Leadership

Couple of years back, in an interview with a top MBA university, somebody asked me - "What's your leadership style ?". At first I couldn't apprehend the question and clarified that what exactly you are looking for in the answer. They just wanted to know what's my thinking about leadership and how do I put it to implementation in real life scenarios. I thought for a moment and told them, I like to lead by example. I followed up with an example from my real life about how I tried to achieve a challenging task  that set the example for others to follow. I have always looked upon my seniors and managers as how well they guide the team in difficult situations. One will follow you only when they have faith in you. And to have people to have faith in you, you got to set examples and win their trust. Merely just having excellent communication skills won't suffice, you got to have the right combination of knowledge and the vision to move ahead and steer your team in challenging times - and that is what I think leadership is all about.

I was listening to a talk on leadership by former Vodafone CEO Mr. Arun Sarin. He was addressing business students from his alma matter at Hass school of business. He broadly categorized leadership into four parts viz. strategy planning, handling Operations, people manager and cross-cultural communication abilities. He emphasized that all four are equally important to be a good  business leader.Certain people are good in planning strategies and have great vision but lack the people management skills. Respecting people is the fundamental quality of a good people manager. It's a simple phenomenon of give respect and take respect.

Further, he stressed that cross cultural communication skills are necessary in current global times where one has to deal with people of different nationalities and cultures. I quite agree with this point of his because, if you have to do business in another country, even if you don't know the language or culture, you must possess skills that can develop a feeling of trust for you in other's mind. After all, they are investing in your business and they won't do so, if they don't trust you.


There are different theories that exist on leadership, (check here) and people have often tried to quantify it but I believe that leadership is something that can not be taught as a subject and you can pass that subject based on some numbers. I believe the traits of a leader comes from the environment one is born and brought up in or the people around you or the circumstances in which you have lead your life. Then be it politics, Science, Arts or Literature, leaders are the one who shape the life's of people and the world.

Top 5 features in iOS6

In world wide developer conference held recently, Apple has announced the launch of iOS6 which will be released later this year. The Apple conference as has been the norm, creates lot of buzz in the tech world with developers and even the end users eager to get the first look of the new and improved platform. Working in tech giant gives me this leisure of using the latest devices and platform updates before these get launched in the market. So I got hold of one of the iOS6 ipad device and thought of penning down the top 5 features to look out for with this release.

1. Maps
2. Siri
3. Facetime over Cellular Network
4. Do not Disturb
5. Integrated Facebook

Writing a Business Plan

Recently, I wrote my first business plan for a b-school competition. Entries were invited on opportunities thrown open by Aadhar and how to tap these opportunities in our business models today. As soon as I saw this article, I thought of giving it a try and spared two sleepless nights to complete my entry as I already had asked for extension of deadline. I know most of the people have ideas but very few go on to build a company out of it. Though I belong to the former group till date, but I want to share my experience of writing a business plan and invite people to share their thoughts and ideas on the same.

Since Aadhar is still in it's conception stage, I collected all the necessary information available on the web and jotted down everything in one folder in my laptop. If you want to read more about UIDAI, go through my blogpost here. I sat down with one of my colleagues and discussed at length all the pros and cons of the technology involved. At the end of the discussion we had couple of ideas. We selected the one which sounded feasible and would be easy to implement given the time constraints and available resources.

Few things we kept in mind before writing down the plan were to identify our target customers, the business problem we are trying to solve, any competition that exist in the market today for our proposed solution and how different are we and what are the limitations in existing solution that we are trying to solve with our solution. We started down by opening a google document which we both can edit at the same time.

The school did provide us the template which we need to adhere to, but in broader terms every business plan template is more or less are similar except few points here and there. We started with writing the summary in 100 words that was to be used to pitch our idea in front of judges. We mentioned two key things here : 1) what we are proposing 2) problem statement: why we are proposing. I think, as this is a starting point and most of the applications are rejected/accepted on basis of understanding of this point we tried to focus more on this space. We continued to write our background details, our target customer and market, discussed why our solution is unique, talked about competitors, the limitations in their solution and how we have an edge over them.

We also mentioned what product/service we are offering, and what would be the pricing mechanism, and why the customer will be really interested in buying our solution. We tried to relate our proposals with real life examples, so that it becomes easy for the reader to understand our thought process.  In the end, we mentioned how do we plan to execute our solution with rough estimates of time duration, what type of resources are required including talent and manpower.

I don't know why after completing this task, I got huge contentment and a boost to self ego. Maybe starting a company of your own and nurturing it like your own child  must give whole lot of contentment to an entrepreneur which makes him travel that extra mile to create an impact on this world. No matter what the result might be, it's certainly a step towards something good to come.

The Social Technology

Recently, I was going through emerging trends report published by Gartner on their website and my eyes were struck on one point viz. Technology and social trends. I decided immediately that this would be the next topic for my blog.

Needless to mention with 700 million users worldwide and with over 4% of photos ever clicked stored in their database, Facebook is the Don of social networking web world. This title would not have been possible without the excellent management skills and charisma of Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook. Handling diverse users without the slightest of hitch is a job well done. One may wonder what is so great about social networking and how can this be of any advantage other than general chit chat and viewing videos and images?

The answer lies within the question itself i.e. networking. This whole concept is a blessing in disguise for many small scale businesses which were finding hard to reach out to their customers. It is slowly becoming a mass media communication technique adopted by startups to reach out to the public domain. And why not as no other technology connects 700 million people worldwide at one place and that too free of cost. Businesses ranging from selling unique hand made interior decoration stuff to heavy machinery based fashion garments don't hesitate to give few bucks to reach out to target customers across the globe.Social networking websites have tapped this ideology to monetize their workflows that connect businesses with cross geographical consumers.

Another thing that is gaining momentum is social collaboration through blogging, instant messaging, collaborative offices and crowd sourcing. Companies find blogging  a nice way to advertise their products and reaching out to the public. They don't mind paying few bucks to some eminent bloggers who can once in a while advertise their products. Moreover every company today has its own blogging site from where it can get in touch with it's customers. Any concerns, feedbacks, suggestions, new product launch, it's feature details and future upgrades are shared using this mechanism which provides a two way interaction interface both for consumers and the producer.

Last but not the least, Social feedback is a very powerful tool to gather feedbacks, opinions and general interest of the public on specific items as seen on youtube, flickr, Digg, del.icio.us and amazon. This is also a mechanism to know and understand what the end-user wants and companies can use the feedback to differentiate their products from others. The invention of "Like" and "+1" is seen as a breakthrough in the field of social networking and as a way to read people's mind- to know about their liking. Gartner predicts that by 2016, social technologies will be integrated with most business applications. Companies should bring together their social CRM, internal communications and collaboration, and public social site initiatives into a coordinated strategy. 


Lastly, I want to dedicate this blog post to my favorite tech icon Mr. Steve Jobs without the inspiration of whom,  the mobile technology and related segments wouldn't have sounded so interesting and meaningful.

UIDAI and Mobile

I tried to google this topic and found very little information on the prospects of future of UIDAI(Unique Identification Authority of India) with mobile technology as one of it's propagators. So I thought of bringing my thoughts to notice and pen down what all can be done with the amalgamation of these business jargons in India in future. As per the latest numbers 2 million numbers have already been provided and 1 million per day is the target w.e.f 1st oct. Doing simple maths it will take another 3.5 years to cover present population of 1.25 billion which by the end of this time would cover every inch of land available on earth.  Highly unrealistic, a herculean task for Mr. Nilekani and co, but I won't go into criticizing columnist mode but instead will focus on my key topic here.

Needless to say, this project if succeeds will bring about a reform in the processes- ranging from reducing paper work, fast services for individual verification, easy access to bank accounts, reduction in corruption, ease of polling and linkages with social welfare schemes such as NREGA esp for rural areas. Though getting a UID number is not a mandate but certainly it will help individuals ranging from people living in remote areas to HNI's. You can do a bank transactions or open a completely new account using your mobile verifying your thumb impressions or iris verification. Currently National Payments Corporation of India(NPCI) is working with UIDAI to provide hassle free transactions on mobile without even showing up to the bank. A mobile app can be built which takes thumb impression of a person, authenticate the details with entries at the backend and allow user to create a new account with the bank of his or her choice ! 

Thumb impression on Mobile

Linking mobile numbers to UIDAI will allow wallet-less wandering anywhere around the country. All your details such as Licence, PAN, VoterID, bank accounts, credit cards can be accessed directly from your mobile with the simple verification of UIDAI. Ofcourse, that goes without saying that one needs to develop a highly robust system and network around mobile, which can be leveraged by customers to access their personal information and consume it in a right manner.  More so, the telecom operators along with government should channelize their energies here rather than spending time, money and efforts on passing allegations to each other and should gear up and develop a strong network that can sustain the traffic of this order. Then be it e-ticket verification for train or Air or Roll number verification in an exam centre, all will benefit from the fusion of these two: UIDAI and mobile.

Engaging Customers on mobile devices

It's been nearly three years now since I have been involved with Adobe Reader team on mobile devices. We have successfully ported Adobe Reader on nearly all major mobile platforms including Android, Blackberry playbook and Windows Mobile7. The journey in mobile technology world is not only thrilling but also gives you an opportunity to think beyond the boundaries of your work. Lots of  innovative ideas and brainstorming sessions on improving customer experience on mobile devices makes your office hours enthralling  and challenging at the same time.


Recently I was checking out the list of top 10 paid apps on android and iOS platforms. I categorized the mobile apps in two broad categories viz. those apps which solves some business problem and secondly those which just engages users with the amazing experience the app provides. The ideas around which these apps were built were not something unique and vast number of apps  built on similar lines co-exists in the marketplace. What is the difference that draws customer attention more on these bunch of apps ?


I laid my hands on few of these and noted few differences that might have caused individual's inclination towards using those apps. User Interface Design is one such attribute that gives shape and color to your idea. The end users firstly come face to face with how the software looks and thereafter comes the intelligence and the feature set. It is analogous to the first impression you create on opposite sex by the way you carry yourself, then be it your clothes or your mannerisms.Right color combination alongside the art work you use creates a lot of impact on the end user. That seems to be one of the prior reasons of Google search bar success and even Facebook over their rivals Yahoo and Orkut respectively.


Ease of use is another attribute that distinguishes a great app from a normal app. In mobile world, it becomes all the more important to not to clutter things in small window space. Too many options, tabs and windows may harm the overall outlook of your app. Ease of navigation across the windows and smooth transitioning makes your mobile app look more presentable. Google search bar in android smartphones is one such example of simplicity and effectiveness. This reminds me of famous TV advertisement by Bollywood actor Ranbir Kapoor for Tata Docomo's new ad campaign "Keep it simple silly" which has created an impression among the masses.


Discoverability is third such attribute that developers must keep in mind before shipping the final product out in the market. If you are developing an enterprise application for consumers, there is high probability that similar concept or feature set must be already available in the market. You may not want to loose out to flash your USP feature in your application in this highly competitive and volatile market. You must ensure that every effort is put to make your features easily discoverable to your customers.

I can not stop myself from writing about famous gaming app viz Angry Birds, which received tremendous response from users worldwide, with over 50 million downloads in just 1 year of it's release. It's a simple concept that involves employing a sling shot to propel small cannonball-shaped birds at fragile glass and timber houses occupied by green pigs. Now what keeps user's engaging is not the above mentioned factors but also the learn-ability factor that prompts users to align the projectile angles everytime they aim to destroy pigs. With each shot you sharpen your cognitive abilities and improves your performance to reach to next level. 


You might have the greatest of ideas but you need much more than an idea to create an impact on customer's mind.

Technology in next decade

Few months back, I was asking this to one of my friend turned entrepreneur that what is his opinion on technology in IT domain in next few years. He said definitely not cloud computing alone and certainly not mobile technology but something related to two. We discussed for some time and finally concluded that in next few years a new technology with the name of cloud mobile computing will be the talk of technology world. This new technology is nothing but a term for fusion of cloud computing and mobile technology.

I just happen to browse through the rich feature set of Apple  iOS5 which is yet to be launched in the market and my eyes were stuck not on all but one feature that is iCloud. This allows you to access your music, photos, calendar, documents and apps from any of your devices.

Many companies have already started work in this direction. Easy access to internet along with smartphone is creating a new business opportunity for both developers and investors. Concepts such as creating and editing photos on your favorite smartphone or tablet, capturing and editing a movie on the run or even designing a new website by just drag and drop of pre-existing widgets in the cloud on your device and continuing the same work on your desktop and laptop from where you left on your handheld device are creating a lot of buzz in the market.

The effects of combination of mobile and internet are becoming globally pervasive and their effects on business and society will be profound. Customers and end-consumers will buy goods and services via mobile devices and communicate and network via social media applications in the mobile cloud. The UID scheme launched in India has opened new avenues for business start-ups to think and come up with innovative ideas in this direction. as mobile is the one belonging that is common between people of different class in the society.