atul jha – Page 213

Startup Ideas #3

sweet

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:

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

one

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.

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

sweet

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

sweet

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:

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

Sharing my Ideas, If you like go build a startup

mango

I been following James Altucher for over a year now. He keeps telling about becoming an idea machine, come up with 10 ideas everyday. I tried it for few weeks and realized its too difficult to gather ideas.

So far I have managed to gather few ideas but implementing is not my piece of cake. I have too many liabilities and limitations. I am also not pushing myself too hard to get out of comfortably zone and work on these.

So I am sharing it with you all, every week i will share atleast 5 ideas starting this monday. If it works for someone, don’t forget to pay me some % after building next unicorn out of it. 😀

Last not the least I have also realized its tough to collect ideas but extremely difficult to implement it.

PEACE

My prejudice towards Buzzfeed

buzzfeed_mixup

BuzzFeed is known for pulling story from Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter, imgur, Facebook, Whatsapp [YEP] and making it CLICKBAIT/LINKBAIT. Every entity has revenue model & this works best for BuzzFeed. One of my friend wrote a nice post Quantifying the Clickbait and Linkbait in BuzzFeed Article Titles

It was my prejudice that did me wrong at the time: https://twitter.com/ponnappa/status/611811575268163584

However, I decided to visit the site to find if they are now in fact producing original content. But I found otherwise [30 mins task, because I follow r/india & Quora]. Check out the stories along with original sources and how BuzzFeed made story out of it.

1. About scoring 33% in exam.

There was a discussion thread on /r/india about the a kid scoring 33% in all his papers, we all laughed commented after seeing the poster and BuzzFeed copied it happily from there making story out of it.

2. On flipkart fake discount.

A user on r/india posted a picture of how one of the seller on Flipkart inflated the price and made fool of buyers by giving discount. The complete discussion thread is here and there we have BuzzFeed again making story of the same.

3. Picking popular post from Facebook & making it Clickbait.

One of the most popular post on Facebook was how outsiders think about India, it was posted on https://www.facebook.com/thenonsensestate and this is how BuzzFeed made story out of it. They had no option but to give credit to original poster.

4. Destinations in India that look like Europe

There was this interesting thread on quora where users were discussing about good Indian destination that look like Europe and then you have post on BuzzFeed about same

5. Indian Army dogs are killed after retirement.

We all know it was all over social media and then Indiatimes folks wrote detailed story about it followed by super creative writer from BuzzFeed making story about same.

6. Artist in Bangalore drawing crocodile on road to bring attention about potholes.

This discussion was started on r/india with a user sharing story which was published on Indian Express It was all over social media and then our super journos from BuzzFeed wrote the same.

Incase you folks are wondering how am I so sure about this, well do check the date/time of original post & BuzzFeed one.

One more thing, If Andreessen Horowitz has funded them there must be some reason/value in it which certainly is not Journalism IMHO. They are definitely serving a specific set of people which is excellent and i have nothing against them.

Walking down memory lane

memory lane

This post is about me growing up, the part where my parents disciplined me to turn out better in life.

I hail from a very remote part of Bihar. When I was in school, electricity in our native was available on an average of about 10-20 hours per week! Most of time, I recall us burning the kerosene lamp around the house. Ironically, that did not do my eyesight any good as I’ve ended up with sore eyesight in my youth. Being part of an average middle class family back in the day,I consider myself lucky to have had the luxury of almost everything a child of my generation ever needed to live a decent life. So much so that most kids those days would have demanded from their struggling parents, for me it was all pretty satisfactory.

My parents never failed to discipline me. Their one and only strict rule was to do well in studies, never get into fights with anyone. It was odd being left out of normal boyish characteristics,but rules were rules and the mischievous me found ways to exploit them. This ended up with me getting beaten by dad for misbehaviour. It might sound cruel and harassing, but its funny how I look back to those dreaded times and value the control my parents had over me. Even if it meant getting beaten by them once in while, I think it was essential to my growing up so that at no point I was every going astray. Obviously, I used to hate it at that time. Today, I laugh about it. Infact, this morning I was reminding my dad of how mischievous I used to be and we laughed. My dad says it was part and parcel of his love towards me.

Growing up, we get to hear of children going astray. When I hear about the miserable stories of kids smoking weed, taking drugs, using abusive language and disrespecting their parents on account of social security, I simply feel disgusted. Somewhere discipline was lacking. Not that I want these kids to take a beating but I feel that some level of control and discipline is lacking which is very important to mould and groom them into becoming better individuals. Too bad that most of them grow up and never realize the importance of lacking self discipline.

For me, growing up was strict.I still remember how much I cried after class 10 when my parents decided to send me to a boarding school in Delhi. Looking at my current state and the success I have achieved it was their decision that led to my betterment today.

Disclaimer: I am not suggesting parenting has to be strict, it was just the way I grew up and the incidents that have contributed to for me write this post.

Beer Hopping In Vancouver

brassneck

There is no disputing my ultimate love for Beer and for evidence to prove that I profusely love my beer, I went around beer hopping with a couple of friends in Vancouver. Here is the post to express that one such event that led my friends Razique, Anna and I to indulge in a beer hopping spree in Canada. Our redeeming pit stop was Brassneck Brewery. The icing on the cake came when we visited BRASSNECK BREWERY that made us fall head over heels for it.

Naturally, I jotted down a small list of impressions that I really liked about the place. It is important to note that the place itself is quite small and packs a crowd in the evenings, so get there early to be seated.

Ambiance: Beginning with ambiance, the surrounding was totally cool with apt signs and visual paintings that comprised the inner decor and elevated the feel of the pub itself.
Beer: They have an incredible list of options to pick from for beer. If you are a new drinker you just let the bartender [lady, in my case] know about kind of beer you generally prefer. I went with something on the lines of hoppy, sweet, ale or cider.
BYB: Yes they had the option to take your beer home which is unlawful in our country. Imagine if I could take my beer home from a microbrewery back in the city.
Friendly service: With ambience so peppy, the staff needed to be welcoming and cordial they were. I loved the idea of filling beer into those home delivery bottles(of which I’ve made video of)
Snacks: The place serves a variety of snacks but considering my no beef or pork consumption I played it safe and stayed with some plain ol’ french fries.

For more on the events that unfolded in my beer hopping to Brassneck Brewery, please do refer to the following links. I would recommend you to view this video that I made depicting how the beer is packaged for sale. Special thanks to Ian for showing us around and letting me shoot this video.

Glorious days of #IndiPop

mehh

I grew up listening to IndiPop & our music channels like Mtv, B4u and Channel[V]. I was having conversation with friends on twitter, felt like revisiting to my memory lane. I have added some songs and singers below [not in any specific order], feel free and let me know if i missed anyone [Bonus: includes Pakistani band/singers as well]. The idea of this post is to list out all those veterans from 90’s with their #IndiPop. Please remember most of these videos are of 90’s so quality might not be great & appear as shock to newer gens. Also thanks to Priyanka for helping, I was able to add more to the list.

Aryans

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Aslam

Band Of Boys

Annamika

Others:

Roop Tera Mastana

Bonus: Playlist of entire track

PS: I am not sure about the License these videos are shared on Youtube, so it might be illegal to watch some of these videos.[just covering my ass with disclaimer.]

Notes from OpenStack summit, Vancouver

I was very ecstatic to attend the recently concluded OpenStack Summit in Vancouver. While the summit was the main focal point of my trip, I was elated to bump into my friends and colleagues. After almost five years I was reunited with my very old friend Razique & Heiko.During the initial days of the documentation project I was involved in working with these guys, it was a joy to be reunited again. At the summit I also met Alex & Sam from The New Stack team and we got to discuss about the future of Openstack.

During dinner at Vietnamese food joint, we made a small podcast about the event besides writing down a post on determining the health of the OpenStack project.

Below are some of my notes determined from the overall event itself:

The event venue was simply fabulous where WIFI worked most of the time and saw an attendance of over 6000+ attendees.
The format of the event was modified to include container day as well as OPNFV day, a good initiative to widen the ecosystem.
Seems like everyone is talking about OpenStack , even those who mocked it during inception.
Containers was the buzzword. Everyone was talking about it.
During the initial days, the champions for projects were acquired by traditional vendors.
A lot of developers and early advocates have moved on to newer things which brings about new faces and talent. I guess it is a part of the overall evolution process.
Neutron and OpenStack documentation is still an unsolved mystery and I am not sure if it can be solved.
OpenStack has a total of twelve integrated projects that will explode in a year and the foundation is working on better ways to manage them.
The marketplace where vendors were showcasing product was absolute fun, most of them had no projects specific to OpenStack.
Accepting one click upgrade option inside OpenStack was considered wishful thinking. Now vendors like Red Hat, Mirantis or Canonical will be able to do it for your enterprise.
It was good to see representatives from almost all major system integrators in India attending the summit and wanting to be part of it.

The next summit is to be held in Tokyo, I personally have no idea if I will be present, but given the opportunity I may just go.Last but not the least thanks to OpenStack Foundation for keeping the project intact for a successful period of five years. Here’s to hoping the momentum continues.

Screen Shot 2015-05-27 at 11.59.08 AM — Sajid, Kavit & Me [Our team of OpenStack India coordinators ]