Anuradha Sridharan

The only vacation we took this year was a trip to Coorg in early Sept. Finally I managed to pen down my experiences. Husband and I had been planning for a vacation for quite some time since it's been 3 years since our last one at Swaswara . We wanted to go to a place which is toddler friendly in terms of food, space and distance from Bangalore. D is 2 years now and she loves being outdoors. We enquired a few places in Kerala but the thought of taking a flight or a train was scary with D screaming within a few minutes after we board a flight/train. So we decided to go for a drive nearby which is not more than 5 - 6 hours. We had earlier went to Mysore and it was comfortable, driving down with a toddler. We called up Orange County and bookings were done for a 3 night package. Since I had mentioned to them that this is our wedding anniversary special trip, they wanted to make it special. The day before our trip, we were packing our things and D was quite curious and interested t...

I participated in the Nasscom Product Conclave event from Oct 28th - 30th. It was my first professional networking event in the past 3 years. It was a good experience, interacting with industry experts and peers. Also, it was great to catch up with many of my ex-colleagues from Yahoo! and Cleartrip. Though I was there on all 3 days, because of the distance, I couldn't spend as much time as I would have liked to. Here are the notes from some of the sessions I attended: Day 1: Growth Hacking workshop by Ravi Trivedi - one of the best sessions I attended. He was extremely clear and focused on the topic. I only wish we had more time. 1 hour was just not enough. Growth hacks - are short-lived - Requires limited spend - Focused towards rapid growth Three ways: - Inbound marketing - customers convert better - Conversation marketing - make sure to check if the customer is ready - Organic customer acquisition (organic search) 3 step marketing plan: - Identify your...

At the beginning of the year, I set out a goal for myself to share with other moms on what I have learnt during the last 2 years, when it comes to feeding my little daughter. I'm neither a doctor nor a nutrition expert. So please use the tips shared below at your own discretion and consult with your pediatrician. I plan to write this topic in a 3 part series. In the first part, the main focus will be on nutrition in the first 6 months after your baby is born. I can complete the post in a single phrase - "breastfeed exclusively for 6 months" But to reiterate the importance and to share my experience, I think a few more lines is necessary. Even before my daughter was born, I made a commitment that I will breastfeed her and I was quite strong about it. Since I decided to take a break from work much earlier than delivery, it gave me time to read up and understand the benefits of breastfeeding. Towards the middle of the third trimester, I started to include oats, bottlegourd...

With the amount of noise and hoards of information consumers take in everyday, it's quite a challenge to stand out and get noticed, especially in consumer markets. No amount of loud marketing or jazzy advertising will give you the reach unless your product adds some value in the life of a consumer. Flipkart advertisements are cute but if the state of their customer service, delivery processes,  inventory and their shopping interface aren't what they are today, the ads wouldn't have much of an impact. In consumer behavior terminology, we call this as " attitude towards the ad " which inturn triggers the "attitude towards the brand". We might like the ad but the brand/product wouldn't gain much from the ad. I would keep referring to this book again because it's one of my favorites. Marty Cagan talks about three important attributes of a product in his book " Inspired " - valuable, usable and feasible . Usefulness of a product is a ...

Problem Statement A business problem doesn't have a right or a wrong answer. The solution depends on various factors - context, environment, dependencies, principles/ethics, goals/objectives, available skills and many more. Solving a business problem requires a collaborative effort within the organization. Often at times, because of past mindsets, conditional thinking and groupthink , business managers might not be able to visualize solutions from different perspectives. A third person's view point or a casual chat with an ex-colleague or a friend might open up new avenues of thinking and expand our scope. Sometimes, while attending a seminar or a discussion forum, new ideas might spark which could have a great impact at our workplace. Such is the importance of interacting with people from different backgrounds - be it education, work experience, thought processes or even ideology. In the current scenario, if we want to seek answers to certain business problems outside the o...

Marty Cagan in his book " Inspired: How to create products Customers love " talks about the characteristics of inspiring and successful products. Apart from the popular ones such as usability and visual appeal, one specific characteristic that struck me is the importance he has given towards human emotions and the role they play in creating a winning product. Being a key enthusiast of marketing strategies driven based on consumer behavioral aspects, it felt like a "aha!" moment while I was reading the chapters on the role of emotion in products. Marty says, "People buy and use products largely for emotional reasons". It could be a positive emotion that is triggered by the product or a negative emotion that has been wiped off by the product. For example, Facebook users might feel friendship, love and pride by being part of their social community and being in touch with their friends Anyone who had to make an urgent phone call might have felt irritated...

I was going over the recently published HubSpot's culture deck a few days ago and was mighty impressed and inspired by it. Many points resonated with my thinking in terms of building and maintaining organization culture. I always believed that vision/mission/values statements shouldn't just be something that a firm creates for the sake of it, with some jazzy words and jargon laden phrases, stuck on the walls of every conference room in the office premises. It has to mean something and represent in everything the firm does. I highly recommend you to go over this deck. Some of the points which I noted down for my future reference: "Solve for the customer, not just their happiness but also their success" This statement is relevant not just for organization culture but also while envisioning a new product. Understanding customer's problems and creating a solution through your product is just not enough. We should take a step forward in empathizi...

In my earlier article on product trials , I briefly touched upon how product trials happen in the online world. This is something I'm really interested, especially in the case of e-retail and personal goods such as clothing, jewelry and perfumes. Consumers would always choose to try out these personal items before they make a purchase. Apparel brands and retailers satisfy this expectation by providing trial rooms with full length mirrors in their retail outlets. Jewelers also help consumers to try out their varied designs before a purchase. In the case of perfumes, one actually experiences the fragrance and the feel when the customer care executive sprays the specific brand of perfume on your wrist. Clearly, the different dimensions of experiential marketing come into play while we decide on these personal products in a physical store. Many e-retailers have been trying to recreate a similar experience while you shop online. Appealing to the sense of sight, most of these e-comm...

The recent trend of burgeoning mobile apps has piqued my interest in the last few weeks. Though I'm late into the smartphone segment as a consumer, it's quite interesting to observe the market dynamics, especially in India. First, a few statistics that might be of interest:    * 70% of India's population has mobile phones    * According to the latest Mary Meeker's Internet trends report , the smartphones user base is just around 4% of overall mobile phone users. In China, the smartphone user base is around 24% and globally, this segment is around 17%.    * Though the previous data point may not be encouraging, the smartphone subscriber base in India has grown by 52% in 2012 as compared to 2011    * Only 12% of India's population are Internet users    * Mobile Internet usage has surpassed desktop Internet usage in May 2012 From a demand perspective, the smartphone user base is growing and as a result, the need for innovative a...

The last decade has seen a tremendous shift in the way we learn, just about anything. I remember vividly during my Engineering days (not so long ago) when learning meant picking up a text book or a reference book, sit down with a pencil/marker and read. There wasn't much collaboration, interaction or discussion during or after class hours. It was a one-way source of communication from the lecturer to the student. Internet was still at a nascent stage and neither accessible nor affordable (browsing centers were few and used to charge anywhere between 30-50 Rs per hour). As I look at the way things have changed for the better, I feel inspired, excited and at the same time, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff one can learn in a lifetime. Being in the technology sector, I spent the initial years of my career, googling for tutorials and learning programming languages along with the skills needed at my workplace related to databases and data warehousing. It was still mostly text ba...

2012 was a special year to me, primarily because I saw my daughter grow from a tiny, innocent infant to a naughty, active toddler. She rolled over in Feb, started crawling in July, standing in Aug and cruising in Sept. I was there at home to witness all these special first steps. We are waiting for the moments when she starts to walk on her own and run around the apartment. We are already chasing her everywhere as she crawls at high speeds. At the beginning of 2012, I didn't know a thing about what to feed my daughter once she is ready for solids. When the introduction of solids phase started, it was scary. Thank God to the power of Internet, I learnt so much on what to feed babies as they explore the sense of taste. As I decided to be at home to take care of her, I took the time to prepare home-cooked food, noted down her food log and introduced new foods gradually. Though a scary phase to begin with, it actually became quite interesting and challenging. I definitely would want...