Musings from 2021

2021, for me, has been a great year to reflect by and will remain something which will keep me anchored around many aspects in personal life -?

• More than 15 months at a stretch where my entire family across 4 generations (great grandmother to my children) shared one meal a day?together
• 2nd wave of Covid where I saw close friends lose their parents, while helplessly we tried to leverage one’s “network” to get a hospital bed / cylinder of oxygen
• 15-day period where I cut myself off from this world to focus just on health - body, mind and soul

Many more to call out… but I want to talk about three which left a lasting impact in my world of Startups / Investments

1. Build Trust. Don’t only Sell?

December is my equivalent of “March” for a CA / CFO and promptly come reminders from Insurance companies to renew my policies. While renewals are a click of a button away, I do take time to research - new product launches, pricing, reassess coverage etc. Believe it or not I renew upto 9 policies in this month (Term Insurance, Health Insurance, Top-up, Critical Illness, Personal Accident, Cancer protect, 2 Vehicle Insurances, Parent’s health policy) ?

Many of you may relate to the barrage of incoming calls, if you had one policy up for renewal - let alone 9. One thing people who know me well can relate to, I would handle most of these marketing calls with fair degree of politeness / patience. One such call was from a gentleman by the name #Rajitesh. Summarising my interactions with him -?

• He came from his point of strength - knowledge of the Industry and policies
• He is tied to 1-2 Insurers but not once he tried to sell me a policy?
• Every day for almost 6-7 days we exchanged notes in the evening, about one of the insurance areas where I would tell him what I discovered as products, pricing, coverage?
• He would place his best offer to me from one of his Insurers and if I had a better product - he would advise me to go ahead with them
• After 7-8 calls lasting decent 30-40 mins each, I haven’t bought a single policy from him
• But I have in him, a trust that I can recommend my friends & family who don’t want to invest that time I did

Takeaway: It is extremely important for founders / startups and even investors to communicate Trust. The relationship that your consumer has with you is beyond one that can be visualised by a marketing funnel. The length of relationship between a VC and a startup founder is beyond the 4-5 sessions of pitching and a week of Termsheet negotiation. Place value in long term benefits (in some proportion) over just short-term gains

2. Size doesn’t matter; your promise does

Covid or no-covid, the foodie in me can’t resist at least 2-3 meals a week ordered from Swiggy, Zomata, Dunzo. A shoutout here to all the delivery folks who risked / continue to risk their lives to serve customers like me each day. Year-end is also the time when some of these platforms show you places where you ordered from, what kind of spend etc. - after feeding the gastronomical instincts, analytics giving “food” for thought, eh !!

To my surprise, two trends stood out -?

• Most ordered restaurant were two corner shops - pettikada, as we would say in Malayalam, one which serves the best authentic Masala Dosa (with spicy Sambar, not the sweet-laced one of Karnataka palette) and another which serves great Kerala sweets / deserts (unniappam, payasam). Mind you, 2 meals of the 3 in my home are Tamil / Kerala cuisines.?
• Secondly, atleast?1/3rd of my orders had a higher delivery fee than the food cost itself - Bangalore’s own legacy food joints in West Bangalore couldn’t be resisted

Takeaway: Build a product of promise and live upto it each time. Your customers would pay even premium to experience it. Leaving economics of food business aside, sophisticated fine-dining / fusion food alone don’t lead to business - Comfy food can also lead to sticky customers too.?

3. Recommendations, not Books but Movies / OTT

Memoir: Schumacher, Baggio: The Divine Ponytail

Family: #Home (Malayalam)

Crime Documentary: Making a Murderer?

Investigation: Icarus

Iconic: Money Heist - Last Season, Drishyam 2 (Malayalam)

Intense: Unhinged

Disturbing: House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths (I didn’t watch Squid Games.. and don’t intend to)

Blast from the Past: The Newsroom, Boston Legal

Sports: 83 the Movie, Sarpatta Parambarai (Tamil), Toofan

Patriotic: Sardar Udham?

#SoonerthanLater: Scam 1992?

Sci-Fi: The Mandalorian

Dark Comedy: Mandela (Tamil), Raame Aandalum Raavane Aandalum (Tamil)

.. and Last but not the least Mass = Master (Tamil) :D

2021 was remarkable for good and bad reasons that most of us would have interesting nuggets to share. Would love to know your musings around 2021.