Staying relevant in the Radio cabs space - Is Meru holding up?

Nokia's CEO ended his speech while announcing their distress sale to Microsoft saying, “we didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost.” Immediately, he and the entire management team publicly wept.

All case studies on Nokia dissecting the reasons for failure point to one thing in common - "inadequate pace of innovation & the seeming reluctance to change even as their world was turning upside down". Interestingly, all market leaders across industries who have been swept away with fundamental changes in their respective industries have this in common - Polaroid, Yahoo or Sun Microsystems.

When I need to book a cab, I usually check the 3 apps on my phone - Uber, Ola and Meru. The occasion decides the app that gets picked. If its an early-morning drop to the airport, the choice invariably is Meru (having burnt hands on a couple of occasions while trying to switch to other operators). For every other case its either Uber (on those rare occasions where surge pricing is not on!) or Ola.

Having used Meru for over 8 years, I'm amazed at their consistency - both, in their 'uber' punctuality with guaranteed before-time arrival AND in they being wedded to technology that is atleast few years behind the industry. 

Their Android app has few frustrating touchpoints. For instance, a basic thing such as the 'favorites' feature doesn't really store your home/office location. Meru, surprisingly doesn't yet have a navigation map for its drivers. The GPS seems to be used only for cab booking. So, the driver doesn't have the advantage of routing technology, and the customer's bill summary doesn't provide a route map, unlike Ola/Uber, which offer this check on whether the driver took an optimal route. Without GPS mapping & proper address storage, you end up explaining your home address & landmark to the drivers, every single time. 

While these contribute to a poor UX overall, their significantly higher fares put off users. Today, a bulk of their daily trips seem to come from airport drops and pick-ups, which is one location where you can still find a very high number of their cabs. Considering that the rival cab aggregators do a pretty good job in the above areas along with providing a seamless app user experience, it remains to be seen when Meru would catch up. However, I've noticed in the past that they took an inordinate amount of time to start offering online payment and wallet facilities, years after their peers, so this may take a good amount of time, as well.

As a side note, strangely I've noticed several of their drivers, across trips handing over their business card containing personal contact details, with Meru branding, possibly encouraged by the company. This is puzzling to say the least on why a cab aggregator would encourage their drivers to push for direct bookings with customers.

Pic Source: Forbes article

Thus, directionally the story of Meru cabs doesn't appear to be too different from the fall of some of these biggest names, in the anecdote at the starting of this post. Meru had a stellar rise to the top in the organised cab players market and at a point had a near monopoly in a couple of major Indian cities. The arrival of cab aggregators marked the reinvention & rejuvenation of this industry - players like Uber, Ola & the erstwhile Taxi4sure had innovated the radio cabs space, unseated Meru cabs from its leadership position and gave it serious competition. 

Thankfully, the story is not yet over for Meru. It continues to try and reverse the downward trend, raise funds and even put in place an expansion plan to fight back. However, the initiatives don't seem to be paying off at the pace that the competition is grabbing business from them. Atleast from a consumer's perspective, things don't seem to look good. 

Can a fitness tracker keep you in good shape?

After over 2 months of using my Fitbit tracker, here is a review of the device:

I’ve been using Fitbit to primarily track the 'steps' and 'floors' metrics. These have been fairly accurate and quite useful. The other two metrics - 'calories' and 'distance' are derived from the above, and hence have a high correlation. However, they are useful additions to have. I’ve hardly used the Heart-rate meter. I did try sleeping with the device strapped on, for a couple of weeks, but the accuracy was low. It showed lesser hours slept, at times under-reporting by over 4 hours. Not finding too much utility for this metric, I stopped wearing it to bed.

I've found that walking for 45 to 60 minutes adds up to about 4000 steps on an average. This combined with general moving around at work and using opportunities to take calls mobile leaves you with an end-of-day count at around 7000 steps. These fitness trackers come with a preset target of 10,000 steps a day, however, somewhere in the range of 7500 would be a good enough target to achieve. I generally take the stairs at every given opportunity so the average floors climbed or 'steps' metric has been healthy at around 12 to 15 per day, while the pre-set target here is just 10.

The Good aspects: 

• Reasonably accurate tracking of steps/floors 
• Nice, sleek design with vibrant colours. Fairly sweat/water resistant - have put this through minor water splashes
• Instant vibrate-alerts indicating achievement of pre-set targets for the day
• Was pleasantly surprised to discover that the display was a touch-screen, something that I found out after 2 weeks of usage - only when my 1.5 year old daughter kept insistently tapping at it! 
• Gamification through achievement badges. However, you end up collecting most of the cumulative badges within the first month (50 km, 100 km, 500 floors etc). Would have been great to have some badges for consistency or month-on-month performance 
• Dashboard provides a good summary and reportedly the best amongst other fitness trackers. Gives a useful set of summary metrics, trending and breakup. 

The Not-so-good aspects:

• The data dump offered for csv download is disappointing. It just extracts the daily total, whereas an activity-wise summary (distance, speed, incline captured) or by-minute detailing would have been better. 
• The dashboard has scope for improvement. Long-term trending (over 30 days) would have been very useful. Further, the weekly summary doesn’t give you a week-over-previous-week summary, nor is a comparison provided against personal averages/best. I’ve now ended up creating my own summary view in excel, based on the csv data download available.

My Fitbit main Dashboard

Overall, Fitbit Charge HR is a good companion that does the job of making you stay active, by the very act of being visibly conscious and up-close through the day. Its almost like a trainer prodding you to move around. Gamification is a definitive motivator. There are days, I’ve felt bad that my steps count were a paltry sub-2000 and have ended up taking a long walk at night. 

Yes, the difference is partly psychological, but I would definitely recommend this for anyone conscious about their activity-level/weight or aspiring to get into this zone. 

Kabali da...!

Note: This post is not a review of the movie

Its been a week since Kabali fever gripped the country. Just as expectations soared right into the sky prior to the release, there have been mixed reviews the past 2 days, after it hit the theatres. There are people who've showered the movie with praises on the bold departure from the popular Rajni genre. While, there are others who've come out with punishing criticism and have even gone to the extent of talking about an impending end of the ageing actor's career. Yet again. 

For a couple of decades now, release of every Rajnikanth movie is marked with the frenzy and celebrations that merit a festival. There are fans who worship him, critics who write him off, people who are drawn-in with interest, while media keeps playing to the gallery. For every movie, as people outside Tamil Nadu struggle to fathom the build up with disbelief, the analysts yet again try to dissect what routinely sets off such a craze time and again: whether its his style on-screen, or his personality off-screen or whether all of this is some irrational, maniacal following that defies any sane logic. 

Love him or hate him, but you can never ignore Rajnikanth. 

Having blocked tickets for Kabali through several friends, I ended up booking 17 tickets - across 2 theatres and for 3 different timings! There were also colleagues planning to join in for the Tamil version of the movie, just to partake in the Rajni craze, though they didn't understand the language. Our preference was to watch the movie with the Hyderabad hackers, the good folks who had organized a special 'Kabali bus' from IIIT to watch the first-day-first-show of the movie at PVR. Having booked tickets for the event through them as well, I had given away all the other tickets for the FDFS show at Prasads. It didn't take too long to find takers for those tickets, and surprisingly long after the tickets were given away, I kept getting requests for tickets based on my facebook post. 

However, PVR made a last minute change in plan and decided to screen the movie in its Telugu version instead of the planned Tamil one, for an already booked show. With this, I was pushed into a last-minute, mad scramble to get back a few tickets on the night prior to the movie release. With some magnanimous friends agreeing to return a few tickets, we kept our date with the first-day-first-show. We had ample fan-crazy moments in the show and it was pure fun. 

With the Boss!	Pre-movie selfie in front of Prasads

At the end of it all, the story of watching the movie was perhaps, no lesser than a short-movie script! Finally, if you're looking for my take on the movie, I'd just say that I liked the movie and enjoyed its detour from a prescribed, formulaic script. But, I'd have to warn that this is a fan speaking! I'm sure, the debates in the media will continue for a while and more 'final verdicts' will be passed. All said and done, 'Rajnikanth - the phenomenon' will continue to both baffle and entertain people for some more time!

Artificial Intelligence debuts in Screenplay for a short sci-fi movie

These days its not new to hear on the advances in machine learning - how AI could eventually take up anything that humans do, and beyond. But we, naturally have been thinking linearly - starting with using AI for automation of low end manual tasks, then moving on to the mid-level tasks that need more cognition. The highly creative and artistic tasks that require great talent are reserved for the last, or some optimists like to keep them within the realm of mankind, assuming machines will never get there.

With bold and futuristic experiments in machine learning, it appears that machines are hitting it right across showing strong ability to pick up tasks at the top of job pyramid. As enthusiasts plug them into totally unexpected and not-ready-yet disciplines, they produce surprising results. Google's Magenta project recently presented the first-ever AI-composed music.

And now, AI has written its first screenplay! The machine was fed scripts from hundreds of sci-fi movies like Star Wars, Avengers, Avatar, Star Trek, Aliens, Terminator, apart form a host of other non-mainstream movies in the genre. A LSTM Recurrent Neural network was trained on these scripts, which eventually called itself 'Benjamin' and churned out its novel screenplay. Film makers had taken a target of 48 hours to direct whatever script comes out.

Here is the outcome - a short, 10 minutes video titled 'Sun Spring'. The script appears to be a cryptic interplay amongst 3 characters set in some futuristic world. Dialogues are never straight, and the monologues border non-sensical rants, but surprisingly it keeps you curious. If this is AI's first outing in screenplay, then perhaps it holds lot of promise. 

It is also the director and actors who have portrayed the characters strongly and elevated the script. But isn't that also too common in the human realm where experts churn out sub-par screenplays which needs technical expertise to rescue?!

Finding Dory.. and more money spinners

Couple of weeks back, I had planned to watch Disney's 'Finding Dory'. I had thoroughly enjoyed 'Finding Nemo' and a sequel though over a decade delayed, really didn't dampen the expectations. I was all the more excited about introducing my son to this franchise. When I told him about planning to watch an animation movie over the weekend, he surprised me by asking if it was for the new 'fish' movie!

Little did I realize that Disney had done a pretty good job of running promos on all their medium - one of them happened to be the Disney kids channel, which my son is usually tuned into. After all, the kids segment is such a lucrative market, and brand extension is the name of the game. Disney has been the master here with their movies minting money as extensions into TV shows - Games - Merchandise - Retail products - Theme parks, apart from others.

Haven't we seen the reverse cycle play out equally successfully with Green Gold Animation's Chota Bheem? What started as a TV show has created an industry of its own, again spanning to cover rest of the categories - Games - Merchandise - Retail products, and... Movies. Of late, there have been many winners taking this path.

Getting back to 'Finding Dory', it was a good watch - giving one more of Nemo's magical oceanic experience. Though not ground breaking or a fresh concept like 'Finding Nemo', it has its special moments. Apart from the movie, I enjoyed the lovely pre-movie clip from Pixar studios - Piper! Check out the Youtube preview here. Won't be long before it spawns its own line of products.

Physical newsprint becomes history, in my world

The unthinkable has happened.

I've stopped buying a newspaper at home. Yes, permanently. 

I've never considered that the digital medium would obviate the need for a physical, printed news copy at home, so soon. And definitely not when the balance in web-vs-print hasn't started shifting as much in India.

Firstly, some context on why this is big for me. Of over 15 years of subscribing to newspapers, I've been on Economic times for the past 10. Newspapers have steadily grown into an obsession for me over time, so much that I usually hoard papers through the week to catch up on unread stuff over the weekend! I had such an obsession for ET Sunday that I've regularly carried around the past several week's editions for well over a month, at times while travelling as well, until I've fully 'finished' them. And there are times when my days started gloomy because the vendor accidentally skipped the daily newspaper at home.

Going from there, not too long ago, to a state of taking a decision to stop the newspaper for good, has been too rapid, even for my own senses to fathom. There's an interplay of several channels that have made the newspaper redundant for me:

• Firstly, there's a steady set of feeds that I've subscribed to online and set them up for consumption on my feedly channel spanning my core interest areas. 
• I've setup a similar lists across interest areas, for some of the notable users that I follow on twitter through Tweetdeck. This has evolved into a great medium for news discovery and aggregation.
• I have experimented with inshorts app (the fast-growing Indian startup) on my mobile, which surfaces top headlines couple of times during the day. This covers the national, local and other breaking global news.
• These channels pretty much cover everything that I'd like to catch up on. Anything missed here or trending viral stuff surfaces on whatsapp, facebook or other medium - all of which I use sparingly.

Over the past month, I had started noticing the newspaper gathering dust at home. Time bandwidth issues apart, I've seen a better customized match of news and articles of my interest online and the availability of apps & aggregator feeds only makes it all the more easier to create your custom digital newspaper. And that explained why the physical newsprint has lost much of its original sheen. 

It remains to be seen if this decision will be persisted, but directionally that's where I'm headed, for now.

Gartner and the interesting space of Technology advisory

Couple of weeks back, I had attended Gartner's Business Intelligence & Analytics conference at Mumbai, their recurring annual event in India. Overall, it was a very well organized conference with good thought leadership being served across the sessions, by their analysts.

All these years of my work experience, I have been bumping into Gartner - their collaterals in the form of whitepapers/webinars and the occasional analyst discussions and conferences. Their business and engagement model continues to amaze me. Quite like some of the successful consulting and research-advisory organizations, they have a rather evolved model of existence. Here, I take a 50,000 feet and possibly simplistic view of my understanding of their business model.

Gartner has a core team of expert analysts, some very good people with diverse & deep industry experience who do research and study trends. However, a bulk of their intelligence and industry reading comes through their consulting and advisory streams of business, wherein they engage IT sellers (technology vendors) and IT buyers (end clients of the vendors) to provide services on a variety of business accepts: 

• how should I position, package & sell technology products/services to my clients?
• how do I buy technology to solve my problems & how should I evaluate vendors?
• who are the top clients I should go after?
• who are the worthy vendors to evaluate?
• ..and so on

As you can see, they are at the centre, talking to both the sellers and buyers and that places them in a great vantage position - both for trend-prediction and match-making! With a market leadership, they are uniquely positioned to practically know whats brewing on the supply and the demand side - this completes their vision of what's happening in the industry. This gold-mine of information coupled with some smart analysts gives them the crystal-ball gazing abilities to call out evolving trends, atleast a couple of years in advance.

Now throw in a slew of products and solutions that are actually by-products of the above mentioned core engine - whitepapers, magic quadrants, hype cycles, analyst calls, webinars, global conferences, media products and what not. They brilliantly package and monetize this knowledge as suitably positioned information offerings, and have an army of people across rolls in their big org-structure who complete the picture (those that most industry watchers wouldn't even be aware of).

One might argue that there is a potential conflict of interest in this (seemingly self-feeding) cycle - IT sellers, in order to get positioned in the mainstream of the Gartner market picture would need to first get into this universe. This is invariably by signing up as a Gartner client, participating in their events and thereby gaining a mind-share with the all-important analysts. Though a successful emerging player could surely get noticed from the outside, there are doubts whether they can get featured in the mainstream collaterals (say, like the Magic Quadrant) if they choose to stay outside the ecosystem.

A potential counter-argument to the above could be the credibility and growing mind-share that Gartner enjoys in the Technology eocsystem, with IT buyers, sellers and all others on the sideline watching it. Perhaps, Gartner walks the fine line by balancing needs/commitments to their clients with an unbiased market picture portrayal to all others. Perhaps, they manage all this too well. 

Nevertheless they are in an interesting position and doing some exciting stuff in the technology industry. Definitely, a space to continue watching.