Talk of Many Things – Page 11 – Personal Blog of Ketharaman Swaminathan

Utilities: New Source Of Subscription Trap

8 March 2023

Media, OTT, SaaS and other recurring-revenue businesses generate revenues from subscriptions funded by credit card- (or debit card-) based standing instructions that automatically charge the cardholder's account every month. As…

How AI Can Take Readability Of Bills And Statements To The Next Level

1 March 2023

In Bills And Statements Are Hard To Decipher, we noted that it was very hard to read bills and statements from banks, ecommerce companies, retailers and other industries. We took…

eBill Vendor Increases Upsells And Improves Win-Rates

22 February 2023

Here's our latest success story: eBill Vendor Increases Upsells And Improves Win-Rates "QRcomaniacs" reinforce vendor's thought leadership positioning Our customer is a leading provider of eBilling and eStatment solutions to…

Shortselling For Normies

13 February 2023

(This is a commentary on how shortselling works and not a guide to carry out shortselling.) I recently posted the following update on social media: @s_ketharaman: Startup Idea: Hindenburg Research…

Revisiting Recurring Payments On The First Anniversary Of RBI Emandate

8 February 2023

According to RBI Emandate: Every credit card and debit card based mandate for recurring payment and auto debit (“Standing Instruction”) will need to be re-initiated by the merchant in accordance…

Twelve Gotchas In Matheran

5 February 2023

Over the years, I've visited many hill stations near and far including Genting, Gulmarg, Kodaikanal, Lonavla, Mahabaleshwar, Mount Titlis, Ooty, Pahalgam, Soanmarg, and so on. However, it was only recently…

Why Are Bills And Statements So Frigging Hard To Decipher?

1 February 2023

People regularly complain that it's very hard to decipher bills and statements from banks. Rant from Quora: Why are the description info on Bank Account Statements so confusing? We cannot…

Three Ways To Screw Up A Sales Incentive Policy

25 January 2023

(This post is a slightly edited version of my answer to the above Quora question.) Legalese is the least of your problems when it comes to sales incentive policy. The…

Core Engineering Degrees v. Noncore Engineering Jobs

18 January 2023

Many people complain that graduates from mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, and other "core engineering" branches take up jobs in IT, banks, consulting firms, and other "noncore engineering" sectors. This is…

Test Drive: SafetyNet – Overdraft Avoidance Open Banking Fintech

11 January 2023

SafetyNet is a UK Open Banking fintech that provides Overdraft Avoidance. While the uninitiated can Google “overdraft protection” for a prosaic definition of the term, Stanley Bing offers the following tongue-in-cheek description…