August 10, 2015, is a special day for Indians, and more broadly people of the Asian subcontinent. On this day, Sundar Pichai, Indian born American immigrant, was appointed the CEO of Google.  For many young & ambitious Indians looking to make a dent in the startup world, Pichai is now nothing less than a hero. A by-product of Pichai’s success is that his words are now taken as ‘words of wisdom, and rightly so. Anyone who has achieved the kind of success Pichai has must have insights everyone can benefit from.  In an attempt to collate Pichai’s thoughts, we collated 36...

“A single decision has the power to change your life” We have all heard this phrase, restated, time and again in our lives by someone or the other, in a slightly distinct fashion, if not using the exact same words. In the case of Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men on the planet, a single decision did actually end up changing the trajectory of his life, and the world of commerce.  The story dates back to 1994. At the time, Jeff Bezos was working in a senior management position in a company called D.E. Shaw, a successful quant-focused hedge fund....

Let’s suppose you bought a new printer. But there is no point in owning a printer without buying any cartridges. So, you go ahead and buy a pair of cartridges to make use of the printer.  A few months later, you run out of cartridges and are, in a way, forced to buy them again. During the lifetime of using this printer, it is likely that you could end up spending more money on cartridges cumulatively than you spent on buying the printer.  If this happens to the case, the company you have bought the printer from would also end up...

You want to watch a blockbuster at 3 am while the cable airs commercials, Netflix allows you to do that. You want a cab at your house without waiting for a cabbie to spot you, Uber allows you to do that. You want food delivered from a restaurant at the tap of a button, Doordash allows you to do that.  We are now living in a period where goods and services can be accessed instantly. However, until recently, grocery delivery was still a problem that no company had successfully. And this is where Instacart spotted an opportunity in 2012. Instacart is...

While Zomato was started as a simple restaurant listing directory in 2008, the company has come a long long way since then venturing into multiple business segments, making the business more diverse than a Zomato user interacting with the business would think it to be. In this blog, we will try to demystify Zomato’s business model. But before we do that, let's take a look at its founding story & how the company has evolved over the years to establish better context. Zomato Founding & Growth Story The only person who has always been involved in the operations of Zomato is the...

High Low pricing is a popular pricing strategy in which a company charges a high price for a product in the beginning and reduces the prices later using discounting. Unlike the price skimming model, however, prices are not slashed permanently. Under the high low model, product prices alternate between high & lower during a particular time duration.  The goal of high low pricing is to lure customers to visit the stores with discounts, which might also lead them to buy other products as a result. The high low pricing is also different from everyday low pricing, which consistently uses low...

Choosing a pricing strategy is a defining point in the life of a business — it decides the customer segments a business caters to, how much profit it will make, and the overall brand image of the endeavour. Price Skimming is one of the pricing strategies employed by businesses out of a host of different pricing models. Simply put, Price skimming is a pricing strategy in which the price of goods and services is highest at the time of launching a product to maximize profits from upper-market segments, and then lowered later on to attract price sensitive mid-market and lower-market...

Videos are an effective marketing tool for thriving companies. Try to create stunning videos that suit business purposes the best and help reach a potential group of customers online. A powerful video can make a huge difference in how you wish to project the brand to the customers, and this shall help to stand apart from the rest.  You have to decide on the specific purpose of the video and if it is for promotional purposes, make sure that the video reaches potential customers. The video is an excellent marketing tool, and you have to decide on the right type...

When a business chooses to expand by either acquiring another company or developing expertise in an unchartered area itself, it uses either of two strategies — Horizontal Integration or Vertical Integration. Understanding these two concepts is critical to make sense of the strategy behind decisions made by companies and make a reasonable prediction about their future.  Put simply, Horizontal Integration is when a company tries to expand by acquiring a similar one in their industry at the same level of the supply chain. Marriott Hotels' acquisition of Starwood Hotels & Resorts for $13 billion in 2015, which created the world's...

Created by Lewis C. Lin, Circles Method is a framework that product managers can use to develop comprehensive & thoughtful solutions to product design questions and challenges. To give examples, these product design questions could be anything from redesigning the Facebook newsfeed to improving Pinterest.  The Circles Method helps product managers cover all major bases of a unique product design problem using seven steps, which together form the CIRCLES acronym: Step 1: Comprehend the situation Step 2: Identify the customer  Step 3: Report the customer's needs Step 4: Cut, through prioritization Step 5: List Solutions Step 6: Evaluate tradeoffs Step 7: Summarize your recommendation. Let's look at each of...