The life of an entrepreneur is really interesting and very challenging. It is interesting because they are trying radical ideas and something which has possibly been never tried before. Challenging because they are walking along unchartered territories and there is joy, disappointment, surprise, shock, failure and success lurking around every corner. It really tests your persistence, patience and...
Entrepreneurship is the buzz word right now. Everyone seems to have that next disruptive idea which will create the next unicorn. Now, if you are the founder of a startup, you are looked upon as a role model and the society, in general, puts you on a high pedestal. It is amazing how things have changed in the last decade or so. When I completed my engineering and joined Philips as a graduate...
While everyone is talking about the lower price points on online stores, people in the business understand that a lot of that price competitiveness is coming due to venture capital (VC) money, which is being used to offer further discounts on the purchase price of the e-tailers. The question to ask is – whether e-tailing, which is based on a marketplace model, can be truly price competitive vis-a...
There are about 50+ startups in India, which are offering hyperlocal services (or what is being called Offline to Online O2O) – connecting online shoppers to brick and mortar retailers. They vary in the segments that they are addressing, with grocery and daily needs being the most popular ones. One thing which is common across all these hyperlocal startups is the process followed – they put your...
A business exists only till the time it has paying customers. The day your customers cease to exist, or have no reason to pay you for your products or services, your business is in deep trouble. So, if we consider all the stake holders in a corporate, an i.e. employee, executive management, investors and customers, the customer is the most important. Now the chances are that you know all other...
If you don’t have a high degree of initiative, you don’t have much of a future in the corporate world. 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes said – ‘I think therefore I am’. With all due respect to him, I am inclined to revise this for the 21st century as – ‘I initiate therefore I am’. For me the world is truly binary, people who take initiatives and people who don’t and that...
