Rebuilding on so many levels!

My last post here was on 4th January’13, I never imagined in my worst nightmare what happened in the days between 5-7 Janurary’13 and since then what has happened.

Things though far from normal, seems to be on track to at-least regaining 80-90% normalcy if not 100%. It may take a good many months, but then somethings are beyond our control.

Its been 3 months and 2 days since I came(23rd Dec’12) from Bangalore to Mumbai as my mom was admitted in hospital(19th December’12) and the diagnosis was yet to happen as to whats been ailing my mom past 5 months.

And then things started to unfold…one after another.

Started with Meningitis(caused by a very strong bacteria known as Listeria), then a type of Cancer(Non-Hodkins Lymphoma), then she went into Septic Shock and was in ICU for 6 days and during this she also got Pneumonia(caused by a again very strong bacteria called Klebsiella). This was followed by not one but 3 severe neuropathy condition – Peripheral Neuropathy, Radiculopathy, GB Syndrome.

Needless to say, our family has been going through hell and the hell like a blind tunnel at times doesn’t seem to end. How bad was it? Well let me say I pray everyday that not even 10% of what we have gone through should happen to my worst enemy.

Nothing is more disturbing  unsettling, traumatic than the health and seeing the suffering of your loved one, specially when its your parents and specially when its your mom.

The good thing is that here I am alive – more stronger, more resilient, more positive, more optimistic –  to tell all that what happened.

What has happened has happened, we cannot go back in time and undo all that…but what we can do is what in our hands. To rebuild, to regroup, to face it, to see what can be done, to see how we can best handle this, how we can come out of it and how we can continue to be positive, be full of hope and faith as we have always tried to be.

Except for prayers we are not looking for any help from anyone as frankly no one can understand, no one can feel, no one can empathize what we have got through. Only those who go through and see in front of them the suffering can feel the pain.

But yes prayers do have this magical power attached to them.  :-)

I do wish to chronicle some part if not all here on my blog, not to share my problems but may be to inspire others who may be going or who have gone through it.

I don’t have a structure in place yet, so lets see how the future posts look like…who knows I may even write a book on it!

Rear view mirror in car is smaller as its utility is limited. Such is life! No point looking back…

…Onwards to rebuilding…Onwards to a better tomorrow…Onwards to a better life…in myriad colors and shades.

Life is what we make of it…regardless of the situation.

 

Anirudh

Fantastic Read : The Twelve Most Important Lessons I’ve Learned So Far

Great post by Tony Schwartz !

Few excerpts :

1. The more we know about ourselves, the more power we have to behave better. Humility is underrated. We each have an infinite capacity for self-deception — countless unconscious ways we protect ourselves from pain, uncertainty, and responsibility — often at the expense of others and of ourselves. Endless introspection can turn into self-indulgence, but deepening self-awareness is essential to freeing ourselves from our reactive, habitual behaviors.

2. Notice the good. We each carry an evolutionary predisposition to dwell on what’s wrong in our lives. The antidote is to deliberately take time out each day to notice what’s going right, and to feel grateful for what you’ve got. It’s probably a lot.

3. Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.

4. Never seek your value at the expense of someone else’s. When we’re feeling devalued, our reactive instinct is to do anything to restore what we’ve lost. Devaluing the person who made you feel bad will only prompt more of the same in return.

To read the remaining go here!

Useful Read : The One Barrier to Your Success

 

Darren Hardy who is the publisher of Success Magazine is a very active blogger on personality-development/self-growth and regularly turns out very useful posts! His latest one in particular seems to hit the nail on his head. Check it out!

http://darrenhardy.success.com/2012/01/the-one-barrier-to-your-success/

 

Cheers!

Life Refreshed!

First things first -

I truly hope the new year is better in all forms for the entire human race! Its in everyone’s interest that we all grow and do well in all aspects of our life!

Having said that I believe at the end of the day its in our hands to make it happen or at-least make an honest effort and I have no doubt it will not go in vain. You reap what you sow and in this life only!

January is a great time to plan things for the year ahead. Its time to refresh your life and start afresh…seriously! If you have had a great year overall, it will be easy to gain momentum and making sure 2012 is even better! If the year 2011 left a lot to be desired, well here is the good news…now is the time to move on! You have a clean canvas to paint a new picture as you want it!

So whats the thing you hear the most in the new year?

Its called new year resolutions!!! Everyone seems to have them or pretend to have them and almost everyone forgets it past the first week of January!

Frankly, I have never made them so I cant say whether it works or not, but am very keen to have one this year. Or rather at-least list out the things I want to accomplish in the coming year.

I have yet to finish the list, but I came across an article by Harvey Mackay which should be a good guideline to keep in mind while creating one.

To give you a brief about the article :

Making a New Year’s resolution is like setting any other type of goal.  You have to choose wisely if you want to achieve something significant.  Remember that a good resolution, like a solid goal, usually has a few definable characteristics:

• Focus.  Set a definite target:  “Lose 10 pounds by June” is better than “Lose some weight.”
• Challenge.  Your resolution should be neither too difficult, nor too easy.
• Commitment.  Share your resolutions with others.  That will help you work on them.
• Presence.  Write down your resolutions in detail, and post your list where you’ll see it often.
• Vision.  Visualize the results you want to achieve every day.

So welcome and embrace the new year like never before and let this be a year which will turn your life around!

Stay happy, stay healthy!

Ciao!

Fighting Inertia!

Image Credit : CORBIS

 

Its been so long since I made a post here, so very unlike me!

Though am never been in favor of excuses(I believe when I make excuses it shows that its not in my hands which is never true!), this time I want to take the liberty by blaming it on inertia!

Definition of Inertia :

The vis insita, or innate force of matter, is a power of resisting by which every body, as much as in it lies, endeavours to preserve its present state, whether it be of rest or of moving uniformly forward in a straight line.

This inertia is specially so powerful and applicable in the world of blogging/writing/any creative work! If you want to be regular be regular, if you take a break, coming back becomes all the more difficult!

I have started my fight back to being regular, for starters I have updated my “Books Currently Reading”  list and do intend to update it as and when my book shelf gets updated!

So much more to write and share…

Soon!

 

Keep watching this space!

Ciao!

Anirudh

 

The Coffee Story : Search Within and You Will Find It!

Image Credit – Corbis

This is one story which has been engraved in my mind and the hidden meaning in this story is so powerful and inspiring that it keeps surfacing on my mind from the deep corners where its been stored for ever. I don’t remember where i heard this one, may be it was on TV, movie, magazines or newspaper.

“Its a beautiful morning, slightly drizzling which makes the morning even more beautiful. A person wakes up and decides to start the day by sitting in his veranda which gives him a view-to-die for of the beautiful ocean and having a hot cuppa of coffee.

But he is surprised to see that someone has already made his coffee and his lying on the dining table. He is pleasantly surprised, takes the coffee and walks towards his veranda. He is comfortably settled down and savors the beautiful morning view. He takes a sip of his coffee but is taken aback. The coffee is very bitter. He is so comfortable that he feels very lazy to go and get some sugar and a spoon to make his coffee sweeter. So he decides to have the bitter coffee itself. He is clearly a bit unhappy but then that’s the choice he has made.

He has finished his coffee half way thru, when the next sip totally surprises him again but this time in a positive way. The coffee becomes a bit sweeter this time.

He notices that the nearer he reaches to the end of the cup and finishing his coffee the sweeter it becomes. Now he is almost reached the end when he sees something and starts laughing at himself.

At the bottom of the coffee cup there were sugar cubes. All he had to do to make it sweeter was to stir. “

Now it may seem like any other story with a good funny pay off but its a beautiful analogy to relate to each and everyone’s of our life.

The coffee is our life. When you have reached the end of the cup and can see the base, we have entered the twilight zone of our lives. We all search for happiness, peace, calm around us and by running over other material stuff like money, fame, prosperity, recognition, attention of others and so on, but we fail to realize that the real happiness lies within us all. All we have to do is stir.

So before its too late, stir and seek inside yourself and i can assure you that, you WILL definitely find whatever you are looking for.

Adios!

How do you wish a person on their Birthday/Anniversary and Why?

 

I simply love wishing people on their special occasions. And I get very nervous on my own Birthday as the entire day right from midnight to midnight, I am in the spotlight so as to speak and very lucky to have my small but close circle of friends/family wish me thru out the day! To put things in perspective I am not a voice user on my cellphone. Say out of 100%, 70% I use it for SMS, 25% for Data(Emails, Social Networking)thru Wi-Fi and remaining 5% for calls! On a full charge, my phone battery lasts easy for2-4 days if not more!

So you can take out voice from my much loved and cherished Nokia E-71 and I will still be happy, but then I do need to make some calls(specially to wish people on their birthdays!) and I have an iPod Touch for heavy data usage. (As an after-thought I think I should get an iPhone which will merge both my devices!)

But on my Birthday I need to charge my phone at-least twice if not more! And I hate being made special. But I love making other people feel special and hence my joy of wishing people on their special occasions. Now each one of us have so many days to wish other people, but just one day when the tables are turned and we are being wished. So from my own experience I know that every wish I get on my birthday be it by calls, sms, emails, etc is very very valuable for me! Yes its easy nowadays to NOT forget anyone’s birthday, but still I don’t like to take it for granted as it’s not about remembering it’s about whether anyone wants to remember. There is a significant difference!

Make no mistake, you may not feel much value by wishing other people, but you have just made the other person’s day much more valuable! You have made him/her feel special! In this mad mad world where time is always less, its not everyday people spend time for others -  even if its 60 seconds to send that sms -  and wish you, to make you feel important, to make you feel  a part of their life!

So its very important to me to choose the right way to wish those whom I really care about and want them to have the best day on their very special occasion. For my closest friends, I send them an sms on midnight and then follow up with a call during the day! I also send them a couple of messages, one for reminding them not to forget my treat and a big piece of cake(regardless of whether they are in my city or not!) and a few more asking them how their special day is going so far!

For friends, who are not very close and whom calling is bit chore for me since I really don’t know what else can we converse about apart from the customary wishes, I prefer sending them a sms. I don’t like awkward conversations or calling some one when I have nothing much to talk about. Why waste their and my time. Sms works totally fine!

Since Facebook shows me whose birthday it is – even though that person may be just a casual acquaintance – I do make it a point to go their Wall and wish them. Sometimes instead of sending sms to not so very close friends or rather casual acquaintances, I go the Facebook way!

For friends and family members(relatives) who stay outside my country(sorry people I am a miser ) and are not very active on Social Networking sites, I choose the good old Email way! In fact I prefer email than wishing on Facebook, as email takes a bit more effort and it makes me happy to take that effort!

For Anniversaries I have recently started sending a Bouquet of Flowers for those in my country. Needless to say its for very close people and I do wish both of them thru SMS at midnight and separate calls during the day or evening or night. I am a bit cautious of sending Flowers as I don’t know how will the other people react. Also the logistics in cities apart from metros and equivalent to metros is unpredictable at best. So far it has been received very well and I was glad I could do whatever I can in my own small way.

Then there are also people whom I used to wish but then somehow we distanced apart and even though I know its their birthday/anniversary I tend to avoid it. I just cant do something if I don’t feel good about it. And these are personal matters, so best to use my heart instead of my head.

In today’s age, the excuse that you forgot it was your birthday just doesn’t work. There are ways to make you remind, IF you want to, otherwise just accept that you just didn’t bother and that’s fine too! Anything done forcefully will not last long. And no one can wish everyone every-time. So if you are wishing some one, do it from your heart or don’t do it at all.

Also we have a 24 hour time period to wish, so even the travel or I was sick, etc is a lame excuse. How long does it take to send an sms, to make a call, to send an email, to go on Facebook and wish! No one, not even Barack Obama is occupied for every minute of his 24 hr day!

Wishing some one regardless of the means is a very small gesture but has huge effects…in a positive way! Try it! Make the day even more special for some one and an otherwise ordinary day for you will become special too!

So how do you wish people?

Adios!

Healthy To-do Lists!

Image Courtesy – Corbis

P.S. – This post is inspired from an article on Fast Company which I highly recommend reading.

I am sure you are well acquainted with To-do lists. Whether its done thru pen-paper, on your computer using notepad or using some cloud apps like Evernote, its something which millions of people count on to make them more effective, more productive. This post is not about why have a to-do list, its about how to make one judiciously and hence the adjective “healthy”!

To start with an analogy, we all have food-habits, however subconscious it may be. And there are definite patterns. Try writing down everything you eat for a week and you will see what I mean. Now having a food-habit is not the key, the key is whether your habit is a “healthy” one or an “unhealthy” one!

In a similar fashion, there are “healthy” and “unhealthy” to-do lists too!

Do I have your attention now?

Anything which is easy to do is also NOT easy to do. Its very easy to exercise, to be honest, to be humble, to help people, to be disciplined, to have a positive outlook, to always be optimistic, but these things are also easy NOT to do. How easy it is to skip your exercise schedule(though its really OK to skip at times to avoid the monotony of it!) specially when the trade-off is that ever so tempting sleep? How easy it is to be dishonest when making a fast buck is the result? How easy it is to be proud, arrogant when you become rich? How easy it is to be self-centered, selfish and have a false sense that everything must revolve around your needs, your desires, your views, your betterment? Very easy if you ask me!

Likewise, having a to-do list is very easy and also very easy NOT to make. I may write a separate post as to WHY have a to-do list and how it can bolster your productivity and giving you a sense of being in control of your time, but for now this post is for those who are already into to-do lists and how to further optimize it.

• Use the medium which comes naturally to you and doesn’t feel forced : There are different and endless ways to make a to-do list. It can be the good old way of using pen-paper and then ticking off as you progress. It can be in the form of using Outlook/Google Tasks or choosing from a plethora of applications available for PC/MAC/Phone. It can be offline or on the cloud(on the web). The main thing is to use what you will remember to refer to. No point having an application if you wont remember to open that application. No point having it in your phone if you don’t even remember its there. For me personally pen-paper works best as its always in front of me on my desk. So there is no way I will overlook it. I have observed time and again that when I have a to-do list I feel more control of my day and at the end of the day have a sense of accomplishment than on days when I skip the list all-together and instead wander around my time feeling totally dejected and less worthy. Its really a work-flow thing. Its not about using the best application or the best paper quality of the best quality of pen, its about what you are comfortable with. If you travel a lot it may make sense to have it on the cloud using something like Evernote, so that where you are, you have your to-do lists with you. If you have a desk job an offline tool will work fine too! Try different tools and see which sticks!

• Make a definite list, not a book : At any point of time thousands of thoughts are running in our mind. There is always so much to do and so less time. So when making lists its very easy to get carried away and having a lists which goes into pages. This totally dilutes the process as more the things on your list, less the possibility of finishing all or even giving into procrastination because it feels so overwhelming. Conversely having just a single task is also counter-productive as once you finish that task you will still wander thinking how to  make use of the remaining time. And very rarely a single task will take the entire day. So its very important to think through your to-do lists. Its nothing but planning your day out. So try to figure out the main tasks which are important(not necessarily urgent), approximate a time frame and then add another task. Ideally this should be done the previous night so that you can jump start your next day as you know what needs to be done. If for some reason you forget the previous night, devote 20-30 minutes in the morning and plan your day out. This is absolutely must. Devoting 30 mins chalking out your tasks  – instead of constantly trying to find what needs to be done – will save significant time during the day and make you super productive! Also don’t confuse to-do list with goals which can be short-term, medium-term and long term. Ideally To-do list are for the day or maximum for the second day. More than that and you are much likely to fall off-track and procrastinate.

• Prioritize deeper : Once you have a number of tasks documented, you can further enhance your productivity by prioritizing among the tasks. Say for example its your anniversary and its your duty to make a reservation for dinner at your wife’s favorite restaurant. And if you know that they don’t take reservation until an hour before they open, don’t fret yourself. Simply mark it say #5 on your list. #1 can be sending the proposal to your client, #2 can be making the doctor’s appointment who is always traveling and so on. Say you have to pay your phone bill and today is the last day. Yes it must be on your to-do list, but you need not tackle it first thing in the morning. As long as you do it today even at the end of the day, its fine! Its human nature to attend to tasks which scream urgent but are not really urgent and important against tasks which scream important but may even be urgent. The lacuna is that things which are important but not urgent – the effect, the regret of not doing doesn’t appear until its too late. Things like having a healthy life-style. Yes its not necessary that I must go to gym today, I can start from tomorrow, but then tomorrow never comes and one day you get a wake up call in terms of….you know what I mean!

• Keep your energy graph in mind while making the to-do lists : This one will take some time to incorporate as you will have to really observe yourself and your day for a few days. Lets say your actual working hours are from 9-7. That is 10 hours. Whether you are aware of not, your energy level is not same each and every hour of those 10 hours. Its like the stock market, keeps going up and down. Usually morning 2-3 hours till lunch you are at peak. Then after Lunch the energy level literally falls off the cliff. And earlier in the evening towards tea-time there is a spike in the energy level and so on. So you can time block your tasks in various hours. For example you will do all your routine tasks like paying bills, booking movie tickets, administrative tasks, etc which doesn’t require much mental energy. And keep the high energy hours -  when your mental engine is running at its peak -  for tasks that require your to “create”. Tasks like meeting a client, formulating a business proposal and so on. Working hours will differ from person to person, depending on whether are in a job or self-employed on various different factors. But the energy graph applies to one and all.

Keep the above points in mind and I can guarantee that your to-do lists and your productivity will soon be on a new level. Also remember that its OK, if sometimes you are not able to tick-mark all tasks on any given day. Carry forward it to the next day and resume your momentum. But don’t make a habit of doing this as its similar to credit card debt. Once your debt reaches a tipping point, no matter how hard you try you will always seem to be paying your bills with no end in sight!

Let me know how you make your to-do lists, as I am constantly looking for ways to improvise mine!

Adios!

Video: Seth Godin on the Difference Between Leadership and Management

About  Seth : Seth Godin is a best-selling author and a renowned name for his unconventional views on Marketing/Social Media.

There is a very thin line between a leader and a manager and its not unusual to make the mistake of substituting one for another. For me a few differences which came to my mind -

• Manager thinks short-term and a leader thinks long-term.
• A manager sees how best to utilize a person’s skill for the task at hand. A leader uncovers skills in people who were themselves not aware of it.
• A manager doesn’t connect(very few do) at different levels apart from the context of the work. A leader connects with its people at different levels and forms an attachment. Feeling attached is very important for people to accept some one as their leader.
• Not every manager can be a leader and not every leader can be a manager.
• A manager is good at execution, a leader is good at planning.

What according to you sets a leader apart from a manager?

We(Indians) are grabbing Tablets, Smartphones like never before!

So, yesterday I was at Croma at Oberoi Mall, Goregaon(E). For those who are not familiar with Croma, its a retail chain from TATA Group for Consumer Electronics and Durables. I simply love going to these stores, since they are quite huge and have probably every Consumer Electronics all under one roof, be it Laptops, Desktops, Peripheral, Mobiles, Cameras, Tablets, TVs, etc etc. They are quiet spacious, well laid out and unlike many other stores, the salespeople don’t become your shadow just so that they can”close” a deal.  In-fact I have never bought anything from Croma so far, as I found their prices a bit higher(5-10%) than what I may get outside. But its about the experience of getting a “feel” of the product you have in mind before actually buying it.

This time I had gone to inquire about iPhone4 and iPad2. As expected they had no clue as to when either is coming. Though the fault lies with Apple and to their hyper-secrecy about product launches and their release dates. And since Apple has a only-hate relationship with India, it doesn’t make it better.

The other reason I went was to get a feel of  iPad-1 and Samsung Galaxy Tab(since I really want to get a Tablet and thinking seriously about it) and also to check out the latest Android-powered Smartphones which is flooding, literally flooding the Indian market.

I was in the store for about 45 minutes and had an experience which I couldn’t have imagined a few years or even months back. So lets begin -

• There were 3 demo-iPads for customers to experience it. The entire time I was there, I couldn’t get to even one. There were people drooling over it and many more crowding awaiting their chance to get a feel of this gadget which didn’t even existed and no one heard of a few months back (Yes iPad-1 was officially launched in India only in Feb 2011, almost after 10 months since it came out in US). I was sure it will take a long time for my chance to come and hence decided to move on.

• I went to the section of iPad/iPod accessories. As I was checking out, I over-heard few conversations people were having on their mobile phones. And no I was not eaves-dropping, neither had the intention of doing it. Just that people were talking reasonably loudly and with so excitement, it was difficult to not pay attention. Each and every conversation was about people asking their friends/tech-gurus as to which Smartphone they should buy, but more importantly whether they should buy a Blackberry or an Android ones, whether they can sync it with their Outlook, whether it has a Google App so that they can be in touch with their emails, maps, calendars and so on! Wow! I was so proud to see my fellow countrymen being up-to date with latest technology and everyone wants to make their life(work, personal) more efficient, more exciting, more moving with the times. I also heard one guy talking about whether Gingerbread is the latest from Android or is it Froyo! Super-cool!

• Now before people caught me listening to them, it was time to move on. Now I was just walking casually with no particular section/product in mind to go to, when I noticed many people carry something which very closely resembled diary/notebook. I thought may be they were part of the same corporate crowd, who have just come out for some conference or going to one. But when I see youngsters(in casual attire) and many women also carrying it, I felt not all could be attending conferences. And then one women opened her diary and there it was – Samsung Galaxy Tab! So people were actually carrying their Tablets just like they carry their mobile phones! Very very interesting! Though I have to say I didn’t see a single i-Pad, everyone who had a Tablet had a Samsung Galaxy Tab! Tablet didn’t exist not too long ago and it already gained immense popularity that it has become a part of their being just like a Mobile phone! And keep in mind that Samsung Galaxy Tab is not really cheap at around INR 24k($520). So in-spite of the high entry barrier, many people are actually shelling out so much signifies the change in consumer mindset, buying preferences and that if a product is new, exciting, innovative, even if not for the masses, people would buy it if the product/marketers(think of Steve Jobs, he totally makes you believe that you HAVE to buy Apple products and how it will change your lives or make it far more interesting and fun) can create a need for them! Its a very dynamic time to be in, as far as Sales/Marketing professionals are concerned!

• Now it was time to head to my last section of Smartphones! Even though I don’t change my phones regularly I love to be updated as to what new phones are coming out, what platform they are on, the features and the price bracket! Before there used to be just one section for mobile-phones and within that section a handful were smartphones. But now there is a separate section just for smartphones and the no. of models on display far exceed the non-smartphones. And not a single person was at the non-smartphones section! While I was checking out the Samsung i9003(which is the successor to the immensely popular i9000, but which has been discontinued as the demand far exceeded the supply and the SAMOLED screen which gave it the best display ever was in deep shortage), 3-4 people came and instead of checking out the models themselves asked the sales-person as to which are the models which are 3G enabled, which are the models that support video-calling, which are the models that are Android based and whether the Android version was Froyo or something else! The last query the sales-person was slightly less informed but apart from that he was well aware of the products, which goes on to say that he gets these types of questions every single day! A lot of credit goes to the manufacturers who have been consistently dropping the prices and now you can get an Android Smartphone for under 10k($220)! People clearly don’t mind shelling out a few bucks more if they can get a fully-loaded phone! This is not to say that high-end phones are not worth, as a lot of factors come into play which dictates the price of a phone! Interestingly there was just one iPhone 3GS on display priced at around 30k($650) and expectantly no body seem to be interested in it! Well if you can get a similar phone for half the price, is unlocked why would anyone go for the overly priced iPhone! But then Apple is not known for its reasonable pricing and some may say that, it is exactly what makes it exclusive.

• My last experience is a beautiful reflection of the Indian culture. There was a family checking out few smartphones(Father, Mother, Daughter and Son). The boy must be around 10-12 years, the girl 15-18. The father and son were busy checking out the phones. The mother and daughter were engrossed spectators. Now 2 models were short-listed(I assume it was a family day out for the son to get a new phone!). Not surprisingly the son liked the model which cost slightly more than the model his father liked! Now came the climax! The son wants the one he liked. The father clearly wants to save some money, but at the same time doesn’t want to disappoint the son by dictating what to buy! As you can see its a very complicated situation! Enter the mother! Even though she has no idea about phones, she magically says something(as they were not speaking in English or Hindi, I couldn’t catch the magic-words of the mother) to her son, her son thinks for sometime and then happily agrees on the model his father had in mind! A difficult situation has been solved rather effortlessly! The entire family is happy!

To sum it up - 

• People may spend a lot of time trying out Apple products but when its time to buy, to shed some fat off the wallet, very few people buy Apple!
• Tablets are selling like hot-cakes! Though Samsung Galaxy Tab is easily outselling iPad!
• The time is in favor of Smartphones and more on the Android platform! Blackberrys are too boring, too outdated, iPhones are too expensive! Android are fun and cheap!
• There are still families, where the parents decide the gadgets for their children or at-least have a say. This group may be diminishing, but it still exists!
• There is a demand of 3G and Video-calling is very high. If the service providers can improve their infrastructure, have a reasonable pricing, people would happily pay!
• There was a time in India, when if it was priced lower it would sell. But not anymore. Price is not the only criteria where buying is concerned.

 

Surfing the net is the #1 activity people do on their Tablets, but there was no Wi-fi or rather not one available for public use inside Croma. So at-least on the Tablets, Wi-fi should be hooked up for to be able to see how the browsing experience is on a Tablet! And the reason Smartphones are gaining popularity is because of apps, this is the primary reason why still iPhone rules overall and where Android is catching up. So even while buying Smartphones people may want to see the App market and the apps available before zeroing in on a particular phone. Wi-fi is must!

 

One more thing, few people asked the sales-person as to which is the latest model from Samsung and repeatedly the sales-person mentioned Samsung Galaxy Tab! It can be used to make calls, but I don’t think it should be categorized as a smartphone for obvious reasons(Size!). Its primarily  a Tablet!

 

Adios!