Faizan Siddiqi What do Facebook, Silver Lake Partners, Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic, KKR and Mubadala have in common? They are all partners with Jio in India. This means a total of $12.96 billion has now been promised from seven investors in exchange for a stake of just over 21 per cent. While Jio is building its … Read more
I don’t really know what happened to Benlays Doodh Patti. I do remember that for a brief period, all the ex-pat Pakistanis I knew could not live without it. It was some thing so simple yet so profound. DoodhPatti is to Pakistan what Coffee is to Americans. People were willing to pay 14/$ for a … Read more
There is one App that has taken the youth bulge by storm every where, that is TikTok. At its core its simple short-form entertainment that has some Chinese pixie dust(aka Algos) that bring virality to content by creating crazy in-platform exposure. This generation is all about instant fixes, when it comes to tiktok where videos … Read more
Visualise the following. You are launching a business, any business, the end product needs to make it to the consumer and the consumer needs to pay for it. Easy enough, even the US hasn’t solved for this seemingly simple concept at scale and at an affordable price-point. Dont confuse Amazon with the US and play … Read more
Every ones home and will be for the foreseeable future. Most things humans want or need to survive must find its way to them. Businesses are realising the true need for Digital First. Not applying new models to old physical only data sets. Not just for optics but for survival. Direct2People (D2P) is the digital … Read more
TL;DR Small Banks are done, unless they take seriously bold steps, Big Banks are done if they don’t burry their legacy issues and upgrade their boards. Software comes much later. Who would have thought COVID would actually be a delivery mechanism to force this nation and many others to adopt Digital Payments & beyond. Till … Read more
Logistics Allow all primary and 3P Logistics (including distribution companies of essential services, like food, vegetables, meat, medicines and consumables) to work on a closely monitored and managed schedule with LEAs(Law Enforcement Agencies) Ensure they follow basic health protocols and undertake volumes for distribution from principals who are either manufacturers or stockists or importers of … Read more
In the general course of listening to pitches and meeting various startups a curious trend is emerging amongst the funded ones. Especially those who were funded locally by local groups. Whilst I do not want to generalise the phenomenon is one that is growing and clearly took me by surprise. There are multiple categories of … Read more
TL:DR Let us start off by defining what this post is not. It is not a critique of any thing besides the content and the context that it was published under and its likely implications. It is also a recognition that you cant make every one happy but you have our respect for going down … Read more
Drive around the country, drive around in big cities and small, look at the names of the streets/roads/avenues. We cant get past sports men, leaders of yesteryears(most of whose f**kups have really put us where we are) yet they all continue to get an honourable mention, some in their life time most posthumously. Not to … Read more