Less is More — My theme for the year
To say that 2020 has been a crazy year is an understatement. For me, it’s certainly made me think harder about what matters most in life and why I should prioritize certain things over others. With that in mind, I took a short break from city life and went into the mountains to figure out what I want to focus on in 2021. My initial list was probably 20 items long and I soon realized I was setting myself up for failure.
So, for each item on my list, I asked myself — What is the downside if I don’t…
Lessons Learned from Uncharted: How To Map The Future by Margaret Heffernan
It took a long time for me to finish my first book of 2021 – almost all of January. Perhaps, that was me being jaded from reading a ton in 2020. Perhaps, it was because the book itself was a tough read. Perhaps, because authors like Yuval Noah Harari have set the bar so high to make non-fiction readable that other very well written books also seem to drag a bit?
Furthermore, my 2021 resolution is to write a review of the books I read. And a tough read meant a lot of jumbled thoughts in my head which meant…
Including my top 6 books of the year
This is the most number of books I’ve ever read in a year and also the first time that I’ve actually read the number of books I set out to at the beginning of the year!
I wanted to give folks a quick, easy review-and-rating system ala The New Yorker’s ‘Briefly Noted’ section that might help them decide if a book is worth reading or not as opposed to a detailed review of each book I read. I’ve written about my top 6 for the year and then all the other 31 books that I read throughout the year.
So…
No such thing as a $1 billion free lunch
As part of my 2021 goals, I wanted to start being more mindful of the books I read and the impact they had on me. To wit, I resolved to write a more detailed and structured review of the books I read this year. This is the first of those reviews.
This was a fun and quick read. And it made my goal of writing a detailed note about the book slightly easier. I’m always interested in companies and events that define our culture. Instagram certainly falls in that culture-defining category for me. …
Beginners’ guide to nutritious and healthy staple foods from an Indian kitchen
In 2008, I moved away from home for the first time ever. At the ripe old age of 24, I packed my bags and moved to the US to get my MBA. Never having cooked (or cleaned, or washed my clothes, or dried them, or ironed them or folded them, or mopped the floor, or dusted the house) a day in my life, I was looking forward to an unbridled life consisting of pizza, ramen, and cereal. You can imagine how long that dream lasted.
Within a month, I started craving home-cooked Indian food. With no option and hardly any…
The staid, old-school industry is ripe for disruption
I’ve been noodling with the idea of a genuinely efficient tech-forward law firm focused on immigration since 2016 when my own frustrations with the US visa process reached a boiling point.
I never took it to completion for a variety of reasons (one of them was, ironically, my own H1B visa status!). But with the current nationalistic leanings of governments worldwide, the time is ripe for a startup to disrupt the conventional immigration law-firm. And based on what I see out there, there are still no real path-breaking ideas out there.
I’m open-sourcing this for anyone who would like to…
...in India & across the globe
The health & well-being movement is well & truly here to stay in India. Individuals and enterprises alike are waking up to the fact that lifestyle diseases are a function of just that — your lifestyle. Furthermore, folks are actively seeking solutions that help them address these issues in their personal and professional lives to live a fuller, healthier life. However, it is going to be a while before companies well and truly reach the seemingly impossible ‘One-app-to-rule-them-all’ goal.
In the meantime, we can at least work towards identifying some obvious issues and finding solutions to them. Based on my…
While I love the slick look of TransferWise, I struggle to justify using it to make my transfers. To me, a transfer service should provide the following 3 things in that order:
- Best Rate
- Fast Delivery
- Security
Everything else really is just bells & whistles that are nice to have but won’t really change my decision in any material way.
Here is a side-by-side comparison of TransferWise vis-a-vis 2 other services (Xoom & Remitly) that I’ve used in the past. The rates were sourced within minutes of each other so there shouldn’t be any discrepancies.
As you can see, Transferwise…
The lure of easy-VC money and multimillion-dollar exits is, unfortunately, stifling true innovation in India.
I moved back to India (a 2nd time!) in September 2018. What amazed me was the crazy amount of startup activity that is happening in the country. It got me curious enough to do a little digging and see if there is something that truly got me excited.
The more I dug (over 5 years now!), the more I’m feeling disenchanted.
I’ll just cut to the chase — to my eyes, a majority of the…
The year is 2020 and yet, Insurers, Employers or brokers searching for a platform to serve their Health Insurance Exchange (or marketplace, in the true sense of the word) users are presented with a plethora of vendors that promise the same ‘revolutionary’ ‘innovative’ and ‘cloud-based’ solution that are barely differentiated, all touting the same features:
- Responsive design
- ‘Intelligent’ Decision Support Tools
- Subsidy Calculators
Crucial as they might be, they are simply table stakes. Nothing more. Nothing less. …
Robin Singhvi 🇺🇸👉🏽🇮🇳
Avid reader, serious wantrepreneur, plant-based foodie, digital health consultant, reluctant nomad.
