Let us build something big

Entrepreneurship is a mindset that teaches how to identify opportunities in a variety of settings and prods to act upon them. This is the mindset that is driving me at TiE. The involvement of a large number of CMs in various initiatives is in fact encouraging me to think big and launch new initiatives and scale up the existing ones. I see lot of opportunities everywhere and trying to work on as many initiatives as possible.

Of the many new initiatives we put together, closest to my heart is Cohorts which is off to a good start. This is the biggest value CMs get from TiE membership. TiE Grad Programme, started by Pradeep last year, is another initiative i am quite enthused about. We are trying to scale-up the initiative and partner with a large number of leading Institutions so that we can evangelise entrepreneurship on a greater scale amongst student community.

We are missing a paltform that profiles TiE members, helps them collaborate with each other, and enables them to schedule private meetings and track outcomes. A team consisting of Bhat Dittakavi, KV Reddy, Srinivas Satti, and Ekta Bahl led by Rajesh Pagadala did a detailed evaluation of various collaboration products available in the market before zeroing in on Hubilo, that enabled 1200 GES delegates to collaborate. We are introducing Hubilo app shortly.

We have redesigned TiE newsletter as TiE Today, to bring more visibility of members and its activities to the wider community and on-boarded Bhat Dittakavi as the editor. We are trying to make it a very useful medium of communication for TiE Hyderabad and i urge the members to reach out to Bhat if you want to be part of the editorial team or you have great stories to share.

Cohorts is for development and bonding, Hubilo is for engagement and TiE Today is for showcasing their achievements. This is just the beginning and you will see more as we progress. Come let us build something bigger so that the world recognises that we are the best in class entrepreneurs.

Choose Your Battles Better
Engineers by nature are good at solving problems. Successful entrepreneurs are good at finding right problems to solve. TiE has been catalytic in transforming problem-solving engineers into problem-finding entrepreneurs. Back in 2009, an engineer returned to India from USA to build a healthcare start up. He took seed fund from friends and families. TiE Hyderabad advised him to downsize his cap table and as a result he paid off his
 initial seed investors. That advice enabled him to onboard marquee investors. Today he has 133 dialysis centres in India. That engineer is Vikram Vuppala of Nephroplus, India’s number one dialysis chain.

Back in 2006, another engineer from Bangalore solved an ERP problem for bus operators whereas the real problem is unsold inventory. Later on, the same engineer had to raise funds and he had no clue about investors. Both times he approached TiE for guidance and followed their advice. In 2014, he successfully sold that business for $101 million. That engineer is none other than Phanindra Sama of Redbus.

I am an engineer too. Before starting my first business back in 1999, I have attended a TiE conference in New York area. Companies like Infospace and Sycamore Networks were riding the dotcom wave and I was privileged to learn the success stories from the Indian founders of these companies. Like in the case of Vikram and Phani, TiE has played a catalytic role in my entrepreneurial success too. As a chartered member, I am glad that I do my part in fostering entrepreneurship in Hyderabad.

At the heart of every TiE chapter lies a gold chest of successful entrepreneurs called chartered members. If TiE has helped you move an inch closer to your goal, please do reciprocate by helping others move miles closer to their destination.

If you are a founder or a businessman, here are couple of ways to increase your daily efficiency at work.

Before you sleep
Founders are time crunched as they must juggle highly scarce resources. Many a times, they come home late night after long hours and relax by watching television before they hit the bed. First thought of the morning will be the last thought of the night. Do you want to wake up every day with the breaking news of last night? Spare ten minutes about day’s progress, things to do or challenges of next day before you hit the bed. Your subconscious is like the magic lamp that gives you answers. Each one of us is gifted with one. Bring the lamp out of the closet, dust it off and fuel it with right questions before you sleep.

We let overseas companies take advantage of outsourcing work to India with the difference in time zone. What stops us from outsourcing our work to our own subconscious mind every night. This is like you are getting grants every night with no equity dilution!

After you wake up
Your mind is very sharp during the first hours after you wake up. Get things done in those hours. Many founders prefer to work late and wake up late. If you sleep when the sun is up, you send mixed signals to your brain. Our natural circadian rhythm is tuned with sun. Preserve it as much as you can. As your Startups in this globalization era scales, you will travel across time zones and waking up with the sun keeps you fresh, active and energetic. Remember that early morning hours especially 4:30 am to 7:30am are the best hours.

As you go after chasing your dream by fighting small battles every day, days turn to weeks and weeks turn to months without your notice. Time to time, keep your head out of your routine and reach out to a mentor who has been through your path, your stage and your industry. Who knows, he or she may help you choose your battles better.

Written by Bhat Dittakavi, serial entrepreneur and founder CEO of Variance.AI as editor of TiE Today series, a TiE Hyderabad initiative.


Sridhar’s Empire: CtrlS, Cloud4C, Pioneer, Iconic || 1600 employees || Cloud4C Rs.250 crores revenues || 26 worldwide locations

Family: Two sons || Sriram 10th || Kris 5th

Sridhar Reddy is a pioneer in establishing the first ISP called ‘Pioneer Internet’ in Hyderabad. He is also a pioneer in building a data centre right in the middle of Hyderabad’s HITEC City during the recession of 2008. No wonder his first company was named Pioneer. The view of the road to Inorbit from his 7th floor suite at Pioneer towers is spectacular. As the road transformed from an open space to skyscrapers in the last decade, Sridhar transformed Pioneer from a single Indian entity to a global conglomerate of four companies in the space of Data centres, infrastructure and IT services.

When complacency hits a business, it gets disrupted. Sridhar knows this well. He never lets himself nor his team to settle for the laurels of success. He keeps disrupting himself to keep ahead of his competition. He’s made at least 200.innovations till date.

Earlier days
Sridhar hails from Bhuvangir. After studying in telugu medium till high school, he graduated as a civil engineer from CBIT. His dad had a small drilling business. As a teenager, Sridhar used to go around with his dad to the borewell sites. While his friends had fun during summer breaks, Sridhar got busy helping his dad.

“I have never worked as an employee. At the age of 19, I hired my first employee. I started building software applications when I was in the fourth year of my engineering. I didn’t know much of programming so I hired programmers.”, said Sridhar.

ISP to ERP for ISPs
In the early 2000s, Pioneer was hit hard with receivables and they almost went bankrupt. Despite hardships, Sridhar never let go off the staff. He moved 75% of the staff to IT consulting for the Indian biggies. Slowly he turned the business around. He did ERP for ISPs all in a box called Allauddin with minimal implementation time. Very soon he conquered 80% of the ERP market for ISPs.

Birth of CtrlS
Between 2002-2007, internet bandwidth prices started to crash. Pioneer pivoted from ISP services to hosting services. It could never compete with the rivals as they had deep pockets. Sridhar sensed an opportunity at the onset of rapid growth of industries catering to Fibre and high connectivity. He started CtrlS data centres as the next logical profression.

“When data centre businesses worldwide were in doldrums, I got excited and ventured into data centres. That is the beginning of CtrlS.”, said Sridhar. During 2003 to 2005, data centres were mostly used for website businesses. Sridhar could predict that big enterprises will eventually move up the chain to data centres as higher bandwidth became more accessible. CtrlS in action
Funding challenges
Setting up a data centre requires huge capital. It was the time when banks never gave loans to data centres. Luckily Sridhar had built a good credit history with banks over years. He also built a great relation with SBI, as they had been his banker. He approached SBI for a capital expenditure loan of Rs. 17 crores. SBI took eight months to approve, during which they hired IIT Chennai for doing the due diligence and audit on the project.

Getting the second power line
Right of way, two substation access, getting the second power line are all part of the many prerequisites for a tier 4 certification. Sridhar was ready to invest into this at any cost.

“I knew getting a special GO is important. We tried to convince the government. This was in 2008. I prepared a three-page document with only 30 hours of preparation for just an eight minutes meeting. Two minutes for describing a data centre and ‘tier 4’. Talked about the value add in having it in India. I figured it would help the distribution company. Two lines means no loss in revenues for them when a power line is down. The IAS officer agreed. Then we moved onto electrical engineers. They suspected I was doing a scam to steal power. It took me 18 months to convince and get special meters and get them tested. All of this is at my own cost.”, detailed Sridhar.

Customer acquisition
Convincing Indian customers was another challenge. Tata, Reliance and Airtel were CtrlS’s competitors. These top brands invested massively on their own Fibre. How could CtrlS get customers? No capital. No data centres. No customers. Sridhar striving on challenging and getting customers on board was no different.

“I came to know a big bell of the west was searching for a data centre provider to setup a global node in Hyderabad. I reached out to SKM, S Krishna Murthy of ESKAYEM who built Citi Bank’s data centre. He shared some of his best designs with me. The telecom giant looked up my record and they heard good things from my customers and bankers. The drawings we submitted were the best. All the big brands already in this space come with lot of inflexible terms. We are agile to do whatever customer wants. I wanted the prospect to be highly critical of our design and work. We picked the best practices from around the world for this telecom operator.”, explained Sridhar.

Today, 15 of the global fortune 100 are Sridhar’s clients. 30 of ET’s top 100 too. Top ones of any Indian industry vertical are their clients.

Secret Sauce
CtrlS provides tier 4 data centre services at the same cost of tier 3. Clients trust CtrlS because they are the only Tier 4 certified data centre in India. CtrlS is extremely energy efficient. They spend 20% less energy than their competition.

Tier 4 certification mandates a minimum of two power lines. There are dozens of such other stringent requirements that one needs to comply. European and US authority, Uptime and TIA942 respectively, have set these standards and they have certified CtrlS.

Today, CtrlS has four Data centres. Bombay data centre is 150,000 sft in size. The one in Bangalore is 180,000 sft in size. Their second data centre in Hyderabad is coming up next month in Gachibowli. Sridhar is planning to launch a hyper scale data centre with the consumption of 100 MW and above in Mumbai soon.

Cloud4C, fastest Hyderabad Startup
Sridhar started Cloud4C in 2014 as a community-cloud that works as disaster recovery for ultra large enterprises. Within two years, Cloud4C has grown to Rs. 250 crore run rate with its presence in 13 countries.

Banks can’t outsource to public clouds. Critical sectors for very large work load don’t have a cloud as they are restricted by regulatory and governance policies. How about those companies that need 20TB kind of cloud? One of the top three telecom companies, when they need very large instance, where do they go?

Cloud4C is in 26 physical locations worldwide. Sridhar aims to be present in 30 countries soon.

Cloud4C versus CtrlS
CtrlS is for co-location and private cloud (managed service). Cloud4C is vertical specific.”Cloud for Banking sector needs twenty plus tools to maintain their security. File and data integrity, access integrity and integration of all. Then the need for RBI compliance. This is like Z category security for an enterprise.”, said Sridhar.

Partnership with SAP
ERP of large enterprises need big control. SAP4Hana and Cloud4C are good partners worldwide. Cloud4C is planning a big launch later this month at Bangalore.

Rapid fire with Sridhar
Bhat) Describe yourself in three words
Sridhar) Entrepreneur, ambitious and innovator

Bhat) What would be your lifelong dream?
Sridhar) Be on top of the world every day. I want the biggest net promoter customer (NPS) in the services industry. We are targeting to reach 50+for our next year from our 35+ current score. I have one permanent dedicated employee to work with customer satisfaction. This resource gets daily feedback from the customers.

Bhat) If you are stranded in an island, what two things would you want with you?
Sridhar) Water. I think of what I can do or add value even if I were alone in that island.

Bhat) What compliments do people give you most?
Sridhar) People say I am honest and they trust me.

Bhat) What have you done that you are most proud of?
Sridhar) My life is filled with them. I feel proud about myself every day with something that I achieve. I challenge everything conventional.

Bhat) Leader or follower?
Sridhar) Servant leader. Our organization chart is a reverse pyramid. I notice that this is not scalable. We have an aggregate 1600 workforce in all the four companies.

Bhat) Define happiness?
Sridhar) State of mind. You are genuinely on top of the world when you are happy. Customer delight is the biggest factor on my happiness. I am super truthful.

Bhat) When was the last time you laughed out loud?
Sridhar) All the time.

Bhat) Four things you would change about yourself?
Sridhar)
1) Spend more time in empathizing with people. Instead of running meeting after meetings.

2) Wish the people around instead of being on phone as I walk in the building.
3) improve the presence of mind a bit more. As my mind is continuously solving problems.
4) Spend more time on my passions like Scuba, Art of Living and Vedantha academy.

Bhat) What is the first thing you think of in the morning?
Sridhar) Just start working.

Bhat) What will you never do?
Sridhar) Let down a customer.

Bhat) What did instil this customer consciousness in you?
Sridhar) I read “Good to Great” by Jim Collins. Instead of working for money, I started working for greatness. My days are fun-filled now. I have become an addict of it. Customer delight is my newfound drug.

Bhat) The next big thing?
Sridhar) I want to establish one more company this time in impact space. The next big thing according to me is a symbiosis of many emerging technologies. If I have time, I will connect emerging technology dots and start dreaming to envision the future. Opportunities will show up in tons.

Bhat) What do you fear the most?
Sridhar) I have disrupted many and someone may disrupt me in future. Be on continues watch guard. I disrupted myself four times in last eight years. I changed ourselves constantly with the state of the art and future prediction. I could predict three disruptions in my industry before they could happen. I discouraged top three performing products and killed those products. If we didn’t do, we would have gone bankrupt. You never like to settle.

Bhat) What frustrates you?
Sridhar) Not getting customer delight. I worked two months in the knock room all by myself.

Bhat) What do you do off work?
Sridhar) My week starts on Sunday evening. I stay away from golf as I know I can get addicted to it. I do motor biking and I do cycling. I do biking in one of the Himalayan ranges or mountains every few months. I got two motor bikes.

Bhat) What is your lifetime goal?
Sridhar) I see it as a journey. Every other year I start a new division or a new company. I have four companies now.

Written by Bhat Dittakavi of Variance.AI on “Sridhar Reddy: A Self-Disruptive Entrepreneur” on 2nd Feb 2018 as part of TiE Today Series, a TiE Hyderabad initiative.

Family: Suresh IIT-KGP | Wife Laxmi || Daughter Malavika IIIT || Son Mayur IIT-B

Empire: Lycos || 24 countries || 400 global employees || 2500 crores in annual global revenues

Behind the soft-spoken Suresh Reddy is a resilient entrepreneur with an uncanny ability to raise $100 million to acquire and consolidate dozens of ad network firms across the globe. His digital marketing company “Lycos Internet” is an India-listed company with Rs. 2500 crores in revenues from offices in 24 countries.
In the 1990s and before the era of Google, Lycos and AltaVista were the internet. GeoCities and Tripod were the web sites. Lycos changed hands and its offerings over 20 years to be christened as Lycos – Internet of Suresh.


The Lycos Hyderabad office is welcoming with vast open spaces and ventilation. Double story ceilings, open cubes, glass walls and doors with a black and white interior blend that goes well with Lycos logo and theme. “I asked my interior designer to see the movie Intern before coming up with this design”, said Suresh. “We leveraged the high ceiling, pillars, ducts and pipes of the shell to make a highly elegant design at a low cost.”, he added.

Early life
Born and brought up in Bangalore and high schooled in Hyderabad, Suresh graduated along with his hostel friend Arvind Kejriwal, current Chief Minister of Delhi, as a mechanical engineer from IIT-Kharagpur in 1989 before doing his masters from Iowa State. While working at Caterpillar in Detroit in 1993, he visited India just for ten days and returned with Laxmi as a married man.

Riding the Dotcom Wave
In 1994, Suresh and his childhood friend Vijay Kancharla came up with the idea of Greeting cards for Christmas. They called it USAgreetings.com. They were doing this as a part-time gig, but it attracted so much traffic that ISPs used to call them again and again to upgrade their servers. In 1998, his then Russian colleague from Charles Schwab and a classmate from IIT joined them and the four of them opened their first office in San Francisco with Hyderabad as a back office. Investor partner MediaRing from Singapore gave voice to their online greeting cards using VOIP. Within a year, they had built 10,000 greeting card designs with the support of their Hyderabad office.

As a backbone of Ad Networks
With the dotcom craze and bust, they realized markets need digital marketing. Demand for digital marketing for online ads has gone up. Post dotcom crash, sites that got content with traffic transformed into Ad networks that connect publishers with advertisers. USA Greetings was rebranded as “Ybrant Technologies” and has become the backend technology for ad networks. Ybrant soon had grown to 150 clients from 2001 to 2005. Revenues were stuck at $5 million range for few years.

Organic to Inorganic
They wanted to do forward integration. Though they understood Ad Networks, they didn’t know how to get the advertisers. Growth was getting tougher and they decided to acquire their own customers to bring in inorganic growth. There were big specialty players like Valueclick, Aquantif, 24X7 Real Media and Blue Lithium.

“We have approached some of our clients. One was in banner, one was in email and one was in international markets. We bought all these three clients one day with 20% as down payment. We told them we pay the remaining 80% within 6 months to 12 months. If not, they can have their company back. It was a very good deal for them.”, said Suresh.

Suresh and team got Samsar capital to invest $20 million and used the surplus to acquire more. Between 2007-2010, they made 10 acquisitions. They brought in Asia Pacific capital, Oak investments & Battery March funds together and all in all they raised $100 million.

YBrant Digital to Lycos
They picked ad market specialists by each vertical. As they started venturing into ad network business, they called themselves Ybrant Digital.

“In 2010, we bought Lycos. First time, we got into publisher business. To our backend, first ad marketing, and now Lycos media was added. Since Lycos got the big brand, we rebranded Ybrant to Lycos.”, said Suresh with a spark of excitement in his eyes.

In 2014, Experion, one of the four credit rating agencies of US, wanted Lycos Internet to acquire their portfolio companies Pricegrabber, Lowermybill and one more. “Then the deal fell through and meanwhile we got Lycos Internet public in India through a merger.”, said Suresh.

Future
Suresh bets that the Internet is going to be an all-pervading medium with IoT.

“Keeping this in mind, we built Lycos Life, a band to tag and identify you as a user in this all-pervading medium. We attached fitness to it as immediate value for people to purchase our product though long-term goal is to make you interact with internet without a phone. We are still betting high on the shift from “people learning internet” to “internet learning us”, added Suresh.

Rapid fire with Suresh

Bhat) Describe yourself in three words. Your family members Too?
Suresh) Risk taker, clarity seeker and people’s person. Daughter is idealistic and son is street smart. Wife is a very good mother.

Bhat) What is one thing you own you wish you didn’t?
Suresh) I own up my assets. If an asset I have didn’t work for me, it makes me resilient and I will make it work.

Bhat) What would be your lifelong dream?
Suresh) Create a brand of very large global significance. Make it part of daily life of people.

Bhat) If you are stranded in an island, what two things would you want with you?
Suresh) My family. Coming to things, after basic necessities such as food and water, I want music and a book.

Bhat) What compliments do people give you most?
Suresh) Resilient. Goes after anything that he has put his focus on.

Bhat) What have you done that you are most proud of?
Suresh) Started from nowhere and created lot of employment and product services.

Bhat) Leader or follower?
Suresh) Leader

Bhat) Define happiness.
Suresh) Peace

Bhat) When was the last time you laughed out loud?
Suresh) A week ago. Frequently.

Bhat) Four things you would change about yourself?
Suresh) Punctuality, Fitness, More white space and Family time

Bhat) What is the first thing you think in the morning?
Suresh) First thing in the morning, I get an insight on cause of discomfort from the prior day. I sleep very well. My Lycos Life band revealed to me that early mornings are deepest in sleep. I started waking up little late.

Bhat) What will you never do?
Suresh) I don’t want to say anything. I am fine with whatever it is.

Bhat) The next big thing?
Suresh) Longevity goes to two hundred years.

Bhat) What do you fear the most?
Suresh) My retirement which I don’t have a hard stop as an entrepreneur.

Bhat) What frustrates you?
Suresh) Rudeness of others. Sometimes my own rudeness.

Bhat) You are an IITian, your daughter is a IIITian and son is at IIT. Is this by design?
Suresh) I was in Bangalore with family many years ago. Impromptu. I took my kids through all the places in Bangalore that I lived and studied and showed them all. I went to my old school. That night I was disturbed. Next day, something bothered me. At the next opportunity, I took the kids to IIT Kharagpur. I showed them around. It caused some discomfort in me that night again. When I showed schools around, it might have put some thought in our kids. After high school, my son told me to give him three years to pick up on his grades. Both the kids were not class toppers till 8th, then they started getting better. My daughter got into Ramayya.

Employee testimonials
“We are like a family. 60% of the workforce is twelve years old. They stuck with us during thick and thin as they believe in the management. We are proud of our brand. Everyone is treated like a family member, we all pitch in for each other. Those who left us keep coming back to us.”, said GM Krishna Mohan.

“Suresh inspires everyone and is a great mentor. He treats everyone the same right from the office boy to GM. He is highly accessible, and we feel free to talk to him.“, he added.

“Lot of freedom at work. Suresh is a great mentor. He connects with us well, makes learning in life as well as learning in work easy and shares about leadership, life and philosophy. I have every day learning. We discuss work on devices. He is open to receive feedback. Lycos is fun and vibrant place.”, said Rema, Lycos spokesperson.

“When we moved into this new office, we made a video that got popular. We had the whole script written with story boarding and professional videography.”, ended Rema.

During school, Suresh moved from Bangalore to Hyderabad. During college, he moved from Civil to Mechanical. While employed, he moved from engineering in Detroit to programming in Silicon Valley. As an entrepreneur, he moved from Greeting cards to digital marketing. As a family, he moved from the valley back to Hyderabad. Every time he made a switch, things got bigger and better for him.

Watch out. His next move will be from Lycos Internet to “internet that learns on its own”. It is only a matter of time before Lycos will be riding on a happy bunch of employees and billions of dollars. Self-disrupting Suresh and his loyal team got the character and resilience to get Lycos to get bigger and better.

Written by Bhat Dittakavi of Variance.AI on “Suresh Reddy: A tale of Resilient Leader” on 2nd Feb 2018 as part of TiE Today Series, a TiE Hyderabad initiative.

  • TiE Hyderabad’s TiE Young Entrepreneurs Finale

TiE Hyderabad successfully completed the 5th Season of TiE Young Entrepreneurs on 12th January 2018, 43 students from 20 schools of Telangana participated and competed in the business plan competition. Team Pop&Lick was declared Winner and Team Nurture was declared the Runner-up of TYE Business plan competition 2017-18.

  • Leadership Series – Scaling with Global Investors.

The Leadership series that took place on 22nd Jan 2018 titled, “Scaling with Global Investors” saw renowned investors like Robin Osmond, Gerald E Coughlan of Monashee Investment Management. In this series we witnessed the speakers talk about their Entrepreneurial journey, the impact Global markers can create etc. Topics such as What do “global investors” look for in companies? What makes some of them more attractive than others? Scaling with all stakeholders is important: how to take care of shareholders, employees, customers? etc were discussed.


Machines – A new perspective for human excellence

Machines are coming. They are coming in different forms, shapes and sizes that we don’t even realize. Sophia, the robot, has become a regular speaker in international conferences off late. More than physical robots roaming on streets, I anticipate software robots spreading their wings across inter-connected cyber networks of IoT devices, industrial sensors and appliances of all kinds.

Robots are good news for economists. Until now, we have had land, labor and capital as limited resources, what economists define as three factors for production. Do robots replace labor? The answer is no. Robots will become fourth factor of production. It means, we make more goods faster, cheaper and better. This is good news for economy in general. There will be some robots replacing some work performed by humans. This leads the future of human work to imagination, creativity and strategy as stated by Joseph Pistrui, professor at IE Business School in Madrid.

Machines give humans a bigger opportunity to upskill. Not every human is cut to foresee such an opportunity to up-skill themselves. They are innovators who empower themselves with emerging technologies that make them employable. These are the ones who switched gears and signed up with online courses back in 2012 and then now draw six figure salaries as data scientists. Then there are early adapters who are nimble. Then there will be early majority that move with the trend and catch up with the running train. The innovators are secured. The early adopters are stable. Even the early majority are fine as they move along with the trend. Laggards are ones who get the worst impact of machines. Like the ones who never upgraded their Windows XP to Windows 10 until Microsoft stopped supporting Windows XP.

Machines are very good at efficiency, productivity and mass production. Humans are wired with Strategy, creativity and imagination. Machines are tactical where as Humans are strategic. Machines are productive where as Humans are creative. Machines do where as humans imagine. Emotion is the undercurrent that makes humans strategic, creative and imaginative. Mark Zuckerberg called it revenge energy – that drove him to reach higher. Without empathy, Martin Luther King would have never made the “I have a dream” speech. If not for the greater good of humanity that drives his life’s second innings, Bill Gates would have pushed the boundaries of his business to trillions of dollars.

When John F Kennedy proposed the national goal of landing on the moon, it was an emotional decision. An emotion to set sail on new a frontier with an utmost certainty for knowledge to be gained for progress of the people. An emotion that drives citizens to excel in world. Emotion is beyond greed and accumulation. Emotion comes with a purpose that sets a vision. Creativity, imagination and Strategy are just the by-products of that vision.

Be an early adopter of modern technologies. Let machines be the means and instruments to drive your purpose. Yes, death is greatest innovation of mankind as Steve Jobs once said. Death gives newer generations, reasons to bear the torch and lead the unchartered territories. Evolution of humans is what distinguishes them from the mushrooming machines. To automate or not is not the question one should ask. Ask yourself, “how do I strive for excellence”.

Written by Bhat Dittakavi of Variance.AI on “Machines – A new perspective for human excellence” on 16th Feb 2018 as part of TiE Today Series, a TiE Hyderabad initiative.