The upcoming book “The Maverick Effect” by Harish Mehta, chronicles the beginnings and rise of the information technology (IT) sector in India. While technology was a globally disruptive force that would have come to India one way or another, without the efforts of a few intrepid entrepreneurs, we might have…

Often I think about the kind of cultural identity that my children will have. They belong to two distinct cultural heritages (Kerala and Gujarat) and there is almost no middle path. The only natural identity they can have is either the global identity or the secular Indian identity. …

DeFi claims to be yet another attempt to remake society for a new generation, but it is capitalism reincarnate in a darker, more subversive form. DeFi (Crypto/Web3/Bitcoin) seems to embody the frustration felt by the 99% against the 1% who keep getting more and more powerful irrespective of whatever changes…

Since childhood we are taught to build up expectations of what we will do in our lives. In the Doris Day song about anxieties of the future, the songwriter first asks, “Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?” and then towards the end of the song, the children ask…

This post is triggered by a very interesting discussion we had at our weekly team call. Most young, smart and ambitious Indians want to leave the country and do so at the first available opportunity. What is the root of this malaise and what can we do to remove it? …

Every accountable ledger is already distributed. — I remember being excited about Bitcoins and blockchain years ago on HackerNews when it first started getting popular. I was instantly drawn into this concept of a world where power is instantly distributed because governments can no longer control the money supply. While I did set up a wallet and…

The right has upped the game of political domination, the left is in risk of getting kicked out of contest until it ups its own game. There are always two sides to an argument For the sake of our argument, let us define the left and the right as follows: Right: Socially dominant groups: Males, dominant race /…

As I write this obituary, it does not feel like Ashok is no longer with us. Startup founders lead a difficult life, and very few have had the courage to persevere and succeed as Ashok did. Ashok was the person I knew the best in the startup ecosystem and I…

In the first few weeks of COVID, experts rushed in with their views on how to make remote work, listicles sharing “insights” on “best practices” on how companies can adapt to this new normal. But they forgot one very important fact. You are not the same company anymore, neither are…