Anshumani Ruddra
@baboonzero
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Tinkerer. Fixer. Product Builder. Payments at Google (India and APAC lead). if you want to reach out to me.
Singapore
Joined February 2010
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Pinned Tweet
Mahabharat - the great war - 18 days of heroism, deceit, blood and intrigue - now as a mega Twitter thread.
I'll add the events from a few days of the war each day.
Caveats: lots of editorialization, creative liberties and interpretations.
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1/ We have a very poor understanding of privilege in India. This has far-reaching effects on the products we design and build.
I am writing this in English. You are able to read it. Congrats - we are both privileged.
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Let's not normalise death. A 55-year-old with comorbidities could have still lived a fulfilling life for 20 more years. A grandma in her 70s could have seen her grandkids graduate. Don't take these deaths in your stride. Take an account for every single one of them.
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1/ My first trip to China (Beijing and Hangzhou) was very insightful and left me in a state of euphoria. So it was important that I wait at least 10 days before putting down my impressions (to avoid recency bias).
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11/ But if you truly want to build for India - travel to the hinterlands. Connect with real people. And quickly come to terms with your privilege.
Do wait for the country to recover before you do this. Happy Monday.
/fin
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I'm sitting in my parents' living room watching my kiddo play with his grandparents and thanking my luck.
This is it. This is the most important lesson from the last 1.5 years. This is the only thing that matters.
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3/ Some data:
Did you study in an English medium school? We only have around 225K of these schools in India and only 25 million Indians (~2%) have studied in them.
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Wife and I were giving each other a hug after a long day of work. Kiddo inserts himself between us and proclaims: "I am the cheese slice in this sandwich!"
Yes, you are, kiddo. Yes, you are.
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9/ In this potent mix, throw in the fact that pretty much every product company in India is made up of individuals like you and me. Forget making for India. We are making for the 1 to 6% of India that is like us. We have no understanding of the remaining 94%.
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A manager who looks out for your well-being and is invested in your career progress can have an immeasurable impact on your life.
Work only for the best managers.
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2/ The Indian middle class is like bigfoot. Imaginary. We do not belong to this mythical group. In fact, this group has never existed throughout history (and was a figment of Hrishikesh Mukherjee's imagination). Say to yourself - I am rich. And privileged.
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8/ In any recovery program, the first step is acceptance. While some of you will be nodding along to everything you have read so far, others will be in vehement disagreement with me. Guess what - the very fact that you have an option to disagree means you are privileged.
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7b/ ... Pfft. I am a tall fair man, born into a brahmin family, where both parents went to college. The above three quotes (previous tweet) are statements I've made often. And yet, in reality, everything was handed to me in a silver platter. And to you.
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4/ Do you have at least one parent who went to college? You are one of 10 million Indians (sub 1%). Around 120 million Indians have a college degree - most of them graduated in the last 10-15 years. So not our parents' generation.
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5/ If you have taken a domestic flight in the last one year, or purchased anything online ever, or own a credit card you are respectively in 5%, 4% and 3% of India's population.
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6/ Oh, and if you make more than USD 10/ day (roughly INR 2.5 lacs/ year) you are one amongst 80 million Indians (6%). If you feel you are not in the same economic class as your food delivery guy - congrats - you are actually amongst the super-rich in India.
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I love how in high end cafes in Delhi when you order a Macchiato the waiter gets a concerned look on their face and explains "sir, it is a shot of black coffee with milk foam on top". Poor chaps are too used to bringing the order and people saying: "abbey, itni kum coffee?
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Folks in the tech world - let's make this more interesting. Donate 50K (or more) to any Covid cause you believe in (hospital bills, treatment, oxygen, etc) and I will spend 2 hours with you on product building, org structure, career advice. Heck - I'll write a PRD for you.
Folks in India who are not able to volunteer directly. Money is easy. Some of us got lucky. Time to donate April's salary.
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7a/ We all love the underdog narrative about ourselves.
"My dad walked 5 miles to school every single day."
"I studied 14 hours a day to get into an IIT."
"Nothing was just handed to me. I worked hard for this."
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@JellyIvy
@aprajit_kar
Oh we worked hard. But the rails were very well greased. Others can work harder but still can't get to where we are.
My parents and I discussed literature and science when I was a kid. Other parents were just trying to survive and feed their kids.
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10/ We can either accept this and make our peace with it or we can decide to do something about it. The former is easy. For most companies - the top 6% of India is a fairly large and valuable market. You can spend your career building for this segment.
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New adult male friendships are difficult.
Making friends was super easy when we were kids. You walked up to someone and started playing with them and voila - you were friends. Best friends even. I see my kiddo do this all the time.
It's inspiring and annoying simultaneously.
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The game of job titles can be addictive but in the long run, is a losing strategy. 🧵👇🏼
In any fast-growing ecosystem (eg India), there are a lot of people who will also grow as a result of the massive success of the companies that they are a part of. This feels right. But ...
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The Big Short is such an underappreciated masterpiece. I'll never forget what a CDO (collateralized debt obligation) is because Anthony Bourdain explained it to me.
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Stay away from people who think that life is zero-sum. Someone doesn't have to lose for you to win.
Partner and work with people who are trying to make the pie larger for everyone.
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21/ Some thoughts for the Indian startup ecosystem:
Setup a team in China after your series C. You need the insights. Massive innovation in product and business models happening in China. /end
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Seriously amazing companies being built right now in India. I wish I had more money to write more angel investment cheques and more time in my day to jam with founders.
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Bangalore, thanks for being a wonderful host for the last 12 years. You used to be Chennai's less cooler cousin, but over the years you've upped your game. You'll be missed.
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It's preposterous to assume that everyone on Slack and other communication platforms is just waiting to respond to you. Don't just say "hi". Complete your thought. What do you want? Just because it looks like a chat interface doesn't mean it is one.
Rant over.
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Got a lecture from the 5-year-old first thing this morning on how to be a better grown-up:
- no scolding without reason
- even when there is a reason, explain properly
- speak gently, always
The child is definitely the father of the man.
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The last month has been difficult. And it is important to appreciate the small joys in life. Just unboxed my Noogler swag. 3rd month at this incredible org and it's still sinking in.
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Why is it not the most massive deal that the words for dad and mom in both Tamil and Korean are the same: "appa" and "amma"? There seem to be a lot of other common words. Why the hell do we not have a better grasp of our maritime history? Aargggh.
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1/ One mistake I see a lot of startups making is in thinking that a high rejection rate in their recruitment funnel is a badge of honour: “We have a very high bar of hiring”.
No - this is only indicative of your broken recruitment process.
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Scolded the kiddo this morning.
Later, wife asked me to apologize and make up with him.
Kiddo: Nope. You need to invent a time machine, go back to this morning and not scold me. Then I'll be happy.
🤷 Bringing up a geek can backfire. Spectacularly.
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May the universe give all of us the courage to handle the first Monday of the year.
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At the Google office for the first time as an employee (9 months after joining the company).
Celebrating this and the festival season with these insanely comfortable beauties.
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Whataboutery can be easily explained through a Venn diagram:
People care about A.
Trolls find B that intersects with A. And start talking about B anytime someone mentions A.
Beware of such trolls. They will try and engage you in civil and sincere-sounding bad-faith debates.
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"Make your friends before you make your money" - a friend who has done well for himself said this recently. Couldn't agree more.
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Folks in India who are not able to volunteer directly. Money is easy. Some of us got lucky. Time to donate April's salary.
Global friends; you can help India remotely 🌍.
Please donate to one of these causes. Most accept foreign cards (and if not message me and I'll give you my PayPal and do it for you)
+ Twitter - pls tag more
1/n
@Hemkunt_Fdn
Delivering oxygen
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2/ The first great thing that happened a couple of days before I was leaving was that both Alipay and Wepay allowed foreigners to create temporary bank accounts with pre-loaded cards so that they could easily transact all across China. I used zero cash on my entire trip!
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Thank you so much for this,
@DisneyPlusHS
. I'm incredibly proud of the work we all did together and eternally grateful for the amazing folks we got to work with.
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I just completed 7 months of living in Singapore with my family.
Travelling globally for work or leisure and even living in serviced apartments for months on end is very different from actually making a new country your home.
A thread of experiences and observations 🧵👇🏼
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5/ QR codes have become integral to the way of life in China. Even beggars and buskers have QR codes on their donation boxes. Colleagues in Beijing mentioned that some of them hadn’t done a cash transaction in over a year.
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Got the entire family together. First banned all talk of politics. Then banned religion as a topic. Now had to ban talk of COVID (because religion and politics got pulled in).
By the end of this trip only peak 90s Govinda films will be discussed. 🤷
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Only married people understand the joy of shopping for supplies for their own surprise birthday party.
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4/ I used the following apps extensively during my stay in China: Alipay, WeChat, Amap, Baidu Maps, Google Translate, Didi, Bing Search, Luckin Coffee, TikTok, iQiYi.
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Was on an Air India flight from Singapore to Bombay when the pilot announced that India had successfully landed Chandrayaan-3 on the moon. The entire aircraft burst into spontaneous applause and shouts of Jai Hind. Amazing!
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I gave a talk internally at Google today. Immediately after the talk a colleague pinged me - "great talk; adding xyz would make it richer and more engaging for next time".
Everyone should have access to such candid, on-point, actionable and prompt feedback. It's a game changer!
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When you are young you want more choices - jobs, food, dating - literally everything.
As you get older you realise (if you are lucky) the tyranny of choice.
Cut down choices. That's your path to maturity.
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When I feel down I solve math problems. A good probability-based puzzle can be hugely cathartic. Calculus is a great pick-me-up.
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I'm super excited to share that enrollments for my cohort-based course for mid-career product managers are now open on Maven:
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So stoked about the guest speakers for my first cohort:
- CEO of India's hottest gaming startup
- CTO of one of the world's biggest OTT service
- One of the most formidable product leaders from India
- Arguably the best recruiter of product and tech leaders in India and SEA
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In the last 48 hours, I have understood a fundamental law on Twitter: no matter what you write about, by the 100th retweet some people would have questioned your integrity, intelligence and patriotism.
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Wife: Kiddo is not reading enough!
Me: Let me get him hooked onto some anime that only has subtitles and no English dubbing.
Kiddo is now running around screaming "dattebayo".
But he is reading all the subtitles. So that's a win!
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The single biggest mistake every first-time manager makes in tech companies (especially product, design and engg) is in believing that they no longer have to contribute as ICs (individual contributors) 🧵 👇
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I've navigated four careers till date (author, game designer, entrepreneur and product manager). If health permits - I'd like to navigate another 4 or 5 over the next 40+ years.
Just leaving this here as a personal annual reminder.
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1/ For the first time in the history of hiring in the tech ecosystem in India, the candidates hold all the power. And it doesn’t even matter if you are a fresher or if you are extremely experienced and sought-after for your skills.
You have the power. For now.
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1/ Mahabharat is choc-a-block with jaw-dropping scenes. But my personal favourite is an under-appreciated battle scene. The Kuru kingdom has invaded the Matsya kingdom where the Pandavas are living out the last year of their 13-year-long exile.
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My greatest professional achievement still remains being turned into a character in the legendary Mafia Wars (a game I worked on) exactly 10 years ago. Say hello to Ivankov Dimitrovich. What an amazing Christmas gift it was.
Also - fitness goals for my 40th year.
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18/ Grandparents live with their son/ daughter in the city and look after the grandkids. Most households are dual income - a big reason for the emergence of the massive Chinese middle class.
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When I was young I used to think that the big failures mattered (not getting into the right college or getting a good job or your company shutting down). Now I know that it is the small everyday failures that truly bring one down.
Parenting - a constant reminder of this.
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20/ Downloading and signing up for the Luckin Coffee app and getting the first coffee free and then subsequently only drinking coffee from their store for the rest of the trip proved to me that introducing relevant friction in a customer flow can be hugely beneficial.
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8/ (food prepared and served by robots), waiting customers can play a live action multiplayer game against each other (complete with a leaderboard and prizes). This is taking CX to the next level.
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This is a seismic event in the ecosystem. Those of us who have interacted with
@tanaypratap
know that he is a force of nature like no other. Excited for him and looking forward to the impact he is going to create.
Last day at Microsoft. Emotional.
Into fixing education 200% now. Ask Me Anything.
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I had forgotten how therapeutic it is to polish leather shoes. Solid meditative state.
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11/ At 16,000 sq km each, both Beijing and Hangzhou are about 28 times bigger in size than Mumbai and Bangalore. While I don’t think such large cities are efficient in terms of energy consumption, we need to invest in building a lot of new cities in India.
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Man standing next to me at the airport toilet was speaking rather loudly on a phone call. He then dropped one of his airpods into the urinal. I've never seen such a spectrum of emotions (coupled with the choicest of cuss words). This was true heartbreak. A real duvidha.
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This insistence on recording a customer's phone number at a retail store's checkout is ridiculous.
@manukumarjain
- a Mi Store refused to give me a bill if I didn't share my phone number (which as a matter of principle I don't share). This is absurd!
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14/ The Chinese pop culture scene has exploded. Everyone reads. And there are magnificent book shops all over filled with latest SF, fantasy, crime, literature and non-fiction. Chinese writers have particularly been dominating the global SF scene. (Cixin Liu is a living legend!)
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1/ My favourite quizzing questions are around transformations. If you know a little bit about guns, you know that a Self Loading Rifle is called an SLR. And then you realize that BSA’s most famous cycle in India in the 90s was the BSA SLR. Hmmm …
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Every major brand in India right now: "ladka handsome bhi hai, bana lete hain brand ambassador. Uske agent ka number hai kya?" 🏅
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13/ The infrastructure was relatively new, well-maintained and staggering in terms of its capacity. I particularly enjoyed the bullet train ride from Beijing to Hangzhou (1300 kms+ in just over 4 hours).
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16/ Everyone loves Aamir Khan in China (Dangal and PK were big hits and people stood in long queues to buy tickets when the movies came out). Young people in Beijing and Hangzhou know of him. Hrithik is emerging as the next big Indian star in China.
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Indian-origin kids growing up outside India (like my kiddo is) don't understand why their parents are so forlorn and heart-broken even two days after that ill-fated cricket match. My kiddo has been trying to cheer me up all evening 😿
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Brilliant numbers for a learning platform:
- 70M MAU 📈
- 2B questions answered per month 😲
- NPS of 82 🏆
@quizizz
has silently built a global edtech powerhouse out of India. Love the work they are doing.
Reach out to them if you want to be a part of this amazing journey.
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As a parent of a 4-year-old, I often wonder what abilities I can help develop in my son. I narrowed it down to curiosity, autodidactism and inter-personal skills. So, essentially: board games and poker!
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Compiling a list of small joys in life:
1. Inserting a USB device the right way in on the very first try
2. Correctly remembering the name of an actor in an obscure film
3. Building a road and a settlement in one turn of Catan
4. A bug moving to Resolved state on Jira
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The
@gojektech
and
@tokopedia
merger is by far the biggest thing to happen in the SEA tech scene. So excited for friends who have worked/ invested in these amazing companies over the years.
@vikramadhiman
@AjeyGore
@smdcmc
@caesars
and so many others - congrats!
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10/ Two things that struck me in both Beijing and Hangzhou - the air quality was excellent and the cities were humongous. Pollution in Chinese cities used to be a problem but it looks like they have been able to curb it in a big way. AQI was Excellent throughout my trip.
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Dang. We don't have a single player in the team who can take up the test captaincy. Not a single one. We'll have to get Dhoni back.
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Days like today, I miss the war room atmosphere at
@DisneyPlusHS
. Best of luck, folks - you've got this covered for the country. Always rooting for all of you!
#INDvsPAK
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I have a deep emotional connect to the counter-wipe. While cooking during this pandemic (and especially during a quarantine) has lost its charm, the act of wiping the counter clean after the cooking is complete is still very satisfying.
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The highest-paid executive at Netflix needs to be whoever is green-lighting their South Korean shows. What a solid year of television programming (Squid Game and now Hellbound)!
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I don't know of any founder/ operator in the tech ecosystem whose eyes don't light up when they see the resume of an entrepreneur - especially those who have failed in the past.
Failure has taught them critical lessons. They are hungry and have thicker skin.
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Just spent an incredible week at Stanford's GSB learning from some of the best profs in the world. I write a monthly update to my team at Google and shared this:
---
I am writing this from my room at the Schwab Residential Center - part of Stanford’s Graduate School of…
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One of the biggest reasons developers (and not just PMs and designers) should speak to the users/ customers of their products is simple - the feedback from a user will make you take great pride in your work. A delighted user is all the motivation you need to keep devs engaged.
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India accounts for 2% of global book sales and does not feature in the top 10 countries by book sales revenue (2016-17 data). Per capita - we are not readers. There is some vague data point floating around that Indians spend 10.5 hrs/ week reading. This is time spent online 🤦🏼
India’s Population: 138 crore
highest selling book in any year: max 1.5 lakh
Most top books are motivational. Motivational books are like sports shoes. The joy of buying them makes you feel you’ve solved all your problems. But neither is really used by most except for status.
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Story of every startup office in India: 5 people in search of a meeting room.
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Most product management careers stall when PMs become people managers.
The individual contributor (IC) to people manager jump is brutal for most and not necessary for a successful career in product management. It takes a toll on the people being managed as well.
#MVN2
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Wife: "Baby, you are my global maxima."
This is how nerds express their love to each other🤓😍
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1/ I am a mythology buff - especially the Mahabharat. Over the years, countless hours have gone into reading, watching, listening to and debating the original texts, some great and some sub-par translations, various versions and adaptations.
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The pond might be small. But the koi brings it alive.
The whale might be insignificant compared to the ocean, but it is still a whale - magnificent!
Impact and influence matter.
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Retirement plan in progress - the Cliffs of Moher will do that to you!
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My mind has been auto-completing any word beginning with VAC to Vaccination by default.
Had to reread the below headline thrice, because for the life of me I couldn't make sense as to why ISRO was vaccinating MBA grads and paying them money.
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Folks - who is the best person in the ecosystem to learn no-code tools and frameworks from?
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I don't know about you, but asking someone I'm meeting for the first time about their favourite font has been a great ice-breaker for me over the years.
It is OK if you don't have a favourite font. No judgment.
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17/ The public school system is fairly good but there is intense competition to get into the top 9 universities in China - their ivy league - C9. Most city kids are ushered from one activity to the next after school by grandparents - music, dance, fencing, English, maths …
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