Traffic Stop...

Traffic stop in Bangalore (and I assume around India) is a pretty active place. Things which happen there are amazing.

1. Folks take a break. Some even take their shoes/sandals off and take a stretch. Some very active junctions have a stop time close to 2 minutes.
2. Pee-break - I don't need to explain what this is. It is pretty disgusting.
3. Nose-digging - clean yourself up.
4. Spit (and clear your throat). Disgusting, but we Indians are not really very conscious of our surroundings.
5. Helmet-cleaning - if you are driving a two wheeler with a helmet on, it gets pretty hot inside (the helmet). So it is a time to cool-off and comb your hair.
6. Vendors sell their wares -what better way to market to your customers. If you have shopped at a traffic junction, you know the margins on some of the items are incredibly high. Don't fall a prey, always bargain.
7. Beggars knock on your windows (so tinted is better and you need to keep them rolled up). Beggars are OK if they are genuine, but irritating if you see them over and over again. If you have seen 'Slum Dog Millionaire' it shows an entire business built around begging.
8. Count as the traffic display counts down to zero.
9. Make that urgent phone call or answer that SMS.
10. Wiggle around, vehicles wiggle around the traffic junction, so that they can be the first to be flagged out at the green. It always fascinates me on how people compete for space here - at the traffic junctions all rules are broken - you can go across into the other lane, wiggle from the left most lane to make a right turn etc.
11. Stare around at your surrounding drivers and passengers.
12. Ask for directions which is really common. Folks who ask about directions are usually a long long way off from their destination and the only legible answer you can give them in the couple of minutes is to politely ask them to turn right or left or head straight.

:-)

Promise of connected devices.

Needless to say, I'm a big fan of Kindle (and Amazon).

Kindle fills two very basic needs (at-least from my perspective).

1. Get books when you need them, where-ever you are.
2. Save valuable real-estate at home - you no longer need those big bulky book-shelves. I can carry 100's of books with me in a very nice form factor.

The key is "downloading where ever you are" (not everywhere on this planet, but in most parts). If someone had told be about this 10-15 years back, it would have sounded as science fiction, but not anymore.

Kindle is in essence a connected device which fulfills a single customer need (i.e download your book anywhere) over cellular network. Amazon has also built a profitable business model around it, which is also the key behind its success. I've articulated the advantages of Kindle and how it might catch on in the education space in one of my previous blog posts.

Bigger picture, one of the successes behind Kindle is the concept of connected devices. It opens up more and more opportunities in the future. Classic example is the smart refrigerator - Can I program my refrigerator to work in a auto-mode. Fill in the list of items I usually buy, set a threshold and when items fall behind the threshold, contact my favorite grocery store and order my items (charge my credit card). So, I really don't have to bother about what happens behind the scenes. Sci-fi ? Maybe not, the technology is available right now. The key is getting business model right i.e building a profitable business model where all the stake holders have an advantage.

There is another advantage with connected devices and that is it brings the customer and the producer nearer. Before Kindle, we used to buy books at a book-store - which served as a middle man in the transaction. With Kindle, I really don;t need a book store - I can talk with Amazon directly and in essence I'm closer to the producer (in this case, the author). I no longer have to visit multiple book stores to check out if they carry a book I need or it makes searching a lot easier etc etc.

If you look at the world around us, we see a lot of example where these connected devices would help us if there is a business model which helps everyone.

What triggered this post was this company (Vitality) which launched Connected Pill Bottle, so that your pill bottle can pre-order your tablets when you run out of them. Is this a business model that will work ? It is easy to laugh at them right now. Would I pay $15 for this service, hell no. But then the technology is cool, my guess is that these folks would branch off into related fields (built on the same underlying technology) - remote health monitoring maybe. 

More importantly, it just signals the advent of 'smarter devices' at home :-)

Instincts

If you stay in one place for a long time, you are prone to instinctive behaviour.

The other day, I saw that it was dull and gloomy outside and it looked like the setting was perfect for a bout of rain, my brain instinctively processed that it was November and so putting those two together - I proceeded to wear a light jacket. As I stepped outside, I got a couple of stares (for the jacket) and in a couple of minutes, it was hot and humid. Of course I no longer stay in Pacific NorthWest :-) (where it rains continuously from October to March and sun is hardly visible)

It is interesting how your brain gets tuned to certain things. There are a lot of habits like that which we don't even realize. The same applies to work place too, the longer you stay in a place and longer you perform the same set of activities, your brain gets accustomed to the routine, that is when learning plateaus and interest wanes.

In short, change in good !!

Entrepreneur

Bangalore has a thriving entrepreneur community and it amazes me the ingenuity and innovation these folks bring along. While most tend to be in software/IT sector, there is a lot of stuff happening elsewhere. I see folks who have given up their IT careers and venturing out into a new area. If you drive around the town, you see a lot of new cafes, bakeries, clothing line, niche stores targeting babies/moms-to-be, new chains for electronic items.

Mobile applications are the craze these days and from what I have been hearing from a few folks running their own app-dev companies, demand for mobile app developers is out-stripping supply. Mobile sure is the future and I expect to see a lot of tablet-based activity as it makes in-roads into businesses and drive efficiency and cost-savings.

I had the opportunity to meet Vinod Khosla one of those stalwarts in the VC industry and hearing him speak at close quarters was inspiring. There were a few messages which stuck in my brain as I walked out :

"learn something radically new every 5 years"


"Hard problems mean big opportunities if you're arrogant enough to believe you can solve it"


"Don't tie your ego with your ideas. Manage your failure. Evolve your ideas"


"Fail"


"Analyze your failures"


"Go around in circles for a little while before taking an exit on a road"


"Prepare Plan A, Plan B, Plan C...but don't be reactive to events"


One other lesson for me was his ability to be upfront (and not diplomatic about certain issues). He bluntly called someone's question as being 'stupid' (though he had apologized before making that statement). He also openly said that he does not believe in NGO (not-for-profit model).

It was money and evening well-spent !!

Weather...

If there is one thing I don't miss about Seattle, it has gotta be the weather. November-March is dreary and filled with rain, clouds and gloom.

The current weather comparison between Bellevue and Bangalore tells the story (almost 30 degree differential). I wish I could spend winters in Bangalore and summers in Bellevue :-)

Speed Governors

This is a real welcome news. The Supreme Court has instructed that all public vehicle (taxi fleets, school buses etc) need to be installed with devices which would 'govern' the maximum speed of the vehicles.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bangalore/Speed-governors-will-check-racing-cabs-buses-on-road/articleshow/10561673.cms

If you have ever driven in India, you would appreciate the value of these devices. A large percentage of these accidents can be avoided with a little bit of common-sense. Indian roads now experience the highest number of accidents in the world overtaking China. (http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5519345,00.html)

I'm eagerly looking forward to the Google initiative for driver-less cars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car) - a nascent technology but one that has immense potential.

Kindle...

Ever since I brought a Kindle 6 months back, I'm a hard-core Kindle fan. The last few years have been hectic with 2 young kids and the associated work, not to mention the never ending work. As a result, my reading habit had suffered with what-ever free time being spent on taking rest. Most of the reading tend to be either technical and consumed mainly from a few websites.

So, when I brought a new Kindle, it was to see if I can make a turn-around with my reading habits. And so far, it has worked like a charm, I've read 4 books in the last 4 months, which is great, considering that we were in the middle of a big international move and I had to cope with work also :-)

More importantly, I'm amazed at the technology. When I see the reading habits of folks in India, the distribution of print media is still via humans i.e newspaper is still distributed by someone early in the morning, if you need a new magazine, you still have to go to one of those stores nearby and pay money or you get a regular subscription to a magazine which is again delivered by a postman. Will we see a big shift towards digital distribution as the prices of these device drop down and it becomes easier for common folks to afford it ? Will the print media in India go the same way as in US where most of the newspaper are dying a slow death or will they survive with the same distribution and advertising model ?

The other interesting area where we might see a big explosion of Kindle-like devices is in the education space. Kids in India still carry a whole lot of books as they progress through the year. Besides the practical issue of carrying these books (which is a big burden), these digital text books might just help in easy indexing and discovery of information. The regular mode of learning something new in a text book at-least is to go to the index at the end of the book and then try to find a cross-reference to the terms you are looking for (pretty much like the way we would search for information on google.com, except that this is all done manually). So, my guess with digital text-books, it might help a whole lot in easily discovering and consuming new material.

A side-effect of digital text-books is that it makes it easier for copyright protection. Currently, at-least in India, there is a scant respect for copy-right, folks xerox/copy text-books without a regard that this is a violation of law. We all have been in the system where this is not frowned upon and in-fact encouraged to a large extent ("why do you want to buy a expensive text book when you can copy it for 1/10 th of the price"). My guess is that publication house will push the concept of text books just because it a good model for them and more-over in the long-run it is good for the economy as a whole if copy-right and intellectual property is respected.

My prediction is that in the next few years :

• we will see a change in the distribution model for print media as more people buy Kindle-like devices
• we will see a change in the education space as kids move to a more digital text books. Kindle-like device might be part of your kids school bag.
• we might see drop in the number of book shops.
• changes in the advertising and revenue generation for print media