branding and digital transformation
Not Valuation, Value Creation Should Be The Focus Of Indian Startups
Just a few days back, there was coverage around Zomato’s pre-IPO buzz, with that “start-up” hoping to raise $1.1 billion or thereabouts from the stock market but also having a current balance sheet showing current revenue being only slightly more than their current losses (at around INR 2385 cr.).
What gives start-ups the confidence (apart from having all that VC money at their disposal) to not bother about profitability at all in their first several years of existence? Why has it become an acceptable norm to prioritize valuation over value creation? And why have start-ups and VCs alike embraced this as the Holy Grail?
This might sound uncharitable but it does seem like there’s a sense of entitlement that has seeped into start-ups and VCs alike—to make money for themselves before anything else.
The funny part is that the disruptive business idea that probably got the start-up founders and the VCs excited in the first place was likely around changing the world, or at the least, making it better for customers. And yet, the pre-IPO part of the journey seems to relentlessly focus on valuation creation at all costs (including making huge losses).
Kara Swisher, described by some as Silicon Valley’s most powerful tech journalist, describes start-ups whose VC money is running out but who haven’t yet become profitable as “assisted living for millennials.” NYT journalist Kevin Roose calls VC money for unprofitable unicorns “Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy.” So why has the world so easily accepted the norm that it’s okay to be a loss leader in order to become a unicorn?
Imagine having this question from the point of view of listed companies. What might sound like harsh indictments on the start-up world from the likes of Kara Swisher or Kevin Roose are still only words. If a listed company were to chalk up such colossal losses as unicorns do, they would likely get indicted—in the court of shareholders as well as in the court of law.
Do start-ups not need to think about the path to profitability? If they do, is this path so different from that for listed companies? How? Why? Because, for every Nithin Kamath at a Zerodha, there seem to be hundreds of Adam Neumanns at WeWork type of start-ups, burning up cash faster than a meteor entering the earth’s atmosphere.
Unsurprisingly, the best insights on any topic usually involves going back to the basics. Perhaps the most important thing that start-ups need to remember is that their “world-changing idea” will never see success unless they recognize that what they are setting out to do is create behavior change. Without that recognition, no amount of cash burn can set a start-up on the path to profitability.
The crux of storming this norm, thus, lies in getting start-ups to solve for value creation rather than valuation. These five factors are critical in getting there.
1. The Pivot from idea to reality can end up with pivoting from clarity to confusion
Many entrepreneurs start with a great idea and an even bigger dream. The market experience leads the idea to a new direction and the company decides to pivot.The problem is that in the absence of a clear vision for growth and optimizing revenues, a majority of India’s startups resort to pivots so often that their path completely diverges from the original purpose, often with no new targets or milestones in sight. This then quickly spirals out of control.
The trick is to pick new goals and align it to your vision as soon as you decide to pivot. Make sure the new direction presents a better opportunity for growth, factoring in the consumer’s voice and a better scope for expansion / diversification. Additionally, make sure you don’t scrap everything you have created thus far but modify / build on it.
2. It’s not all rainbows & unicorns
Aiming for unicorn status is a fundamentally flawed approach to building your start-up. The growth-at-all-costs proposition only works in the strongest bull markets and in the most optimal conditions. At some point, this party ends because bull runs are not sustainable and no one has limitless capital to fund a perpetually money-losing business.
Instead, the resilient start-ups execute balanced growth, they take a long-term outlook, and they weave diversification into the business model, enabling an ecosystem of adjacent products and services, building a full stack of supporting structures, from day one. When one slows, the others pick up the slack.
3. Do not Burn Before You Earn
Cash flow management and staying on top of your burn rate is the most basic aspect of start-up survival. A larger trend is that the burn is far greater than the core revenue generated by the business. When such is the business model, the stability of the firm’s future comes into question. How do you circumvent this unviable business model?
a) Right-pricing from the start. Charge your customers for the value of your product offerings from the get-go. Price shouldn’t be considered a barrier to growth. Instead, it is a feature of the product that reflects its market position and its quality.
b) Cost management through the life cycle. Manage costs through the life cycle of the company to align with a longer-term growth curve with two key factors in mind: one is the unit economics of the business for user acquisition, and the second is how far do you invest in headcount ahead of the revenue curve to drive that growth?
c) Optimizing Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS). The advertisement and promotion expenses being greater than the revenue earned year after year is a huge problem. In effect, the firm is paying the customer more than the revenue this customer is generating for the firm, and when has that been optimal for any business?
4. Private Equity: A curse or a boon?
Each start-up decision is influenced by a founder’s ambition and his/her vision of – How Big and How Fast? That is, how big do we want the start-up to become, and how fast do we want get there?
And that leads to the Problem with Having Too Much Money too soon. Founders forget that valuations are a function of supply and demand. With the demand for Indian start-up investment opportunities clearly outstripping the supply of quality companies in the marketplace today, unrealistic valuations abound. With that comes the risk of getting overextended with high expectations. The infusion of capital early in the journey might not have been able to accelerate the business fast enough to meet those expectations. Choosing the right investors, infusing the capital at the right time and utilizing the same with a long-term outlook is critical to manage the risk-return trade-off.
5. No Exit Route or Strategy in Place
The predicament of Indian start-ups is made worse by a general lack of an exit route or clear timeline for exit. Typically, investors rely on public listings as an exit route when putting money into start-ups. However, a close look at financial records indicates that even the unicorns in the Indian start-up ecosystem are nowhere close to ready for IPOs. The attempt to try and offload their risk onto the public puts this exit route and IPO market in a danger zone.
The End Of “Formality”
Formality began with the elite and the so-called upper class with their high power distance culture. It gave birth to a society where great importance was placed on formality of behavior, manners & proper external decorum.
As one might expect in such a culture, rank and appearances carried great weight, one was expected to exercise authority and dress in accordance with one’s social stature. Entertaining and conducting oneself with meticulous formality and social grace became a norm. Elegant speech was valued more than tangible effort and accomplishment. There was a reluctance of the classes to mix socially.
The elite class painstakingly preserved their superior status by keeping a certain distance and restraint in just about everything they did. They came from the belief that any person of taste and refinement could not afford to wear their emotions on their sleeve. It was a generation shrouded with protocol and formality where people were reluctant to express their opinions freely and could not easily say what they wanted to say.
In fact, displaying any kind of feelings was looked down upon and considered a sign of weakness. It was this suppression of emotion & unblinking fortitude even in the face of most severe hardships, which defined ‘proper’ societal behavior of people of wealth and class. There was a natural requirement of etiquette or custom compliance with formal rules in every aspect of life and equally a tendency to associate ‘informal’ with ‘unstructured & chaotic’.
It was this stoic class that gave birth to ‘Formality’, which was then rolled out from top to bottom of the society in all aspects of life. This belief manifested itself in many different ways: formal dressing, fine-dining, formal education systems, formal etiquettes and a requirement of discipline & custom in just about everything.
Generation Just-In-Time: A shift towards Informal
What’s happening in our country now is that the new generation of this privileged class is shying away from everything stiff and structured.
In every possible way they seem to be different from their parent’s who went to great lengths to distinct themselves & made sure their wealth & power was obviously apparent to the world.
This new generation is casual and relaxed and comfortable in their skin. They do not want to be fussed about (it’s in fact the novo rich that has taken on the mantle of loud display of wealth) and shuns away from any anything that makes them stand out. This class is not loud, they do not want to be seen flaunting, does not want to be fussed upon, shies away from anything that brings them in the spotlight. An open-minded and diverse population that readily shares
information, encourages experimentation, accepts failure and believes in dispensing with any form of formality & hierarchy.
It is this generation that is shaping the culture of loosening up and gradually weaning out formality from society.
Let’s take a few examples to bring this alive.
Formal Dressing; spare me please.
Dressing down to stand out, yes, it is not just the style Gurus who are suggesting less starchy attire. This generation prefers casual comfortable dressing any day as opposed to stiff fashion. Ultra-casual yet functional outfits by young entrepreneurs and office-goers are replacing stuffy and uncomfortable work wear.
They do like to dress up at times, yes there are ‘black-tie’ & tuxedo events, but it serves more like a social leveling device than an attempt to stand out. Customization to bring out wearer’s taste & upbringing but all with an attempt to blend –in and yet be authentic & original in taste.
Fine Dining: You guys carry on
When people think of fine dining, they think of starched table linen, white gloves, hushed up conversations between sips of wine, tons of cutlery & everything stiff and expensive.
But that’s precisely what new generation is breaking down and calibrating it to a new normal. They like to stroll in restaurants in their jeans & shorts, have a good laugh, enjoy the food, and pour out their own wine without being fussed upon by waiters in suits. With travel broadening their culinary horizons, they are experimenting more with food in high-street , happening eat out joints that are more welcoming, accessible &fun.
And this is certainly a move away from stuffy, traditional formal dining cocooned in privilege to a non-pretentious, chilled; hang –out places with authentic, high quality cuisines.
Etiquettes & Formal behaviors: Not for me
Many forms of media and education over last many decades have eroded the myth that showing feelings is somehow a negative thing or a sign of weakness.
Over the last 20 years we have learnt how to communicate with ease and technology has created a new language of communication. Just look around on social media and you will notice a constant stream of emotional outpourings at all sorts of events from personal to national tragedies. Reality TV is another place where you see mature adults break down and weep & equally ecstatic with joy, comfortably display over-top emotions. Changes in schooling & discipline have made people less formal and the new generation is more casual and relaxed in social interactions across genertaions & classes. There is emphasis all around on self-esteem and free expression. People are encouarged to show their feelings and not suffer in silence and in the process shed the hangover from our country’s feudal and class system. There is a legitimate sanctity of emotional display which has resulted in this generation being a lot more friendly, open,outspoken & appear much more externally confident. This is a generation that is wonderfully eccentric in their individual way.
Formal Workplaces: I am looking out
There has been a lot of research on the impact of new generation on workplace culture. This lot of people is known to be demanding and require a lot of flexibility that is amenable to their lifestyle. As a generation that has grown up witnessing the evolution of technology, become used to information at the click of a button, it expects work places to grow and evolve at the same pace and in the process shed their beurocracy. This ‘here and now’ generation enjoys workplaces that are flexible and nimble and make it easier for people to be more efficient. Faster & informal work environments that capitlize on opportunities and provide constant learning & growth for the employees is creating new norms and relationships at workplaces.
The Dying Art Of Chit Chat
Are we loosing respect for the art of conversation?
The other day, I was sitting in the drawing room with my teenage son and daughter just chatting With both of them busy with their own agendas ( my son is appearing for his 12th board and my daughter busy trying to set up her own design shop) and I with my full time job; I must admit, that this in itself was a rare phenomena.
So we begin with general catching up about studies, a new show on Star World and ‘what would you like to eat for dinner’ kind of conversation. Ten minutes over and I can see that it’s a stuggle to keep the conversation flowing and in the next five minutes I notice that the heads go down and the screens on the mobile light up and I’ve lost their attention.
The situation is no different when you have some guests over and you so eloquently introduce your children hoping they’ll take a cue and strike atleast a few lines of intelligent conversation. But no use building your hopes…after a brief hello they’ll just carry on with their own lives silently hoping they’ll be left alone .
And this is not just about cross-generational conversations, even amongst the same age group cousins and relatives, I have noticed the conversation getting more and more mono-syllabic.
It sharply rewound me back to my growing up years where everybody just talked for time-pass. The community spirit of the 80’s where it was so easy to strike up a conversation.
The gali ,nukkad, aangan, chaubara, the neighbourhood paan shop were hubs for hours and hours of free-flowing conversation.
The profound chit chat ranging from politics and philosophy for men to aachar and pappad recipes for women. Children and their chores was another full time topic of conversation for mothers. As teenagers we could just pontificate at length about school teachers, next door boys, garish neighbouring aunts or just about any kind of gossip.
Irrespective of the place ot time of the day, it was easy to generate sackfuls of conversations in just a few hours of being together.
These social niceties used to bridge the gap felt by the reserved or the more awkward among us. As soon as one person started talking on any topic, it gave an opening for further converastion subsuming everyone in the conversation.
But all that has changed now. We no longer give the art of conversation the respect it is due. The omni-present and the all pervasive mobile phones have just hijacked our lives. And mind you, it’s not just the waking hours but also our sleep. The blinking red light indicating a new message is creating sleep disorders for many.
As you walk into the office, colleagues are so busy with their machines that few have the time to look up and wish a simple good morning. It’s as if people are concerned about appearing too nice or too free! If you have a new joinee in the office, beyond a brief hello, you don’t see anyone initiating a general chit chat to ease a person into his/her new workplace.
Surely that is just basic manners (and social etiqutte) to make a person feel welcome.
The funny thing is that if you take the intitaive and start making a conversaion, most people generally are nice and friendly, so it boggles me as to why are they so reluctant initially.
Are we loosing our basic social skills and the art of conversation?
It does seem like that because even Pope Francis in his annual message for the church’s world day of communication released on 23rd Jan this year said this and I quote “ The great challenge facing us today is to learn once again how to talk to one another , not simply how to generate and consume information”.
Mobile and Social media while at one level has helped far flung members stay connected, but has also enabled others to escape and avoid at will. The absence of visible emotions in interactions has given an opportunity to text one thing and mean something entirely different. After all, there is no fear of exposure!
Developmental psychologists studying the impact of mobile and texting worry especially about young people, not just because kids are such promiscuous users of the technology, but because their interpersonal skills — such as they are — have not yet fully formed. Most adults were fixed social quantities when they first got their hands on a text-capable mobile device, and while their ability to have a face-to-face conversation may have eroded in recent years, it’s pretty well locked in. MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle is one of the leading researchers looking into the effects of texting on interpersonal development. Turkle believes that having a conversation with another person teaches kids to, in effect, have a conversation with themselves — to think and reason and self-reflect. That particular skill is a bedrock of development.
I am sure that we do not want the subsequent generations to become aloof and lonely and loose the need to create better relationships by short-changing the complexity and messiness of human communication.
Too much texting, Turkle warns, amounts to a life of “hiding in plain sight.”
And the thing about hiding is, it keeps you entirely alone.
The Color Of Meaning
We’ve seen and read and heard about the meaning of colors—across cultures, across time, across topics, and even across people with different visual ability (i.e. blind, color-blind, etc.).
At the most simplistic levels, we know red stands for danger, stop; green is for all-clear, go; yellow is for caution, slow; pink went from being manly to effeminate, and so on.
It’s clear that colors are imbued with meaning, based on context, culture and time.
But I want to pause for a minute and ask the reverse question: is it colors that have meaning, or is it meaning that we ascribe color to? Why, and how?
Take the cacophony surrounding intolerance in the country right now. How do some people ascribe saffron to right wing intolerance? And how do some others imbue extremism with the color green?
For centuries the color of royal blood has been termed to be blue. In one fell swoop, an athletic brand turned this ancient order on its head when it asked a billion Indian citizens to bleed blue over a cricket trophy.
How did we take positivity as a point-of-view about the world and decide it was rose-tinted?
Communists are red. They were also pinkies.
Fresh, inexperienced people are green.
Evil is black.
Pure is white.
Depression is blue.
Cowardice is yellow.
Seduction is scarlet.
So, why and how do we ascribe color to meaning?
The why is fathomable. We’re wired to deal with complexity by finding and creating shortcuts that make it easier for us to recognize things, put some method to madness, and to expend less brain in dealing with things that we encounter time and again, or in multiple places. And colors, in some sense, are labels we give to stereotypes and archetypes, to phenomena we believe we, and others, will encounter more than once. They are an easy descriptor for complex metaphors and analogies.
What’s fascinating is the how of it. How, for example, did we decide cowardice is yellow? A quick trawl through the internet doesn’t deliver any convincing answers. The explanations range from jaundice (itself derived from jaune, the French word for yellow) weakening a person and making him or her too feeble to display any strength / courage, to the peculiar yellow belly skin of the 18th century inhabitants of the Lincolnshire Fens in the U.K., to yellow bile being one of the four humors (fluids) of the human body. Why, when yellow otherwise is the color of sunshine and all things cheerful, the meaning of cowardice was imbued with the color yellow, is a little mystifying.
Purity’s association with white, meanwhile, seems to have arisen not because of white’s spotlessness so much as the ability of even a smidgeon of dirt to destroy the color. Pure, by association, was that which could be destroyed by even a smidgeon of doubt.
A range of passions—from love and seduction to anger, courage, health and vigor—are associated with one color, red. This seems to have mainly physiological origins, in that the suffusion of blood, itself red in color, to the face is plainly visible in the arousal of any of the passions.
Evil’s association with black comes from darkness—the period where our main sense of perceiving things, our eyes, become useless. Darkness is the phenomenon that renders things mysterious and beyond our perception. With our inherent desire to believe in goodness and the forces of good—seemingly within our comprehension—evil goes beyond our ken. We are unable to fathom why people would be driven to evil acts, and hence, by association with other things beyond our comprehension—like the darkness, we term them black acts.
As the modern-day example of the athletic brand and the blue-bleeding billion indicates, though, it is possible for culture and context to bend even the most established associations between meaning and color. To what end is an altogether different question though.
Mom: The New Best Friend
So, have you walked on any tightropes recently? Without any balancing aids? Without a safety net? With the whole world watching your every step, and giving you free and unsolicited advice on that step and the next that you are about to take?
There is one person who goes through this daily: Mom. Especially when she has a pre-teen / teen-aged daughter. And especially of this generation. The meeting of Gen M(om) and Gen Y is filled with situations, surprises and standards that are very different from any previous or (likely) future generations. And this has as much to do with the mindsets of the two parties involved as it does with the times in which they’re both interacting. No other generation has been born and brought up in “fully” liberalized India as has the one born after 1990. Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, V.P. Singh (and not just Nehru and Gandhi) are as much a part of the history books to them as ATMs, the internet, mobile phones, IM, FB, Twitter, KFC and pubs are an integral part of their contemporary socio-cultural fabric (and not some futuristic Asimovian scenarios).
Let me tell you a bit about Vijaya (name changed) from Vizag. “When it comes to my 15-year-old daughter, I’m constantly thinking of her, and her future. We talk about it. We discuss what she wants to do in college. And afterwards. I know it’s likely she’ll be married off as per our customs in a few years. But before that, I want her to have the opportunity to study as much as she wants, find a job to her satisfaction, and, dare I say more…?”
Vijaya is your typical SEC B2 mom, whose husband is the sole wage earner, bringing in around INR10K a month, as a mechanic with a sea-faring company. Oh, and incidentally, Vijaya is originally from an even-smaller town two hours away from Madurai, itself not exactly lining up to be the next bustling metropolis.
Vijaya is trying to balance conflict between tradition and modernity, between small-town-mindedness and the globalization of opportunity.
Or take the case of Niharika (name changed again), the daughter-in-law of a substantially wealthy, substantially old business family in South Delhi. Niharika made her fortune all on her own with a unique niche she’s carved for herself in the luxury travel business. Without depending on her husband or his family for her own needs and desires, Niharika holds her own and then some, in her fabulously wealthy sasural. Her more challenging role is that of mother to her daughter Avantika (name changed). At 16, Avantika can say “been there, done that” to pretty much most things that teens in more developed countries would check off in their lives at the same age. Between balancing business, the whims and customs of her in-laws, and raising two daughters, Niharika’s is not an easy or enviable job. “I’ve given her immense freedom (and money),” says Niharika about Avantika. “Some of it because that’s how I wanted to raise my children, and some of it, I will admit, because I didn’t have time for closer attention to my parenting duties.”
Niharika, a little unlike Vijaya, is trying to turn the clock back a bit to try and balance home and office. But both of them are also constantly trying to straddle the roles of best friend and mom, albeit in different ways, in completely different socio-economic strata.
But what they’re doing, in their own ways, is exemplary of today. One might argue that this isn’t new, and moms have always strived to be friends and parent to their children, and this is true to a certain extent, especially in comparison to dads. But the specifics in many ways truly and uniquely reflect only today’s times. So much so that the lines start to blur for those watching about which ones are friends and which ones are mother and daughter.
Those two good-looking women you were checking out at the fitness centre today? They dance to the same tune at home too (sometimes it’s the latest Beyonce hit, other times it’s what Shahid is jiving to). And if you were able to take a peek into their vanity cabinet at home, you wouldn’t be able to tell if it’s one or the other who shops at the Body Shop, drops into the Ayurveda Store for rejuvenating hair massage oil, and shuns the imported creams, preferring instead the Himalaya range of herbals and organics.
You couldn’t tell from their clothes either whether they’re friends or family. Short kurtis from Fab India or t-shirts from Bennetton work just fine for both of them. And in case you’re wondering, they both wear Medium. Sometimes, mom will be the one to tell daughter excitedly about the new Ed Hardy tee she saw in the window. Other times, it’ll be the younger “best friend” helping the older one “rediscover” the amazing chana-kulcha at Khan Chacha’s.
But the place where you’ll probably see both of them let their hair down (apart from the beauty salon) is when they’re on holiday together. Their intense camaraderie means they give themselves the space to do what they want, as well as the leeway to not do something they’d rather skip. So there’s no longer a “check-list” of must-see, must-do items on a holiday. There’s no strict adhering to a schedule. Instead, it’s time for indulgence. To each her own. Without holding each other back. So much so that sometimes it’s the Miss who’s telling the Mrs. all about the magnificence of a heritage temple, its history, and its importance to India and her own identity. While Mrs. is the one helping Miss unearth the fashion find of the year in the by-lanes of Coimbatore.
So what’s the catch? It’s in each of them knowing exactly where to draw the Laxman Rekha. Except in this case there’s no Laxman on the other side. There are plenty of metaphorical Ravans though.
You might see them in the real world sipping cappuccinos together. But in the virtual world, it’s highly unlikely that daughters will “friend” their mom on, say, Facebook or Orkut. That photo of hers with her peers where they’re all sitting in the classroom and using their digits to freely express themselves, it’s highly doubtful she’d want Mom to see it.
In the world of ads, you might see a traditional Tamilian amma (complete with vibhuti and kumkum on forehead, and M.S. Subbalakshmi’s Vishnu Sahasranama playing in the background) being okay with a dragon tattoo on the small of her daughter’s back. Can a real amma in the real world maintain her equanimity as easily in the face of many metaphorical dragon tattoos daily?
How far can Mom go without encroaching on My space? How long can Mom hold onto her (now imaginary) umbilical cord and yet not lose her daughter to the world? How short can a skirt be before it becomes too short? When does a t-shirt caption stop being funny and start being too saucy for public consumption? When does “space” become too small to be private and too large to be public? And how do you tell your daughter to dream but not to dream beyond her place in the world?
These are the questions that today’s Moms are grappling with daily. She’s not going to find any gharelu nuskhe to help her out here. All she can do is roll with the falls, bounce with the good times, and learn from her daughter herself. Sure, she’ll sometimes score high-fives, sometimes draw glares. But history will probably show this Gen M(om) will share a much stronger and healthier (if sometimes, tougher) relationship with their Gen Y daughters than any other future one in India.
More and more Indian women have lately been marrying in their late twenties or even early thirties. They’ve themselves grown up at least partly with a fast-liberalizing economic and cultural world in India. They have seen first-hand the stretched limits of morality and frugality. And given all of this, you might expect them to be more understanding and better able to cope with the expectations of their future adolescent / young adult daughters—in terms of freedom, attitude and behavior. But if history is any indicator, we don’t learn from our own follies. In the West today, the Hippies / Flower Children of the 1960s are today some of the most conservative parents when it comes to their own children’s upbringing, bordering on hypocrisy. Perhaps this next generation of Indian moms would’ve learnt from their predecessors. Perhaps not. One thing is for sure: today’s Indian Mom is a great example of one of the toughest balancing acts. Sure, it’s not perfect. She’s swaying on the rope sometimes. She may appear to wobble occasionally. But she’s willing to tough it out. And whether she knows it now or not, her daughter, her occasional best friend, is waiting at journey’s end with this message: “My mom is my hero.”
Is India Ready For Women In Public Places?
It’s not just about safety. The fact is that public infrastructure is not keeping pace with women’s emancipation, with improvements in gender equity, with the strides that women are making in every sphere of public life.
Recently, taking off from the airport in Bombay, it was frustrating to see that while there were some half-dozen security check-points for men, there was only one for women—and this, even though there were at least half as many women than men (which means, there should have been one queue for women for every two for men). Everywhere, from passport offices to cinema halls, women’s queues are lengthening as service points are hogged by men, either because there are more such windows for men or simply because the men jostle their way forward.
More women are venturing out of the homes—with higher learning, accomplishing more in jobs and professions, shouldering more of the family’s financial and other burdens, driving children to school, travelling on official assignments, handling financial decisions and meeting with tax lawyers, shopping for the household….
In metro and local suburban trains, the number of spaces reserved for women in no way match the number of women out commuting to work. No doubt, the commuter facilities are limited for all, for men and women, but the proportionate facilities, based on gender, remain skewed.
The same holds true for public sanitation facilities; where these exist, they are generally in bad condition. So where can women commuters, the women vegetable vendors or women salespersons seek relief? Or must they accept the inevitability of kidney problems?
Women cannot have access to parks without fear, walk freely on streets after dark, even take buses or taxis home after an evening out with friends without anxiety. Is the age of chaperoning coming back with a bang?
Is, then, all talk of education for girls a sham? Is the fight for women’s equity at home and at the workplace to remain just that—in closed spaces, and not in the outdoors, in public spaces? Is she to remain merely a worker and a householder, not someone entitled to enjoy the parks, the theatres, the cinemas and malls, restaurants…? Is she not entitled to go on camping trips, picnics, holidays to distant or remote lands?
Time and again, questions have been raised about infrastructure for women. The question posed here, today, is this: Is society ready to accept women in public life? If yes, then the evidence of this would be to accord infrastructure that supports their participation in public life—not only more pubic sanitation for women, but also washrooms that are designed to accommodate their special needs, staircases at railway stations that take into consideration that women wearing sarees would find it easier to use gradients rather than steps (and, of course, so would everyone pulling luggage!), and more reserved compartments and security services. In some instances—such as the high step between railway platforms and the entrance to the train compartment or the high step into an auto-rickshaw—this lack of sensitivity to women’s particular needs can be downright dangerous, and has, in fact, occasionally proved life-threatening.
Corporate organisations today have special cells to address women’s grievances and safety concerns, and deal with harassment; but civic bodies seem oblivious to changing gender dynamics, to the fact that women are shouldering the city’s (and the village’s) economic burden in public life about equally with men. They seem unaware of the fact that there as many women commuting, on the streets, attending to various social needs—from commercial activities to political, cultural and social—as men, and that this must be acknowledged through the provision of necessary support structures.
The emphasis today is on a false protectiveness; what women need, as do men, is considerateness— a considerate attitude that is sincere and, therefore, serious.
I am an Indian and I love Lahore
I am a voracious traveller and have had the good fortune of visiting at least forty to fifty cities across continents in the last two decades. Travel energizes me, as I am a curious and happy traveller always looking out for the new, the un-discovered and the ‘positive’ in every place I visit. Whether it is Naukuchiatal or New York, Periyar or Paris, Delhi or Denmark, I have enjoyed and celebrated each of my travels with equal zest, always discovering something ‘special’ that is unique & exquisite about the place. And it’s never been about the facilities or the comforts, as much as it is about the energy and attitude of the place and it’s people.
So for someone like me, an opportunity to officially visit Lahore came like a blessing in disguise, as Pakistan is one country that would otherwise never come up as a tourist destination for most Indians. I was in Lahore to speak at the prestigious Women Leadership Forum organized by Nutshell & AIMA. I was delighted at the thought of visiting our closest neighbor and the birthplace of my parents.
I had grown up hearing many stories from them about the large houses, the warmth, the camaraderie and the good life they lived before the lines of geography came in the way of humankind. My Mom says her father owned a cinema hall in her name called “Lakshmi” in a small town of Dadu and my Mom-in-Law talks about having a badminton court inside their haveli that had twenty two rooms! Stories always ended with a tinge of sadness, ruing the way they had to leave the country overnight like fugitives.
I was excited about finally crossing over the line & meeting our twin neighbor, so similar & yet the constant ‘other’. But I must admit that beneath this excitement lay a lurking nervousness, well aware of the hostility and suspicion exaggerated by the constant images of strife & stress by our politicians & media. What didn’t help matters was the reaction of friends and family, “What? Lahore? Are you sure? Think again!!”
But I was only interested in the human interactions; the relationships beyond the politics & nothing could dissuade me from taking this trip.
And how glad I am!
‘Jine Lahore nai vekhiya, o jameya nai’ (One who hasn’t seen Lahore has not been born). Whoever coined the phrase had obviously experienced the glory of Lahore and so did I.
I experienced the outpouring of warmth and generosity from Pakistanis the moment we reached the Visa Office. Our hosts were personally present to meet the Indian delegates. The curiosity & conversation started the moment we identified ourselves as Indians. While, our papers were being processed, the lights went off and that became a converastion starter and the start of fabulous Pakistani hospitality .
“Do you have electricity problems too? Don’t worry, it won’t take long.. please sit in the Duty Officer’s room, there is a big window there..you’ll feel more comfortable”.
We were offered water& tea and made to feel comfortable.
And this experience repeated itself throughout our three day stay in the city.
As we got in the car to drive towards the Pearl InterContinental hotel, the driver got chatting. I noticed his finesse as a conversationalist. His speech was laced with nuances with many small details & facts. The energy during the interaction was un-deniable. I soon realized that most Pakistanis are great talkers displaying genuine interest in the person they are speaking to and probably that’s what makes their company highly enjoyable. Their conversations about the most everyday topics have so much flavor and if I may use the Hindi word, ‘ras’ in them.
The conference itself was well attended and I was surprised to see at least 35-40% male delegates in a Women’s conference, which was so unlike India. There was an honest attempt in dialogues to address gender related issues across class & creed.
Later in the evening we went for an Atif Aslam musical evening at the “Punjab State University” and this is one experience that sealed my belief that we have to step out of the prism of received opinion and false perceptions. But first the incident.
I am a big Atif fan and one of my Pakistani friends ( by now I had made a few ) insisted on taking me to the front of the stage to shake his hand and experience him up, close & personal. Looking at the sight of hundreds of students going wild infront of the stage I immediately resisted but my friend started cutting me through the crowd with just one phrase “She’s a guest from India, please let her pass”. I was simply amazed at the ease with which the path opened up and we were in the first row within seconds!
That got me wondering “Why hasn’t our media ever captured these emotions? Why do they only cover large events like exchange programmes or music and dance performances or literature festivals that happen once in a while? What about the everyday experiences of people travelling to one another’s country?, I am sure they are enough anecdotes from both sides with people carrying delightful stories of warmth, friendship and their neighbours going the extra mile for them.
“Aap India se hai? (Are you Indian?) That makes you our guest and we’ll serve you is a phrase that stopped to surprise me after some time.
Pakistani goodwill towards Indians seemed to be visible all across and manifested itself in offers, mementoes and many eager conversations about common cultures, Bollywood and of course, cricket.
I can narrate many more experiences but I am sure by now you get a gist of my emotions. I am not trying to give any message, but just saying that there is so much to share, cutting across cultural-historical boundaries, so much to gain by wiping out the lines of divide and hatred & start celebrating rather than denigrating each other because after all we are two sides of the same coin.
Growth Hack
Eighth #GROWTHHACKS TO IMPROVE YOUR PROFIT MARGINS IN A TOUGH MARKET CONDITIONS
Get your business ready for recovery using some of these practical hacks that will not just grow your business but also ensure profitability.
Covid is an inflection point that has reset several norms as we realize that we’re never going to go back to working the way that we did. All industries are at the mercy of an invisible, uncontrollable enemy that has impacted everything from consumer interest to consumption patterns and the ability of the business to cater to this unprecedented change. Your business may have been upended by this disruption too, that has changed the market dynamics overnight.
To stay afloat & remain relevant to your customers & shareholders, it is important to start getting your organisation ready for recovery & make the change your business needs today.
To manage your way through this, here are eight very practical & powerful #hacks to make sure that when the world returns to normalcy, you are there all prepped to ride the wave.
HACK #1: PLAN FOR BUSINESS RECOVERY USING A BARBELL STRATEGY
Like rabbits that sense an earthquake and start running helter skelter, businesses face the same imminent danger of falling in trap of flawed short-termism in their bid for immediate survival. The main source of the problem is the pressure on companies to get the business back on its feet through a combination of tactics, incentives & cost-cuts.
While well-intentioned, these efforts fail to recognise the hidden opportunities that pandemics of this scale & magnitude have the potential to unlock.
To balance the quarterly capitalism with long term value creation, leaders should skilfully balance the immediate survival actions with the new strategic choices by allocating equal time, resources & actions to score at both ends of the Barbell.
#Plan for business recovery using the ‘Barbell Strategy’ balancing the immediate survival & the gradual transformation & foster innovativeness.
#Mobilize a War Room with combat warriors on one end & an Innovation Garage with dreamers on the other
HACK #2 STOP CHASING THE LONG TAIL
Long tails thrive on the economics of abundance when everything is available to everyone. Nothing could be further from the truth in the post Covid world
To provide for small, niche offerings that customers expect, requires dozens of facilities stocking tens of thousands of items with intermittent demand that suck away valuable company resources. It is therefore, vital for leaders to understand the profitability of the segment because the extremely low demand for the large array of products in the tail means that simply recovering the costs of producing them is challenging.
So, it is prudent to trim the long tail of fringe sales with limited demand & and focus on the core, high value, evergreen offerings.
#Get to the ‘head’ of the demand curve by concentrating on popular & hit products
#Cut the complexity & hidden costs of SKU proliferation in distribution & inventory supply
HACK #3 SOCIAL PROOF YOUR BUSINESS
Unpredictability & ambiguity is the fuel that activates and feeds the process of social proof. When faced with an unfamiliar situation, an unsure individual would feel the need to refer to other people for guidance.
So, expect a more guarded & self-protected society to approach the marketplace with a lot of diffidence & anxiety. Consumers will seek reassurance from the action of others leading to a rise in herd mentality.
Social proofing is a very powerful weapon of persuasion and influence that uses the power of numbers to help businesses win back the consumer trust. Use it wisely.
#Win back consumer confidence with the wisdom of the crowd & the power of numbers
#Weave in authentic stories, real time reviews & feedback loops in every customer transaction.
HACK#4: MOVE YOUR SUPPLY CHAINS FROM PART-TIME USE, FULL-TIME COST TO FULL-TIME USE, FULL TIME VALUE.
Success of business today is inextricably linked to the performance of supply chains
Multi-channel distribution eco-system, ‘just-in-time’ delivery & long tail SKUs have resulted in highly complex but in-efficient supply chains. Consumers have never been more demanding in terms of immediacy & level of personalization they expect.
The current supply chain components for most businesses are rigid & built for exclusive in-house use with limited agility to adapt to external demand volatility. Additionally, the physical supply-chain processes such as warehousing & transportation are often not fast or flexible enough to cope with the large numbers of smaller orders that Omni-channel requires.
#Create greater flexibility across the supply chain by making planning, manufacturing, distribution, and logistics more adaptive with the use of design thinking & technology that enables visibility & ensures agility of inventory flow through the supply chain at any given point in time.
#Create multi-purpose supply chains with flexibility of a plug & play model to outsource, in-source, part-source components to ease out redundancies and extract full value of each supply chain component.
HACK #5: PROMOTE FRANCHISEE STORES, RESTRAIN COMPANY OWNED STORES.
Historical evidence proves that franchisees perform far better than company stores during crisis. They have a greater perseverance to ride out the storm as they are far more invested in the business, sometimes with their lives’ savings. With increased commitment & reduced capital outflow, organizations should bet on supporting franchisees to hasten their recovery.
#Franchisees are smart entrepreneurs with better survival instincts.
#They are tenacious & have better tolerance of ambiguity.
#Have the power of the brand & shared resources of built-in systems, technology, training & marketing support to sustain through difficult times
HACK#6: TREAT EVERY CONSUMER LIKE CUSTOMER
The words “customer” and “consumers” are often interchangeably used and are easily confused with one another. Agreed, that the customer & consumer can be the same but at a time like this, it’s the mind-set that delineates the two clearly.
The typical consumer, devoured by endless abundance of everything & swayed by marketing pressures will be replaced by an exacting customer judiciously assessing every rupee spent. These customers are extremely likely to bypass a brand if they sense they are being manipulated or bamboozled in any way.
#The stereotypical hedonistic consumer fostered by artificially induced wants without regard for the consequences will be replaced by the conscientious customers leaning towards brands that do the right thing.
#With reduced purchasing power, they will shift spends towards meaningful consumptions as against mindless consumption & grant their approval to products & services that offer ‘better’ instead of ‘more’
HACK#7: THINK IN PARTS to SOLVE FOR THE WHOLE
Highly uncertain conditions call for decentralized but mutually synchronized small actions that impact the overall solution.
When change is unpredictable & rapid, innovating by breaking things down will make sure you innovate without the risk of big losses. It allows for quick adaptation to changing circumstances.
#Bury the grand strategy & foster small scale modular thinking.
#In a networked economy, big solutions can be found by solving a series of small inter-connected problems.
#With the rapid & unpredictable nature of change, ‘incrementalism’ is a safer bet.
HACK #8: FIND YOUR HEADROOM FOR GROWTH
In difficult times, companies instinctively unleash a flurry of new activity, often overlooking the growth opportunities that are right in front of them. In their hurry to make up for lost time & see quick results, they get easily tempted by tactical opportunities or get lured by the idea of diversification without a clear sense of where the true opportunity for #growth exists. That can prove costly, perhaps with disastrous consequences, at a time when resources are scarce & getting the highest yield on these resources is paramount.
To avoid falling in that trap, it is important to play to your strengths & unlock #in-market potential from the ‘existing’ by understanding where your real #headroom lies.
High Value, low headroom HARD CORE LOYALS Belong to you | High Value, high headroom SPLIT LOYALS Belong to a few |
Low value, low headroom POLYGAMOUS LOYALS Belong to many | Low value, high headroom COMPETITION LOYALS Belong to competition |
#Nurture your ‘loyalists’.
#Ignore the ‘competition loyals’.
#Lure the ‘split loyals’ with tangible propositions.
#Park the ‘polygamous loyals’ in the queue for better times.
An era of consumer frugality has begun with headwinds that will repress the business by at least a year if not more. Some leaders will turn this into an opportunity to strengthen their business to emerge stronger, leaner & fitter. These leaders are bold innovators who believe in capturing opportunities whenever they arise, from whatever direction—and allow their flows to propel them onward, even if the ultimate destination is uncertain or the route shifts along the way.
Follow the hacks in this article & you could be one of them!
Sensing, shaping& storming the business norms: Tagline
AUTHOR:
ANISHA MOTWANI
Innovation & Brand Expert, Author: STORM THE NORM
Forget Needgaps Identify Greedgaps
The concept of need is both outdated and overused in marketing today. If nowhere else, we believe at least in marketing, greed is good. In fact, everywhere else too—in the real world—greed drives not just consumption but brand choice, preferences, recommendation and even loyalty and community. It’s time to revisit that old framework of Needs, reinterpret it for the future and create a new paradigm for estimating what motivates consumer choice.
In simpler times, need gaps were the key to measuring opportunity for a brand. They signaled simple economics of supply and demand, un catered-to spaces in the market, product / technological advantages over competition that enabled gap fulfillment, and the relative insignificance of cultural factors in satisfying unmet needs. Today’s consumers, however, follow a slightly more complex pattern of behavior. Abundant supply and choice in the marketplace signal the primacy of want (or desire or greed) in driving consumption.
However, brands’ success lies not just in catering to want. That is merely the first step. Lasting success comes from turning that want, that greed into a need again. Basic human nature, even in times of prosperity, tends to be predictably rational (or irrational, actually) in more easily justifying need fulfillment over greed fulfillment for fear of being judged by society as wanton creatures. The elusive formula, then, is to (a) go beyond need, (b) cater to greed, and (c) convert greed to need, in order to create enduring consumers and communities for brands.
Debunking needs
“I’m not needy. I’m wanty.”
– via @FunnyOneLiners on Twitter
In his 1844 Paris Manuscripts, Karl Marx famously said that human beings are “”creatures of need.” And ever since, the irony of the world’s most famous anti-capitalist lost on them, marketers have latched on to it as the best description of consumers, needing no evolution with time. But as even a flippant remark from Twitter today suggests, we’ve always been “creatures of want.”
Where did marketers’ obsession with needs and need fulfillment begin? The most visible source for this is Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This eminent (but often contested) psychologist proposed that humans are not nearly as transparent in their motivations as the word “need” suggests. We are not driven purely by necessities. If that was the case, we would not have evolved into the, well, evolved species that we are. Instead, Maslow delved into our collective psyches a little deeper and unearthed different kinds of needs.
Perhaps Maslow’s limitation—and therefore of those who adopt his framework—is the sweeping label of “needs” he gives to the higher order life drivers. More appropriately, these are desires and not needs. Or, as we would like to call them, greeds. And as much as Maslow used the label of “needs” for everything from lower order drivers of physiology to the higher order drivers based in psychology and metaphysics, the reverse is probably true today. Desire defines higher order drivers, like the desire to realize one’s higher purpose in life, the desire to hone one’s creativity, to fine tune one’s moral conduct. At a slightly lower level, desire drives one to win the confidence of others, to rise in one’s own esteem, to surpass one’s past achievements. At a parallel but more social than individual level, desire creates kinship, drives one to seek sexual intimacy. And, contrary to Maslow’s labeling, desire can also explain the drive to seek choice in avenues of safety and security, and even in fulfillment of physiological imperatives like breathing (yes), food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis and excretion.
We use the words greed, desire and want interchangeably to signal that consumption is no longer driven by necessity.
The key point is that needs are finite, and we have long moved on from satisfying these finite needs. Greeds, on the other hand, are infinite, ever evolving, and being constantly created anew.
To illustrate this point, consider as basic a physiological “need” as breathing. We no longer merely “need” to breathe to live. We desire purer living spaces. We want air purifiers, humidifiers, dehumidifiers, air conditioners, air fresheners, non-polluting vehicles. We want rejuvenating spaces that satisfying our physical craving for space that doesn’t cramp us physically or psychologically. Spas are as much a solution for better breathing as they are for better being.
Or consider another example, of a safety “need.” Avoiding bodily or familial harm is no longer a mere necessity. We want to ensure absolute safety for ourselves, our loved ones, our property, and in fact, even for our uncertain futures. Kevlar in body suits, bullet-proof auto bodies, and insurance policies are proof of this, if proof was desired.
Shoes were originally created in response to a safety “need,” to protect feet from dust, grime, and harm from protruding objects on the ground. Today, we desire shoes to match our clothes, our occasions, our personalities and our social milieu. The biggest clue to where the future lie though is still in the plaintive cry of “I need new shoes!” we continue to hear from people.
Our bodies may need rest. But we want vacations. Or, as we colloquially say, “I need a vacation!”
Our sustenance needs food. But we crave a lot more from food than mere hunger satisfaction. We want to satisfy our desires for gluttony, for things gourmet, for comfort (“just like mom’s cooking”), bragging rights (“you haven’t eaten at Salt Water Café yet? Where do you live?”), achievement (“you haven’t arrived until you get the corner table at Bungalow 9”), and so much more.
For protection from the elements, we need shelter. But we want a lot more from the place we live in. We want elegance, we want attitude, we want vibrancy, we want the right vastu, we want the right address, we want the right neighbors, we want the right amenities, the right schools in the neighborhood, the right conveniences, and all the social signals that emanate from having all of the preceding.
This much is obvious that needs have given way to desires. The hidden truth is that we are also well on our way to turning desires into needs. Or at least in articulating our desires as our needs.
A new perspective thus emerges of what drives consumption, and in fact, human behavior.
The second, deeper learning from this distinction between needs and desires is this: Needs define a category (e.g. food, hunger satisfaction), but desires define market segments (e.g. for gluttons, for connoisseurs, for social butterflies, for achievers). Distinct segments of people desire different inputs and outcomes from different categories of products and services. And it is brands’ opportunity to cater to them distinctively.
Need gap identification is therefore a fool’s errand because such a chimera as a need gap does not exist at all, if it ever did.
Consider a 21st century category such as social networking. The category serves the need of people to connect with one another. But information hounds gather around the Twitter water cooler, friends and family prefer Facebook, entertainment seekers throng YouTube, geo-proximate people congregate on FourSquare, the visual stimulus enthusiast community hangs out at Pinterest, sexual pleasure seekers flock to YouPorn, professionals connect via LinkedIn, and so on.
The bottomline is this.
In seeking such solutions to these desires, consumers turn to brands—as much for desire fulfillment as for choice, experience and kinship with others who have sought and used the same solutions. How did we come to this? And why haven’t brands woken up to this yet?
The economics (and sociology) of greed
“Our necessities never equal our wants.”
– Benjamin Franklin
Up until the 20th century, need gaps signaled the crux of a simpler economics (than today) of supply and demand. Consumers needed products and services to cater to their lives. Brands provided them. Demand and supply enjoyed a fairly linear relationship. Yes, brands assured a certain consistency in product quality and experience, but they were still primarily catering to unfulfilled demand that originated from unmet needs in the category. That was how brands identified marked opportunity and leveraged product / technological superiority to get an edge over the competition. Sociology did not enter into the picture at all.
This worked especially well in a market like the one that was prevalent in pre-Liberalization India. Supply was lower than demand, there were many unmet needs across categories and product superiority was a ubiquitous advantage to those who could deliver it. Those were the days when the 4Ps—product, price, place and promotion—were sufficient to drive brand preference.
Even here though, the beginnings of want were clearly more visible. If laundry detergent became a universal need, then Nirma catered to those who wanted value for money, Surf for those would not be denied quality, Ariel for those who wanted premium, and so on.
Back in the day when most people bought ration-paani from the ubiquitous government-run ration shops, it was no different. People desired to get more grains than stones in their wheat. To have more oil and less contaminants in their cooking oil. To ensure that they got 1000 grams and not 950 grams when they bought a kilo of salt. It was no mere need that brands were catering to. And so Tata Namak was built. And Saffola. And Annapurna Atta. On the back of consumers’ desire for better, more, easier, stronger, etc. Today’s story, though, is not merely about the imperative of merely delivering “-er” brands.
Across categories—from laundry detergent to soaps to automobiles to banking to holidays and more—brands were stuck in a millennia-old cultural ethos, of thrift and rationality. India had always celebrated the value of stretching every paisa and cutting out frivolity, at least from its consumptive behavior. Also, “if you couldn’t afford it, you didn’t need it” was the prevailing sentiment.
In a post-liberalized, globalized world though, all that has changed. A whole generation has grown up steeped in this new ethos of plentiful choice and control, of having the means to meet the demands of want.
Accompanying this has been a momentous cultural shift, away from the shackling conventions of thrift. No longer are consumers motivated by mere need. Desire drives consumption. And the most important fuel for greed—the will to indulge—now partners the means to do so, more and more often. A combination of economic prosperity, market choice and a sense of entitlement have finally turned the tide against the centuries-old ethos against conspicuous consumption.
Driven as they are by desire, consumers are no longer looking to fill need gaps. They don’t have unmet “needs,” strictly speaking. And, in their efforts to fulfill their greeds, consumers are willing to leave no stone unturned. To paraphrase an old adage, consumers are now saying, “I always live within my budget, even if I have to borrow to do so.” Thus, where loans and borrowing were a means of tiding over difficult times of need in the past, today even jeans are available on Equated Monthly Installment (EMI) plans.
A second pivot is the economics of choice. Since greed-based consumption is often impulsive, not rational, brands face the imperative of going beyond the usual amidst the plethora of choice consumers have in order to become their preferred choice. Thus, even a traditionally “hygiene” factor such as distribution turns into a brand building factor. Being present when and where greed strikes is more relevant than ever for brands. This is as true for brand communications as it is for brand consumption. (The necessity of multi-screen presence of a brand today is just one indicator of this.)
Clearly, the economics of need-driven demand and supply are limited and limiting. Because needs themselves are finite. Greeds, on the other hand, are infinite.
The question is, how can brands identify, measure and provide solutions to these desires? How can they do so better than their competitors? And how can they do this in ways that build last relationships with consumers?
Down-Aging and Speed-Aging
Mother’s down-aging & daughter’s speed-aging…
They looked like sisters. If I hadn’t known that the one is my sister and the other my niece, I could have been fooled. Both were wearing jeans and tops, had stylishly cut short hair, dark glasses and ice cream cones in their hands!
As I watched them approach me, I thought how mothers today look younger … no, are younger! And young girls today are growing up faster, catching up with their mothers….
All around me I see mothers and daughters dressing similarly, often in the same size of clothes! I see mothers enjoying “kiddie” foods like candy floss and daughters staidly opting for salads. I see 40-something mothers adopting new technology tools almost as quickly as their teenage daughters! And passing the book they’ve finished reading, to their daughters!
I see daughters graduating quickly from the childish “dress-up” games, trying on their mothers’ heels, to young women who raid their mothers’ wardrobes for tops and scarves! I see them share reading materials with their mothers, and fashion tips, cosmetics, jewellery, and diet plans. I see many of them adopting mothers as their role models—more so among those who have working mothers—especially as they grow into their teens and start wondering about careers choices.
It’s not about patterning themselves on their mothers as clones, it’s about patterning themselves on their mothers quite judiciously. So it is that a friend’s daughter shares her mother’s T-shirts, but not her saris, goes to salsa dance classes rather than the gym her mother frequents! But she shares her mother’s interest in social causes, and though she believes these are best served through entrepreneurial work, not charity, she often accompanies her mother to her ‘Teach for India’ sessions.
I see mothers and daughters bonding, more friends than in hierarchical relationships, out at restaurants, at movies, shopping at malls, exercising at yoga centres and at gyms, jogging along Mumbai’s Marine Drive. They talk about the movies they like and the ones they don’t, the books they have read —and dare to argue without self-consciousness over the parenting role.
Gone are the days when daughters were so much in awe of their mothers that they hesitated to talk to her about their fears and other feelings. Gone are the days of the adored mother in The Little Women and even of Rahel and Ammu and their fraught, authority-centric relationship in The God of Little Things.
And gone are the days when a mother prided herself on being that authority figure! If she appears younger today, it is mainly because she has a younger outlook, not simply because she looks young! She is open to new ideas; she goes beyond the classics to read new literature and news magazines; she remembers what it was like to be a teen and empathises with her daughter as she deals with teenage issues.
Mothers are younger because they remain approachable, allow themselves to be vulnerable, to allow children to question them.
My daughter doesn’t hesitate to question my opinions on various political and social news; we read the same newspapers and magazines and discussions at breakfast or around the dining table are endless, often heated. She has an opinion on my judgement on many issues, social and personal. Her opinions and questions often make me think and rethink. I value that.
There’s a freshness in her ideas that helps me to keep my thinking energised too. It keeps me in touch with the younger generation with its new ideas and creativity.
But, equally—or perhaps more—importantly, it helps me remember what it was like to be a teen myself. How the overconfidence with which I voiced opinions was so often a cover for deep uncertainties. That helps me to understand my daughter’s feelings and to respond with respect.
That is when I realise that while we are friends, I am also the mother, the adult who has to be more responsible in this relationship.
