Month: July 2019

  • vs Amazon

    I had an interesting conversation with a start-up founder recently, one whose business had received multiple rounds of funding and is scaling well. Our chat soon moved into listing on Amazon/other horizontals, and I was reminded of my post from earlier this year – The Shrinking Shelf Life of Ecosystems. I had written how the advantages of dominating the triumvirate – distribution, product and brand – now have a shrinking shelf life.

    I had taken DTC brands as an example of this. But while that is relatively true and there are enough unicorns around, in absolute terms, the distribution might of Amazon and other horizontals continues to be formidable. In this insightful post – Bonsai Brands – Simon Andrews explains that while it might be “easy” to get about $50m, the journey to $100m and beyond gets tougher because efficiencies start maxing out. They could remain viable businesses at a certain scale. (more…)

  • Uno Chicago Bar & Grill

    Some movies exist only so that a few good songs can be released into the universe. That’s roughly the way malls and eateries work for me too. Sometimes. Whitefield’s latest mall is thus host to Uno Chicago Bar & Grill. We visited twice – the first when the bar wasn’t functional, and then later, when we also decided to try out the Cinepolis that has opened at the mall. Uno is sandwiched between Punjab Grill and You Mee on the ground floor of Forum Shantiniketan.

    It has three sections – one facing the mall atrium, another indoor, and a third that is a bit more open and faces the apartments behind the mall. The first section has diner-like seating, albeit more plush. The second is a mix of that and standard chairs, and the third has bar stools as well, with some cobblestone flooring too.

    The white wine sangria they served us on the second visit was reasonably disastrous. Chunks of fruits meant that we kept wondering whether a fruit salad had been mixed with wine! Far from our Toscano benchmark for the sangria pitcher. The Chicken & Jalapeno Chowder though, is worth a try, though for the best experience, you might want to wait till winter. Thick, creamy, chicken soup with jalapeños and tortilla strips for some nice texture.

    We tried two pizzas. The Windy City Works was a thin crust pizza with pepperoni, pork sausage, chicken meatballs and bacon bits. They were generous with all the toppings and the crust was excellent too. But the outlet is known for its deep dish pizza, and that’s why we had to try the Chicago Meat Market pizza with lamb mince, chicken pepperoni, grilled chicken, chicken chorizo and parmesan. The small size proved quite sufficient for our appetites. No arguing the flavours here and the “double decker” levels of flavours is indeed quite unique.

    The welcoming committee does its job well, but the service takes some persuasion. The wallet will be left considerably lighter. We got close to Rs.1200 with just a soup and a pizza the first time, and a little over Rs.2700 the second time thanks to the Sangria pitcher.

    Uno Chicago Bar & Grill, Upper Ground Floor, Forum Shantiniketan, Whitefield, Ph: +91 9667540036

  • A Man Called Ove

     

    Fredrik Backman

    This was a book selected by D (my much better half) as part of our once-in-two-months book shopping. So naturally, I couldn’t just read it, I had to read into it. The message was simple, I had a lot of character similarities with Ove. It was less to do with his literally hands-on approach to fixing things and more to do with “right has to be right”, but the similarities in personality were obvious enough right from the beginning for me to LOL.

    This is probably the only book that has made me go from smile to laugh to moist eyes in a span of 30 pages. Smile because I understood Ove’s perspective and why he does the things he does. As it turns out, Ove isn’t bitter. “He just didn’t go around grinning the whole time!” Laugh because the insults and reactions are hilarious and creatively sharp. And cry because. Oh wait, that’d be a spoiler, so no.

    The slow reveal of Ove’s not-so-typical heart of gold, as people keep popping into his life, is really done well. And it’s not just Ove, the other characters, especially Parvaneh, have been written very well. In general, the main reason the book worked for me, outside of the excellent humour, was its solid understanding of its protagonist’s condition, and its commentary of the changing nature of society and its mores. There is something profound that is being delivered here – on life, youth and aging, death – but with a gentle touch. That’s probably what makes the book so heartwarming and such a pleasure to read.

  • Know your mind?

    We had an interesting conversation the other day – four of us, with a 25% woman representation. From a bunch of directions, we finally reached #MeToo. While we all agreed on there being no excuse for a conscious man committing such acts, we did argue about a couple of points. One, our individual reactions to something that might happen in front of us, which IMO is subjective and contextual, and two, the responsibility of those who commit such acts, but were not in control of their mental faculties.

    The second is something that has intrigued me since I saw an excellent Malayalam movie called Mumbai Police. Yes, our titles are geography agnostic. 🙂 The movie was released in 2013, and since then, I have read quite a few books that approach the subject.  (more…)