Anuradha Sridharan

Coughs and sneezes pepper rasam and kichdi Calpol and cough syrup honey and turmeric milk messed up sleep and rest The story of my last few days of 2014, with D falling sick. Before the recency effect takes over and paints a gloomy picture, I felt it's time for me to look back at some of the best moments of this year. I began this year by writing about " small wins " and it was indeed a year of multiple small wins that I collected on the way. One of the goals I had set for myself was to venture into baking . My new microwave convection oven followed by 3 useful baking classes from LG paved the way to get a head start. Cakes, cookies, muffins and breads were baked multiple times, with different recipes and varied results. Whoever spoke about the joy of baking is indeed true. This is one hobby I look forward to invest more time in 2015, albeit in a healthy way by reducing plain flour, sugar and butter. Talking about healthy ways of cooking, I also invested in learning the...

As 2014 draws to a close, I want to write about an important change I made this year. Being a South Indian, rice has always been a staple food on my plate for years on a daily basis. Though I used to take wheat in the form of chapatis or bread, the proportion is less as compared to rice. Having been aware of the fact that excess consumption of white, polished rice (which is a high glycemic index food) potentially leads to diabetes, I was looking for healthier alternatives. I tried broken wheat as a direct substitute for rice but somehow I didn't like it (though it turns out yummy in the form of a kichdi). I stumbled upon millets and their health benefits through this blog . I also read in another article that millets used to be the regular food (rice reserved only for special occasions and festivals) during our great grandparents days. There were 3 challenges that I had to surmount in order to make millets a regular feature on my plate: 1. Sourcing them 2. Learning how to co...

Thanks to a FB post shared by a friend, I came across this inspiring talk on the importance of eating local foods. The speaker Dr. G. Sivaraman who is a Siddha doctor spoke with passion and conviction. Many of his talking points resonated with me and thanks to Google, I researched more about him and his work. I stumbled upon his book " aaraam thinai " during this research. Apparently, he had written a series of articles in Ananda Vikatan tamil magazine, which has been compiled into 2 books. During my recent trip to Chennai, one of the top items on my agenda was to purchase these books. The book shop near my home had only the first volume which I bought instantly, came home and started reading one evening. Little did I know I would get so hooked onto this book, that I ended up finishing it in a day. Each article is filled with profound insights on traditional food practices which we have forgotten or lost track completely in the era of modernization and globalization.  After...

I stumbled upon this book through Sheroes tweets and got intrigued by the title. Having been working from home for the last 1.5 years, the concept of the book piqued my interest levels. One of my goals in my bucket-list is to work from a village for a year (hope to achieve this soon!). These multiple trigger points led me to purchasing this interesting book. The author James Joseph has shared his experiences of how he managed to deliver global work responsibilities for Microsoft, living in Kochi, Kerala. The good part about this book is that he doesn't jump into the dos/don'ts of working from home in a preachy way. Rather, he has taken the time to set context based on his life journey - achievements and disappointments of building his corporate career and learnings and inspirations that guided him on the way. The little anecdotes he has shared are interesting and sets the tone for "Why work from home-town?". Quoting a couple of the snippets I really...

It's been more than 6 months since we canceled our DTH subscription. For those of you who are thinking of going down a similar path, let me share with you how this decision has positively impacted me and my family. Early this year, hubby dear stopped watching TV. I used to watch a few serials in Star World / Zee Cafe or amble around, watching back-to-back recipe shows in Food Food. I get this time ONLY when the little one is asleep or when she is playing.  She used to watch her rhymes DVDs back to back the whole evening. We hadn't exposed her to Cartoon Network or Pogo channels. Then one Monday morning, when D had gone to her play school, we shifted the TV inside a closet. When she came back from school, she wondered where the TV disappeared. We were glad she didn't throw a fit. The TV was in the closet for nearly 5 months before we decided to bring it back to get some space. We own a 29" CRT TV which is huge and occupied the entire closet. The TV is back but the ...

2014 - An important year as I knocked off one of the items in my bucket list !! To experience the joy of baking, to smell the aroma of butter wafting from my new convection oven and spreading warmth and comfort all around. I have been trying out different variations of cakes, muffins and cookies. Some experiments turned out really awesome while some were average. Fortunately, there hasn't been any disaster so far (Love you all, food bloggers for your perfect recipes and drool-worthy clicks). Baking bread was the ultimate pinnacle I had set for myself. For some silly reason, I was very scared to plunge into baking bread. Maybe, it's because of reading so many recipes that I feared my pav bun would turn into a rock or my bread loaf would turn into a brick. Every time, I passed the aisle that had yeast in the supermarket, I would look at it in anticipation, only to walk away after a few minutes. Early Aug, I took the "bold" step of purchasing a small pack of "Act...

He never had tea or coffee before we met. I have always been a big fan of my dad's filter coffee. Then something changed. I don't remember how and when exactly. Maybe, It was the Bangalore weather, it was the freshly brewed milk tea at the office pantry or it was the time we spent together, talking for hours and discovering each other in our office cafeteria. 12 years later, our mornings are never complete without a cup of chai. Life has changed, a lot….But this is one ritual I love to follow every morning, wherever it is. There were days when we weren't buying a pack of milk everyday but still the tea would be prepared with milk powder. It didn't taste good but the beginning of the day with your loved one over a hot cuppa makes you feel alive. Then I discovered the art of tea making - a simple masala chai with milk. This has always been our favorite drink every morning for many years. We used to sit on the bed, spread the newspaper and sip tea slowly, chatting about s...

Alert: Wrapping up old drafts. So you might hear stories that happened long time ago (okay, not so long! A few months back to be precise) I love to travel more often that I actually do. When the opportunity presented itself, we planned a nice trip and it was fun and memorable. Hubby dear is into some serious running this year and one of his goals was to run the 10K in Cauvery Trail Marathon in Srirangapatna. Since the run was scheduled on a Saturday, we decided to leave from Bangalore on a Friday afternoon and return on Sunday - ah, a perfect weekend !! We got a good deal in Ginger Hotels, Mysore through Cleartrip and we grabbed a 2 night stay. Hubby entrusted me to come up with a plan for 2 days in and around Mysore. Trip planning is something I just love to do for hours - browsing through blogs and websites. We started off from our home around 3 PM and hit Mysore road quickly. Stopped for a snack break in Kamat near Channapatna and then continued on our drive. The rains sta...

I admit it, I consume a lot of content - books, e-books, blogs, links from twitter feed etc. Most of the content is not really assimilated. I don't often sit back and think through what I read and reflect on the relevant take-aways and how I can apply/expand/refute/customize further. On one of the routine content consumption days, I stumbled upon this wonderful piece - "Don't die of consumption, Learn by writing" . I have read this article thrice so far and I intend to read it atleast once a week. Not to say, my consumption has reduced but I have started to consciously introspect, analyze and write down my thoughts around content that resonated with me. The below article is one such reflection. I was listening to the first lecture in "How to start a startup" series, initiated by the folks at YCombinator. It was a valuable lecture with many useful insights. Although I would have loved it even more if Sam Altman had shared the awesome material in a more prese...

While reading Chapter 3 of the book " Thinking fast and slow " by Daniel Kahneman, there were multiple "aha" moments for me, when the author talks about how self-control is a tiring task for humans. Below are some of the key take-aways for me from this chapter (quoted directly from the book): "People who are simultaneously challenged by a demanding cognitive task and by a temptation are more likely to yield to the temptation" "Cognitive load is one of the causes of weakened self-control" "Self control requires attention and effort" "All variants of voluntary effort - cognitive, emotional or physical - draw atleast partly on a shared pool of mental energy. This phenomenon is called ego depletion" "An effort of will or self-control is tiring. Exertion of self-control is depleting and unpleasant" "Effects of ego depletion could be undone by ingesting glucose" These points give us some clarity on many areas of ...

Couple of weeks back, I participated in a Product Camp event in Ebay-PayPal office premises in Bangalore. It was one of the well-planned and executed events. Product Camp is an unconference where the interested speakers volunteer for a topic they want to speak about and participants vote on such topics before the event. The schedule of the event is decided just before it starts, based on popular topics and speaker availability. The event kicked off with two inspiring keynote speeches. Piyush Shah, VP of Products at InMobi talked about how the playing ground for mobile startups is the same irrespective of geography. Couple of interesting points he shared: "You can build and launch an app in 100+ countries on the same day" "Fast iterations, pilots and making mistakes crucial to learn in fast paced markets like mobile" "Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details" The second keynote was by Ravi Gururaj, Serial Entrepreneur and Chair - Product C...

In the biography of Steve Jobs, I came across an interesting point made by Jonathan Ive, Chief Designer at Apple. He says, "Ideas are very fragile, so you have to be tender when they are in development". During the course of the day, your mind could be brimming with a lot of ideas. It could be a startup idea you want to explore, an idea for a book you would like to write, a thought process/framework you want to ideate upon based on an article you read recently, a presentation that you plan to give to an audience and many more. These ideas can be very exciting to begin with but at the same time, are potential areas where we might procrastinate, due to their inherent vagueness. David Allen, in his book "Getting Things Done" says that we tend to procrastinate on projects where we don't know the next action steps to be taken. Living in a world of distractions and its inherent busyness, it becomes even more challenging for us to dissipate the vagueness and gain clari...

Much of my work time in July was spent working on a competitive landscape analysis for a client of mine. It was an interesting learning experience, given that the scope was broad and there were many competitors to be analyzed. A step-by-step approach helped me to unravel the various dimensions, analyze competition and identify the underserved areas (or green-fields). Do note that although these perspectives are specific to a B2B product standpoint, the approach can be customized to B2C context as well. Here's my 9-step approach to perform a B2B competitive landscape analysis. 1) Define the scope of your domain Which verticals fall under this domain? What are the adjacent/dependent areas in the value-chain? What activities fall under this domain? Let's say, the domain of your interest is "Customer Service". The verticals relevant to this domain are customer support, sales and account management. The supporting functions are product development, procurement/shipment (in...

I believe in juggling many interests and not focus on ONE single thing the whole day. It might sound contradicting from a productivity standpoint but experience has taught me that this is how I prefer my ideal day to be. While I was working full time, my time was spent in 9-10 hours of work in office and 2-3 hours of commute. I didn't make much time for hobbies/activities/interests except I used to blog occasionally and cook new dishes during the weekends. Now that I work from home, manage a toddler and the household chores, nurture my new found interests towards baking and healthy eating, keep up with fitness, writing and reading, my mind often gets bombarded with a lot of things to do. I used to practice GTD diligently a while back but have stopped completely. I wanted a simpler system to keep myself sane and ensure I make progress in all my areas of interest every week. " Necessity is the mother of Invention " - I hacked up a simple weekly goals system and I'm se...

I felt extremely happy and grateful when one of my friends asked me if I had written a blog post on "Introduction to solids". I'm neither a pediatrician nor a dietitian but I have been sharing my experiences related to child nutrition in the past 2 years. One of my goals is to ensure that every Indian mother has the right information/knowledge about child nutrition and the packaged foods industry wouldn't be able to influence us in the wrong direction. These blogposts are just a fraction of efforts towards that goal. I started off this series by talking about the importance of breastfeeding your baby in the first six months of his/her life. This is the second post in this series where I want to talk about how to introduce solids in a phased manner. This is applicable for babies in the 6-8 month range. "Solids" may not be the appropriate word since you start off with liquids (other than milk) and pureed/mashed foods. For the sake of simplicity, I will refer...

Over the last few years working for a couple of startups, I have learnt this important lesson -  For a startup to be successful, the following 2 principles are extremely important and in the same order as below: Focus Momentum These 2 principles are crucial, especially in the initial few years when you are trying to establish your foothold. Focus : I came across an interesting article this morning which reiterated my learnings. It talks about how Facebook in the initial years was relentlessly pursuing "growth" to be the key focus area, although many skeptics wondered how they would monetize or generate revenue eventually. I believe - "A startup should have a vision that is so big, that it inspires everyone around you. At the same time, it should have a focus that is so clearly defined, that it serves as a guiding light to everyone around you." Focus is even more important if you are entering a new product category. Yes, you will foresee multiple opportunities in di...

One of the challenges I had faced as a product manager in an earlier job role was to ensure that my users are actively engaging with my product/app. When I looked at the numbers, I noticed there was a tremendous dropout after the first login. There wasn't any huge marketing budgets back then and so the users who were visiting our product/app were primarily organic. After a round of data analysis as well as talking to a few users, the conclusion was that the onboarding experience wasn't so great. We went back to the drawing board and redesigned the entire onboarding experience from the ground up. I have been reading up and researching quite a bit on the best practices of onboarding since then and I have distilled it down to the following 10 points: (1) Issues such as time constraints, short attention span and cognitive overload make it much more important to design a smooth and intuitive onboarding experience. In case of mobile apps, it is even more imperative, given the challen...

The last month has been a good learning experience in understanding how to perform a B2B market segmentation and sizing exercise. Though I have read about the best practices and frameworks in my marketing courses, getting the hands-on experience is extremely valuable. The whole exercise took about a month and 3 presentations and culminated with identifying a prioritized list of market segments to go after. Academic inputs and theories did provide the required direction and focus since market sizing can be a daunting task without it. Here are the 7 lessons I learnt that I would want to reflect back whenever I take up a similar project in the future. Hope you find them useful too. 1) Start off with a framework or structure At the beginning of any market segmentation exercise, the definition of your market will be very broad. In order to identify your niche or specific target segments, you need a step-by-step approach to navigating the market space . The framework needn't be something...

D has been going to a play school for more than a year now. Since she wakes up quite late, she usually drinks a little milk or a tiny portion of her breakfast. I usually pack her breakfast for her mid-morning snack break and she has been eating without a fuss so far (touchwood!). I used to wonder what her friends/classmates bring in their snack boxes. When I ask D, she usually says "biscuits" or "grapes" :-) Early April, we enrolled D in a new school for a summer camp programme. Being a new school, I accompanied her for 3 days and sat next to her, to get her settled in the new place. During the 10:30 AM break, it was so cute to see all the tiny kids open their snack boxes and eat together. Snack breaks are a perfect time to bond and get to know each other. Yes, it applies to 3 year olds as well. I quickly glanced around to check out the various snacks that kids have brought along. Some of them were the usuals like parathas, cheese sandwiches and bread+jam. A 3 ...

I had the opportunity to attend a master class on Entrepreneurship couple of days back by Scott Cook , Founder of Intuit. It was fascinating to hear about his experiences of building Intuit in the 80s. He is an amazing speaker with perfect clarity of thoughts and words. He spoke about 2 principles of creating successful products. 1) Keep looking for insights from customers If you are building products just for yourself and for your friends/family, insights may not be that relevant. But in most of the cases, we build products for a larger community. The only way to learn is through deriving insights. Insights can be obtained using data gathered on product usage. But the most useful source of insights is "observation". During the session, Scott demonstrated the power of observation through an airplane making exercise. You tend to gather a lot more insights and surprise elements by observing how people use your product rather than asking/interviewing them about how the product e...

A couple of days back, my husband asked me an interesting question " Who inspires you the most? ". No one has ever asked me this question before. Top-of-the-mind recall led me to answering "Sachin, AR Rahman, Dr.APJ Abdul Kalam". But the question was still lingering in my mind. While I was going for a walk around a nearby lake a few days back, the answers started flashing in front of my eyes. I saw an elderly couple, walking around the lake. They must be 60+ and looked fit and healthy. I noticed another elderly man, jogging at a brisk pace. There were several such senior citizens who were walking and I felt inspired at that very moment. I had initially planned for a single round, but I ended up finishing two rounds. I pushed myself further in the second round, with a slow paced jog. During the jog, this phrase emerged from my cluttered thoughts. I feel inspired by "People who don't feel constrained by their age, gender or life situation and go onto accompl...

After posting my earlier article on 10 ways to make your toddlers love vegetables , a few of my friends suggested that I write a similar article on fruits. I was surprised, thinking, "Don't kids love fruits? They taste sweet!". While talking to my neighbor, she mentioned how her 5 year old daughter doesn't eat any fruits, except oranges. So this seems to be a problem as well, though not as big as feeding veggies. Most of the principles from my earlier article still holds true when it comes to fruits. A few more which I would like to highlight: 1) Start early Home made Fruit purees are one of the best weaning foods when you start introducing solids. Please avoid the ready-to-eat jars. They cost a bomb, imported ages back and tastes so artificial. It's very easy to make fruit purees at home. When D was around 6 months, I started her off with apple puree. She loved it and ate without a fuss. The recipe is very simple.      - Wash the apples, peel them and chop...