Category: Life Notes

A Schoolteacher and a Professor: In a week recently, I met a schoolteacher and a professor from IIT. Both had left a mark on me with their teaching, and it is just one of life’s delightful coincidences that I got to meet both separately. I have many happy memories of St. Xaiver’s school – I wrote about them on my previous blog in 2010. [Parts 1, 2, 3, 4.] As Bhavana, Abhishek and I spent a wonderful afternoon with my schoolteacher, memories of school came flooding by. I was back in her classroom, sitting on a bench, paying attention, listening, and learning. Those were the formative years of our lives. A week later, I was at an IIT Alumni event, and I met a professor whom I saw after almost 35 years. And for a moment, I was a student again. His teaching was something I loved – because it was so different and alive. Even though we only got a few minutes together, it was a meeting to remember for a lifetime. As I was walking out, I told him, “Thank you very much. You made me what we I am today.” And the professor’s words are ones I will not forget, “Rajesh, and so did you. A professor is also made by students.”

Mumbai Rains: Come June, and so do the Mumbai rains. Just yesterday, we were driving on the Sea Link, and the intense downpour reminded me of how magical Mumbai’s rains are. When it pours, it really comes down. And all one can do is watch. This is the way it has been every rainy season. There was a time I meticulously tracked the daily quantity of rain – Times of India had a table showing how much rain fell over the past 24 hours in different cities of Maharashtra. I was always envious of Matheran and Mahabaleshwar because they were always ahead of Mumbai! Every year, there would at least be one occasion when I would get thoroughly drenched despite having an umbrella. As one grows older, the rains become background noise – and some of nature’s wonders are lost on us.

Homes: During May, Bhavana, Abhishek and I were searching for a new home. We have lived in our current home for 20 years. And perhaps it is time to explore something different a few years down the line. My first home that I remember was at Taikalwadi in Mahim. Then, we moved to Nepean Sea Road, and that was home for over 30 years, until we moved to our current home at Kemp’s Corner. We may not realise it, but our homes and neighbourhoods mould us. They share our happy moments and sad ones, we have our favourite spots and the ones where we sit when we are down and feeling let down by the world. For me, it was the pandemic which created a much greater attachment to the home. The table where I sit to write this was bought during the early days of the pandemic as I needed to create makeshift working space. All my writing is done here. The view of the Arabian Sea expanse, the garden behind, the new buildings coming up nearby. And memories of me growing up, me raising Abhishek. Our homes are us.

As one grows older, reminiscing about the past tends to increase! In this sub-series, I will write occasionally about memories that come up.

Bangkok: In late April, I went to Bangkok for a Netcore international sales meet. As we drove from the airport to our hotel, many memories came flooding by. Bangkok was a destination Bhavana and I used to visit a lot in the late 1990s and early 2000s (before Abhishek was born). After Abhishek was born, and our international travels (during summer vacations) ended up being mostly to New York or Singapore because there was a lot more for all of us to do. We had made a trip to Bangkok and Phuket a few years ago (during which I bought my BB), but that was now the exception than the norm. Bangkok, just a 5-hour flight away, was a different world from India. We used to stay at the Riverside Marriott. Bhavana liked the shopping experiences, and for me it was a good break from work. Taking the boat ride across the river was such a calming experience. I also liked the Kinokuniya bookstore which had a good collection of English books. Bangkok, even with its traffic, reminded me of what Indian cities should have become. We would visit the various markets, especially the night market. The city was (and is) a shopping hub. Even today, that allure stays. At 28 million, Thailand gets almost four times the tourists India gets annually.

Old Mumbai-Pune Highway: In early May, Abhishek and I were going to Talegaon to see a factory of a company a friend had invested in. (Abhisek is keen to do Industrial Engineering and wanted to see some manufacturing happen.) Because of some traffic on the Expressway and the fact that we needed to go to Talegaon, we took the old Mumbai-Pune highway. I had not travelled on that road for over 20 years – since the Expressway started in 2002. We passed Khopoli and I was reminded of the obligatory stops at Ramakant just before the ghats. The old highway, as it made its way slowly up, always offered spectacular views, especially during the rains. We passed a  small temple where I remembered throwing coin for good luck, as we motored along first in our  Ambassador car, then a Fiat, then a Maruti. The speedy expressway and its ‘professionalism’ has perhaps taken away some of the charm of the ride through the ghats – one almost doesn’t notice them because the speed barely reduces. For a brief time that day, I was a teenager in the 1980s looking out of the car window and enjoying the beautiful views of the world below.

Factories: Talking of factories, I was also reminded of my childhood summer and Diwali vacations spent at Abu Road, against the whirring of marble cutting and polishing machines. My father had set up a marble and granite unit in Rajasthan at the foothills of Mount Abu. Since he needed to visit, we (my mother, sister, and sometimes, a few cousins) would go to Abu. Even as we visited a few temples, there were visits to marble mines. And then stay at the factory! During the summer heat, we slept in charpoys in the open which meant the noise from the machines was even more. The Talegaon factory visit also reminded me that there is a world beyond software and finance, a world where real stuff is made.

A few months ago, I started gym training. My sister, a doctor, has been telling me for many years that I need to do more than just a 30-minute walk five times a week. Her point was that the body starts losing muscle mass after the age of 40, and unless I do strength training, things could become harder as I grew older.

Here is the medical explanation from Henry Ford Health: “As we age it’s normal to experience some reduction in muscle mass, strength and function, a condition known as sarcopenia. These changes begin as early as your 30s and continue at a rate of 3% to 5% per decade. The good news is that strength training can help you maintain and rebuild muscle at any age. Research shows that older adults see even greater improvements in their muscle strength versus younger adults. “So it’s never too late to start,” says Pamela Webert, MS, ACSM-CEP, an exercise physiologist at Henry Ford Health. “Everyone should be doing strength training as part of their exercise program.””

We have a gym in our building. I never once entered it during the past two decades. Just seeing all the equipment through the glass door scared the daylights out of me! Walking was so much easier.

Last October, after another push by my sister, I decided to change. Under the guidance of a trainer, I now workout for about 35-40 minutes three times a week. The first few sessions were tough given that my body had seen no real exercise through life (except for a few years of yoga a long time ago). Having a trainer come is good because there is no “I will do it tomorrow” excuse. Now, even though I don’t fully enjoy it (!), it has become part of my weekly routine. As one grows older, the realisation starts dawning that good health must become a priority.

I asked ChatGPT to list the physical health benefits of gym training:

• Improved Muscle Strength and Tone: Regular weight training helps build and maintain muscle mass, which naturally declines with age. This can enhance your strength, endurance, and overall physical performance.
• Increased Bone Density: Weight-bearing exercises, such as weight lifting and resistance training, can help increase bone density, reducing the risk of osteoporosis and fractures.
• Enhanced Cardiovascular Health: Incorporating cardio exercises, like treadmill walking or cycling, can improve heart health, lower blood pressure, and reduce the risk of heart disease.
• Better Joint Health and Flexibility: Strengthening the muscles around your joints can improve stability and reduce the risk of injuries. Stretching and flexibility exercises can help maintain joint flexibility and reduce stiffness.
• Weight Management: Regular exercise helps burn calories and can aid in maintaining a healthy weight or losing excess weight, which is crucial for overall health.

So, one piece of advice: don’t wait until it’s too late. Begin training now (especially if you were over 50 years of age).

IndiaVotes is a website I had created in 2011 during the time I was working for the 2014 election campaign. I had found a gap in the easy availability of election data. While the raw data was available from the Election Commission, it was in PDFs and almost impossible to search. So, a group of us had extracted the data into a database and designed a nice navigation and search interface. I am glad to say that even after 13 years, it remains the best elections data website in India. A Google search for “india elections data” shows IndiaVotes as the #1 search result.

During the recent elections, traffic spiked by a magnitude. I was very surprised. Post 2014, while the site had been updated with the results of all the elections, the interface had not changed, and the site had become slow. I guess its simplicity and authenticity has helped make it popular and the go-to destination for elections data.

It is perhaps time for an overhaul of the site. It needs a Gen AI chat interface – “show me all the constituencies that were won by a margin of under 5%” is much easier than doing the same query on the results pages. It also needs better visualisation of results – we had tried maps once but somewhere it has got lost. Another idea is a “swing calculator” – so enthusiasts can see what would happen if voting patterns changed. I would also like to bring in Form 20 data so it becomes a permanent repository of granular elections data. The one innovation we had done during the recent Lok Sabha elections was a prediction game called YouPredict which attracted a few hundred players. I am hoping that over the next few months, we can create an improved IndiaVotes site – the best needs to become even better!

**

A few friends had called me for my take on the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. My take: after two wave elections in 2014 and 2019, India has gone back to seat-by-seat, state-by-state, caste-by-caste voting, as was the norm between 1989 and 2014. This is what I had written about in my prescient 2011 essay about how the BJP could win 275 seats in the 2014. For any party to win a majority on its own in India, it needs to create a wave and have a very high hit rate in contested seats. This did not happen in 2024.

PS: Here is the IndiaVotes page summarising the 2024 results. An interesting page to see is the alliances summary – focus on the contested voteshare.

A couple of years ago, I had written about my blogging system. “At any time, I have a list of topics that I can write on. And that is good enough to get started. Once I start writing, the ideas flow. Some of the writing is original, while at other times I will aggregate what others have written in a single place. This reading and collating also helps me learn new topics. At times, I find myself going back to my earlier writings to refresh my own thinking.”

I have now settled into a routine. Most of my blogging happens in the early mornings on weekends. Sitting at my home desktop, I write for about 2-3 hours in a flow. (On weekdays, it’s either gym or walk so I don’t get that kind of contiguous time.) I will typically have thought through the essay theme, the sub-topics, and the opening sentences by the previous night. This way, I can begin writing without wasting precious time thinking about what to write.

Much of my recent writing has been around new ideas in marketing. Since I write for myself, there is no pressure to be perfect. Each essay moves my thinking forward. Even as I have a broad structure in mind, as I write the story takes its own course. This is what I like the most: the process of writing itself begets more writing. For example, during the process of thinking about how AI will impact marketing, many sub-themes came up: large customer models, co-marketer, and digital twins. I then also explore synthetic data and vector search, both of which were new to me. In email too, a similar process has followed. Writing about AMP led me to Email 2.0, 3.0 and eventually Action Ads and Epps (Email Apps). What I like most is naming the ideas. Velvet Rope Marketing, Generative Journeys, Co-Marketer, Inbox Commerce, Segment Twins, Singular Twins, Profipoly, Action Ads, Epps – these are all words and phrases I have come up with.

In the past year or so, one big change in my writing has been the use of AIs. I use a combination of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to help with several tasks: exploring ideas, summarising my past writings, expanding and improving on briefs, helping write stories from my ideas, and preparing briefs to encourage others to read what I have written, critiquing what I have written, and adding new ideas to what I have written. Working with AIs has been the biggest change in my blogging process, and one that has helped make the process faster and better. It is almost as if I am working with a co-blogger: one who understands my thinking and works interactively with me. More than my specific voice (which is of course always there), what I want is to ensure a proper and full exploration of the ideas I am writing about. This is where the AIs excel.

The key to getting the most from the AIs is of course prompting. This is where my past writings and briefs come in. It is not just about “Write an essay about email apps” but more like “Here is all that I have written so far. Improve and expand on it.” To borrow a phrase from Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Klarna and the Sun”, the AIs have become my “Artificial Friend”. I have used the AIs to improve my titles and help me with naming (“Give me a better phrase for Singleton Twin starting with the letter “S” – and it came up with Singular Twin). I talk to it as if it’s a person working alongside me.

For me, blogging has become a way of life, an integral part of me. It frees my imagination, fuels ideas, and births innovations. The words I wrote four years ago still ring true: “I think every entrepreneur should write a blog. Not just tweets or pithy LinkedIn posts. But write about one’s ideas and aspirations in real-time. Give people a glimpse into the world that you see. Because that is what you are really doing – creating a future ahead of others. And blogging is a great way to accelerate that future.”

After my talk at SaaSBOOMi in early March, a number of people came up to me and said, “I have read your book, and loved it.” Some even mentioned sections that they liked. It felt good. The book has sold 5,000 copies in India but I don’t know who the buyers and readers are. So, its always good to meet people for whom the book has made a difference. And most of all, I like the “published author” feeling.

In December last year, I was on one of the stages at the Bangalore Literature Festival in front of an audience of a few hundred discussing my book. I also signed copies for many who had bought it. For an author, there is no better feeling that meeting a reader.

When I speak about the book, I now end with the story about work-life balance (page 220 of the book). I read out much of it because it has been written so well and I want to make sure the words are spoken right. After a recent talk, a woman came up to me and said, “What you said I had told my husband after our son was born. But he did not listen and kept working long hours. And it now shows in the father-son relationship.” I was so moved listening to her. These are things few tell us when we are in the midst of building our company or furthering our career. Lost family time can never come back. It is stories like this which make the satisfaction of having written a book come alive.

Over the years, many have lost the love for reading. Time has been fragmented – just long enough to consumer short messages on X, LinkedIn, Instagram, and WhatsApp. If the story is in short video form, even better! But I feel people are losing out on the joy of holding a book and getting lost in the world and words of the author. There is a voice, a story, a message. There is a lifetime of experience that a book has. That’s what one gets when one sits down in a cosy chair and reads for an hour or two, free from digital distractions. We may remember the pithy one-liners served on social platforms, but true learning happens with the stories and the world the author conjures.

Writing the book made me a better reader, listener and thinker. It also has helped me tell stories better. And the blog is my outlet. Somewhere between all these writings is my next book. I just need to figure out which!

I used to blog daily from 2000 to 2012 at emergic.org. I had then taken a break because I had started working on the periphery of politics. And even as that work ended, I did not restart my blog. April 1 2000 was when I finally started again – at rajeshjain.com. And since then, it has been back to my old self: something new daily, writing for myself, and sharing readings. It has now been four years of the new blog, and I am so happy that I am writing again.

Much of the blog writing I do on weekends because I get contiguous time in the mornings at home. (I don’t do gym or walk on weekends. So I get about 3 hours from 5 am to 8 am, where I can write undisturbed.) I have realised that my best writing happens on these weekend mornings at my desk at home. I try not to miss the weekend writing slots and space.

I have always liked to write. When I was a teenager, I maintained a diary for many years. (I probably still have some of them at home!) As I grew up, I would write the occasional note to myself in my book – it was a way of clearing the mind. Sad moments, angry moments, frustrating moment – writing helped me move past the troubles life throws at us. Writing helped clear the mind. My diary became my friend, a person I could talk to whenever I wanted. My private space. Where I could say whatever I wanted without worrying about what the response would be. I still do that at times.

Most of my writing is now on the blog – mainly marketing ideas and short posts like this. The book happened because of the blog posts. (I now tell people my secret of writing of a book: 100 posts of 500 words each. And the 100 posts can be split into 10 topics with 10 posts each. Much easier to think like this than a 200-page book or 50,000 words.)

I don’t want for perfection in the ideas. Even if it is half-baked, I start writing. I don’t even edit – there can always be another iteration later. Many times, I have seen the idea evolve even as I am writing. I get into a zone – flow – where connections start happening. For the past few months, I have started using the AIs (ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini) to refine, summarise, critique, and enhance the ideas.

By removing the desire to write for others, I have freed up my own thinking. Its just me and an empty page to be filled when I start. All I need to do is to get the first few words going, and then the rest of the story starts coming together. Blogging lets the imagination roam free – I can imagine new worlds, new themes in marketing, and new futures. There is no one to please, no likes to count, no comments to respond, no metrics to track. Its just me, my mind, and the ideas that flow through.

In the past few months, some friends have called asking me to talk to their kids about their first job. For those in the US and UK, it has been especially difficult to find one. I remember how it took me almost four months to get a job in the summer of 1989 as I was finishing my MS at Columbia. When I finally got a call (voice mail in those days left on my answering machine at home), I called my manager-to-be at NYNEX and said, “I accept.” He asked, “Don’t you want to know what your salary will be?” I said, “No. All I want is a job. I am fine with whatever you pay me.”

When I speak to the students hunting for their first job in difficult times, I tell them not to worry about the salary. In fact, I even tell them that they could even offer to take minimum wage so as to get the experience. My logic: their parents have spent $200-300K in their education, and another $60-70K won’t make much of a difference. The key is to get into the workplace and meet with people. There will always be a time to negotiate salaries in life but that time is not now; what’s key is to get past the hurdle of the first job. The workplace is very different from student life, and they need to start experiencing that as soon as possible.

I also give a few more suggestions as they look for a job prior to graduation:

• Attend conferences. They are a very good place to learn and network. Very few students do this.
• Work at startups so you get do a lot more. And offer to do anything. Think of it as an extension to learning.
• Write a blog. Show a body of work with your thinking.
• Develop some extra skills which students would not be expected to have. For example, for someone in liberals arts, learn AI and coding.
• Speak to professors and ask for references to startups and companies run by alumni. Few will turn down a request by a professor.
• Send out LinkedIn requests and cold emails; there is no downside.
• For those in the US/UK and unable to find jobs (the visa status makes it harder in a tough market), consider returning to India. There are plenty of opportunities available in India.

When I was job hunting, I would go through the careers section in the newspapers and send out letters to every company I thought was remotely relevant. I was willing to travel anywhere for a job interview. I even spent a couple weeks on the West Coast staying with a friend and writing to local companies. One has to think like an entrepreneur!

Another story from the skies. I was on my way back on Air India’s non-stop from San Francisco to Mumbai. Unable to sleep, I had opened my notebook and was making some notes about the trip and what we needed to do next. I had asked for some tea. One of the crew members came with a cup and happened to see the words “vision” and “mission” written in big on my notebook page. And she said, “That’s what I need! How can people like me, who work long hours and are separated from families for days at a time, give ourselves a purpose in life? I see a spark in you, and absolute concentration and intensity. How can I achieve that?” A short conversation followed mostly with me asking the questions. I told her I will share some thoughts when she has some time during the flight. (They were just about to start the meal service.)

An hour or so later, she came up to me again and said, “I spoke to a few of my colleagues, and we would all like to listen to you.” And so it was that I found myself giving an impromptu talk to four of the Air India crew! I made some notes prior to the talk that I shared with them.

As I thought about the conversation later, I realised it took immense courage for the first crew member to have the conversation with me. She was curious, and wanted to do more and better. And that in itself is a good step forward – a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset. I wish her and her colleagues well! For me, I will remember this talk as the first one I have done in an airplane!

I reached Bangalore airport at 9:15 pm for my 10:45 pm Indigo flight to Mumbai. On the way, I had got a message that the flight was delayed 50 minutes to 11:35 pm. I decided to check at the Indigo ticketing counter if there was a seat available in an earlier. (That is one advantage of choosing Indigo – the frequency of flights from the major cities is very good.) The 9:45 pm flight had been delayed by 30 minutes to 10:15 pm. So, perhaps I could get a seat on that flight.

The agent looked at me and said that it will cost Rs 1800 for the change. I hesitated in answering – wondering if the hour extra was worth that much. Perhaps sensing my dilemma, the agent said, “Mr. Jain, I will do a one-off gesture for you. I will waive the additional charge.” And then, without me asking, she assigned me 1C, which would have cost extra. I was delighted.

As I made my way to the gate, I thought to my self about how a frontline customer service executive was empowered to make the decision without making any phone call or checking with her manager. Indigo does not have a loyalty program so she had no clue whether I was a loyal traveller. (That the airline has a 60-70% market share does mean that for business travellers, it would be a preferred choice.) This was a story I needed to tell my Netcore colleagues: how can our customer success teams work on customer delight moments and be empowered to make “in-the-moment” decisions if it was so needed.

My positive experience did not end there. As I reached the boarding gate, I found someone waiting for me. He introduced himself, “I am the airport manager. X [the ticketing agent] works for me. She informed me about you, and I came to make sure everything’s fine.” Quite a surprise! I thanked him, and told him, “I run a company of over a thousand people. It is so good to see that the agent could make the call on her own. Thank you.” And as I walked away, I realised I could do a small gesture of my own. I had a signed copy of my book, which I gave to the airport manager. I said, “This is for both of you. The second last chapter has some very good life lessons, which I hope you will find useful.”

I was indeed happy to reach home an hour earlier. Thank you, Indigo!