Vijay Basrur

Apple and Jobs

There has been quite some talk everywhere about how Steve Jobs is dying and all such. When spurts of these news come through, the Apple stock gets hammered and for no other plausible reason.

I am not buying that logic at all. Infact Fortune did a cover story on the Apple story with a focus on their COO Tim Cook. I think it was a nice article. The role of Jobs has always been of a leader. Here is a nice perspective on Jobs by Kevin Kelleher at GigaOm.

Whatever said and done, I think Jobs did a great job at re-building Apple and Pixar and I am sure the team at both these places will take the firms to greater heights even if Jobs steps back, which I reckon he has already started to. I feel so about these firms as they are solidly entrenched in the foundations of innovation.

Recession. What recession?

We went shopping last evening to Shoppers Stop. With the recession rumours we were hoping we would be faced with an average crowd. We were also hoping to get back home for dinner.

Rumours be damned..The crowds were there in hordes and they continued to pour in. I haven’t seen a queue for parking like that since quite a while now. we had to park away from the mall and then walk to the store. We were greeted by more folks inside the store than I’ve seen before. Took us a while to finish shopping and more time to pay than to pick up stuff. I hate standing in the slow moving queues with those idiotic folks bothering you to sign up for a “some-thing-or-the-other” card.

Next stop was Crosswords and I was thrilled to lay my hands on Chinese Democracy (a GNR album after nearly 17 years)which has a fairly decent review in the Rolling Stone and Amy Mcdonald’s debut album This is The life which was favourably reviewed by Luke Kenny in the Rolling Stone Indian edition. We also picked up a Thousand Splendid Sons by Khaled Hosseini. We are both dying to read it. Not to forget there were enough folks at Crosswords to make the queues long enough to get bored.

Shopping done we realised we would be better off grabbing a bite before heading for home. And lo and behold the restaurant was practically empty. And we were like huh? How be this? Shoppers Stop is bursting at its seam and no one to grab a Thali at Rajdhani?

We were ofcourse more than pleased. So we got a table, had a nice meal and then when the bill arrived it hit us. The Thali on Sundays is priced nearly twice as much as the weekday rates. The value conscious Indian consumer was shying away from these expensive binges. Wonder if its the recession or the price?

I am sure as the year draws to an end and with the Christmas spirit in the air all those recession fearing folks can take a walk to any of the malls and breathe easy. And I hope for longer than they expect.

Rewriting to make it simpler

I have been working on some of our mailers to make the content more simple. Ironically it is much tougher than I thought. We are striving to ensure that the user experience is simple yet helpful.

Like Guy Kawasaki says about his 10/20/30 rule and Rajesh Jain shares his thoughts on Public speaking, it does take a lot of effort in keeping things simple.

Google exemplifies simplicity. In the Indian context I think there are very few folks who keep it simple. Cleartrip does a great job. I worked with the folks at Bookeazy and I think their efforts were pretty good. There are quite a few but much less in number that you would want ideally.

For now it’s back to the simple stuff!

Biscuits and me

I have forever been a huge biscuit fan. My Mom tells me I used to lap up Parle G squashed in milk when I was a baby. Parle G ofcourse still remains an all time favorite.

I remember as a kid I freaked on Delite, Ginger & Coconut Crunchees (all from the Britannia stable and how extinct) not to forget pink wafer biscuits too. I am not very experimental about biscuits and am more prone to pick up chocolate flavoured ones like Hide n Seek (pretty good eh?)

A few weeks back while I was shopping I spotted 2 biscuits from McVities, Fruit Shortcake & Ginger. I decided to pick up the former.

Now trust me when I say it that these biscuits are really quite good. They have this yumm feeling as soon as you pop them in your mouth. And while most biscuits go well with a cuppa chai, this one does a good job on its own too.

These guys have recently launched in India (they were imported earlier). At Dollar Store you can pick up 5 packs for 100 bucks. They are priced a bit steeply but I am sure you won’t regret biting into them.