Ola Money - Menace Or Delight?

Ola Cabs is currently a very popular cab/taxi aggregator service in India that provides match making services between those looking for taxis and those providing taxis. They have become popular due to the way they have adopted technology to make the taxis available to people, overturning companies like Fasttrack taxi and Wings Radio Cabs. These other companies still continue to exist and operate, but a large chunk of the taxi driver population has shifted loyalties to Ola cabs and Uber as well. Uber does exactly what Ola does, only difference being it is an american company that has started operations in India now.

Now, in their endeavour to keep up with superior competition like Uber, Ola has adopted a technology aided approach to make your taxi ride a smoother process. Going by this approach, and also believing that cash is a messy mode of payment, for the past one and half years, they have been offering a within-app wallet service called Ola Money, where you prepay and store some money in your name in their account, and that is digitally disbursed to the taxi driver you want to pay at the end of your ride. No need to run around for change. The driver gets a settlement on a per-day or per-week basis. In theory, this sounds very rosy. But implementation is a different beast altogether.

In my observation of using the Ola service coupled with the digital wallet feature, and also in my interactions with some of the taxi drivers who ferry me around the city, I have come to realise that in the name of having agility in business decisions, Ola has become a company whose payment policies can be as fickle as the human mind. Taxi drivers regularly mention ever changing payment settlement policies, what with Ola trying to factor in user feebback into payment disbursal and penalizing drivers with lower ratings. While users are getting accustomed to the convenience of not having to worry about exact change, or running short of money to pay the taxi, the taxi drivers are increasingly wary of taking digital payments because they are not clear exactly how much money will come to their hands inspite of running the taxi for the entire day. The average driver's expectation is I get a customer, I ferry them around, I ought to get paid in full for that. And when that fundamental logic in their mind doesnt match up with reality due to constant churn of policy decisions, it puts them in a spot. Result – A good number of drivers regularly ask for cash payments, and some of them go to the extent of turning down taxi bookings where customer may not pay in hard cash. And lacking a practical view of real life scenarios, the Ola app doesnt give the customer an option to choose the mode of payment when you keep money in your Ola wallet.

You can read this thread of tweets by blogger and techie Krish Ashok, and the many responses to his tweet that will give you an idea of how the digital wallet implementation of Ola lacks the angle of practicality to it. - https://twitter.com/krishashok/status/740450772459130881

In August of 2015, There have also been news reports about how the Ola APIs have been built in a less than robust way, and about how some hackers have been able to pilfer out personal information of various users. The company subsequently claims to have plugged these loopholes and fixed potential vulnerabilities.

As they say, it takes a lot of vision, commitment and foresight to build a robust business that creates a lifetime of value for itself and also for people that depend on it. Hoping that Ola does the same, and not get trapped in the cocoon of lopsided technology addiction and compulsive need to sway to the commands of their fund masters.

Illustration - An afternoon without electronic gadgets? Child's play?

I was playing with some of the kids in my society/colony and using some of the pictures clicked during that time, I created this illustration of how, in this modern day, a child's afternoon would be if there would be absolutely no gadgets around?

Here take a look - 

So how do you keep your children weaned away from gadgets? I would definitely like to know!

Design Made Easy by @Canva

Today's era is one where one needs to straddle multiple boats at the same time, and having a design sense in every little thing you do makes a lot of difference in your output.  While this is true, learning and working with the various visual design tools that are available out there (and I am specifically talking about tools like Inkscape, Photoshop, CorelDraw, Illustrator and the likes) is an area of study and an area of work in itself.

So how do these two realities co-exist and as a product designer and/or content creator how do you deal with delivering quality visual design content while at the same time focussing on your core competence, and not spending too much time learning the nitty gritties of  visual design tools?

It is for this purpose that (for a while now) I have been using this web based tool called Canva a lot.  In short, Canva helps those people who have a sense of visual design, but are not literate with the knobs and buttons that true blue visual design tools offer. And the folks behind Canva have come with a reasonably powerful yet easy to use browser based tool, that I was surprised myself when I started using it. And trust me, for all this that I have said here, Canva is super easy to use.

If you would like to read a detailed post about how things work in this tool - You can read this article titled "Any Body Can Design" by Darshan Gajara - It has enough details for you to get a good understanding of various things that you can do with Canva.


Now Canva is coming with a version of their product called "Canva for Work" and you can sign up here if you want to get early access to this version of their product.

Try it out! Happy Designing!

Languages - you can only speak so much

Reducing someone to the number of languages he or she speaks trivializes the immense power that language imparts. After all, language is the living testament to a culture’s history and world view, not a shiny trophy to be dusted off for someone’s self-aggrandizement.

Excerpt from http://ideas.ted.com/why-i-learned-20-languages-and-what-i-learned-about-myself-in-the-process/.

I discovered this link on my facebook feed today, it was shared by the good souls running the TEDxGateway page - https://www.facebook.com/TEDxGateway

Being a language aficionado myself, I eagerly clicked through to know what this article had to share, and landed on something that I myself have come to realise over the years. The following paragraphs quoted from the link above, particularly, resonate with me -

“Reducing someone to the number of languages he or she speaks trivializes the immense power that language imparts. After all, language is the living testament to a culture’s history and world view, not a shiny trophy to be dusted off for someone’s self-aggrandizement.

Language is a complex tapestry of trade, conquest and culture to which we each add our own unique piece — whether that be a Shakespearean sonnet or “Lol bae g2g ttyl.” As my time in the media spotlight made me realize, saying you “speak” a language can mean a lot of different things: it can mean memorizing verb charts, knowing the slang, even passing for a native. But while I’ve come to realize I’ll never be fluent in 20 languages, I’ve also understood that language is about being able to converse with people, to see beyond cultural boundaries and find a shared humanity. And that’s a lesson well worth learning.”

And I completely agree with the above points. Reducing someone to the number of languages that person speaks is sheer injustice to the power of expression that each of those languages bring along with them. And trust me, it takes a lifetime along with a lot of persistence, to learn any language. And even then, we need to etch in our minds that it will still be only a tool to communicate, and that the actual communication is a skill that resides in our brain, that needs constant nurturing. When these two come together, is when the magic happens. And the language that you spend the time most on, will become your language of fluency. And it is ok to not be fluent in 'N' languages, your ability to communicate matters more.

And this is why, perhaps, one of the slokas in my sanskrit lessons from my 10^th standard lesson says that to be able to speak sentences that are non-provocative, yet true, yet are kind on the ears and beneficial to the person hearing it, yet reflecting what is put to practice from one's self studies, is akin to penance, a penance of speech, a penance of the spoken word. The original text -

अनुद्वेगकरं वाक्यं सत्यं प्रियहितं च यत् |
स्वाध्यायाभ्यसनं चैव वाङ्ग्मयम् तप उच्यते ||

And I am sure, my english teacher who blogs at https://forstudentswithlove.wordpress.com/ will agree with this.

Of accepting realities and living life inspite of it

This is more a self-conflict-acceptance-trying-to-deal-with-it post. So expect more rant than rationale. Of late, I have been having to deal with a slew of (totally undesirable) health issues that keep prompting me to take a sabbatical from work. I am trying very hard (combined with a very understanding workplace) to not give up a role that came to me after a lot of hard work.  But, the mind is a beast which is very difficult to control in times of difficulties. So it wavers from being very strong to very weak - all within the few hours of a day. The most easiest part of my life are my night sleeping times when I dont have to think about anything in particular.

Want to and need to get past this phase ASAP.

Looking back to 2011

Today, I happened to go through my photo collection in my hard disk.  After I was done admiring my lean and trim self from then, I got into a complaining phase about myself, but coming to think of it.. A life with no change is a life not lived. So all good here, just physically heavier by some kilos.
Getting back in shape is the agenda this year.

A Happy Christian New Year 2015

Life is often all about perspective - a point of view. The way one views the same situation makes all the difference in the way one will react to it!

May your Christian year 2015 be filled with a positive perspective always --

Here is a picture to echo this predicament --

This is captioned - "Its all about the perspective"

Why Narendra Modi should not become Prime Minister of India

I have great appreciation for Mr Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat, India. The media and hence a lot of people give the colour of religion, autocracy, and too much control. So much that they provide automatic prime time coverage for him, without him moving so much as a finger for it.

So, do you think all that is false, is what you might want to ask me. My answer is simple. What the media reports I have not seen/experienced. Nor has anyone I know closely. And I firmly believe this - as much as it tries to position itself as the torch bearer of truth for the common people, the news media industry in itself is a sort of a racket considering its eternal quest for sensational news. And when I see good work being carried out successfully in whatever little measure, I believe that one should appreciate it, understand how it has succeeded, take cues from it and move on to apply it in one's own life and works.

So when I try to analyse Mr.Narendra Modi's profile as chief minister, as administrator of a state, I give the news media's information a benefit of doubt and take it that this man has failed on certain counts. But after that, he has also succeeded on certain counts. And I want to emulate the right things that he has done. And I believe everyone should do the same. Complain, crib and cry over his mistakes. But after that if you dont learn from his successes, then you have succeeded in one thing - in failing to make a rational observation.

And if we say that Mr.Narendra Modi should become Prime Minister of India next, it means this - We promise to be inefficient cribbing people, who know to complain and blame, but do not comprehend the word "action". Its like promising to yourself that you will certainly look to appoint a person to flush your toilet, rather than just extend your hand and turn the lever.

Come, and be the force that should take India forward. 
Think about it.

PhotoCredit - http://indianexpress.com/photos/picture-gallery-others/indian-prime-minister-narendra-modi-takes-charge/1/