co-founder + marketing @clevertap; @mumbai_tech_; #product #tech #treks #dadjokes; LKO →AMD →SFO →SEA →BOM →🌎
Mumbai
- Tweets 45,238
- Following 240
- Followers 26,436
- Likes 23,946
Pinned Tweet
Creating a master tweet of my stories -
1) Luna + Washing Machine: nitter.app/helloanand/status/1104…
2) My "Computer" career: nitter.app/helloanand/status/9955…
3) Manufacturing Birdspikes: nitter.app/helloanand/status/1399…
4) Soap As A Service (SaaS in '90s):
SaaS is 1992 - a short story.
In 1992, while doing general timepass with a bunch of friends, one of them said that he's won a cleaning contract of a certain soap factory. Each evening after the shift work is done, he goes there with his crew to clean up the factory floor.
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Hey @Uber_India how about leveling the playing field. Pay us when the driver cancels, and we'll pay when we cancel. Fair game?
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A story on how I went from selling modems door to door to working as a software engineer in the US.
Time for a thread -
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In early 2006 I moved back from the US to start a restaurant review & listing startup called burrp!
While I had grown up in Ahmedabad, I relocated to Mumbai because that was our launch city for burrp!
I would travel to Ahmedabad on weekends to meet family.
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My 15yo painted one of the walls of the @CleverTap Mumbai office. It’s a 18x6 feet wall, and it took her 73 hours to paint it all.
Can you count how many colors were used?
The art, and the artist.
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Was irritated giving directions to the Uber driver, until I saw this message in the app. Excellent product expectation management.
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What makes my Diwali special? Spending time with my granny. She’s fit and very active at 96.
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Thread on "taking a bet on your kid" #MothersDay
I grew up in Ahmedabad. My academic years were always a struggle. During school I could never wrap my head around subjects like Algebra, Chemistry, Biology etc. Basically, the subjects that could get you into the Science stream.
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48 exercises, many don't require any equipment. #stayhealthy
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I could never learn much during my school/college days, but I’ve never given up an opportunity to learn as much as I can during work and go beyond the charter, and that’s always attracted 10x opportunities to me. I never had to go hunt for them.
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Many people want to work for a high growth startup, but only a few can stomach the changes stemming from growth, scale and speed. Most feel nervous and scared.
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Hire people with traits of coachability, curiosity and team play. Pedigree and certificates are overrated. #startuplife
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Count your blessings. That’s my granny. She’s 93, super energetic and very active. So happy to meet her.
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I have a joke on #GPT3, but I’ll let the joke write itself.
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Story of how Dattu Bhokanal got to the #Olympics. If you want to feel motivated, read this story -
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Recently I was talking to @avinashraghava about how I broke into the tech field despite having no engineering or related degree (MCA, etc.). It was part confidence and part stubbornness to not accept NO for an answer. Time for a story -
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I did ~50 installations across Mumbai and Ahmedabad.
For those interested, I sold the bird spike at Rs. 70 a running foot. 10x cheaper than the imported version. It costed me Rs. 22/piece to make.
Thanks @avinashraghava for the nudge to write about this.
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Learnings from running a #SaaS startup -
Work completed > Job titles
Outcomes > Activities
Feature adoption > Feature shipped > Item in backlog
Collection > Revenue accrued > Contracted booking
What are your learnings?
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Was explaining some SaaS marketing fundamentals to my 10yo, and she came wrote a doc on it. I think her understanding on this now far exceeds mine.
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Back off @HumansOfBombay. I say this as someone who was featured // cc: @humansofny
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That sweet moment when you're about to step out of the home, but mom asks you to go change the shirt because you don't look good. I'm 40+ and mom's 70+. #onlyinindia
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At @CleverTap we operate at some serious scale. We send over 100 billion messages a month, process about 200K incoming requests/second. This thread captures all the stuff we've written about our infra, size & scale. #engineering
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Why do most fitness ads talk about getting fit in x weeks, 6 pack abs in y weeks, losing x pounds in y days.
Fitness is a marathon. It takes months/years and not just days/weeks. So do less but be consistent & continuous. Keep at it. Don't expect miracles in days.
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Some exciting news to share 📣
Super stoked to announce our funding of $105M in Series D led by @LaCDPQ
Also participating in the round are @IIFLAMC Tech Fund, and existing investors - Tiger Global and @SequoiaIndiaSEA 🙏
More - clevertap.com/blog/series-d-… @CleverTap
#SaaS 🚀✌️
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Plane announcements have some pearls of wisdom for start up founders. For e.g. please wear your own oxygen mask first before helping others. Basically, in Bambaiya speak it means - apna dhandha sambhaal doosre ko gyaan baantne se pehle.
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I was on a Zoom call today with 300+ participants and about 10-15% of them had their video on. What a rock solid product!
All the #WFHomers - I’m curious what’s the max number of participants you’ve had in a single Zoom call?
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Announcing our new @CleverTap office in Singapore. Looking forward to serve our APAC customers even better now. #newnewthing #excitingtimes
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"I don't know and I'm willing to learn" is a good starting point for most things in life.
The problem starts when you think that you know it all and you're going to make it better.
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Wifey gave our house help staff a months salary as bonus so that they could stock up some essential food supplies. Two of them have large families.
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Some instant karma on the flight. Gave up my paid isle seat to an elderly couple for their middle seat. My isle neighbor didn’t show up in an otherwise full flight. I got isle seat with an empty middle seat. Big smiles exchanged with the elderly couple. Goodness #FTW.
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Happy to report that @CleverTap had a phenomenal 2018.
We grew our customer base by over 50 percent, adding brands such as Fandango LATAM, Discovery Kids, Cars24, Lenskart, Oredoo, Truecaller, and Vidio from across the globe.
martechseries.com/mobile/mob…
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I don't want the refund, I want them to penalize the driver that cancels after making you wait for 20 mins.
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Went for a passport renewal at 2 pm yesterday, and they sent a new one today by 2 pm. Passport turnaround in ~24 hours is fantastic! @passportsevamea your service rocks! #tatkal
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China is living in 2050
Simutaneous live-streaming on 40 accounts selling womens clothes. #Chinaecommerce
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The same reason Bollywood made a movie called Border, but Australia never made a movie called Gavaskar. You’re welcome 🙏
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. @CleverTap Named One of Forbes' Best Startup Employers 2020 - finance.yahoo.com/news/cleve…
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We @CleverTap celebrated our 5th birthday yesterday. Here are some thoughts from the last 5 years -
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The world is now split between Telegram, Signal and WA. Previously we had one problem, now we have three.
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Mom burst out laughing when she remembered that Luna + Washing Machine episode from my college days. For those who know it, you know what I'm talking about. For those who don't, ask me next time you meet me. You'll burst out laughing hysterically too.
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We had a Fafda + Jalebi party in our office earlier today, thanks to @iMayavi. He brought in a sack full (I kid you not) of F&J, and we feasted like there's no tomorrow.
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Breaks my heart to not being able to use the Paytm FASTag, especially since they had auto-recharge.
What’s the next best option?
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A touch of red to mark #10YearsOfCleverTap. Celebrating today with our customers and India team of @CleverTap
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Push notification throughput record of 26M/min by @CleverTap. That's ~433K/second.
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SaaS is 1992 - a short story.
In 1992, while doing general timepass with a bunch of friends, one of them said that he's won a cleaning contract of a certain soap factory. Each evening after the shift work is done, he goes there with his crew to clean up the factory floor.
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There are many people who connect me on LinkedIn then say they’re interested in some job we posted. I usually reply with a “send me an email with a short note on fitment”. The funnel drop off is a staggering 95%. People want the job, very few want to work for it.
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.@CleverTap is one of the fastest growing Enterprise SaaS companies, and we're looking for competent, committed, and clever folks to join our Engineering, Marketing, Design and Product teams. Apply here - angel.co/clevertap/jobs. Please R/T.
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While leading this project, in ~2 months the client was so impressed with the work that they wanted me to visit them on site. So in 1998/1999 I made two trips to the US (my visit to the airport, and my first plane ride ever).
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I met @anaggh rather unusually. We had just launched burrp! and we were getting 3-4 restaurant reviews daily. Then one evening, we saw a username called "Lashkar" sign up. The reviews immediately started pouring one after the other.
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If you’ve been asked to assist in household chores, then refrain from advising the family members on minimum viable soap for washing dishes, traveling salesman problem for the mopping, or how to control net burn for the veggies. Stay calm, and carry on the household work. #PSA
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My to-read book stack. Previously read Never Split the Difference, Nudge and Who is Michael Ovitz. Currently reading Blitzscaling. Some gifted, some advised and some bought on a whim. #books
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That startup raised $200M in their first round of funding (year 1999), I was one of the early team members hired right out of India and was incredibly lucky to work with some of the smartest. I skipped some more colorful stories in between, but promise to post them someday.
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Landed in Goa. Taxi situation -
One counter quoted ₹800 but wanted me to download app
Next counter quoted ₹1150 but said only cash accepted
last one collected ₹1300 by card then said pay ₹50 for toll in cash.
Got a cab with missing seatbelts
🙄 🤦♂️ 😱 but 🌴🌊🏝️🏖️
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Thanks @avinashraghava for reminding me that I hadn’t posted one of my hustle stories in a while.
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Scaling your startup at each stage is a really hard thing - an org trying to survive → product/market fit → building a repeatable & scalable business model → profitability. Every stage changes everything about the org - people mindset, process & ambition.
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Can’t believe it’s been a decade already for @CleverTap. Time flies when you’re having fun. Here’s to many more 🥂
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They made a special case with the US dept of labor to clear to my file since I only had 15 years of education and no STEM degree. How I got my H1-B visa is story for another day, since I didn't even go to collect my B'Com certificate.
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Over the months I earned the trust of my boss, who tell would leave the office keys with me. I would surf late into the night learning as much as I could about HTML, Java applets, reading up about technology, web servers, etc.
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Soon I would also get the additional responsibility to build websites for our industrial clients - Vadilal, Sintex, Rasna, Cadilla, etc. I taught myself Coreldraw, Pagemaker and Photoshop to add images, fonts, etc.
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If you're a startup employee/founder and haven't played a team sport like football, basketball, volleyball etc (cricket doesn't count). then enroll somewhere, and see the difference it'll make in your day to day. It's never too late to start. It'll teach you: Team > Individual.
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The view from our @CleverTap Mumbai office. It’s fabulous to be back in office and meet some team members.
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It's a proud moment for a company when their first customer from 5 years ago is still with them. Focus on customers, not competition.
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Super excited to welcome @mkyurkchiev and the @leanplum team to the @CleverTap family.
Together we will serve 1,200+ customers across 100+ countries. Looking forward to chart a 10x growth story in the next 5 years
🚀👊🙏
clevertap.com/blog/clevertap…
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Thought I had seen it all on LinkedIn until I saw “Award Submissions Specialist” as someone’s role.
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Recently stayed at a @bloom_hotels, and was pleasantly surprised by: food, stay, service, and the overall experience was superlative.
They had complimentary water and other non-alcoholic beverages not just as the reception but on each floor.
Breakfast options while not lavish, where very well thought out - including matthi with chai.
Good quality linen, mattress, and towels.
Big rooms, noise proofing, and super clean and fresh looking interiors.
Well done 👏
Thanks to @iMayavi for the suggestion.
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In a few weeks I had taught myself HTML, figured how to use third party Applets on our site. I didn't know how to write Java code, since it was Object Oriented. I knew GW Basic, FoxPro, and C back then.
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Thanks for speaking your mind. We take this as constructive feedback, and trust me, we’ll work on winning your love for CleverTap. I’ll DM you to understand where we fall short.
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Trying the @mappls app for the first time.
Convenient and accurate info on speed breakers, potholes, speed monitoring cameras, and whether to go below or above the flyover.
Take a bow @_rohanverma and team @MapmyIndia for building a 10x product 🙇♂️
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My prep for a panel discussion -
- Stationed in living room since kids are occupying other rooms
- Cooker & kitchen noise dealt with
- Wifi conked so had to connect to a dongle
- Seated next to the window for good lighting… and then heard a vendor shout “eeeaaa Bhaaji le lo” 🤦
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We broke a new internal record yesterday - processed 3.5 billion incoming data points. Most of it during smallish peak hours, and not spread across 24 hours. 🙏🏻
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In the next few tweets, I'm going to tell a tale of how burrp! got Google to pay for content.
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If you're flying Singapore Air from Singapore airport, the whole process of printing boarding pass, printing luggage tags, dropping off bags, and passing thru customs is fully automated and doesn't involve any human. End to end takes max 7 mins. Excellent efficiency!!
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Epic trek today with @miten. Dripping rain, misty clouds, and a cool breezy wind. We took Katwan route to Alexander point and down Rambaug.
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So I setup the web-servers and FTP servers for him. Then he asked me whether I knew Java programming language. I replied in the negative, but said I know C, Foxpro, etc. He said no problem we'll teach you Java if you come work for us. He offered a 10x salary. I refused.
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Besides selling networking/telecom equipment, our company also dabbled into domain registration and selling internet connections. I used to do sales during day time, and then in the evening surf around the web (hello Altavista, Excite, Yahoo, Dogpile) on the office desktop.
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At @CleverTap we're growing rapidly and looking for passionate, talented & hungry folks to join our Engineering, Product, Test and Design functions.
We're hiring for 60+ openings.
Why should you join CleverTap? Read on ...
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So I ask this person (Let's call him Mr. X) if he has a couple of minutes to check out some cool new age stuff I was working on? I showed him an early prototype of a distributed software I was working on. He liked it so much that he took me to our VP Engineering's office.
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There's been a lot of chatter about the characteristics of the 10x engineer recently. I've worked with such folks in the past. We have quite a few of them @CleverTap. Here's how you can spot/evaluate a 10x engineer when interviewing engineers -
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Been using @DuckDuckGo since morning and the quality of results for any search is astounding, probably at par with the world’s leading you know who
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After 45 mins of debate between the two, our VP Engineering looks at me and informs me, Anand you're going to lead the project. Big sigh of relief.
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