12th August would’ve been an inconsequential day in most of our lives. For us, it was one of the most significant milestones in our lives. My designation of ‘‘husband of one’’ got upgraded to ‘‘husband of one & father of one’’. Our daughter just turned one month and each time she is in my arms, I’ve this fuzzy feeling which is a cocktail of joy, bliss and fulfilment. I’d be lying if I said being first time parents is fun; it’s a lot of struggle, hard work & anxiety. However, with time - you start communicating with your infant & chaos starts to turn into organised chaos. Having an empathetic employer & loving parents definitely helps because it does take a village!

Birthdays were always a big thing when I was a kid. Mainly because one would get a lot of attention that day and more importantly you have an element of surprise in form of gifts lying on the table top, neatly wrapped in shiny papers. Growing up in a typical middle class family meant writing down the approximate gift value against the person who gifted so that you can return the favour. This year, I got this gift a month early. Wrapped in a white swaddle with wavy hair, unusually large eyes & nails big enough to scratch her father’s face. There are some debts that can’t be cleared, being blessed with a child is one of them. I hope I’m able to reciprocate the generosity of this universe with love and kindness.

Now I definitely don’t want to miss out on this golden opportunity to give free & unsolicited advice on my birthday. So go on & ignore (or implement) at your own risk. More than anything, these pointers are more of ‘‘note to myself’’.

1. You are what you eat.

2. Trust but (always) verify.

3. Envy skill sets, not individuals.

4. Sleep is the ultimate recovery tool.

5. Happiness is only real when shared.

6. Listen to understand, not to respond.

7. Complain sparsely, compete fiercely

8. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

9. Life is too short to have a small talk.

10. Opinions are biases if not backed by data.

11. Misery is inevitable, suffering is optional.

12. Love thyself before loving thy neighbour.

13. Appreciate in public, criticise in private.

14. You are not what you say but what you do.

15. Grass is always greener on the other side.

16. Journey of a thousand steps starts with one.

17. Things are never as bad or as good they look.

18. The only permanent thing is impermanence.

19. Try to please everyone, end up pleasing none.

20. Over index on action, under index on planning.

21. Takes decades to build trust & minutes to lose it.

22. If you don’t control your time, someone else will.

23. Compounding is easy to understand, difficult to practice.

24. Treat every interaction as a medium to learn something new.

25. What looks like overnight success is often years of hard work.

26. Learn the art of seeking feedback, it’s a gift that keep giving.

27. Whether you think you can or you can’t - you’re right either way.

28. Understand the different b/w earning money and building wealth.

29. Never take criticism from someone whom you won’t seek advice from.

30. It’s not about how hard you get hit, it’s about how quickly you get up.

31. This moment is the ultimate truth and reality. Everything else is a mirage

32. The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read

33. Goals are meaningless without habits that will eventually help you achieve those goals.

34. Never spend the money you don’t have on things that you don’t need to impress the people who don’t care.

35. You don’t control what happens to you but you definitely control on how you respond. Focus on latter.

36. Never waste your time in reading a list of 35 plagiarised life advices just because you’ve nothing better do. Also, get a life.

While RBI has been supportive to these startups, we are yet to witness the ''UPI'' moment with the cross border payments & we are quite well positioned to do so. In fact, Mr. Shaktikanta Das (RBI Governor) recently said “I strongly believe cross-border payments can be made more efficient through adoption of CBDCs and this is an area which should receive close attention.”

Would be exciting to see if CDBC can help in democratising cross border payments.

If you'd like to understand the 101 of what goes behind the scenes, I highly recommend watching this video from a16z.

Some notable companies operating in this domain

1. Zolve (US Bank account for Indian students and OCIs)

2. Skydo

3. Tazapay

4. BookMyForex (P2P payments, acquired by MakeMyTrip)

5. Cashfree Payments (part of RBI's 2nd cohort)

6. Fairexpay.com (part of RBI's 2nd cohort)

7. PayNearby (part of RBI's 2nd cohort)

8. Open Financial Technologies (part of RBI's 2nd cohort)
   WSFx Global Pay

9. Nium
   
   Additional reading links below

• RBI Press Release - https://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_PressReleaseDisplay.aspx?prid=54057

• A report by PwC on evolving landscape for cross border payments - https://www.pwc.in/assets/pdfs/consulting/financial-services/fintech/point-of-view/pov-downloads/the-evolving-landscape-of-cross-border-payments.pdf

• a16z global payments - https://a16z.com/global-payments/

Similarly, in personal life there is always a switching cost of moving cities, changing your family doctor & switching to a new telecom provider. We often discount how easy it is to hop on a new platform but how challenging it would be to bring in the learning curve and get used to the new platform. People switch because of one strong reason or a mix of multiple reasons and its important to understand the underlying motivation to double down on these reasons.

Almost always, we make purchases based on emotions and later justify it with logic. Something similar happens when we need to switch a vendor or a service provider. Before 2 years, we shifted from Bangalore to Mumbai (not a very common move these days) mainly because it stuck an emotional chord - we just never felt at home in Bangalore whereas each time we’d visit Bombay - we would get this warm fuzzy feeling. Now in order to make this change, we had to justify with logic otherwise it would be a blot on human intelligence. Since my parents live in Rajkot which is a 45 mins flight or an overnight train journey, I could easily justify this move with the idea that we’d be visiting Rajkot more often and thereby get a chance to spend more time with the family. Guilty as charged, we’ve not been able to visit as often as we thought we’d be visiting but nevertheless it helped us reduce the friction of making the switch with strong arguments listed neatly in our excel sheet of pros and cons. In hindsight, this has been a great decision without getting into a debate on which is a better city because to be honest, none of them are even close to having the infrastructure that an aspiring nation like India should have but let’s reserve that discussion for some other day.

A more recent example would be switching my telecom provider. Last week (Sept 2023), I switched to Reliance Jio after getting frustrated with the fact that Vodafone is going to take a lifetime in order to provide 5G services. Unfortunately, there is no ‘‘test drive’’ when it comes to telecom providers so I took the plunge to put an end to my 18 year old relationship with Vodafone (fka Hutch & Orange) and the FOMO of not having access to 5G services. Guess what, I do get 5G but I get it only when I get network. Well played, Reliance Jio. Even when I passed from Antilla, I could see Mukesh Ambani’s smirk on my mobile screen along with 2 out of 4 bars of mobile signal. I’m sure Mr Ambani is probably using Vodafone in his own house. This is a classic case of switching for peripheral benefits while compromising on the core benefits. The core benefit being availability of signal and the peripheral being 5G speed. In hindsight, I was doing just well with 4G speeds because I’m neither a content creator nor a content consumer, just someone who loves bookmarking interesting articles to never read them in this lifetime. As per TRAI rules, I can only port back to Vodafone after 90 days. Basically, they want me to suffer for switching to a new provider without doing my due diligence - fair enough TRAI, I’ve learnt my lesson!

If you want to understand how hard switching costs can be for businesses, MCX and 63Moon’s relationship is one of the finest recent examples. MCX has been using the core trading platform provided by 63 moons and has not been able to work with its technical partner TCS to build an alternative platform in order to make this switch. Only time will tell on who will have the las laugh but for now, MCX is definitely reeling under pressure where on one side, they continue to get bullied by 63Moons in shelling out 125 crores a quarter & on other side, they keep getting long bills from TCS who has been unsuccessfully trying to build a trading platform since several quarters.

If you’re a business who is planning to make a significant switch to a new technology or a vendor - you might have your decision making framework ready but attributing intangible and tangible switching costs early on can really help you create a clear picture of what you’re getting into.

If you’re a business who is planning to grab someone’s lunch by getting your prospect switch to your platform or service - you might want to showcase how easy this ride is going to be and more importantly who quickly they could realise value without your product becoming shelf-ware.

Switching is easy, deriving and delivering value is hard.

I’ve purposely skipped 2X2 table on switching cost vs derived benefits just in case if you’re wondering.

In the era where we are wired to put filters on reality, one might feel under constant pressure to show up with the best version of themselves - for all of you who are reeling under this pressure, Chill Maadi. This impairs authenticity. Our biggest strength and differentiator as human beings is authenticity, without this - we would all look like a herd of sheep heading to the meadows with no real purpose in mind.

No one is alluding to normalising mediocrity. As humans, we must strive to excel what we do but chasing vanity metrics like number of likes, amount of engagement, number of comments is like an E-Commerce startup chasing Gross Merchandise Value over Unit Economics. It’s futile and meaningless if you’ve a crazy engagement and followers but you can’t even get 8 hours of sleep!

Before you feel this is turning into a one of those self help articles, I’m going to jump right into summarising my 2022 and areas that I plan to focus on 2023 because I strongly believe this world needs one more self obsessed and a narcissist write up that no one really cares about.

Analysis/Paralysis - 2022

Apart from teaching mediocre grammar, my English teacher taught me one thing that really stuck with me ‘‘In English, you can never get full marks no matter how great your essay is’’ - similarly in life, you can never be fully satisfied and content no matter how your year went by. Learning from her, I love to cut marks before I review anything, so the best I would rate a flawless application (like Headspace or Strava) would be 4/5.

I’d rate the year as 3/5 as I could not accomplish my fitness goals. I was really hoping that buying new dry fit clothes, a pair of new running shoes and an Apple Watch would solve this but someone told me that you actually needs to get up and go out for a run or a workout. While this sounds totally unreasonable to me, I’m just going to take it with a pinch of salt. I plan to reach out to Mr Tim Apple asking for a refund.

However, there are a few things that really stood out!

1. We (finally) renovated our apartment in Mumbai - Dealing with contractors is no fun & the best way to avoid this is to run away from them. We moved to Rajkot for a couple of months (which got extended to 4 months) while this renovation was taking place. It was mentally taxing & we are still grappling with a few issues here and there but overall it turned out to be decent for the budget that we had carved out.

2. Booked an apartment in Mumbai - Like habit stacking, expenditures come in packages. Though we plan to get our hands on this new place only in 2025, it is definitely something that we are looking forward to.

   

3. Traveling - This is something which has always been close to my heart. Must admit that I haven’t been able to travel as often as I wanted to (personal travel) but I do plan to change this next year.

   1. We did our customary 2021 end of year trip to the hills. So technically we started 2022 with our first week being in Uttarakhand. Mesmerising would be an understatement. Uttarakhand is truly the ‘‘Devbhoomi’’ where you can find inner peace; momentarily. Some of the nicest people on earth, finest landscapes and the weather gives a tough competition to Bangalore. (I hope you get the drift now)

      

   2. In May I travelled for work to Tel Aviv, Israel. It was a short trip and I was meeting most of my colleagues in person after a LONG time. Having been to Jerusalem & dead sea during my previous trip in 2018, I decided to skip sight seeing this time around (not a wise decision in hindsight)

      

   3. In June, we travelled to Tahiti & Moorea Islands. This was a fully sponsored trip by my company as a part of making it to the President’s Club. For the uninitiated, President’s club is that imaginary club which you get to join on achieving your yearly targets provided you are in Sales. We were in two minds because reaching Tahiti from Mumbai would take us ~40 hours with 3 layovers. However, when we landed there we realised what we could’ve missed if we didn’t take the pain of taking this long flight. This place is definitely worthy of a separate blog but for now, just check out the beautiful natural landscape this island has to offer.

      

      

      Quarterly Business Review in Dehradun in August - This was our first Indian offsite after a long time. We decided to host the QBR in the beautiful city of Dehradun in the month of August. A 3 day offsite to facilitate team building, peer to peer learning and planning for next Qs was indeed a great experience.

      

   4. Customer Event in August in Goa - Right after the QBR, we did an industry event in Goa. The schedule was so hectic that I barely got to see the beach, though some of the attendees were barely seen at the event (guess where were they chilling?). Back to back travel can become hectic at times but I can assure you that the kind of discussions we manage to have during an in person event comes nowhere close to Zoom meetings! Definitely worth the time and resources.

      

   5. Birthday Trip to Varanasi in September - This is a tradition I’ve been following for more than 10 years now. Birthdays are meant to travel. This helps in two ways, you get to reflect deeply & you don’t have to throw a massive party when you’re not in the town.

      

   6. Trip to Rajkot for Diwali October - Home is where you celebrate Diwali, no matter what part of the world you’re in - you need be back home for Diwali. Period.

      

      

   7. Back to back work trips in November - Bangalore, Coorg and then Bangalore - We hosted a flagship event in Bangalore, followed by our QBR in Madikeri, Coorg and then finally ended the trip with another industry event in Bangalore. This was a total of 2 weeks on the road & trust me - explaining this back home to the high command was no easy. Getting Rahul Subramaniam for 45 mins set at our Corporate Event was probably the best decision.

      

4. Investing - While I totally missed the bus of becoming a financial influencer, I can vouch for the fact that Gujaratis are stock market natives. I’ve been investing in equities since I was in second year of my college and losing the entire capital before I graduated. That really taught me that there are shortcuts to make money but there are no shortcuts to make wealth. The shorter the way to make money, equally short is the way to lose money.

   1. Equities - 2022 was a blissful year where I just bought a few beautiful stocks to keep them for a lifetime. Continued with the discipline of SIPs in mutual funds though the returns have been below expectations.

   2. Unlisted Equities - Bought a few stocks like Care, STUDDs etc from brokers who deal in unlisted equities. Price discovery can be a challenge so unless you think you have a clear advantage over others - I highly recommend not to invest in unlisted equities. I know people who have bought Pharmeasy at Rs 90 per share which is trading at less than Rs 30 per share. What a colossal loss of capital. Might as well go to Goa and play Roulette with this capital.

   3. Startups - Ended up investing in ~23 startups in 2022. I made as many investments in one year compared to all other years since I started investing. Though I haven’t shared this earlier but investing in startups is NOT as profitable as it sounds. Investing in pre seed and seed stage companies is extremely risky and one needs to find a solid reason beyond diversification, making crazy returns etc in order to invest in startups. This is not to demoralise anyone fro angel investing but there is enough evidence that unless you’ve a solid plan to invest in 20+ companies over next 3 years - don’t get into startup investing. This is back by data and experience of countless early stage VCs. I plan to continue investing in this space because I truly believe this is how the ecosystem will evolve and early stage companies need operator support more than capital.

5. Health & Fitness - There is no doubt that this 5 letter word is the probably the most important thing today in anyone’s life. I wasn’t as focussed and as regular as I should’ve been in order to hit my fitness goals. Something that I look forward to changing next year. Drastically. Promise. Running comes naturally to me, whether it is running from responsibilities or going for a jog. The plan is to concentrate on latter.

6. Writing & Reading - Writing has often been a meditative experience for me. I’m the happiest person on this earth when I’m punching in some random words on my keyboard, I’m in the flow. Yes, this is my first blog of the year. I recall being regular at writing a few years back. The content game has indeed surpassed all expectations and one it is becoming increasingly competitive to churn out great content that adds value. I intend to write more often this year. On the front of reading, it hasn’t been a great year either. Allocating 30 mins each day is probably the best way to get started.

Yes, we all know this is just a change of date but some change of dates are more equal than other change of dates. A change of date which nudges you to reflect is a good change of date. We are not the same person that we were yesterday let alone be after a few years. The only constant in life is change and I look forward to an amazing 2023 on ALL fronts.

~Be Happy!

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