TL;DR: All the items below are based on publicly available info that you are too lazy to Google, so if your understanding is different than mine, leave a comment. On Jan 11th I saw like many others a news paper announcement for the long awaited MPG(Micro Payment Gateway) project, launched as Raast + The standard … Read more
Let’s start with the fact that we have an entire telecom corporation that is responsible for providing ICT services to the government. Likely well intentioned in a different era, but what caught my attention was a tweet that was taking credit for video call that a kid with a laptop and a zoom connection could … Read more
What an amazing & resilient country. Even after decades of less than adequate governance, economic progress, security challenges and internal issues; if you ask the average Pakistani how they are doing, their initial response is “sab theek ho jaye ga inshallah/all will be well by grace of god” There is no other way to explain … Read more
Technicolor: You can use technicolor to describe real or imagined scenes when you want to emphasize that they are very colorful, especially in an exaggerated way To dream in technicolor one must have some thing worth dreaming about? Right? Given the not so rosy picture(s) down below, what must one do or can do, to be in … Read more
Risk is not driven off a gene, yet it seems to be coded in to our personalities and our national DNA. But it seems there is right and wrong risk, which I will get to shortly. What I want you to consider is the following: Scientists who study the humanmind—say that most risk takers become … Read more
A single Google search will bring you to gurus of product market fit. This is the exact opposite thinking. I had recently solicited ideas to feature in the blog post. The one below got me thinking. So how does one go about solving for the non obvious? The basic construct in my mind is to … Read more
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