creative upstream contributors talking to the newer developers, sharing their experiences and advices alike. We wound off the event with cake cutting followed by a pizza party.

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I hope the OpenStack journey continues to progress, flourish and grow as we continue to celebrate more birthdays in the upcoming years with newer upstream contributors and more users.

Startup Ideas #2

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In continuation with my previous post to share startup ideas that I would love to see flourish, here is my second post with more adept ideas that should become startups.

Startup Ideas For The Week:

Brewery Review: The whole concept of the microbrewery scene in India is really expanding beyond imagination. A brewery with the sole purpose to produce beer that is consumed in-house is now catching up with the masses. In Bangalore, we have over 20 established microbreweries. The sad thing is that nobody writes about or publicizes them. I was thinking maybe an app/portal that would review and inform beer lovers to explore microbreweries around India would be a good idea.

Emoji App: I love this one. Picture an appchat  that  lets you communicate with emojis, barring all text to elevate the science of communicating with pictures. Like me, there maybe several who hate typing long sentences to communicate and instead will be more than happy to have a conversation via emojis.

Mentor: The app name itself is self explanatory- have a portal that provides aid and assistance to help mentor youngsters across various domains from sports, education to psychology and rehab.

NewsFeed: To curb the amount of newsflow daily, a good idea is to have selective subscription to read news in short textual summaries. In a hurry, it is difficult to go through an entire news article. By simply receiving a short summary, you can read it and if you want to know more visit and, download the entire article.  People will be happier if they get summarised text news of interest from a single app for news source

Erase: Ever wonder how much information will be available once you depart? It is important to have some app/service that erases and removes all the identity from social media once a person expires.

These are my ideas for the week. I would love to hear back from you, I know some of these ideas may sound crazy but what benefits some could also be a waste for another, hence choose wisely.

Startup Ideas #1

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I am very enthusiastic to publish posts on startup ideas that I would love to see flourish. In my previous blog post I mentioned that I would be regularly publishing posts on start up ideas. So as promised, here are some ideas for this week’s post.

Startup Ideas For The Week:

  1. Traveller Guide At Service: Interesting ideas steep and dwell from experiences of the past. Every tourist would be much happier if he/she had a guide to help navigate the tourist spot. And for a locale fee structure, developing an app that provides information about reputed and verified guides with a comparable price/rate card is the service you just need when on vacation. As I land at  a tourist destination all I have to do is pick a guide, meet up and take him/her on service throughout my holiday. It would be an added bonus if I could rate and review the tours and travel guides.
  2. Education for migrant workers Kids: Migrant workers have so many issues to deal with and maybe education arrangements for their kids is the least of their worries. Since education is no cheap affair for them in particular and they are always migrating, getting their kids education sorted out is very tough so they choose not to bother and some sort of empowerment is required. With a detailed app developed to provide the right information including an SMS platform that can suggest to migrant workers where to send their kids  for basic schooling when either the husband/wife both are working at a construction site is quite useful.
  3. Magic for old age people. This is an app only made for senior citizens and elderly people. The app takes extra care of their needs and ensures the elderly are taken care of appropriately.
  4. Surprise Party: This is a good startup idea if it succeeds. Imagine an app that connects party organizers to those who are seeking to throw someone a surprise party. Maybe friends, a wife/husband or parents looking to celebrate a milestone in one’s life, planning and organizing a party can be quite the hassle. Now if you can get someone to plan the same for you, that is a well provided service. A nice 5 star luxury at your home. In simple terms making arrangements at your house by experienced organizers.
  5. Your personal stylist: Ever wondered about having a personal stylist like a celebrity to pamper you once in a while? An app that connects you to a stylist to plan and personalise your needs at a rate maybe a good startup as well.

These are my ideas for the week. I would love to hear back from you, I know some of these ideas may sound crazy but what benefits some could also be a waste for another, hence choose wisely.