Anuradha Sridharan

Bright sunshine after more than 2 weeks and I feel so happy and cheerful. The rains, the wind and the dark skies were so depressing to me. I was feeling sad, dull and irritated. The effects on the mind had an impact on the body too, with severe stomach cramps and loss of appetite. And not to forget the excruciating migraine and the nausea. I felt so sick that I didn't have the enthusiasm and the motivation to do anything. Dull and dragging days. The slight sight of the sunshine and I would feel exhilarated, only to find minutes later the dark skies and the rains again. The wet clothes that are hanging forever to get dried; wearing sweaters, socks and thermal wears all the time - Nope, not my kind of weather at all. I completely understand that my plight is nothing compared to those who suffered so much in Tamilnadu with floods entering their homes, lack of food and proper sanitation. The videos shared on FB are so scary that I prayed for the water logging to be cleared soon and pe...

Image Source: http://www.jtdesigns.com/jtblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/rent-vs-buy1.jpg One of the important lessons I learnt in product marketing is - Emphasizing on benefits (and not features) is extremely important when it comes to marketing collaterals and product messaging. Most of the times, we don't give much thought into the benefits our product offers to your customers. We get obsessed about the cool features of our product and our messaging would proudly list them out. Even if we do talk about the benefits, it's more superficial and biased by our own assumptions and experiences. But if we dig deeper, we can figure out the actual value our product can bring into the lives of customers. I call it the "benefits discovery" exercise. This can be done before launch - either as part of your customer development interviews, MVP validation or usability testing feedback. Ask this one question repeatedly to atleast 12-15 target customers:  "How does that help y...

The last 10 days have been raining heavily and Bangalore is at a freezing cold temperature in the mornings. It would be nice and comforting to snuggle inside a cozy blanket and get some more sleep. But my body clock wakes me up on time for my Yoga class. It's been 6 months now since I started doing Yoga and it has become a part of my routine now. On days when there is no Yoga class, I feel something is missing and my body also feels the same. It has taken me so many years to incorporate a regular exercise regime in my day. I find keeping my eating habits under check relatively easier than doing regular exercise. I had struggled, been lazy, gave myself enough excuses over and again but Yoga has finally helped me to break all the obstacles that I had built for myself. If you are like me who is struggling to get some exercise into your routine, the following 6 tips might be helpful. (1) Try multiple forms of exercise and pick the one that you like the most For years, I have t...

 It's clearly etched in my mind. When I was a kid, we had a Godrej steel wardrobe in our home that had 4 shelves with a locker. The top-most shelf was used to keep unstitched dress materials, dhotis and other rarely used stuff. The second one was for my dad's clothes, the third one for my mom's and the bottom most shelf had mine and my brother's. These clothes were the ones we used to wear when we go out. The daily-wear clothes were kept separately outside in a trunk. I remember we used to buy new clothes for two occasions - one for our birthday and the other for Diwali. The birthday purchase was done only for us, the kids. Our parents never bought anything for their respective birthdays. If there was a wedding or any other family function, new clothes would be purchased. Other than that, Diwali shopping was the only time when we buy new clothes for the entire family. And it used to be an exciting trip, going all the way to T.Nagar and hopping from one shop to the...

 I love public speaking. The preparation, topic selection, putting together a structure and coming up with a seamless flow of thoughts/ideas, delivering the presentation in front of an audience, taking questions - the entire process excites me. Though I have participated in a couple of speech and debate contests at school, I wasn't naturally good at it from my childhood. I wanted to become a good speaker and have been investing time and effort over many years. Thanks to my first job at Oracle where there was an active Toastmasters club, I started to work and refine my public speaking skills. Whenever there's any presentation to be given at work either to an internal audience or to customers, I look forward to it. I also love to speak at lectures/sessions at public events and I have managed to speak at 4 such sessions so far (would love to do more!). Although I have good experience in public speaking, I still believe there are certain areas that I need to improve upon. ...