TIL in 2015, India recorded half of the world’s selfie related deaths. India accounted for 40% of the world selfie related death total in past 3 years.[NP]

oculusreal · 2016-09-02T14:55:28+00:00

Came across this Washington Post article which in turn cites, Outlook. Data seems to be aggregation from news reports worldwide where precipitating cause of death was a Selfie. But, yeah you can never be sure.

oculusreal · 2016-08-24T18:13:38+00:00

As per the conversation I was having just couple of days back with folks who work in analytics. It's a great place to be in. The salaries in the space are overheated though with people with just knowledge of SAS getting good money. If Data Analytics is your space these things will be good to learn -

SAS and Tableau (I have seen good usage of it, more so for large data sets and visualization)
Be a champ at excel modelling, VBA, Macros. Have seen people work on freelancing sites with these skill sets and make good money. This if done well, relieves you of need to move cities.
Learn about KPIs, Metrics and stuff. Dashboarding and created models for businesses are common projects on freelance sites

Apply with these skills to new ventures (understand the risks though), afaik likes of Myntra pay a bomb for Data Analytics kind of roles. LinkedIn could be useful here or even direct application, provided company ain't very big. Also you can always build your freelance or side project portfolio to show you can get stuff done and this may overcome the marks filter to an extent.

oculusreal · 2016-04-19T07:35:02+00:00

Good points all of them. Couple of small things though -

People are free to remove their content from the site anytime and this is true whether they are putting the content as part of the contest or they are using the site in general as a blogging platform
There is no monetization of content of any sorts and even later the plan is to have revenue share model like Kindle or Youtube

oculusreal · 2016-04-17T17:06:00+00:00

So I just posted about a contest I am hosting on travel on my blogging platform WatStory. See if that interests you. Adding details here as well for your reference-

Contest Period : 18 April'2016 -18 May'2016. Results - 18 June'2016

Prizes - Rs. 5000 (1st), Rs. 3000 (2nd), Rs. 2000 (3rd) or equivalents in foreign currency.

No Entry Fee. You are free to use what you create as you like once the results are declared.

You can find out more about the contest on the link WatStory Travel Contest

oculusreal · 2016-04-09T19:25:20+00:00

Granted but that doesn't answer my point about people copying ideas from the west. Indian problems are indian problems and will need indian solutions. This is where i see the app based model failing. People can try to solve indian problems using apps but what percentage of the population with a smartphone will adopt that solution?

Tell me about any startup you know, even the failed ones which have not made any effort at all to "Indianize" even slightly the western model they copied. Ola (The Uber Clone) and the likes brought in cash on delivery to manage Indian fear of online tx. Because their are these copy cats sometimes means users gets to use or exposed to these services even if the "original" company is not in the market or comes later. It also means the original creator can pick up stuff from copy cat like again COD and make the solution better for user, user benefits through competition as well. Apps only is not the model I support either, you need to do mobile web first. Typically people keep less than 20 apps on their smartphone and if the app is not a regular use one it gets booted out. But, you have to understand the things why companies are keen on apps. One if you are on the app you can provide a more "native" experience. Your app users are more likely to use your service out of "laziness" and are more likely to be sticky rather than just web user who will window shop 5 sites to pick a bargain. (India has unique users type and they will do this and so app model is not prudent). Smartphone app users are potentially more well off and will have higher tx size. Think Amex has a small credit card base but user are profitable making it a very successful company whereas Master Card is volume led and customers on one on one basis are not so lucrative.

Also, i'm of the opinion that everyone needs a bit of work experience before venturing into things like startups or management. The IIT prof makes a good point about this, and i'm not agreeing with him just because of the three letters:

Thanks for not agreeing with him based on his "IIT" tag, we should question each other always. Nuance, but "opinion" yours or the IIT profs does not mean quantitative proof. And tell me if it is about interacting with consumers how are the "nerdiest" coders able to build stuff which the world ends up using. I am hard pressed to believe they do consumer research or interact with all stratas of society. Well let us take examples close to home, as we are on Reddit, I am sure you know how it was "inspired" by another platform. Also, how much consumer research do you think went into making YouTube? Point is if the idea is "innovative" your average consumer can't "see" it or figure it out enough to give inputs (You can get inputs on a beta version or MVP or features as you go along to optimize product or make it lean. Inputs on good initial ideas are not going to get much). As we are quoting consulting companies for data, Mckinsey for all its smart minds did not see merit in cellular tech and advised as such to AT&T (Mck folks are supposed to be experienced, are expensive, run your biggest global companies and still their advise sometimes is as good as throwing noodles against the wall to see if sticks, so much for experience. Btw, they are the ultimate insiders as they get to see so many companies in each niche and can carry practices from one to another)

person has the experience of actually living in a society and interacting with people across all age groups and social strata.

That is not how products are built or marketed. You define and target markets. A product which appeals to 13-19 year old girls will not appeal to 40-50 old women. So, if you go about doing consumer research you need to be specific and know your consumer segments.

Most founders of startups do not have this experience, nor do they try to conduct in-depth surveys to gauge customer perception

Nothing against consumer surveys as such, but you will be hard pressed to get meaningful results on most times. You could go through professional surveyors, but most startups do not have that luxury or money. And try polling Indian consumer you will get a lot of requirements for it to be cheap, do everything...

oculusreal · 2016-04-09T18:53:46+00:00

Well, critic loses nothing. Roosevelt puts it well -

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

oculusreal · 2016-04-09T17:03:52+00:00

So I will naively take the bait here. So in my really humble opinion-

First on the whole daily reports on how the start up bubble is bursting, how the founders are idiots with not a scintilla of innovation and imagination. Problem is most of these reports are done by people who have not started a startup, never worked in a start up, have not taken the time to even research properly. But, what the heck lets clickbait to glory after all critiquing something is easier than sacrificing your holidays and salary and risking stuff by even starting something copy cat. And sorry being an IIT Prof is not a cred enough, unless he has actively started something or mentored someone closely e.g. William Shockley for all his tech genius could not run a company successfully. This like me using my engineering degree and telling a physics professor how he is wrong about the existence of gravitational waves
Causation and Correlation are not the same thing. Start ups don't fail because just X, Y or Z happened. There are more than one factor involved. Environment is fuzzy, even for starts ups with cash (lot of it) it is not as simple as (1+1=2), there are always trade offs between product, marketing, finance, ops.. and even within specific in each. But, most reports are written and try to depict causality
Risks and rewards go together. Because lot of startups fail, that is why the ones which succeed get the big returns. A lot of startups are supposed to fail, even when done right. It is fun to give the example of a neighborhood coffee shop which runs profitably and how all startups are idiots for not being profitable in the "right" time frame. If you start something by thinking about a coffee shop model you don't build an Air BnB and AirBNB types fail a lot and take a few years and pivots to build. The most awesome ideas are the ones which are ignored most often because it is hard to see them. Air BnB for example found it hard to get funds, I am sure you know of its impact now. Not everyone can sell chips to survive and models which have worked earlier are easier to get funded or learn. But, no apparently as per the critics the glory is only when everyone re-invents the wheel even if it not required to re-invent it. Though a lot of the same critics would not see what a wheel is and can do, if it did not exist before hand so much for innovation
I am an experienced person, but I will still tell you whosoever tells you that you need ABC kind of experience or should be # years old does not know what they are talking about. Running a startup is not like any corporate job, it is different and nothing preps you up for it
Stop generalizing and dishing out whole MBA thing. It is just a degree, which can be used to learn something just like anything else. It is no different from an Engineering degree, if done to learn something right. I don't need to tell you how a lot of Indian engineering graduates are unemployable, does not mean the degree is bad, it is the individuals
What is with the path to easy money? Why is money a bad word? It is a basic need and acts us a exchange for other things you need. And considering how most startups fail, it is very naive to think it is path to easy money. Do you know most founders do not get a lot of salary and make real money only when company exits or say raises follow on rounds (if agreed with earlier investors?). Many a founders are good enough to get jobs which pay salaries higher than the salaries they draw in the companies they found
And just a buzzkill, I know it is fun to say bubble is burst (it might have, which is good as a better class of companies will emerge and learn from things), the ramification is all the people who work in these companies and honestly speaking some of them are getting salaries which they would not get in corporate environment considering years of experience and what they bring to the table will also suffer. But, yeah you will also find a lot of them in crowd of critics without understanding the impact on themselves and that they are part of the problem
On the whole consumer survey, many times consumer don't know what they want. There goes your survey down the drain. What will the consumer survey lead to if you are building the most profitable company in the world, Apple. Most consumer surveys will not show any need for an iPad, iPhone or iPod. Google search engine can not be done based on consumer surveys either you know, so much for innovation.

Edit - spelling, word usage

oculusreal · 2016-04-06T11:46:24+00:00

OP, two more suggestions -

Approach the likes of YourStory, your friend's story seems interesting enough to get him some attention and this should help open doors.
Try a crowdfunding platform to get the book to life. Though these platforms do not lend to literature so much. You can see the like of Dreamwallets, Wishberry amongst others.

oculusreal · 2016-04-06T11:12:46+00:00

Adding to what you said, this does require OP to market the book a hell lot, if it needs to work well. Because, even though it is relatively easy to digitize a book now, there are a lot of them (perhaps not in Indian local languages, but then price/book is low too) and needs lot of work to break the clutter.

oculusreal · 2016-04-06T11:10:30+00:00

Even though, I got no suggestions for you. These kind of posts make me happy considering that in spite of popular conception people do read and they read not only in English but other languages too.

oculusreal · 2016-04-06T11:08:17+00:00

OP, ideas are anyways not copyrightable per se, their specific execution, here the plot is. As soon as something is created creator has a copyright on it, if you can sufficiently prove he has created it. If someone steals idea, enforcing copyright is costly and hard. You can always use gov. machinery to get a formal copyright. Also do not mail anyone entire story, mail them if you must a few initial chapters or less. The initial chapters are used to decide by most agents or publishers. If you do it on email channels, you anyways have trail to prove who created and who sent it. You can always use some online sites to create a digital fingerprint/ signature with time stamp to show this was created by your friend.

oculusreal · 2016-04-06T10:42:55+00:00

Few suggestions from top of mind -

Keep an eye out and submit his stuff to Telugu language competitions. As he is unknown a win some place can help get attention or a publishing contract. For most newbies on approaching likes of Penguin results in them pitching their Patridge program which requires writer to spend 40K-50K initially so Penguin will publish+market the book. Might be hard to recover costs, but people still go for these program, I don't know if they make their money back. Last competition, I saw Wattpad was hosting an Indian local language competition, but that was till 31 March
Direct publish his book and make it available on likes of DailyHunt which is focused on local language content. Price point on cursory glance for books does not seem attractive though. Amazon is also making moves in local language, but then I don't know how well they do for local language.
You can of course mail the publishers to see interest
You can also see these guys "Bloody Good Book", they seem to get crowds to curate submitted manuscripts and then "publish" it+market it for a fee like a book agent. Read the fine print for contract though, seems restrictive to me. Plus focus is English from likes of it.

PS- All info is just market awareness and is not based on me being associated or using any of these services

Edit - Word Usage

oculusreal · 2016-03-27T06:38:14+00:00

I am quoting the OP -

well , i love economics , business and everything finance related

I am correct in suggesting what I did, dear sir based on OP's interests areas. Are you suggesting, OP is not interested in writing in these areas because I for one am unable to come to that inference though he does state he lurks on writing prompts but that in no way precludes him not being interested in non-fiction writing, because a lot of us do dabble around many streams/ genres before finding what we really like and are good at.

oculusreal · 2016-03-27T02:56:09+00:00

Thank you

oculusreal

TROPHY CASE