To be fair, I decided to go down this rabit hole because I was anal about my user flow and wouldn’t budge. It started with building a session based authentication mechanism for users of the FIFAWall app. Given that I started building it out for myself and my immediate circle of friends only, I wanted the onboarding/sign up/login flow to be as frictionless as possible. If ever I decided to market and extend it beyond my immediacy.…

Lending is a hard business in India. Ruthless. Competitive success is a result of difference in relative cost, price or both when compared to your peers. It is extremely hard to build this in the Indian environment. Capital being a commodity makes it nearly impossible to charge higher prices (Rate of Interest in case of lending) as the perceived and financial value are the same. Brand reputation, trust and customer experience are factors that can affect the decision of a potential customer, but only if the delta is a few basis points.…

Silk Board is a hot mess! Forget that there is traffic from 6+ lanes merging into 2.5 (Hello world class infrastructure!). Humans ARE genetically monkeys. Monkey see monkey do-It becomes easier for us to litter when we see someone else doing it. Pedestrians have made it a point to cross the road when the light is green. Ten do it and the rest follow as vehicles crawl through the junction, choking the worsening bottleneck.…

I was in Delhi for a friend’s wedding reception when I found myself thinking about change. So much has already been written about change that I find my thoughts reductive. Over the course of a quick 3 day trip, I realise that change is refreshing. Change can be good, bad or both but absolutely necessary. Trust me I am no fan of Delhi-The smog, loud people and horrible weather. Even though I was born and brought up in the city, I find it hard to relate to.…

Building software with generative AI Before we get down to business, I would like to add a little preface to set the context. I want to share my reasons, constraints, and goals for experimenting with generative AI. Although not unique, but certainly less common, I set out to build software MVPs exclusively using GPT. From scratch, as opposed to both organizations and individuals using GPT to work on existing, large and complex codebases.…

For the past more than a year now, I’ve been feeling anxious about not having materially incorporated a breakthrough technology in my day-to-day. AI. Two syllables that continue to shape the world on an unprecedented scale. From applications in drug discovery to sparking conversation about originality and art to being weaponized in disinformation campaigns, the buzzword has become far more pervasive penetrating most of our lives beyond the technology bubble as well.…

For most of my life, I have been an avid consumer of content on the internet, higher than average at that. I’ve been a lurker. Whatever I’ve had to say exists in the form of out-of-date company documents behind firewalls or scattered across private notes to myself. The rest? It either lingers in my head, growing stale, or has been lost in fleeting conversations with friends, family, or acquaintances. This is the first time I’ve seriously considered putting my thoughts out on a large public forum.…