Categories
misc

My ikigai – Product, People, and Tech

I have been thinking a lot about what gives me energy, what I can contribute to the world, and what will still make me money – in short, what is my ikigai (the Japanese concept about which you can read here). I have realized that the intersection of product, people and technology is what gets me to this state. In this long piece (and it has been a while since I wrote a long piece), I am going to be writing different facets of these three circles that I am excited about. I am writing this primarily for myself, so that I can introspect now, and later (if/when I re-read it). 

Technology: If I go by journey chronology, my journey starts with technology. My PhD in Computer engineering took me down some deep research rabbit holes on how to do high level synthesis of VLSI circuits optimizing on static leakage power. It was a world when techniques to reduce dynamic power (or the power that is consumed when electronic circuits are running) was just saturating, and the research in the field of leakage power (or the power that is ‘leaked’ even when circuits were not being used) was just beginning. If you are old enough, you would remember that feature phones would start dying on you at the end of the day, even if you did not use them at all. My research focused on how to design circuitry to reduce this power – which was super important for portable electronics that was just picking up. Doing research taught me resilience, persistence, and the power of positivity (you get knocked down so many times with paper rejects!). Fun fact – My advisor Dr. Katkoori was a huge shell scripting fan, and it rubbed on to me – my entire MS dissertation was a multi-hundred line csh script 😀

This is how beautiful LaTeX type-set research documents looked like. This is a screenshot from my doctoral dissertation.

Right after my dissertation, I joined Cadence Design Systems, where I continued working on power optimization, but this time on production quality software, which crunched circuits of millions of transistors, with almost every known VLSI design house using our software (Samsung, Sony, Texas Instruments, Broadcom, nvidia, apple, to name a few). After a few years, I moved on to Synopsys, where I worked on synthesis tools for FPGA (think of it as configurable VLSI circuits). The focus in both of these roles was writing high performance and scalable code in C/C++. These complex algorithms synthesized the VLSI designs for the latest and greatest chips of the time (and to this day).

Towards the end, I landed a new charter to create a new group called Reusable Components team, to focus on building high performance libraries for several common components that were being written/used across the dozen odd product lines in Synopsys. This was almost like Technical Product Management (TPM) where there was much to be discovered / negotiated / deployed between large product groups that worked in silos. This was also when I created the TPAC (Technical Publications Advisory Council), where we encouraged, reviewed, and rewarded engineers for submitting patents and technical papers.

This is how CAD tools looked back in the day. I wouldnt be surprised if they look the same now. The code on the left is RTL code in verilog. img src utah.edu

This work in Cadence and Synopsys taught me to write solid high performance code. I learnt the subtle art of managing and working with super bright engineers. It also gave me the attitude that any new technology can be learnt and applied, once you have the fundamentals right.  

Product: My jump into Product was purely accidental. I have been blogging for upwards of 18 years. And circa 2010ish, I started writing about interesting products, businesses, and just ideas that just came into me. I was writing about branding/advertising fails (like the mast-kalandar brand in Bangalore around that time). I wrote about products that the travel industry and the upcoming ecommerce industry should implement. One fine summer evening, when I was driving back from work, in the quintessential traffic of Bangalore, I got a cold call from the CEO of goibibo, who wanted to talk about a series that I had written about standardized budget accommodations in India (this was before Oyo, Treebo, Fab etc). We spoke for an hour about what I had written. I was just happy that someone had read my blog (yay!). The next two days, I spent my time (in traffic) happily talking to two other folks. And a week later, I was offered a leadership position to lead Flights at goibibo. I learnt all about product management in consumer startups, from folks at goibibo, and the community (thank you TPF and headstarters). 

web archive of my blog circa 2005. Note metafilter, lifehacker, lifehack.org etc for all the OG folks of that time.

Startups: And then on, I spent some time in goibibo, stayzilla, shotang, and finally ended up doing what I think was closest to being a founder, without the funding responsibilities (ixigo was our parent company). I created and ran travenues – an aviation SaaS ecommerce platform for close to three years. As a tight high performance team, we created magic. Our first paying customer was SpiceJet and we created their entire ecommerce platform from scratch, and as a fully configurable SaaS product. (This still exists in the form of SG’s current android, iOS, PWA, and desktop apps). With CoVid the aviation industry was hit hard, and our prospect funnel disappeared. We ended up selling our IP to SpiceJet and exiting. 

The full travenues story -> https://x.com/gcmouli/status/1285555910379618305?s=20

Microsoft: I joined Microsoft where I have been doing enterprise grade Product Management for the last three years. I have worked on established products such as Outlook and on ultra-large-scale API platforms such as the exchange mail/calendar APIs. In recent years, I have been working on a 0-1 product called Microsoft Places that is solving for the future of hybrid work. I head product for the scenarios that the India team works on. For the sake of completeness, I should include the two years that I spent at Microsoft in the middle of my Synopsys stint, one year of which was disastrous. Being a PM with the Bing team during the time, when the Yahoo! Team-technology-swap happened, took a toll on me. The negativity and the culture mismatch was unnerving, and I went back to Synopsys.

Tech-friendly: Being a technology person in a product leadership role has helped me significantly. I can understand and speak with Engineers and Engineering Managers in their language, which establishes trust very quickly. It also has the hidden side benefit of being able to get better estimates from engineering teams. This is a boon and a bane. There have been times when I have had to learn to tell myself that as a product person, I need to be more mindful of my outcome and the engineering process should not be my problem.

Design-friendly: I had led design in both Stayzilla and Travenues. This educated me significantly on the differences in mind-set and the creative ways of designers. I got to learn how and what levels of autonomy that designers need to bring out their best, and how to build trust with them to trade-off between tactical vs creative work items.  

We did significant redesigns on the home page and on the search page.

People: I contemplated hard on writing this as the first section, because it is so dear to me, but the flow of how I came to be what I am today would not have been clear, if I had done so. 

Creating, growing, leading, and managing high performance teams. Since my early days, I had been doing this in Cadence, Synopsys, and Microsoft. I interviewed, coordinated interview squads, created hiring processes and the likes. I grew my team in goibibo. With the help of my then boss Pankaj Gupta (ex-twitter and a bunch of other great companies, now with Coinbase), I helped do a full-scale org redesign at Stayzilla. We created pods, assigned appropriate lead PMs, set rigorous standup cadences, ship cycles, and right-sized the PM team. We also had to reset the entire design team. I had to rehire almost the full team and was interim head of design for some time. I also headed the awesome content team. There was so much I learnt from Pankaj during this time. I got a chance to do the pod redesign again at Shotang. 

The rockstar team that created magic. We had so much fun doing that. Thats the whole point.

I was part of hiring the entire travenues team. This team was probably the closest tight knit team that I have ever worked with. We created magic (yes, I am repeating myself, but it was!). I even got to bring in my designer and a front-end lead from Stayzilla into travenues. I learnt so much about communicating effectively, client negotiations, high stakes stakeholder management, and dealing with customers. I learnt pitching to customers and creating relationships in the aviation ecosystem at conferences and other opportunities.   

Cross-geographic / cross-cultural interactions. I derive a lot of energy in working with folks across different cultures and geographies. I have worked very closely with teams from the US, Europe, Singapore, Korea, and Japan. It excites me a lot to get to work with people, understand their culture, and get to know them closely. To this day, I enjoy seeing the joy in people’s faces when I do something close to their culture (eg suffixing my Japanese sales counterpart name with the customer ‘san’ salutation). Given my education in the US, I have, in most cases, been the person who will understand the western culture, and get things done with the mothership. This extends to working with folks from different parts of India as well, of course. My Hindi is a unique blend of street cred Mumbaiyya and  respectful salutations from Delhi.  

Teaching, mentoring and community. I learnt most of my product management from working alongside awesome people in startups and meeting up with other people, through communities like The Product Folks and Headstarters. I love to teach. I have been teaching since graduate school. I participate in a lot of panel discussions, do talks, and attend meet-ups as part of PM communities in Bangalore. I have been meeting interesting people for breakfast (as part of what I call #dosaWithMouli) for the last 8 years. This is an agenda-less breakfast where we discuss the vagaries of our career arcs, how we have learnt what we know, what excites us, and many more things. 

My latest talk – Conducted a storytelling workshop at HSX 2023.

Leading style. Leading and growing people/teams is an integral part of my work identity now. It gives me immense joy, and makes me purposeful. I lead people with a balance of structured outcomes, and friendly trust. Radical candor and transparency is a must in my books. If a team member has to always keep guessing what I am thinking, then things are broken. I strive for this mutual trust, without which either of us cannot stand in for each other. I am strong believer that I do my best work when I am having fun, and I try my best to bring in the same with my team.

Culture. They say leave the best for the last, and culture incidentally has landed here. I am one of the strongest believers that culture is what makes people do 10x impact things. I can write a whole blog post on this, but essentially –  setting up people for success, getting the team working seamlessly together, organic transparency and mutual trust, confidence in the team. Culture builds over time but needs to be nurtured from day zero. Culture cannot be built by going to forced team lunches, or t-shirts. Culture needs to be breathed in every day, every minute, and it cannot be forced. Pragmatically, there might be a minority of people who might not subscribe to everything that I described above, but as long as the collective goodness of the ones steeped in it overrides the people who do not subscribe, it wins. Culture also involves continuously be aware of some people going completely against the grain, and taking efforts to align.


End-note: I had been wanting to write this for a while. Why do I want to write this? I tell this story to a lot of people, and almost all of them have said, I should write it down. There is one other reason – I believed that when I do write this down, it would make me think, and boy, it sure made me think. If you have gotten to this point, I applaud your patience, and the interest that you showed in reading my story and who I am. If we are not connected on Linkedin, please do reach out. I am very active on twitter/x as well.

Categories
innovation misc Opinion Product Management startup technology

Mobile Jewellery Shop – Lalithaa

Disclaimer: Most of what I talk about below – are my observations from Southern parts of India, and might not be applicable to Northern parts, which I am not very familiar with.

Lalithaa Jewellery seems to have introduced a mobile jewellery shop in the form of a modified long chassis bus. I think this is a darned good innovation. There used to be a time when the predominant way of doing jewellery was to go to a jewellers shop, where you discuss patterns, weight, wastage etc, and then the jeweller would custom make it for you.

Some of these jewellers in Tier 1 towns (such as NAC etc), who had access to capital and fast business movement, had ‘some’ ‘readymade’ stuff – things such as small silver tumblers, chains, rings etc – which are mostly impulse buys. In recent times, large box format stores (mostly chains which have large capital) have started making their presence (Malabar, Jos Alukas etc). These stores started off in Tier 1 cities, and now started slowly moving towards Tier 2 towns as well. Accessibility to ‘readymade jewels’ is significantly improved because of this. A ‘trip to the city’ is usually saved.

While accessibility is improved, it is not economical for these large format stores to go to every Tier2 and Tier3 towns. I think this is the market that Lalithaa is targeting. For some context, Lalithaa is one of those hybrid stores, which does some custom jewellery, but has predominantly large inventory of pre-made jewels. This bus looks to be a modified shell with a proper jewellery shop facade, counters, staff etc inside. The bus is now stationed in Theni (a Tier 2 town in the border of TN and Kerala), in a fair ground.

These large box stores do a ton of advertising on main stream cable/satellite TV – whose penetration in India has just exponentially risen in the last decade (next only to telecom). With the brand visibility already present, with the store coming to you, I think it is a novel technique to increase the reach.

Couple of feature-y things that come to mind –

a) Some rough schedule of the bus (perhaps a loop), so that folks in towns know when the next bus would be here next. Maybe even a call center or recorded info about the bus whereabouts.

b) Some form of demand capture – phone perhaps, (and in the long run through learning from data).

If this is successful (or not), I see this as a model that should be tried across other verticals too. Very interesting. #SolveForBharath

Categories
misc tourism travel

Wayanad-Kozhikode roadtrip – May 2017

Started off early at 6:15AM on a Thursday morning. Route plan was Bangalore – Nice Road – Mysore Road – Ramanagara. Breakfast at Kamat Lokaruchi. Took roughly an hour (usual time) to get there.

The route from Ramanagar is – Mysore Bypass – Nanjangud – Gundlpet. At Gundlpet, you fork off towards Wayanad/Sultan Battery (the other road goes towards Ooty). After a few miles from Gundlpet, you get into forest territory. Awesome road and scenery all around.

Super roads all the way. Took another half hour to get Windflower Resorts. Reached around 1:30PM – right in time for lunch.

If you went all the way to Vythiri town, you went too far. There is a town just before it called Chandel Junction. At Chandel, look out for Canara Bank and SBI ATM on the left, and a road that goes down hill right opposite it. The corner is also an auto stand. Easy to miss. You go down the road, or what is called a road for 3.5km. Horrible horrible driveway. Apparently they have not repaired the road because it is under some court stay order.

The resort is just fantastic. Isolated. But beautiful. We had booked a villa with a private jacuzzi. Totally enjoyed the room and the resort. Some pictures of the resort below.

We went to Pookode lake one of the days, and totally not worth it. Super crowded small (compared to Ooty/Yercaud) lake. There is also a view point on the Kozhikode road that is pretty darned good. But we had to run off quickly. Too many rowdy monkeys demanding stuff from the tourists.

There is one other place near by, called Banasura Dam. It is the second largest earthen dam in Asia (largest in India). You can do a speed boat ride (super awesome – my son loved it!) and just get some awesome views of the dam and the Kabini river.

We stayed there Thursday and Friday. We were planning to leave Saturday back to Bangalore. But we realized that Kozhikode was just 2 hours away. And the beach beckoned. So we made a flash decision. Was able to snag a room in a beach resort in Kappad beach, which is 20 km from Kozhikode. The resort (Renai Kappad Beach resort) is separated from the beach by just a small road. We did Banasura on Saturday morning, on the way to Kozhikode. Reached Koppad beach by lunch time.

Evening was spent on the beach. Super time was had.

Back to Bangalore on Sunday morning. Had breakfast in Kozhikode. It is a long ride back to Bangalore. Almost 10 hours including breaks. Lunch was at Gundlpet. There are a couple of decent restaurants just outside of the town. Reached home around 6PM.

 

Categories
misc Opinion

Disclaimer Generation

This is my opinion, based on my research and preferences. You should do your own, to figure out, yours.

I overheard a young man say this to his father last weekend. Somehow, it just stuck inside my mind, and kept coming back. Today morning, I thought about it a little more. I stepped back, and realised that, I do this too. With family, with friends, with colleagues, with everybody. Step back yourself, and think for just a minute, on how you respond, when someone asks you for an opinion.

We are currently a generation, which gives opinions and recommendations, only with disclaimers. We are afraid of telling it as what it is. We are afraid of people coming back and saying – “you said so.”. I don’t remember it being so hesitant, when I was growing up. There are so many things, that I have done, because I trusted someone’s opinion, went to them, asked for the opinion, and just did exactly this.

Now, where am I coming to, with this? Is this a bad thing? Probably not. The newer generation is becoming more aware. They are making more informed decisions. However, I am just a little sad, that the trust factor is diminishing. Every time, I say, “This is my opinion, you should also do your checks”, it kind of feels like, I am washing it off of me.

What do you guys think?

Categories
humour misc

Sita, Hanuman, Hulk, Spiderman …

hanuman-hulk-spidey-dora

I usually do not forward or propagate ‘forward-emails’ – emails which say that, this happened to my friends brothers sister-in-law. But this one brought with it major entertainment. This is about a little girl who went for a UKG interview in one of the premeire schools in Chennai. The Principal asks the girl to tell a story, to which the kid asks if she can narrate a story that she has written, or a story that she has just read. The surprised Principal asks her to read the story that she had written. If this is really true, God bless the kid – she is going to go places.

Ok, tell me story which you have written.

Sarithra said “Ravanan kidnapped Sita to Srilanka”

Opening scene failed to impress the Principal but still she encouraged the child to continue.

“Rama asked Hanuman’s help to rescue Sita. Hanuman too agreed to help Rama ”

“Then?”

“Now, Hanuman called his friend Spider man.” No one expected this twist in the story

“Why?”

“Because there are lot of mountains between India and Srilanka..if we have Spiderman we can go easily with his rope.”

“But Hanuman can fly isn’t it??”

“Yes. But he is having Sanjeevi Mountain on one hand, so he cannot fly very fast. “
“Hanuman and Spiderman flew to Srilanka and rescued Sita. Sita said Thanks to both”

“Why?”

“When you are helped you should say Thanks”

“Hanuman now called Hulk.”

All were surprised. She realized our curiosity and said ” Now Sita is there, so to take her safely back to Rama..he called Hulk”

“What logic???” the Principal asked.

“Hanuman can carry Sita right?”

“Yes. But he has Sanjeevi Mountain in one hand and has to hold spider man on the other”

The Principal could not control her smiles. ” So when they all started to India they met my friend Akshay”

“How come Akshay there now?”

“Because it is my story and I can bring any one there”

Now the Principal didn’t get angry but waited for the next twist

Then all started to India and landed at Chennai’s Velechery bus stop

Now I asked,”Why they have landed In Velechery bus stop? ”

“Because they forgot the way..& Hulk got an idea and called Dora”

“Dora came and she took Sita to Velechery Venus Colony…that’s all.”

Finished the story with a smile

Now the Principal asked “Why Venus Colony?”

“Because sita is there & I am Sita!!!”

Categories
history misc

Padhinettaam Peru

adiperukku

(image courtesy – subbu’s kitchen – where you can find some yummy recipes as well for this festival)

Today is Padhinettaam Peru, or as some people call it Aadi perukku – the 18th day of the Tamizh month of Aadi (mid july – mid aug in the Julian Calendar). On the average year, this is a typical spring day. This is celebrated as a Spring Harvest Holiday. This is not a typical harvest festival to thank the Gods – that is Pongal (Sankranthi). The ritual in this festival is to make simple mixed rice dishes (such as lemon rice, tamarind rice, etc), take it to a river bank or beach, and have a picnic. I kid you not, that is the ritual, and people did it a thousand years ago, and still do it. What a beautiful culture that we have.

If you want a detailed description, read the first chapter of Ponniyin Selvan by Kalki Krishnamurthy. The first scene is when the protagonist, Vandhiyathevan rides into the sunset, along the banks of the Veeranarayana Lake, fed by the Ponni river.

If you just want to read an abridged version, here is my PS-Chapter-1.

Read the rest of the abridged volumes here.

Categories
misc

Happy Yoga Day!

Image courtesy MEA India.
Image courtesy MEA India.

Today, the 21st of June is being celebrated as the United Nations International Yoga day. If you want reference to a few basic aasanas, the government has released a booklet describing how to do these.

http://idy.nhp.gov.in/UploadFiles/files/jk_IDY%20common%20yoga%20protocol_book.pdf

However, it is always recommended to do this after training from a Yoga guru.

Categories
fiction history misc tamil

Ponniyin Selvan Book 1 Vol 2 is out!

Book1Vol1Vol2

The second volume was released early today morning. Follow along with the adventures of our hero warrior – Vandhiyathevan and his encounters with the veera vaishnavite – Alwarkadiyaan Nambi, Nandhini, the seductress, and the beautiful Princess Kundavai.

Buy the two books here -> Book 1 -> Vol 1 and Vol 2.

 

Categories
misc

Ponniyin Selvan – A Retelling

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WZOUMAM

The first of a series of books. This is a retelling focused more on the plot. I have also tried to make it “easy to read”. Formatted as mini books. 3 volumes for each book, which makes it 15 books for the epic.

Go buy it here -> http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WZOUMAM

Categories
misc

Sutta ….

I got down from the auto at the Trinity Circle. And that is when I saw him. He was walking towards me. His hunch showed his age. The wrinkles on his face spoke about all the hardships he had been through. All the scowls, all the smiles, and the anger that has now dissipated into just crumples of skin near his jaw. His eyes were sunken. It had seen the world through lenses of suffering and joy. He walked slowly towards me. I stood there in the pretext of putting the change that the auto-driver had given me into my wallet. He walked with a slow gait almost like the trundling of an aged elephant. He slowly started lifting his hand as he neared me. I was almost certain that he was going to ask me alms. I still held my wallet in my hand and had not put it back in my jeans pocket. The slowly, almost bionic, bony arm went up, and wait, it did not stop midway. It went all the way towards his now emotionless face.

From within his fingers, jutted out a tiny remnants of a beedi and he took in a long drag and continued walking past me …..