Discover New@Mrigank's

One thing, the Prime Minister of India is good at is not to get into the rat race of opposition and the media and set the agenda which suits his campaign. Modi must be the harbinger of his own disaster of Demonetization, yet this campaign helped him propel to great electoral heights and even though 99 percent of the extinguished notes came back to the RBI didn’t affect his storyline. The campaign “50 days or punish me” might have failed tangibly but the intangible effect on UP election was unprecedented and anointed Yogi as the CM in the state where communal tension has always been at its peak. “The suit boot Ki Sarkar” is still is still strong, though we still miss the Holland and Sherry Rs. 10 lakhs suit he wore in a meeting with Barak Obama. Modi is a perfect example of brand manager, he knows what to do at what time and understands the meaning of breaking the status quo and sending shivers down the opponents’ body. A person who is always in a campaign mode can’t go ...

I started my journey to Bangalore from Chennai, in a double Decker train. It’s a nice concept to carry more people on a track which is one of the busiest during weekends. There was a certain excitement in me, just like a kid when he travels for the first time in a train or a plane. I remember my first flight to Nepal, which didn’t allow me to sleep on the eve of my flight. I don’t remember my first train journey, but my mom says, I made my first girl friend during my first train experience, which is actually hilarious, knowing I would have been just 3 or 4 years old. We all remember our childhood days, the innocence that dripped from our face, even when we did something evil. Eyes starry and drooling face was the perfect enactment to emanate trust. We knew how we have to market our innocence, how to put forward our desires and each wish was fulfilled. During my stay in Delhi, I spent some time with my niece, an angel with a tinge of naughtiness and abundance of curiosity to kn...

A small recap- You have build your product, you have a small but meaning full team, who is chugging along with you and working as hard as you are, you have a co-founder which as strategically involved as you are and you have money from your elder brother and an angel investor. You have a valuation of 12 crores and a well distributed pie chart. By the dilution which has happened in recent past, is it healthy? It is good too and bad too. Good because you have a larger chunk of money to utilize and bad because you have lost certain amount share and hence control over the company. Now your employees, your co- founder, elder brother and the investor will have right to say in most of the decisions.  But that’s alright as you are the boss and you will always have the last say till you own major chunk of your company. But make sure, you involve those people only who respect your work, your product and your plans rather than shoving their plans in your mind. So, what now? ...

Opening a startup teaches you many things and researching over some taught me many things. Equity sharing is one of those learning. Let’s start a hypothetical startup called “DiscoverYou”. It has been started by you and you have done some initial work on it like some market research or initial product designing. It looked amazing and you thought about going forward with it with whatever money you have right now. Let’s us discuss the stages involved in my first article of two article series- How to manage your equity? Stage1: Your Company is still un-registered, but you have started gaining some value out of it. You look happy and have not thought about equity yet. Don’t worry just chug along for some time and enjoy the feeling of being your own boss. :-) Stage 2: Phew! It’s harder than you thought. What to do? Idea, let’s get a co-founder. You find someone who can help in making the prototype little better and is as crazy about your idea as you are for it. You find som...

Lately, “Startup” as a term has caught my attention and it’s a whole new world with endless possibilities and high riding dreams. Earlier it was considered as a “Not so cool” thing in India, where people were not ready to invest at monetary as well as daughter (Talking about marriage: P) level. But today things have changed.  Entrepreneurs have become talk of the town. Now I see, a special page in newspapers, dedicated forums and large number of investors lined up to even catch the sneeze of a startup aspirant, having a nice plan and workforce to execute it successfully. Almost every day, one learns about new B-plan they come up with, new marketing strategies; whether “Ambush Marketing” or “Single day Complementary joint ventures”, things which one can’t find in books and journals. A person starting this endeavor is like a one man army, who has to decide the line of defense (from other competitors), the strategic points of attack (targeted consumer base), the ammunition power...

DISCLAIMER It’s hard to satisfy everyone. So if someone can get offended, please don’t continue and close the browser window, and the one who want to read on this go on. Happy reading :-) ************** I am crazy about brands, how they are built, managed and how the propaganda is set for generations to come. While every brand has different USP on which it prospers, it uses two of the most important parameter to count on its success- Consumer  behavior  and Market research. A product or service can be hyper  localized  or spread across different time zones, but require consumers like us to start on a positive note, break-even, or even go with IPO. There is one brand which has always mesmerised me. It is not the P&G or Hindustan Unilever or Micromax ( having o ne of the best Marketing team in India). I am talking about ISKCON (International Society of Krishna Consciousness), an organised brand, having religion as its platform and deep rooted Kr...