At 91, dad asks, “Why isn’t anybody protesting?”

Baba turned 91 last week. I went to Mumbai from Bangalore to wish him and to perform our quarterly ritual of taking both to the family physician. This time dad fared better than mom. Her blockages in leg arteries are worsening, making it difficult for her to sleep. However, I am accustomed to situations where we ask, “How will they manage by themselves?” And yet they do, valuing their independence more than anything else.

Baba doesn’t do much these days. He is mostly on his bed, occasionally getting up to eat and visit the toilet. He ventures out once in a few months for a haircut, or to visit the doctor or his brother, or sister. He is still addicted to the newspaper, though – Loksatta if he is in Mumbai and The Hindu if he is in Bangalore with us. He also reads two magazines with a socialist leaning – Sadhana and Maha Anubhav. After he is done with reading the news, he has asked me many times, “Why is nobody protesting?” I don’t know the answer. I can only ask, “Why am I not protesting?”

Baba tells me that he has seen the rise of fascism in India since the 60s, before I was born. He worked at the Indian Cotton Mills Federation, perhaps the NASSCOM of textile industry, influencing the policy makers on behalf of the industry. He feels that the murder of Krishna Desai, a Communist Party leader, the then MLA, and a leader of mill workers’ union in 1970 was a turning point in the rise of fascism in Maharashtra. Three Shiv Sena party members were convicted and spent seven years in prison. Baba feels that a few textile oligarchs funded the assassination, and the then Congress Chief Minister Vasantrao Naik made money in the process. Barely three weeks after Desai’s death, Shiva Sena founder Bal Thackeray has said, “We must not miss a single opportunity to massacre communists wherever we find them."¹

The rise of fascism had its reflection in society. Vijay Tendulkar wrote the now-famous play “Ghashiram Kotwal” (1972) on the corrupt police chief of Pune serving the corrupt chief secretary Nana Phadanavis during the Peshwa dynasty in the 18^th century. I watched Ghashiram and read George Orwell’s Ninteen Eighty-Four while in school. Bombay gang wars also had their share of representation in the newspapers. I was in the 6^th grade when Dawood Ibrahim’s brother Shabir Kaskar was killed by Manya Surve at a petrol pump near our flat in Prabhadevi in 1981. Next year, Surve was killed in a police encounter, also remembered as Bombay’s first encounter killing. It provided masala to two Bollywood films – Amitabh starrer Agneepath and Shootout at Wadala. One of my school classmates joined the Rama Naik gang and one became a police inspector. I was too shy, skinny, and underweight to go towards either of the paths. However, I became aware of the brutal power of “the system,” which included mafia as a core element and the doctrine of “winning at any cost”. I was not convinced that protests could make a dent in such a powerful system.

As I flew from Buffalo, New York, to Bombay (now Mumbai) via perhaps Heathrow in December 1992, I watched the demolition of Babri Masjid telecast all over. I didn’t know that it would go down in history as the event that broke the secular backbone of India. When I landed in Bombay, the city was standstill and still burning. Riots that followed within a month changed the city forever. A few years later, our friend Iqbal narrated to us in Buffalo how his family literally ran from their house in Worli, not too far from our place.

But the event that saddened Baba the most was the assassination of Narendra Dabholkar in 2013. Our last name sake, he was a social activist, rationalist, and writer involved in the eradication of superstition in Maharashtra. Baba could visualize then how “the system” is going to capture India. Dabholkar’s assassination would be followed by Pansare (2015), Kalburgi (2015), and Gauri Lankesh (2017). CBI called these murders “a pre-planned act of terror”. Last year, eleven years later, two shooters got life imprisonment while the masterminds remain at large. People protested for some time and then stopped. I didn’t join any protests, didn’t even consider it. Why not? What were my biases?

I strongly felt that to navigate a crazy system, brute force doesn’t work. Shouting out can be detrimental. It is a miracle that Julian Assange survived five years in jail. What appealed to me the most is what I wrote about more than a decade ago in the backdrop of Anna Hazare-Kiran Bedi protests – the wisdom from “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest” – the first step is to be invisible. This is what Rana Ayyub did for eight months, God only knows how, before she could write Gujrat Files. And, unfortunately, this is what Hemant Karkare, the then head of Mumbai Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) couldn’t do as he began exposing the perpetrators of 2008 Malgaon bomb blasts. He was crushed by “the system” on the same day as 26/11 attacks and in a sophisticated manner, putting the blame on Pakistani terrorists².

My lack of enthusiasm for protests has another side. Protests assume (mostly, not always) that the world is “fixable”, like how we fix a car or a broken hip bone. What if it is more like cloud-fixing as opposed to clock-fixing? Mindfulness suggests that “fixing” the world can be a dangerous addiction. It is just an expression of the innate desire to mould the world to feel secure in an inherently insecure world. Sustained narrative to fix the world calcifies the belief that the world exists independent of me. What if it is not? If everything is indeed interconnected, and hence Sunya as Nagarjuna suggests, then seeing the sunyata (emptiness) must be primary. Without this insight, I carry hatred/anger against the bad world, sometimes deeply buried within. The society appears to be like a plumbing system to be fixed when things don’t flow in a desired way. And, insight can’t be engineered, either by protests or by force or by meditation, at least not yet.

My lack of belief in the power of protests has begun to shift recently. Protests against the ongoing wars, the proxy-war against Russia and the Israel-Palestine war looked pale initially and easily suppressible. However, in the past year or so the power of protests has surprised me. I also found the work done by Whitney Webb (One nation under blackmail vol 1 & 2), Lina Khan (Amazon’s antitrust paradox), and Francesca Albanese (From economy of occupation to economy of genocide) totally impressive in exposing the nexus between oligarchs, politicians, intelligence, and organized crime. I also admire the work of Indian YouTubers like Shyam Meera Singh, Kavya Karnatac, Mohak Mangal, Kunal Kamra, and Sheeba Fehmi in raising awareness on various aspects of the Deep State in India.

In March 1993, a few months after the Babri debacle, Vijay Tendulkar wrote a short fictional piece on Ghashiram Kotwal. In his dream, while traveling in Deccan Queen, Tendulkar meets Ghashiram in jeans and T-shirt. Ghashiram shows him his diary which, like Epstein’s black book, contains the names of top politicians and industrialists in India and beyond and tells him, “The entire democracy in this country is standing on the black money, top class weapons, and unpatriotic people like me. The Ghashiram in your play is running the country.” Two decades later Ghashiram’s clout has grown stronger. In 2025, India is ranked 151^st out of 180 countries in World press freedom index ranking.

Sources:

1.  “Nativism in a metropolis: The Shiv Sena in Bombay”, Dipankar Gupta, Manohar, 1982, pg 159.

2. "Who killed Karkare? The real face of terrorism in India," S. M. Mushrif, Former I.G. Police, Maharashtra, Pharos Media, 2023  

Image source: oneindia.com

Assessing journey-centric mindfulness against McMindfulness criticism

 

I have been teaching Journey-centric mindfulness (JCM) over the past decade. My book “Mindfulness: connecting with the real you” was published half a decade ago in 2019. Yesterday I conducted a mindfulness workshop at home for free, as I have done for the past seven years. Last month, I wrote my key takeaways from Ronald Purser’s critique, “McMindfuless: How mindfulness became the new capitalist spirituality”. How does journey-centric mindfulness (JCM) fare when assessed through the lens of McMindfulness criticism? That is what I will explore in this article. For a more detailed treatment of this assessment, please refer to our paper, “A critical review of journey-centric mindfulness” which was presented at the International Research Conference on Mindfulness at IIM Bodh Gaya last year (IRCM-2024).

Journey-centric mindfulness: JCM is a journey (process) of learning to see clearly despite biased thinking anytime anywhere (even on the go). JCM is a lifelong journey without any destination. What is it that we are learning to see clearly? Primarily, three characteristics of existence (Pali: tilakkhanā, Sanskrit: trilakśanā): repetitive wasteful thinking (dukkha), impermanence (Pali: anicca, Sanskrit: anitya), and non-independence of self (Pali: anatta, Sanskrit: anatma). JCM is a secular form of mindfulness. It does not prescribe any belief system or practice as mandatory.

Now, let’s assess JCM McMindfulness lens, especially the three points from the criticism as presented in my earlier article.

Crisis is in the head: Purser is saying that large corporations like Google, Meta, (erstwhile) Twitter, and Apple are manipulating our attention. In his words, “Mindfulness has, like positive psychology, and the broader happiness industry, depoliticized and privatized stress. If we are unhappy about being unemployed, losing our health insurance, and seeing our children incur massive debt through college loan, it is our responsibility to learn to be more mindful.” JCM suggests that stress is a side-effect of repetitive, compulsive thinking that is largely wasteful. As we learn to see clearly the movement of thought, its wasteful nature, and its gullibility to social media, the movement of thought slows down. As a result, one may reduce one’s dependence on social media. JCM is primarily about seeing, not doing. JCM doesn’t say anything about what one should or should not do. In fact, it assumes “clarity is action”. One can be a social activist, a corporate executive, or a monk and be on a journey of learning to see clearly. JCM suggests that an action when one sees clearly is likely to be more appropriate than an action when one’s perception is distorted. Of course, nothing is guaranteed.

Tool for self-improvement: JCM assumes that mind is like weather - highly non-linear and deeply hierarchical. The weather analogy is borrowed from a neuroscientist Prof. Karl Friston of University College London¹. A small change can make a big difference. A small SMS can change the state of mind from peaceful to raging anger in a short time. Do we talk about a tool for weather improvement? No. Similarly, JCM assumes that self-improvement is a meaningless concept as far as the mind is concerned. Thus, doing mindfulness in order to reach a peaceful or blissful state is meaningless. Then why should we learn to see clearly?  To appreciate this, let’s ask - Why do we keep the windshield of our car clean? Is it to reach a destination? Or without a clean windshield, it is difficult to make appropriate decisions. Since JCM doesn’t subscribe to self-improvement, this aspect of McMindfulness criticism is not relevant to JCM.

Secular approach without wisdom: JCM is a secular approach. However, it is influenced by and borrows from Buddhist Vipassana as well as Nagarjuna’s Sunyata. The wisdom aspect is at the heart of JCM. Learning to see impermanence AND interconnectedness is emphasized. Anicca and anatta are crucial. Learning to see that absolute necessities are a meaningless concept is important. And the self is nothing but a collection of absolute necessities – body ownership, possessions, name, fame ownership, etc. Each has a role in life. But nothing is permanent, and nothing is context-independent. These insights don’t come easily, and even when they come, they are not easy to digest. Seeing self-deception clearly can make one uncomfortable or even angry. It may result in quitting the job. It can also make one peaceful. Since learning to see impermanence and Sunyata is at the heart of JCM, it is more like a secular approach with wisdom.

Since JCM doesn’t have a destination such as a stress-free life, higher productivity, or more profit, it is not sold to corporations. I do conduct some sessions as part of IIM Bangalore’s executive education program occasionally (twice this year so far).

In short, JCM stands tall when reviewed through the lens of McMindfulness criticism. It may not appeal to many, especially corporates, because it doesn’t promise anything. However, the shallowness of one’s life may motivate people to explore mindfulness. And, JCM can be practiced by grabbing moments in one’s busy schedule, even on the go. Why not give it a shot?

Notes:

1.       Mind is like weather: This analogy is explored by Prof. Karl Friston in the interview “Karl Friston: Neuroscience and the Free Energy Principle | Lex Fridman podcast #99” (39:15). Friston compares the attributes common between brain and weather – deeply structured, very non-linear, and rests upon non-equilibrium steady-state dynamics.

My key takeaways from Ronald Purser’s McMindfulness

Ronald Purser feels that the current mindfulness fad is the entrepreneurial equivalent of McDonald’s. Spiritual salesmen are commoditizing mindfulness and making money by marketing it as a more efficient, calculable, predictable, and controlled form of meditation for improving mental fitness. “One invests in mindfulness as one would invest in a stock hoping to receive a handsome dividend,” says Purser in the book “McMindfulness: How mindfulness became thenew capitalist spirituality”. As a mindfulness teacher and author of a book on the subject, I was attracted to the book to understand Purser’s criticism as well as to check how my teaching stands against Purser polemic. In this article, I will summarize the key points from the book and in a subsequent article, I will write my response to Purser’s critique as well as assessment of journey-led mindfulness that I teach against the critique.

Which mindfulness? Before we look at Purser’s criticism, let’s understand what is the form of mindfulness Purser is putting under the scanner. It includes Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) an 8-week therapeutic intervention championed by Jon Kabat-Zinn initially in a clinical setting and subsequently expanded to corporations, schools, government, and the military. Purser also looks at corporate mindfulness programs such as Google’s “Search Inside Yourself” which was subsequently spun off as a leadership institute.

The mindfulness under review here is “nothing more than basic concentration training. Although derived from Buddhism, it’s been stripped of the teachings on ethics that accompanied it, as well as the liberating aim of dissolving attachment to a false sense of self while enacting compassion for all other beings.” It involves paying attention to the present moment, non-judgmentally. And, shifting from “doing” mode to “being” mode.

Now, let’s look at Purser’s key arguments.

Crisis is in the head: Purser feels that giant corporations like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Apple are monetizing and manipulating our attention. Rather than looking at this aspect, mindfulness champions are telling people to go inward, be in the present moment and let go of judgments. He says, “Mindfulness has, like positive psychology, and the broader happiness industry, depoliticized and privatized stress. If we are unhappy about being unemployed, losing our health insurance, and seeing our children incur massive debt through college loan, it is our responsibility to learn to be more mindful.” “We are repeatedly sold the same message that individual action is the only real way to solve social problems, so we should take responsibility.” Purser feels this approach stifles critical and radical thinking.

Tool for self-improvement: We are told that if we practice mindfulness and get our individual lives in order, we can be happy and secure. Google’s “Search Inside Yourself” program champion Meng promises, “Mindfulness can increase my happiness without changing anything else.” Jon Kabat-Zinn is quoted in the book saying, “Mindfulness may actually be the only promise the species and the planet have for making it through the next couple of hundred years.” David Gelles, author of Mindful work, says in his book, “Mindfulness can be a source of employer value proposition and may in the long run provide organizations with a valuable tool to manage high burnout levels of employees.”

What’s wrong if all this could actually happen? Purser points out that the scientific evidence for these improvements is poor. Thupten Jinpa, The Dalai Lama’s interpreter and a PhD from the University of Cambridge says, “The scientific study of meditation and its effects is very rudimentary.”  Another scientist is quoted saying that there is convincing evidence that mindfulness studies suffer from positive reporting bias, suggesting therapies are more effective than they really are. “Mind the hype” an article authored by fifteen researchers says, “As mindfulness has increasingly pervaded every aspect of contemporary society, so have misunderstandings about what it is, whom it helps, and how it affects the mind and brain. At a practical level, the misinformation and propagation of poor research methodology can potentially lead to people being harmed, cheated, disappointed, and/or disaffected.”

Secular approach without ethics or wisdom: While the secular mindfulness programs have their roots in Vipassana tradition, Purser feels that the ethics and wisdom part of Buddhism has been kept out. He says, “The claim that major ethical changes intrinsically follow from ‘paying attention to the present moment, non-judgmentally’ is patently flawed.” In Buddhist tradition, right mindfulness is one of Buddha’s eightfold path along with right perception, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, and concentration. Purser points out that secular mindfulness programs leave other seven things out. Buddhism also points to the constructed self or the insight of interdependence or pratitya-samutpada. To see that the feeling of independent self is a cognitive illusion is an important aspect of Buddhist teaching. Many mindfulness programs, especially in the clinical settings, leave this part out. If mindfulness helps you to connect with the real you, then what do you do after that? If you simply bliss out and accept injustice, how is it different from being a drug addict, sedated into zombified oblivion? Purser asks.

Purser’s suggestions: He feels that a truly revolutionary mindfulness would challenge the western sense of entitlement to happiness irrespective of ethical conduct. He feels mindfulness should aim towards individual and collective “conscience explosion,” converting exhaustion, depression, and burnout into constructive forms of activism. It should move towards personal, social, and ecological liberation. It should combine spiritual practice with radical action. By first witnessing shared vulnerabilities and acknowledging social suffering it should develop collective capacities for resistance by building trust and empathy.

Contrarian aspects of my life: no-religion, no-job, no-certification

India is a populous country. There is a competition for resources on the road, for buses, for college admission, for jobs, in hospitals, cricket match tickets, temples, and even in crematoriums. A contrarian position helps reduce the fight and eases life to some degree.

I learned driving while in the US, and when I returned to India in Bangalore in 1998, I realized driving here needs a whole set of new skills. For example, taking a right turn onto a main road was a nightmare for me. I kept waiting for someone to let me in, and became a target of serious honking from behind. I was no match for the swiftness and guts of the autowalla who used to become impatient waiting behind me. Soon, I found a trick. I started letting the auto move ahead, and I began following him. That was much easier. But I had a bigger Aha moment a few months later.

I realized the streets are empty when there is a cricket match on TV. I had not followed cricket for almost a decade by then. I started driving the family around during that time. We visited Gangarams, movie theatres, Ulsoor lake, HAL museum, Cubbon Park, etc. I began to learn the benefits of a contrarian position. Now, I haven’t watched cricket for a quarter of a century. Subsequently, I ended up taking contrarian positions much bigger than don’t-follow-cricket position, some by design, many others by circumstances. Here are three of them: No-religion, no-job, and no-certification.

No-religion: By the time I returned to India, I was convinced that the process of becoming is an illusion created and sustained by society and the culture. You must become successful by acquiring name, fame, and wealth – has been the dominant narrative. Hindu religion, with which I had a loose sense of belonging, is no exception. Right from birth to death, a set of rituals is “mandatory” so that “all will be well” for you during this and future births. That is the grand promise. For me, it looked like a crooked game being played by a small community, mostly Brahmins, for millennia. I lost interest in becoming anyone, and as a side effect, the grand promise of the Hindu religion looked meaningless to me.

For the past two decades, I haven’t been participating in any rituals – birth and death included. No idol worship, no temple visit, and no expenditure on anything remotely ritualistic. Over the last ten days, Gauri and I travelled from Dehradun to Ghangaria in Bhyundar valley. We trekked to the Valley of Flowers and to the Hemkund Sahib gurudwara. We have no plans of visiting any of the Char Dhams including Badrinath where most of the crowd is headed. Sometimes, I don’t have a choice, in which case I just chill out nearby. For example, when Gauri visited Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi, I went to Mani Karnika ghat nearby and watched the sunrise. At the Puri temple, I looked after her belongings outside. Yesterday, when Gauri visited the oldest temple of Rishikesh, Bharat temple, I managed to strike a conversation with the school-going fourth graders about what they liked in school (they said – playing, except one girl who said she likes studies).

I continue to be a serious student of Upanishads, especially Katha Upanishad (my blog), that of Nagarjuna’s Sunyata as depicted in the 2^nd-3^rd century text Mulamadhyamaka Karika (my blog), and Ramana Maharshi’s UpadesaSaram (my blog), none of it requires me to belong to a religion. I study these texts in Sanskrit. When the Government census guys visited us in 2011, I asked them if they had “no religion” as an option. They didn’t. So, I got counted as a Hindu.

No-job: I have been a big beneficiary of capitalist structures. I worked for a decade after finishing my studies, two years in the US and eight years in Bangalore. I got stock options, and after IPO, I sold them and it helped in partial repayment of the home loan. I have been debt-free for the past fifteen years. However, capitalism demands that every for-profit company keep growing revenue, profits, and shareholder value. Given my disregard for the process of becoming, I realized it is better to step away from the corporate world and make a living independently without any pressure for growth. I quit my job in 2006, and I have been freelancing ever since. I still needed to pay the bills and work around the inflation. Moreover, I had to stand out from the crowd, market myself, create a niche, and deliver value. That’s not easy. I got lucky, got good collaborators, and kept getting assignments from for-profit, not-for-profit, and government organizations.

What’s in a name? One may ask. But the name I ended up giving for my consulting practice – Catalign Innovation Consulting acted as a beacon. It implied three things I would do: One, my primary role would be a catalyst – someone who helps an individual or teams move from intent to impact effectively. The primary role won’t be an activist driving an agenda of my own, won’t be a solution provider, and won’t be a knowledge imparting teacher. Two, I would be helpful in aligning strategy and execution. And three, I would help organizations in their innovation journey.  

Can innovation capacity building become obsolete, making me redundant? Sure, it can. However, if I look around, I see some of the innovation world leaders struggling right now, like Intel, Boeing, even Apple. Indian companies – both startups and established players are under pressure to innovate, especially in deep-tech innovation. I clearly see an opportunity in innovation capacity building in India at least for another decade, perhaps more. I also see myself playing a role in raising awareness on the dark side of innovation – using innovation towards predatory practices allegedly used by big corporates like Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta, Flipkart, etc. In short, I don’t see any dearth of opportunities right now.

No-certification: Indian society is obsessed with certificates. If you have a certificate from a prestigious institute, good for you, or better still if it is from a foreign institute. The obsession is understandable given the number of applications for any position and the number of bogus certificates floating around. I have been a big beneficiary of two certificates, one a bachelor’s of technology from IIT Bombay and the other, a doctorate from University at Buffalo, USA, both in Computer Science. I got my last certificate in 1996, almost thirty years ago. And then I decided to stop playing the certification game. I let my writing and my work become my credentials. This is a contrarian position, given that the three areas I work in: innovation capacity building, design thinking, and mindfulness have very little to with Computer Science. I have no certificate in any of these areas. My father finds it odd how I make a living by claiming expertise in areas in which I carry no certificate.

One implication of no-certification is that I don’t take an existing framework (or a case study for that matter) and adapt it. For example, I don’t do a certification in executive coaching or I do not do a certification from a foreign product management program and resell it in India. These are great and lucrative business models. But I don’t go there. I only work with my frameworks published through my books and blogs. Of course, these frameworks are created by building on top of existing studies and frameworks, and they are given due credit (each chapter of our innovation book has an average of 35 references).   

All my frameworks have one common assumption that is uncommon. They assume a biased-agent model versus a rational-agent model. If a president, a prince, or a portfolio manager participates in underage sex trafficking, it can happen only under a biased mental model. I was blown away when I heard Daniel Kahneman say, “Rational agent model is a non-starter” more than a decade ago, and it stuck.

To summarize, no-religion, no-job, and no-certification are some of the contrarian positions in my life. They have helped me navigate life relatively smoothly so far.

image source: Gemini AI

My reading list and themes for 2025 - strategy, wars, and stock investing

I read mostly fiction last year – revisiting Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, P. G. Wodehouse, etc. This year, it is non-fiction and revolves around three themes: strategy, wars, and stock investing. Let me start with strategy.

Strategy: So far, strategy has played a supporting role in my work on the management of technology and innovation. And I have been thinking about how I can strengthen that part. Apart from revisiting the strategy books I read more than a decade ago like “Understanding Michael Porter” by Joan Magretta, “Co-opetition” by Nalebuff and Brandenburger and “Good strategy, bad strategy” by Richard Rumelt, I plan to read “Playing to win: How strategy really works” by A. G. Lafley and Roger Martin and “The Crux: How leaders become strategists” by Richard Rumelt. I have already listened to podcast interviews of Roger Martin and Rumelt.  

Who rules the world? Wars are the new normal, and I realized my understanding of the real forces behind these prolonged wars is at best superficial. This is likely to be a vast ocean, and there is a chance that I get even more confused after reading a few books. Nevertheless, I plan to read the following two books as a starting point: “The new rulers of the world” by John Pilger and “Who rules the world?” by Noam Chomsky. If the essence of Pilger’s writing is that, “Imperial power wielded by rich states and multinational corporations, led by the US, is far more destructive than any terrorist organization,” and if Noam Chomsky is saying, “US is world’s biggest terrorist”, I am curious.

Stock investing: I opened an online trading account more than twenty years ago. It was a joint account with my mother, who was keen to learn the game. Soon I realized our approaches to investing are diametrically opposite – she likes to buy and sell the same day (or a few days later) while I was more interested in an investment horizon of 2-3 years. So, we split our accounts. She is now 88 and still going strong with her trading. In contrast, I lost interest in a few years and eventually turned to mutual funds, thanks to advice from friends like Ravi Aranke. My mom kept nudging me to get back to it. It has been six months since my interest was renewed. Now, I know that it is extremely difficult to beat the index. However, I am interested in finding out if I can manage to follow Buffett’s rule number one – Not to lose money and enjoy the process. I have started small and averaged one trade a week since December 11, 2024 (all buys so far).

This year, I re-read Peter Lynch classic “One up on wall street” and Joel Greenblatt’s “The little book that beats the market”. Also, read Parag Parikh’s “Value investing and behavioral finance”, Mohnish Pabrai’s “The dhando investor”, and Phil Town’s “Rule #1: The simple strategy for successful investing”. I am hoping to finish Pat Dorsey’s “Fives rules of successful stock investing” (half-way through), Aswath Damodaran’s “Narrative and numbers” and Tim Koller’s classic “Valuation”. Listening to podcast interviews of Dalal Street legends like Manish Chokhani, Rajeev Thakkar, Sankaran Naren, Sunil Singhania, Ramesh Damani, Sanjay Bakshi, Madhu Kela, and leading asset managers like Ravi Dharamshi, Amit Jeswani, Arvind Kothari, and Samit Vartak has been a big help. While I admired the legends, I was also impressed by the young investors (in their 30s) like Amit Jeswani for mastering the one-year horizon game and Arvind Kothari for demonstrating what scuttlebutt investing means in the Indian context. Outside India, I enjoyed listening to US tech-investor Dan Niles for his AI perspective and the Swiss investor Felix Zulauf for his macro perspective. 

I like what Mohnish Pabrai says (58:55), “Life has no meaning. We are here for a short time. And a lot of randomness in life. I don’t think there is a grand plan.” And when Sonia asks him, “If life has no meaning, why do people chase fame, money, success?” Mohnish answers, “They haven’t thought about it. And that’s why I became a game player. To pass the time, just do interesting things that you are excited about. And I am excited about playing games.” I have been in the life-has-no-meaning camp for a long time, playing different games that I enjoy. Now, I am exploring if the stock-investing game is something I can enjoy by keeping a margin of safety.

Some of these books will be read fast, and others will involve slow reading (see reading, fast and slow), taking notes, and updating frameworks. Chances are high, I won’t finish the list this year. Who cares?

Strategic management of technology and innovation 2024: A reflection

In the last few months (Sep-Nov) I got an opportunity to teach “Strategic management of technology and innovation” (SMTI) at IIM Bangalore to EPGP, PGP, and PGPBA students. In a fast-changing technology world, SMTI kept me on my toes even though I was teaching it for the sixth time in the last six years. It was a period when genAI hype had begun to settle down, all tech giants had taken positions in humanoids, and AMD under Lisa Su was doing much better than Intel. Here are a few things that stand out as I reflect on what I learned.

The increasing role of start-ups: Traditionally, Indian companies have focused more on operational excellence and relied on long-term partnerships for technology development and innovation. For example, Tata-Hitachi (construction material), TVS-Suzuki (two-wheelers), Amara Raja Batteries (ARBL)-Johnson controls (battery technologies), etc. However, over the past two decades, some Indian companies have shifted gears in their technology strategy. Some have set up / strengthened their in-house R&D (e.g. ARBL). Moreover, over the past decade, the center of gravity of innovation has shifted towards start-ups and they seem to be playing an increasingly important role in how large companies are managing technology and innovation. Reliance acquired Faradion from the UK in the Sodium-Ion battery space and has invested in the robotics company Addverb, Titan acquired Hyderabad-based HUG innovations to scale the digital watch business, fertilizer player Coromandel Intl is a majority stakeholder in Chennai-based drone startup Dhaksha. Over the past five years, Maruti Suzuki has onboarded 18 startups as business partners through its accelerator. With the startup ecosystem maturing in India, this trend is likely to grow.

Innovation-related disclosures in annual reports: Disclosure of intellectual capital or innovation dashboard in annual reports is not a statutory requirement in India. However, several companies present various parameters such as new products launched, R&D expenses, patents filed/granted, automation achievements, digital onboarding (in banking and insurance space), etc. Some companies also mention continuous improvement-related metric. In fact, in many annual reports, there is a separate section called intellectual capital where this information is presented. There is no consistency in these disclosures, however, it give some idea as to what is important to the company as far as innovation is concerned. For example, please see some of the innovation dashboards from Tata Motors, Asian Paints, SBI Life, and Zomato. I feel a lot can be learned about innovation from these disclosures.

Role of genAI: Unlike last year, genAI tools were no longer a curiosity. They had become part of an accepted toolset. Students were openly discussing it. I can’t say I used it extensively while preparing for the course. However, I found it useful in getting pointers for further study. For example, while studying AMD’s strategy during the last decade, ChatGPT gave useful tips. However, I relied a lot more on annual reports, earnings calls, CXO interviews, etc. I thought the assignments might be a high-scoring match given the access to genAI tools. I am sure the tools were used extensively by students. However, it didn’t guarantee quality reports and there was a lot of variation in the quality of answers and referencing. Let’s see how this aspect evolves going forward.

Guest lectures: We had two guest lectures bringing in a fresh industry perspective. The first one was from Dr. Balvinder Singh who is a leader in camera/vision/XR technology and is credited with Samsung smartphone camera global leadership from Galaxy S3-S24. He presented how camera development especially the role of software has evolved in the past decade. He also shared the important role open innovation is playing for companies like Samsung.

The second guest lecture was from Sunil Mishra, who has decades of experience developing banking products. Sunil gave an overview of the rapidly evolving digital banking ecosystem in India and associated product innovations. Who would have thought India would have virtual or neo banks with no physical branches so soon?

Overall, SMTI-24 was a great learning experience for me. Hope it was the same for students.

Poor customer experience vs poorly-working business model – which is easier to fix?

Given two companies – A – with poor customer experience, and good business model, and B – with good customer experience and non-working business model - where would you bet? Of course, most people would not like to bet on either. But, let’s say you have to choose between the two. Which one would you choose? I asked this question in my class sometime last year. In a class of forty, all except one or two students chose B. That is, they felt it was easier to fix a business model than customer experience. Since then, I have repeated the question multiple times. While the response has never been as lopsided as the first time, there are enough takers for A and B in most cases. Let’s explore the question in this article.

People choosing option B feel that fixing customer experience involves external variables while fixing a business model is internal and hence easier. Option-A guys feel that the business model is deeply entrenched in the company’s guts and hence more difficult to fix. I began this exploration with a bias for option A. I was influenced by the Dunzo case I discussed in class.

We discussed Dunzo’s customer journey and used it to illustrate journey mapping and how Dunzo enhanced its customer experience. While customer experience improved for Dunzo, it struggled on the business model front. For the first few years, its business model relied on partnerships with local stores from whom goods would be sourced as per customer demand. Post 2021 it tried to emulate the quick commerce players like Zepto and Blinkit by moving to a dark store model. This business model is capital intensive, and the unit economics went from bad to worse and Dunzo ended up losing eight rupees for every rupee earned in FY23. Eventually, Dunzo had to shut down.

It was not difficult to find more cases like Dunzo's where a company couldn’t save itself while fixing its business model. WeWork (global), Kingfisher Airlines, and Micromax all had good customer experience and a decent market position. However, they couldn’t save themselves from going bankrupt by making changes to their business model.

What about a similar situation for companies with poor customer experience (option A) and not able to make it? It is easier to start with extreme cases. One area to look at is to see product recalls due to health hazards. This happened to Philips in 2021 when it had to recall more than 5.5 million sleep apnea devices due to the potential dispersion of carcinogenic substances during its operation. It had to spend $1.1 billion to settle the claims. Its valuation dropped to one-fourth of what it was before this incident. It is gaining the lost ground slowly.

Closer home, Ola Electric is facing a barrage of customer complaints and service issues related to its e-scooter. Unlike Philips, Ola Electric isn’t a case of product recall, at least not yet. However, the number of complaints is so high (more than 10,000) that various regulatory bodies like the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) are stepping in and investigating the situation. At this point, it doesn’t appear that Ola Electric is going the Dunzo way. It is holding on to around 30% market share so far. It is likely to bounce back.

Does it mean that fixing a poor customer experience can be challenging but usually not fatal? In contrast, a non-working business model can be fatal? Yes, these are possibilities. However, my bias may still be operational and more study is required.