Ather Subscription and the end of Ownership
How the subscription model pioneered by electric vehicle manufacturers will transform the concept of ownership.
Techonomics
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Discounting the Economy to Death
The modern deep-discounted digital app-based business model is against the natural laws of economics and completely unsustainable.
The Mirage of the Manufacturing Miracle
The two decades following World War 2 is popularly considered as the “golden age” of modern human civilization. The 1950s and 1960s were a period of legendary economic prosperity, when most of what we know today as the “modern way of life” was established, including the present-day world political and consumerist economic order, the (American)…
What Disrupted the Indian IT Industry?
The changes in the Indian IT industry were the results of a series of events that stretch over a decade.
#KeralaLeads in Unconventional Solar Energy Projects
Solar power is a wonderful thing. It costs next to nothing to produce, requires little maintenance and its raw material is never-ending. Apart from the big oil mafia, the only thing that could hinder the generation of solar power at massive scales is the unavailability of large parcels of flat land to install solar panels,…
India’s Chinese Smartphone Market
There is nothing like smartphone shopping to make you aware of how things are changing in the country. I was doing some heavy-duty research to find a replacement my 3-year old Sony Xperia E3 Dual which with its massive 4 GB internal memory (yes, not RAM) was giving me some problems, to put it mildly….
On Dynamic/Surge Pricing: There is no Free-Market
There are a lot of things in the world that we obey and take for granted without questioning, many of which are natural laws created by forces we don’t fully understand: the laws of quantum physics, Hydrogen and Oxygen combine to form water, girls fall for jerks, Rahul Gandhi. Then there are some laws that…
The System that Rewards only the Rich – In the Context of the Sub-Prime Crisis
Watched the financial-thriller-drama movie “The Big Short” the other day. As you might already know, the movie is on the sub-prime crisis of 2007-08 and resulting Great Recession, about four guys who looked around and predicted that the US housing market was a bubble which would crash in the imminent future, taking banks and the…
The State of Digital Music in India: From Piracy to Retail
Finnish Symphonic Power Metal band Nightwish released their seventh studio album “Endless Forms Most Beautiful” on March 27 2015, for which as an obsessed fan I had been waiting since forever. Then I faced the problem I face with every international music album: there was no way I could buy the album in India. It…
Creative Destruction in Bangalore’s Auto/Taxi Sector
I don’t think anyone in India needs any introduction to the social menace called autorickshaws, especially so in Bangalore. They and their drivers are Bangalore’s universally most despised creatures, the hate spreading across class, income and social status, bridging even the great IT/non-IT divide. Much of the complaints against them are on what they charge (if they agree…
The Flipkart Fiasco and its Online-Offline Aftermath
On October 06 2014 Flipkart has shaken up the country and its systems with its mega e-commercequake, the #BigBillionDaySale, whose aftershocks are still being felt. A lot has been said and written about this. Here I add mine to the heap, a holistic overview of the entire thing. At 0800 hours on October 06 2014, like…
An Ode to Orkut
There was a time not so long ago which today would be difficult to even imagine having existed. I am talking about those ancient days when there was no way to meet people other than physically getting out of your house and encounter other human beings face to face. Young Indian people were the ones…