My immediate plans are to #travel and #explore new places, meet old friends, meet new people, work on Karmastic – A project close to my heart and, and, and, and uhhh just nothing … this list is already getting too long [remember I am on break]

Feel free to schedule a call with me to discuss anything product, new business ideas, travel inspirations, or support Karmastic.org

Opened up my calender via Calendly https://lnkd.in/dmCSxfuV

We are living in very difficult times and It’s important that we take care of ourselves and our family. But there is a huge population fighting this pandemic on multiple fronts and may need financial & medical assistance.

While most of us who are working from home, almost hate that one more call. But I am proposing a call that may make difference in someone’s life during this time of distress. I’m opening up my calendar for the weekends to catch up with new and aspiring Product managers who wish to connect to discuss product management, bounce off ideas, or general chitchat. I would love to discuss your queries and try to answer them to the best of my ability.

In return, I would request you to make a donation to the charity of your choice (INR2500 or above).

Schedule a call: Let’s Talk Product

Some charities you may consider (in no particular order):

Hemkunt Foundation : The #O2ForYou Drive-Thru has been started and is now available 24/7.

Mission Oxygen : Help hospitals across the country get immediate access to oxygen concentrators.

Give India : Providing life-saving equipment for critical patients at hospitals and Covid care centers

Due to other official commitments, I have opened my calendar for weekends only for IST timings for now. If need be I would extend this to any public holiday and try to accommodate early morning/late evening calls for friends in different time zones.

Update 25.04.2021: My calendar got blocked till June, so opened up few more Sunday slots for May 2021.

Update 01.07.2021: Opened up few more slots for coming months.

Just another day in the life of a married maskman (Me, poor husband off grocery shopping).

A cold start in a new country can be a little tricky and challenging. And when the country happens to be THE USA it’s next level. The cherry on the cake, you have to do all this during the golden period of global lockdown.

You can bring carry as many things with you from back home (Cattle class limitations you know).

Cultural (and financial) Shock

• Water bottle (500ml) at Seattle airport (if not for coronavirus, I would have saved receipt) $2.50 (185 Rupeees). Paani hai ki Gangajal. Now here at hotel also we get water bottles, consuming tap water is so middle class….Monésha.

• $20 for porter, and no you are not getting him.

….and not even him

• Not tipping a service person is a social crime. Be ready to pay 10% of bill on any service porter, taxi, food, and have heard hair-cut (not experienced yet, just to remind you … its Lockdown and stay home, stay safe)

• It’s healthy for your wallet to walk to/from the grocery store.  

Reel life over and real-life hits you…

SSN (Social Security Number): Your lifeline and identity in the US. You need this for practically all govt business, banking & IRS transactions (including Taxes, medical… bla bla bla). And as you know, the US welcomed me with a lockdown, leaving me high and dry.

• US financial institutes to poor me, without SSN
  

Credit Card: No amount of credit history back at home comes handy. Man, First time in 20 years I got a credit card application decline … not 1 but 4 in a row & and 2 from the same bank …  like what the F*. I think its karma – curse of all telecalling calls blocked by Truecaller.

*Fun Fact: Food used to be the most searched F word before furloughed)

Then there was a savior in American Express (Credit in US without SSN and Credit history).  I was always a fan of customer service for Amex and here they not only honored my credit history in India but delivered the card to my hotel within a week without the need of any SSN or document. Kudos!

Bank Accounts: By the way, the salary account is checking account, and saving accounts is savings account. OK got it! Declined by US bank (Reminded me of Govt bank back home); Day 1 shared a list of documents to open the account. Day 2 can’t open the account as they have to maintain social distancing.. Ummm ok. So you can visit the branch but can’t open account and to open online you need…… yes… say it loud… SSN.

Chase.. no luck, they need confirmation the company letterhead of your existence. That’s easy right, well of course if the offices are open

Savior – HSBC, unconventional, and friendly … well overfriendly. But work is done got an account opened instantly without SSN (you need a passport and authorized visa to work). Still not recommended… Sorry HSBC (& your mobile app sucks).

Bank of America is actually you should head to for your first account. Easy process and no fuss account. You need your passport, visa, and no initial deposit (Baniya in me highly recommend this bank).

BTW above is about checking account and saving account is to be opened online and you need …. yes SSN.

Retail therapy (Desi Style): It’s an online world, remember to carry plain papers, Lan cable, passport size photos 16$ for 2 copies. Cultural shock !!!

Every item (yes! you heard it right) can be returned. Opened, used, and even abused… no questions asked. Things I have returned in the last 30 days (last checked this doesn’t impact your credit score ) And you can’t blame me for this, it’s because of lockdown … shifting hotel (non-contextual to this post)

Returned with a full refund: Printer, Paper (who buys them anyway), Grocery items, mixer.

Most interesting purchase (if it qualifies as a purchase) Humidifier. Bought this one and got a post-purchase survey to get a free gift. And FREE always gets the attention.  So wrote the review and guess what got another humidifier as a free gift. And I can only return what I have purchased (do I explain the rest).

Anyways  … till I can say,

Me every 10 minutes, you also stay home and stay safe.

2020 brought in a global pandemic (covid#19) and with it mayhem in the economy. Some of you would remember the last global recession of 2008-09 and this time its kind of 2009 on steroids. It took some time but we all get out of it stronger and wiser (ok that’s debatable).

So here we are in the middle of the global pandemic, and your’s truly is going with the flow of life in a totally different tangent. While the whole world is following “Stay Home, Stay Home”, I have traveled halfway across the globe to be in the land of dreams.

So much has unfolded in such a short period of time.

a. I almost missed my Visa appointment waiting for the documents. (BTW next appoint slot interestingly may not have ever happened, as US govt temporarily closed the consulate due to COVID situation).

b. An anxious trip to the US consulate in Chennai. I would have gone through hundreds of articles about visa interview stories on umpteen online forums and thousands of screenshot of the same articles on my WhatsApp by better half. Like really, never had that pressure since my first job interview. I owe it back to the community so one article pending on my interview experience.

c. A story of the loss/theft of my wife’s purse(with all original documents). But really liked the easy process of filing online FIR with TN police with payment gateway integration for a copy of the report. We need to seriously think of a solution for these multiple documents/cards. Aadhaar card should evolve as a single document (unique identifier) and the rest of the services should be just activated on it. I had to here deal with Transport deptt, Income tax, Banks, Voter ID etc all separately.

d. A crazy & hell of the night-long party just days before India locked down. Pictures below are not doing justice to the craziness of the day ;p

e. Flew out of India. Interestingly, friends & family not only helped me with packing but ensured that they waited outside airport till we cleared security checks, affection yes, but more than that to ensure flights to the US are operational and are not canceled at the last minute. Immediately after we flew out, all International flights out of India were canceled.

f. 21-hour flight with all precautions, equipped and geared up with tons of sanitizers, masks and gloves. Landed at scantly populated Seattle airport (Smooth and quick immigration).

g. Here we are life packed in suitcases halfway across the globe and Tisya looks visibly tired.

h. And the next day lockdown is declared in the US. I think it would need a whole lengthy write-up on life in the US without SSN during the lockdown.

i. So here I am, traveled 20,000 KM across 4 timezones and spending time in the command module (Hotel room) while looking out for the moon from the window.

When you are far and away with yourself, just remember Michael Collins.

“In the 48 minutes of each orbit when he was out of radio contact with the Earth while Columbia passed around the far side of the Moon, the feeling he reported was not fear or loneliness, but rather “awareness, anticipation, satisfaction, confidence, almost exultation”.

1. Blessed with a baby daughter – my little princess Tisya.

2. Enjoyed a larger part of the decade building product and communities around them at Times Internet and checked-in to OYO rooms in mid 2018.

Some of the products I loved building in the last decade

a. Indiatimes Email (now deprecated)
b. Times Points (User engagement & Loyalty Program)
c. Central Identity (SSO) for Times Internet
d. OYO Wizard (Loyalty Program for OYO)
e. All new consumer experience on OYO Apps (Android & iOS and oyorooms.com )

https://youtu.be/XKGeHb7hDNw

3. Continued my learning with first certified online course for Gamification and attending IIM, Calcutta for an executive management course.

4. Watched live cricket match at stadium.

5.Nokia E63 & Blackberry were my choice of business phones before I got addicted to Android. Check out my blog about best android apps.

Graduated from first hindi post to a blog about interesting facts in hindi and my first android app .

6. Conquered some fears with Bunjee Jumping at Sentosa Island and Paragliding at Manali.

7. Started a bit of running and completed my first 10K and half Marathon.

Just completed a personal challenge of running 500Km this year (Today on the last day of the decade)

8. Travelled for work and leisure.
Within India – Goa, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Dalhousie, Shimla, Mussoorie, Lucknow, Agra, Chennai,
Kochi, Allepey, Jammu, Manali, Haridwar, Munnar, Ahmedabad, Kolkatta, Vrindavan, Jim corbett
International – Chicago, New York, London, Bath, Singapore, Bintan, Macau, Hongkong, Macinac City

9. Last but not least, met and made friendship for life with some of the most extraordinary people. Looking forward to the next decade with open heart and mind.

Overall a wonderful decade. I took my chances and made some bets, won some and lost some but learned from every bit of it.

“I never lose. I either win or learn” – Nelson Mandela

Ending this note with a clip from the movie Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.

My learnings from this sport

✓ You start and run at your pace, know your strengths & weakness.
✓ No one is competing with anyone, the challenge is for self.
✓ You support and cheer everyone running with you, together we succeed.
✓ Be consistent and practice is the key, you have miles to go.
✓ The last few miles its body vs brain, just don’t give up.

So, What has changed? Actually alot.

1. Information Architecture
2. User interface and UX 
3. Personalised widgets
4. and many under-the-hood changes to improve latency

Update your OYO play from Play Store  or App Store to the latest version and experience the change.

Old Detail Page

New Detail Page

Check out the all new layout, video & Image gallery, reviews & ratings and many other features (rolling out globally in phased manner).

Lessons I learned from this amazing experience:

✓ Take calculated risks
✓ It’s wonderful to be on the top
✓ You have to take the leap of faith to conquer fears
✓ Enjoy the fall and the rise
✓ Most Important – Trust the team behind you

Unexpected, unplanned or sometimes even planned travel takes you to unfamiliar places. Choosing the right hotel is something which can take a lot of your time.  OYO Now simplifies this for you by curating a personalized set of best available OYO’s near you at amazingly attractive prices.

It was so much fun building this ground up with one of the most awesome team !

Following is the post as published on Medium. Thanks to Shreyas Joshi for the write-up.

Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value. ~ Jim Rohn

Background

What are perishable goods? Aside from the obvious answers such as vegetables, fruits etc. — information can also be a perishable good in purely economic terms.

The value of the daily news, for example, reduces exponentially as time passes. That is why the newspaper that you buy in the morning is almost worthless in value by the time the day ends. No one is going to pay anything to find out which political candidate has a better chance at winning when the election results have already been out for a month.

In a similar way, in today’s digital age — movie tickets, flight seats, room nights — these are all perishable goods. Their value is a function of both the demand and the time until which that demand exists.

In number of rooms, OYO is now the biggest hotel chain in India, nine times bigger than the number 2, the 115-year-old Taj Group.

(Fun fact: OYO is also valued more than the Taj Group and the Oberoi Hotel group combined)

Challenge-opportunity paradigm

Needless to say, matching supply with demand efficiently has been an age-old problem across various industries.

But no problem is unsolvable for OYOpreneurs. At OYO, Technology continues to not just enable business but also drive new business ideas through innovative features. And while selling off perishable goods (thus increasing occupancy) might seem a challenge to many, we at OYO looked at this problem as an opportunity.

Limited Time + Limited Inventory + High-Intent Demand = OYO Now!

The rationale behind OYO Now! deals

Discounting has been tried-and-tested tactics used by every Tom, Dick, and Harry who are in the business of selling products/services online.

But there are multiple issues that we wanted to avoid while designing OYO Now! and some of them we have listed below

• Mass targeting — flat discounts for everyone, irrespective of their intent
• Non-Contextual Offers — providing offers without knowing what the user is searching, deals have low or no relevance to the user
• No sense of urgency — Doesn’t seem like a real deal. Discounts are omnipresent
• Deals not available within booking funnel — Once the user actually is in the process, there’s no incentive for him to complete the purchase

OYO Now! is a three-pronged solution –

• It is a real deal — click it or miss it. The timer counts to 45 minutes once the user opens his app. (If the deal expires, there’s no way you can avail the same through any other user flow in the app)
• It incentivizes the user to complete the purchase without a compromise on quality — also ensures demand is well distributed amongst all highly rated OYO properties
• It is contextual — the user has high intent and urgency (as they have provided the date and location of booking), and we try to provide the best prices only on the properties that fall within his search parameters

There are other advantages such that this also increases customer delight as well as motivates the customer to book OYO through our platform, and provides OYO with an avenue to educate the user about our new initiatives within the customer journey itself.

Why wait? Book Now — OYO Now!

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