Chronicles of Nikhil Baliga

 Swami Gulagulaananda said: " Jaago Grahak, Jaago " Pick up any book on startups, and you'll always find customer-centricity as a core tenet for a company. " Give the customer what they want, and the rest shall follow " advise the pundits. While evolving from resource crunched scrappy startups to competition-trampling behemoths, companies often develop a  flippant attitude towards their customers. If you are lucky, you will even experience it blossoming into effrontery. In this post, I want to share my excruciating experience with Samsung, and how a consumer can fight back Goliath. Wardrobe Dry A year ago, we decided to upgrade our washing machine. Our IFB machine had been serving us well, but we still need to put our clothes out for drying. Rather than opting for an additional dryer, we thought of going for an all-in-one washer-dryer machine. These machines have modes called Wardrobe Dry , and as the name suggests, spit out clothes so dry that you can directly ...

Swami Gulagulaananda quoted: " Only the paranoid survive " 'In these unprecedented times' may sound like a cliche, but it appears to be true in the context of this pandemic. Every single day, we are bombarded with statistical data quoting the number of deaths and active cases, infographics that discuss the spread of the disease, posts shared by people lamenting the deaths of their loved ones and how the healthcare and associated services are overwhelmed by the sheer scale of afflicted people, in addition to multiple forwards that discuss cures - some useful while others balderdash. Considering that a large number of my near and dear ones came in contact with the disease, I thought of putting together a note that may benefit others. It is important to continuously educate ourselves and make sure that we are protecting ourselves and those around us. As the old adage goes, ' Prevention is better than cure '. Intellectually, we understand this; and though a few pe...

 Swami Gulagulaananda said: " When pitching your ideas doesn't pan out, go for a drive and pitch a tent " The spread of Coronavirus and the associated lockdown has been a frustrating experience for most of us. While working from home has a great many advantages, not everyone is a homebody all the time. Sometimes the spirit of adventure beckons us to step into the sunlight and walk amongst tall grass to be bitten by bugs. In this post, I wanted to share my experience of spending a day in the woods in the bosom of nature, lulled to sleep by the gentle breeze - Actually, it wasn't all that rosy, but it was definitely a great experience. We are first-time campers, and yet we wanted to experience it all - Setting up our tent, cooking our own food and generally enjoy being in the midst of open nature. Our search for a good camping spot around Bangalore culminated when we discovered Camper's Creek on Camp Monk . There are multiple suitable plans depending on your temper...

 Swami Gulagulaananda said: " He who competes in a cooperative game is but surely a fool " When I watched the movie A Beautiful Mind , I liked the idea of Game Theory - And being a fan of all kinds of games, I thought Game Theory would be useful in some video game that I played (apparently I wasn't very smart). It was only later when I read about it, I found it to be something totally different. Game Theory is an interesting concept, and it helps us to choose the best move based on the outcomes that we desire. Let us look at the nature of games that we typically play - whether it is chess, carrom, football or cricket - Our objective is to win and ensure that the opponent loses. In these games, there is always a winner and a loser (Let's ignore ties), and such games are called Zero-sum games . Participants in such games play to win, to ensure their victory and the defeat of the opponent. On the other hand, there is a second type of games called Co-operative games , and...

 Swami Gulagulaananda said: " Situations are almost always more complex than they appear at the outset. Unless we dive deep to fully understand it, we are most likely going to err in our judgements " Social media has resulted in the democratisation of media. Before the advent of Facebook and Twitter, we had to consume what was fed to us, and it was nearly impossible for our voices to be shared and to check the pulse of the nation. We consumed information from newspapers and news channels, and they could project information in any manner they wished. Social media has largely remedied the situation. At the same time, this has come with its own share of issues. The handy mobile devices are prompting people to blurt things out as soon as thoughts form in our minds without due consideration. And this is also resulting in several simplistic thoughts being put out. One would be wise to remember that situations are always complex with multiple factors playing their roles, and it is n...

 Swami Gulagulaananda said: " Not all card games are hard games " Card games are a popular pastime worldwide, and there are numerous games and variations like poker, rummy and others. With the Coronavirus pandemic, people often have some time to kill. In this post, I wanted to share an old card game that I used to play during my childhood - The game is called 'Mongoose' Mongoose is a good game for 3-4 players but can be played by any number of people. The objective in Mongoose is to ensure that you are not left with any cards by the end of the game. No jokers are used in the game. A single deck is used in the game. To start off with, the deck is shuffled and a random card is picked from the lot. Then, pick other cards of the same type. For example, if the first card is 2 of hearts, also pick 2s of spade, club and diamond. These four cards have to placed next to one another on the table. The remaining cards are to be distributed among the players. None of the cards is ...

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " I know what you did last summer... And thus can predict what you will do this summer. " In the popular TV series "Person of Interest", a genius software programmer writes an incredible piece of software that penetrates all networked devices, accesses data, compiles it to create profiles, connections and predict future events. The series shows the ease with which hackers can penetrate our handheld devices like cellphones and laptops to access even the camera and microphone. Considering the rate at which Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are advancing, the story is not necessarily far-fetched. There is an old saying that talks about the business models of free software service providers like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and others - If you are not paying for it, you are the payment. In other words, the data that you are supplying is substantial enough. If you think hard about it, the amount of data that you h...

Swami Gulagulaananda said: “ Working from a customer backward makes businesses successful ” Customer service is one of the most important pillars in an organisation and can play a significant role in the success or failure of a company. Amazon, one of the largest multi national companies in the world, has put customer delight into their core by making it their goal to be Earth's most customer-centric company. To achieve that, Amazon has 14 leadership principles that form the company's core tenets and is taken very seriously when it comes to hiring. Customer obsession is their first. I'll give you an example to illustrate this point. When running my own startup, a one-man show, I used Amazon's AWS as my cloud provider. Apart from the fact that Amazon AWS was (and still is) the market leader in cloud infrastructure, it was the only service that I'd used. I'd experimented a little with Google cloud, but it hadn't quite reached the stage that I needed. One...

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " Greater the risks, greater the rewards... " The withdrawal of American troops from Syria has been in the news for some time now. It got me wondering what the Americans were doing in the Middle East in the first place. But more importantly, it got me thinking about the ability of the US to project its power in an area hundreds of kilometres away from their homeland. What is it that makes a country stay significantly ahead of her rivals? Similarly, Israel is always ten steps ahead of her neighbours. The answer, of course, is technology. Why then is India lagging behind her rivals? Doesn't India have enough smart people? In my opinion, there are two main reasons for this. The first is the mentality of people, and the second is the ecosystem. The mentality of people is more obvious to observe. For example, software engineers in the initial stages of their career should be focussing on developing good software to excel in their field. I pic...

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " Walk the path of righteousness, walk the path alone if you must " "You really didn't have to drive me back home, you know", she said looking at me. I was squinting my eyes to look through the drops that had accumulated on my windshield. It had been raining heavily and my wiper blades seemed to be performing the perfunctory role of sweeping over the glass without doing much in the elimination of the water. "That's not a problem. It's quite late and autorickshaw drivers love the combination of rains and nights. It's rabbit season for them." As I threaded my car through the traffic, guessing half the time, my phone blared out "In 500 metres, turn right". I was wondering what I'd have done if it wasn't for my phone. "Stop the car near that yellow car over there", she pointed. I brought my car to a gradual halt in front of her house. "I had a great time. Thanks. When are we catchi...

Swami Gulagulaananda quoted: " One can wake a sleeping man, not a man pretending to sleep. " "Consensus" is an intriguing concept - It is difficult to get a group of people to agree to something. People who have tried to organise reunions or get-togethers will be familiar with the concept. It's incredibly hard to get people to agree to a date, a location, time - and eventually, some people will backoff nonetheless. Driving of consensus in a group is hard - and it becomes exponentially harder as the number of people increases. It is the same with debates where the two teams have different opinions, and each tries to convince the other. Historically, scholars in India used to travel across towns challenging various schools to understand which school of thought was the best. One of the well-known contests is between Adi Shankaracharya and Mandan Mishra, where the defeated scholar had to follow the philosophy of the victor (Shankaracharya won). What is more im...