Financial incontinence

Outside ATM, Aundh

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stabbed in the Bag

I was recently robbed. In, as they say, broad daylight. I let a stranded commuter (or so I thought) hitch a ride on my pillion seat. He alighted at what seemed a funny place for a commuter to alight - no buildings or bus stops or road junctions nearby. Much later, when I fished out my wallet from my backpack to pay a shopkeeper, I noticed something seriously amiss. My wallet had contained many thousand rupees and a twenty when I tossed it into my bag at home. Now, it contained only a twenty. Very smooth. It was clearly an opportunistic pinch - all my cards and other important stuff were intact. The only thing missing were the big bills, which I'd just withdrawn a couple days back, since I'd intended to do some shopping for the home. My mind was such a whirl of emotions, that I had to sit down with a coffee to disentangle one from the other and make sense of where I was. The first thing I felt was betrayal. It's not about the money , I told myself, it's the feeling that ...
Read more

Elevator

I'm on one of my now-infrequent trips to the metropolis. In the apartment elevator going up, saw one of those familiar neighbourly faces that I'd seen hundreds of times in the lift but never spoken to. Gave him a nod and looked down. I'm not much of a social person. Jolting me out of my thoughts, the neighbour said Hi. "Hi", I replied warily. Not content with the perfunctoriness of this exchange, he persisted with a How are you? Oh well, thought I, it's just an elevator ride so "Good. I'm just back here, will be off again in a few days." "Oh? Where are you based now?" "In Kelshi, it's in coastal Maharashtra. I'm there on project work." "Oh? What kind?" "It's an agricultural experiment." He looked mystified at this. "So.....", he picked his way, "it's some software?" I stared at him. "No, complete hardware", I said, and smiled. Thankfully his floor came by then ...
Read more

Small Is Beautiful

Working on a startup is a tremendous learning process. Along with the technical learning, I also get to meet and work with a diverse bunch of folks. I firmly believe in the power of partnerships as a means for small firms to survive and grow, and have been lucky in forming a set of crucial tie-ups with firms that complement our own skills and abilities. Some of these have turned out to be mutually beneficial relationships that have provided a steady stream of work both ways, and crucial inputs on trends in the industry and what our competition is up to. Others have been more psychological comfort than hard cash, however their presence on our portfolio would have indirectly helped generate sales, as clients gained confidence in the spectrum of services we could provide through our partners, although they were only interested in the stuff we did. However large or small, there is one thing that all my partner companies share - a desire and a passion for growth. In fact, I do not think I ...
Read more