Weddings of Friends

 Kshitij wedding

My birthday 2017

 v

The Bridge of Logic_Last Leg

 Hi,

Test

Ideal Business Model Design

 How should businesses be designed theoretically?

I'll be answering this question using a combination of theory and practice. For the sake of non--business audience, let me first define a metric called NPS (Net Promoter Score). After using a product/service, the business owner sends a survey to the customer asking to rate from 1 to 10 on how likely is the customer to refer the service to a friend. People who give 9 or 10 are called Promoters | 7 and 8 rating are given by Passives | 1 to 6 rating is given by detractors. The NPS score is the % of people who give a rating of 9 or 10 minus %of people giving 1 to 6. It's a measure of customer service/satisfaction. Higher the NPS, the better it is for the business. 

Ever since businesses have started, the objective of businesses has been to maximize profits. That is the starting point in B-schools across the world. That is the primary objective. Businesses state that customer satisfaction is also equally or more important. Profit maximization requires reducing costs at every point of the customer journey. Increasing customer experience/satisfaction involves increasing costs at every point of the customer journey. Today's businesses largely operate trying to balance out between these 2. 

If there is conflict between the 2 goals, typically business prioritize maximizing profits. And this conflict exists in every business out there. This is a direct conflict and usually what ends up happening is businesses prioritize profits at the cost of customer happiness. This leads to a substandard product being sold to the customers. 

Imagine a world where businesses operated where the metrics were reversed - Maximize customer satisfaction at whatever cost would be the objective. Revenue would naturally follow. If that sounds impractical to you and a costly affair, let me give you an example. 

'Assume that you want to start a business and you don't have capital. You have identified a large gap in the market which you can fill. And you want to get capital for this project. Assume for the sake of this theoretical discussion that you get access to an investor with infinite capital and he asks you to come up with a business plan for the project. Will you now design your business to maximize profit or maximize customer satisfaction at whatever cost. 

In the Maximize profits model, at every customer touch point, you'll try to save on costs which affects NPS at that touch point. This would lead to a lower budget for the project and you might come up with some plan but can you guarantee that customer satisfaction will be maximized? No. It'll be a low budget project with profit projections based on market demand. Now, let's look at NPS maximization based business models. At every customer touch point, we'll try to maximise the quality of the service. We'll try to solve the problems using the best possible approach not limiting ourselves on cost. 

What is the result? At every point when we measure the NPS, it would be highest and in reality we would be building the best possible solution for the customer with no budget constraint. As part of product development, we can define a large enough test customer base with whom you can co-create the product. What i mean by that since in this theoretical discussion, capital is not a constraint anymore, you can pay the test customer base incentives, measure NPS, improve the product, run this logic in a loop until NPS is really high and then go for marketing your product. Hence, before sending it out into market, you have close to product market fit. 

Then you can do marketing for your service which is already largely customer ready and setup systems to capture the customer feebdack on a loop to improve the product and maximise NPS.

 What is the result? NPS is maximised because of which customers gives tesimonials, refers other customers, who get into this loop again and they refer other customers and this goes on in an infinite loop to create a theoretical infinite revenue generating business. 

In simple words, we're investing heavily in product development and co-creating the product along with the customers by investing heavily in incentivising them to be part of it for filling NPS surveys, giving all sort of qualitative feedback which goes into the product development loop. This will lead to more initial product development time and high cost of development. But we're saving on marketing cost because we'll have customer referrals that help build the brand. The initial cost of the project will be so many multiples higher than the profit centric based design. But return would be guaranteed for the business owner/investor and the value of the return is infinity considering a large enough market. 

I realized that conventional business models based on profit maximization is based on an illogical societal notion and most businesses from the beginning of time have been following this. 

So, one aspect is Customer NPS. the other metric for the business owner to closely track is Employee NPS/Employee Satisfaction. Businesses today largely operate with an objective of getting good quality resources at the cheapest price. My theory states that you need to put in more investment in hiring good quality resources at way above market price because you'll be saving on attrition cost which otherwise you would have incurred. That will have long term business implications.

Hence, to summarize, as a business owner, I would track just 2 metrics and maximize my investment on that - Customer NPS and Employee NPS. The investment in this case will be much higher than profit centric business models but the return can be guaranteed (theoretically Infinity). NPS/Customer Satisfaction cannot be some secondary metric that is measured by leaving it to the mercy of the customers. If you need to incentivise customers to fill up detailed NPS surveys, that needs to be done. If you feel that customers will randomly fill up long NPS surveys just for incentives, you're completely forgetting about tbe time cost for the customer. IF we incentivise customer with say an Amazon voucher to fill up an NPS survey, there is a time cost for the customer to do it. 

 I have a feeling it might not have been that insightful because the discussion is theoretical. So, let me show the power of this thought in practice.

I'm currently working in a bank. Parallely, I've been wanting to launch a startup in the careers and job preparation space. I found a co-founder through an online platform. After discussion, we decided to use his expertise in the field of AI and my prior expertise in the field of resume making and bring it together. 

We called our service JoPrep. In the long run, we want to be everything job preparation related. To start off, we decided to create an AI resume making service where our AI bot Jo will interact over a web-audio with customers who want their resume made and make the resume instantly for them. We hired a good quality low cost team and built the first version of the product in 2 months. Since i had worked prior in the field as a manual resume writer, my insights drove the product development. After launching the product, we've been trying to do marketing. But there have hardly been any conversions. I wasn't sure whether this is the right approach to follow. 

I've been working on a theory for the last decade and part of that solves for how businesses should ideally be run. That theory work got over 2 weeks and as part of that I was posting a few relevant content on linkedin. I hadn't told my co-founder about my theory as anyone would think i'm crazy for coming up with such theory. The theory was around how to create a utopian society. 

Anyway, lately my co-founder found that I was very distracted and not committed to JoPrep. So, he said that we fundamentally want different things and wanted to part ways. He's an amazing partner and i did not want to leave him. So I wrote a letter to him. The letter will show you how NPS maximization based business models trump profit maximisation based models. 

I believe it's an interesting read. Click on Letter to Co-Founder

Capability Building Services

CAPABILITY  BUILDING SERVICES 

So, what happened after I got selected into Mckinsey?

I think for a fraction of a second, I felt some sort of momentary joy after I got the news that I was selected. But the whole experience was super-overwhelming and the trauma I went through to reach to that point was very deep. I was just lucky to have been selected by Mckinsey. If it was another interviewer, I might not have been selected as well.

But what I want you to focus on is my mental state. The deep trauma I went through, the stress I was put through all of it together made me feel very empty and lost. I went back to the area where everyone was seated and I was given an applause since people heard what I did. I couldn’t feel happy at a very deep level. It was as if my senses became numb and slowly I started questioning “Why did I have to go through such a super stressful experience despite having a stellar profile?” I wanted an answer to this and I was sure I will not be able to rest without finding an answer to this question.

A lot of disturbing thoughts haunted me. It was afternoon on Day 0. I quickly went for a beer with a friend of mine just to take my mind off these thoughts. I came back to campus and placements were still going on. I decided that I will put in my maximum infinite effort to get myself back into my old state because I felt my sense of self was lost

My friends were struggling for shortlists. They were finding it hard to prepare for interviews. Somewhere I could see myself in them, subjected to a wrong system which no one whomsoever seemed to care about correcting. So, I sat with a few friends and helped them prepare. I was able to motivate them and create positive energy in them and seeing that, my empty feeling started reducing. I started to feel sparks of happiness. That was the start of a long road ahead.

The more I helped my friends, it seemed like the positive energy I was creating in them was feeding back into me and making me happy. And the depths to which my happiness got destroyed was too much that I decided that I’ll help all my batchmates together so that my happiness levels increases.

That night, I spent a few hours writing down my approach to crack interviews and tried to motivate my friends through my words. I sent the blog to my section mates and from there, I understood that it reached the entire batch. If you want to truly deeply understand my thinking at that time, you should read that blog post. It has some elements of my core theory written in it. I would strongly recommend reading it.  

Blog post to Motivate my batchmates

It’ll take you an extra 15 minutes to read it, but you’ll appreciate a lot more. In case you’re not planning to go through this blog post, I’m just posting some comments that have come on that blog post over the years. I’ve also put pasted the screenshot of a testimonial from a friend of mine who read the blog. This testimonial was collected as part of analysis for a psychology related course in my 4^th trimester.

So, I sent the blogpost to everyone. Next day, placements continued and a lot of my batchmates came to me and hugged me for writing that blog. They said it helped them find that internal motivation to crack their interviews. I was obviously happy. Their positive energy had fed back into me, creating positive energy in me and making me happy. And this was done at a full batch level. So I felt happier as compared to just individually helping out a few friends.

I thought I could go back to relaxing. I was walking around the campus listening to music. Placements were still happening. I thought the blog would help me find peace of mind. But the momentary spike in happiness again dipped and I started feeling empty and super disturbed again. I started feeling like I’m losing myself. I can’t explain what I was going through. Imagine you have your child close to you and some external force is pushing your child far away from you and you don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. The child equivalent here is myself. I seemed to be losing myself and couldn’t seem to do anything about it.

At some point, I decided that “Enough is enough. I’m going to do something about it” and looked at the immediate problem that I was facing. For some reason, I could feel the stress of all the previous IIM B batches who went through the same messed up placements process. I also could deeply feel the pain of the future batches of IIM B students who would be subjected to the same corrupt process.

Long story short, I thought I’ll try to solve the problems of students in terms of placements at IIMB by myself. No body seemed to care to solve it. Someone has to solve. It. I felt I was intelligent enough to attack this problem. And finally, I formulated the problem like a business case. I assumed that after putting all this effort and reaching the Mckinsey interview, if the interviewer asks the question “Your client is IIM Bangalore. Client wants you to revamp their placement process. There is massive student dissatisfaction. This is leading to IIM B students not referring the campus to other students who end up going for better options like B Schools abroad. You need to figure out a strategic solution for the client”

When I framed it this way, I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t solve this. My approach to solve this was simple – “Put in infinite effort. Until I figure out a solution, I will keep on thinking about it”. This led to me not sleeping for the next couple of days. I wouldn’t take you through the different solutions I thought of. The final solution is suggested is the following and has 2 parts

1. Dream Job – Every student coming into IIMB needs to have 1 guaranteed interview with 1 company of their choice no matter what. This will make sure that people coming into campus, even if they’re from a Tier 3 college background have atleast one shot. Now, what is happening is although both the Tier 1 and Tier 3 student has passed the same admission bar criteria, the Tier 1 college student is again getting preference. A friend of mine who had a super fancy job offer from the US (He was a tier 3 college computer science graduate) decided to come to IIMB for his MBA. But he got trashed during placements. So as a minimum requirement I felt that the dream job option guarantees students of 1 shot atleast. There are practical considerations here. For a batch of 400 students, that would mean that the campus needs to arrange for a maximum of 400 more interviews which is not very practical. And if this is done in one campus, it will have to be done across campuses which makes it even less practical. But I felt that these interviewers are also people. Assume the child of an interviewer falls sick during an admission exam and doesn’t get into a Tier 1 college. Doesn’t that person deserve a second chance? And the current system doesn’t account for that. I felt that this is doable but when I discussed with a lot of my friends, they debated and I agree that there could be different points of view on this. Hence, you can drop this part of the solution. But the second part of the solution is the important part

 

2. Setting up of Capability Building Service: The idea of my blogpost was very simple but had deep impact. I felt that as a system, IIMB does not provide a holistic motivational platform to energize students. When we come to campus, we’re told that you’re all adults, you need to have figured out what you want to do with your career – whether it be marketing, finance etc. The whole point of coming to campus was to figure this out. But there is no dedicated platform that enables discovery of careers. There is of course the academic part which is heavily grades focused. But before our summer placements, we would have done just 1 course in each field and that is simply not enough information to decide on a career. You’ll need to talk to professionals across multiple sectors and make an informed choice. There is no form of motivation provided by the campus SYSTEMICALLY just like what my blog did. So, I recommended setting up of a department which I call Capability Building Services (CBS). This needs to be added to the org chart of IIMB. The function of this department would be to be a motivational powerhouse and super-charging students to face life. There obviously be a cost to setup this department. IIMB would have to pay salaries for the employees in this department, the preparatory material etc. will have to be designed. But think of the long term benefits! Parents sending their children to IIMB would know for a fact that their kids will be molded to face life. Hence, I assumed that parents will be willing to bear this extra cost of a few lakhs where they’re already paying a substantial fee. So, the incremental cost on parents would be less is what I thought.

So in summary, I felt that this is an organizational design management problem and it can be solved if IIMB management is ready to put in the effort.

Now, I wanted feedback on my solution. So I went to a few of my friends. Almost all of them agreed for the need of a CBS department. But there was huge debate on the dream job front. People also said that how can the mindset of people who do the shortlisting be changed? They would still prefer students from Tier 1 colleges in their companies. This was a live case where the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer. In between summer placements, I got into heated debate with my friends who got placed. Long story short, I realized there was a larger societal problem at play. The reality of rich gets richer, poor gets poorer so far never bothered me. I thought it was somebody else’s problem. I felt bad for the poor and did help people out. But beyond that, I never felt that it was my problem to solve.

But now, to convince my friends that my theory will work out practically, I had to convince them that it is possible to change the fundamental mindsets of people who shortlist candidates. It became a real problem for me. You probably don’t relate to this because you cannot imagine the stress I went through because of IIMB’s corrupt placement process. And I didn’t want to lose myself in the process. So, I decided that if I ever were to get my old self back, I now need to solve the problem of changing everyone’s mindset. And that’s a larger societal problem. If I could change the mindset of interviewers and people who shortlist candidates so that they give a fair shot to all candidates, then I might as well try to solve the larger problem in society of inequality. One thing led to another – I was no where ready to give up. Finally, I landed on a new larger much more complicated problem statement of solving for world peace/happiness. That sounds abstract and impossible. Yes, I know that. But if I had to come out of my deep trauma, I just had to atleast attempt solving this problem. Instead of thinking of this as an abstract problem, I gave it a structure. I imagined myself in front of my Mckinsey interviewer and he asking me a live unsolved case “Your client is the entire world – The present and future generations. The client does not know whether they’re operating efficiently. There is a lot of productivity loss in the economy because of all the stress that exists. You need to figure out a solution to this problem. Take as much time as you want”. My attitude to solve this problem was to put in infinite effort. I wouldn’t give up until this is solved. Some of you might think of me as being mentally unstable for even thinking of this seriously. But it was as real as it gets for me.

I hadn’t slept for 2 days after I got placed in Mckinsey. Again, long story short – I spent another 2 days thinking about this case making math models, not knowing where to even start. Should I start with poverty or unemployment or something drastically out of the box which I couldn’t think of. After 4 days of sleeplessness after getting selected in Mckinsey, I had what I thought was a decent solution. Let me explain the solution in simple words.

My objective is that 6-7 billion people need to be happy NO MATTER WHAT. This means that I have to be happy NO MATTER what. For that I looked at my past and looked at data points where I was absolutely sure I was happy. Happiness is a feeling. So I defined a function called Happiness   index function which is unique to each individual. There’s no absolute value to happiness. You cannot say you’re 20% happy or 30% happy. You can say that you’re more happy now compared to some other time. It’s relative. Happiness index function is a function of time and the unique experience and preferences of each individual.

Happiness index function is the output function. So, there had to be an input function. I looked at it and understood that there is a pattern to decision making. It comes from the gut for every future point at which I’m happy. I defined a conditional binary function called Gutmeter which either gives you a clear decision instantly at any point in time or stays still in the center where either no decision can be made (might as well toss a coin and make the decision) or you might want to go hunting for more information. (I have described this with more practical examples in the post titled “The Gutmeter Framework”)

Gutmeter is part of me but is like a separate person guiding me on decisions. All these data points I analyzed were discrete data points. What I wanted for continuous happiness. Mathematically, I had to compress time to such a small entity and follow my gutmeter every micro-nano second. Happiness is a natural output. This thought dt>0 (which means time is incredibly small) was the most insanely powerful thought I thought anyone could have. For life, I have outsourced my decision making to my gutmeter. I don’t know whether you’ll get the depth of this thought if you read it from a blog post. It meant that I don’t have to take anymore of my future decisions. That was insanely liberating. The thought seemed simple enough. It hadn’t taken control of my mind program yet. But I started stumbling on this thought.

Additionally, I also kept thinking that if you look at the org structure of the world, it’s missing a CBS equivalent department starting from primary schools to high schools to universities to work places to corrective units like jails. This thought also started looming in my mind. 4 days I hadn’t slept and I couldn’t get these 2 above thoughts out of my head. I discussed with a friend. He found it interesting as well.

I thought just following gutmeter is sufficient and that will help all of us be happy always. I started smoking excessively because my gutmeter was asking me to. There were discrete sparks of the gutmeter making me happy moment by moment and I could start to feel it better. It had not become continuous happiness yet. So, I thought the solution of world happiness was just to follow the gutmeter and install CBS in every sphere of life.

Then, I decided to take more feedback. Summer placements were over and classes were starting the next day. After 4 sleepless days, I loaded myself with redbulls, After my Quant class, I went to the class and said I have something interesting. In a class of 60, 12 were interested to listen and I gave a lecture for 4.5 hours. They agreed with my theory and gave me positive feedback. Then I went to a senior, he also said the thought is overwhelming. I started getting excited. The gutmeter model was taking control of my mental program. I got super excited and started posting on facebook. Those facebook posts convey my then thinking very clearly. I have taken screenshots of all those facebook posts. You can find them here in the next post

Blog post to Motivate my batchmates

Facebook Posts

Back to India and thereafter

 

BACK TO INDIA

I returned back to India in Dec 2015 and then went into a stage of suicidal depression since I did not know what to do now. The core issue seemed to have been that my entire learning was experiential whereas for people to whom I tell my theory, it all seems logical but since it's not experiential for them they're not able to take it in and change their lives. Even my professor later had the same issue. I did not know how to create an experience for another person. Every day, I felt suicidal. This time, I went to the psychiatrist myself and asked for help since if I did not intervene, something bad might have happened. I was on anti depressants for 1 year after I returned from Europe. I did not know what to do. I delayed my Mckinsey joining date as much as possible because I wasn't excited about joining Mckinsey. It's just that I did not have any other means to earn money for my survival. No one would fund my research because everyone would just dismiss my vision of a single strategy for global peace as a stupid impractical idea. So, I had to take a job to survive.

Mckinsey & Co. (Full time from Sep 2016 to July 2017 )
This was a total mega disaster for me. Calling it a mega disaster would be an understatement. Mckinsey was my dream company coming into IIM Bangalore. But my work on this theory changed my inclination and passion towards Mckinsey. Every single project in Mckinsey was based on profits as the core metric and I had to create solutions to maximize profits. My mind fundamentally believed this was wrong but I couldn't tell any of my managers that they're wrong. So I had to somehow survive for the sake of survival hoping that my theory can be made into a personalized experience for each person listening to it. I got criticized and shout at by almost every manager I worked with. It was incredibly stressful. Again, supremely suicidal in nature but like I said, my mind was saying, even if the probability of finding something I don't know is 1/10^highest finite number, I need to push through. Finally, in July 2017, I gave up on Mckinsey. I realized I can't do this anymore. Fundamentally, I believed maximizing profits is the wrong thing to do and so fundamentally, I believed Mckinsey is not doing the right thing. In between I again lied and took leave and tried out Buddhist Vipassana meditation hoping for answers. It was good but didn't let me find my peace of mind.  Lied to my manager and took a sabbatical and went home and went for Vipassana meditation for the 3rd time. Below picture is post Vipassana in Chennai with my friend Alex. 

Sabbatical (July 2017 - Jan 2018)
I became extremely desperate to find a solution and complete my theory and make it practical and implementable. Now I decided to remove UN and Governments and everybody else from the picture and do something in my control. I rephrased the entire problem statement - What can I, as Issac Jojy, in my control do to tranform the world and make it into a state of utopia. I kept aside all my ideas of gutmeter, CBS etc aside which I feel in itself are valid ideas. And I decided to start afresh now. 

I made my thinking very sharp. I want to make the world go to a state of utopia. For that I need to solve people's problems. And who solves problems. Other people. I came to the realization that one person's problem is a business opportunity for another person and assumed that every single problem in the world hence can be solved through business solutions. You could ask how wars can be solved through business solutions or how poverty could be solved through business solutions or rape for that matter.  I did not have all answers a this point. But I realized that a lot of the problems in the world can be solved through business solutions and I decided to figure out the other problem solutions along the way. This meant that I need to come up with a business strategy to take the world to be in a state where everyone lives like their own family. My vision became to create one mega massive company that runs the planet and everyone in the company share brotherly love and compassion. Currently, the world consists of infinite number of organizations each functioning in what I thought was a wrong way. 

My goal was continous world happiness. This needs to be measured. For that I defined a metric called Earth NPS. NPS is a business term which stands for Net Promoter Score. In normal business operations, after the service is delivered, you have a customer service survey where customers are asked to rate the service. Most people end up not giving this rating as they're not incentivised to provide this. NPS is where the customer is asked "How likely are you to recommend this service to your friends/family?" A rating of 9 or 10 shows that they are "Promoters"., A rating of  7 or 8 shows they are "Passives" and a rating of 1 to 6 shows they are detractors. NPS is defined as the % of customers who rated 9 or 10 minus % of customers who rated 1 to 6. The higher the NPS score, it shows that better the quality of service leading to better customer satisfaction leading to better customer happiness which is my goal. 

Currently, businesses are designed around maximiziing profits. Business say they have an objective to increase customer satisfaction/NPS but that is typically considered to be some sort of secondary goal or objective. If there is conflict between the 2 goals, typically business prioritize maximising profits. And this conflict exists in every business out there. Maximizing profits means reducing costs at every point of the customer journey and Maximizing customer happiness/NPS means increasing costs at every point of the customer journey. This is a direct conflict and usually what ends up happening is businesses prioritize profits at the cost of customer happiness. This leads to a substandard product being sold to the customers. 

I came up with a theory that the metrics should be reversed. Maximize customer satisfaction at whatever cost should be the objective. Revenue would naturally follow. If that sounds impractical to you, let me give you an example. Assume that you want to start a business and you don't have capital. You have identified a gap in the market which you can fill. And you want to get capital for this project. Assume for the sake of this theoretical discussion that you get access to an investor with infinite capital and he asks you to come up with a business plan for the project. Will you now design your business to maximize profit or maximize customer satisfaction at whatever cost. Maximize profits would be at every point of the customer journey, you'll try to save on costs which affects NPS at that touch point. This would lead to a lower budget for the project and you might come up with some plan but can you guarantee that customer satisfaction will be maximised? No. It'll be a low budget project with profit projections based on market demand. Now, let's look at NPS maximization based business models. At every customer touch point, we'll try to maximise the quality of the service. We'll try to solve the problems using the best possible approach not limiting ourselves on cost. 

What is the result? At every point when we measure the NPS, it would be highest and in reality we would be building the best possible solution for the customer with no budget constraint. The product development loops where we interact with test customer base and incentivise them to try out our product and give NPS score goes on an infinite loop until test base NPS is maximised. That's close to product market fit. Then you can do marketing for your service which is already largely customer ready and setup systems to capture the customer feebdack on a loop to improve the product and maximise NPS. What is the result? NPS is maximised because of which customers gives tesimonials, refers other customers, who get into this loop again and they refer other customers and this goes on in an infinite loop to create a theoretical infinite revenue generating business. In simple words, we're investing heavily in product development and co-creating the product along with the customers by investing heavily in incentivising them to be part of it for filling NPS surveys, giving all sort of qualitative feedback which goes into the product development loop. This will lead to more initial product development time and high cost of development. But we're saving on marketing cost because we'll have customer referrals that help build the brand. The initial cost of the project will be so many multiples higher than the profit centric based design. In the case of JoPrep about which you would have read in the beginning, it's 20 times higher initial investment in product development. But return would be guaranteed for the business owner/investor and the value of the return is infinity considering a large enough market. 

I realized that conventional business models based on profit maximization is based on an illogical societal notion and most businesses from the beginning of time have been following this. 

So, one aspect is Customer NPS. the other metric for the business owner to closely track is Employee NPS/Employee Satisfaction. Businesses today largely operate with an objective of getting good quality resources at the cheapest price. My theory states that you need to put in more investment in hiring good quality resources at way above market price because you'll be saving on attrition cost which otherwise you would have incurred. That will have long term business implications.

Hence, to summarize, as a business owner, I would track just 2 metrics and maximize my investment on that - Customer NPS and Employee NPS. The investment in this case will be much higher than profit centric business models but the return can be guaranteed (theoretically Infinity). NPS/Customer Satisfaction cannot be some secondary metric that is measured by leaving it to the mercy of the customers. If you need to incentivise customers to fill up detailed NPS surveys, that needs to be done. If you feel that customers will randomly fill up long NPS surveys just for incentives, you're completely forgetting about tbe time cost for the customer. IF we incentivise customer with say an Amazon voucher to fill up an NPS survey, there is a time cost for the customer to do it. If it's a 5 minute survey, i bet only genuine customers will fill it up and take the incentive. 

Now when I came to this realization, i realized all businesses who are trying to solve a real problem are just putting profits at the center of their business and just circling around it trying to solve it using a fictitious approach. 

I then realized that if i find a market gap and a  business idea, i can  easily setup an NPS focused business. But that is not my vision. I don't want to just run a business. My vision is world happiness. So now, I need to figure out a strategy to take the world from my first business that I setup to the world state of continuous happiness. What do I have as an asset? If i take a few months/years and setup my first business which generates infinite revenue, that becomes the source of Capital for the second business that I will setup. Now, setup a related second business in the same sector using the capital from Business 1 and convert Business 2 into another infinite revenue generating business. And this loop continues to  Business 3,4 etc. until within a particular geography say India, we're large enough and a trusted brand. Now, there will be other established businesses in the same sector which are based on profit centric business models. Now that I'm an established player in this sector, make moves against established players. Profit centric business models cannot fight against NPS centric business models since customers will find more value and employees from competition also will want to join NPS centric company. That way I become the top player in Inda and theoretically, wipe out competition. 

Next, for the same sector expand globally and use the same infinite revenue generating loop and capture the global market for-that sector. Parallely, identify gaps in other sectors and start investing in those sectors with the asset of infinite revenue generating Sector 1 businesses. Then follow the same logic in Sector 2. Repeat tbe same for Sector 3,4 etc and capture these sectors. Now, reinvest tbis capital in product development in operating sectors to make more efficient products which are NOT priced higher but priced lower than earlier prices. The vision is to create a free and happy world. So, increasing the prices is a short term view to increase short term profits. Decrease the prices. A larger pool of customers now start using the product. Quality is enhanced. Use this logic to invest within and across sectors and get all that infinite revenue and reinvest it again in product development to give cheaper price products and this logic runs on an infinte loop where there is one company which has infinite revenue and funds the operations of the world and everyhing is available for free for everbody. As this happens, customer satisfaction happiness keeps on increasing and although infinitely far away, this became the theorteical strategy to take the world to a state of utopia.

For example, if the objective is to reduce the increasing fuel prices, first after establishing one infinte revenue business, invest in the energy sector and offer fuel at super subsidised rates to customers. Competition which is based on profits will not be able to fight back and will  be wiped out/acquired. 

It had to extend my mind to infinite limits to get this level of clarity of thought. But once slowly the strategy got set in my mind, I started to look for ideas to start my 1st business. And I could see so many gaps in the market all of a sudden and the feeling was super-overwhelming. Now it was a pure execution problem. I just need to setup the first business and my vision seemed within reach. This had the collective benefits of capitalism and philanthrophy. 

This was when I had to travel to Chennai for a close friend's wedding. The load and overwhelming feeling on my mind was massive. And I realized i am going to be a gazillionaire in a matter of time. So, i wanted to treat myself for reaching this far. So when i went to Chennai, I decided to stay in ITC Grand Chola which was the biggest most luxurious hotel in the city. The next part is super disturbing. 

With every step I took after I reached Chennai, the overwhelming feeling on my mind increased and increased to a point where I lost my mental balance. I started assuming that I already have a ton of capital in my pocket because I realized i can make it so quickly. I started making irrational decisions all of a sudden. I felt that my life needs to be super efficient since I considered myself as the CEO of the planet. So I started making purchases like iPads (Which i still have). I started overusing my credit card on things to make life super efficient. The mental turmoil I went through is not describable. I was acting as per my gutmeter and in retrospect, I was acting like a mad person. In reality I was moving closer to sanity but the process was very erratic. Even thinking of what all happened that one day at ITC Grand Chola is super painful. Long story short, the hotel people threw me out of the hotel since my credit card declined. I was out in the streets of Chennai at 12 midnight not knowing what to do. But my guiding light is my gutmeter. So, again, i blindly listened to it. I did not even have money on any of my digital wallets. My cash was out. I had a friend who stayed 5 km from the hotel. I decided to go there. But my gutmeter kept on pushing me to go back to the hotel and create a scene there, expecting that I can raise the issue to ITC hotel management. The thoughts that went in my mind were that ITC Hotel Management would get it escalated to YC Deveshwar, the then Managing Director of ITC Ltd. I was hoping that me, being an ex- ITC employee (before B school) and Mr Deveshwar's son-in-law being a partner in Mckinsey under whom i had worked - I would see whether they will listen to my theory. 

Executing this strategy also requires partnerships. I wanted a hospitality partner, a consulting partner etc. I hoped ITC and Mckinsey would help me out. On the other hand, my gutmeter was also asking me rest and hence go to my friend's place 5 km away. What happened after that is my gutmeter kept on giving me mixed signals where sometimes i felt going to ITC hotel and creating a scene made more sens and sometimes goiing to my friend's place made more sense. In short, from 12 in the night to morning 9 am, my gutmeter made me walk between these two spots and finally my body couldn't take it. There were stray dogs chasing me in the night. At the end i just semi-collapsed and sat in the middle of the road, not knowing what to do. I didn't end up going to my friend's place or ITC..Below are some photos from that night. 

. I lost my balance and a series of unfortunate events lead to be being stranded like a crazy person in the streets with 0 money and no place to stay. I even had to pledge my driving license to pay for a shoe because I didn't have the money because the situation was such. If you're thinking that I should have been crazy to have done that, don't you think I would have thought of all that? There were far more powerful thoughts in my head driving my decision making and not money. So at a point, I was evaluating everything in terms of the time cost of making that decision and not in terms of the actually money cost. Anyway, I'm not even starting on this story. It's an extremely extremely painful one and I don't want to even tell the story to another person because I don't want to relive it myself in my head.

On the streets in Guidy, Chennai in first week of Sep'17 late night with absolutely no cash in hand and no place to go

Phone battery at 2% at 2.16 am in the night

There was a huge bulge under my leg because of excessive strain of walking. My phone was out of charge now. Luckily when i went through my bag i managed to find some petty cash which I have no idea how it got there. In the morning, I used that to go to the nearest Mckinsey guest house.I was on sabbatical. the rooms in the guest house were filled up. I stayed in the living room. The caretaker saw my feet, arranged for it to be treated. There were thoughts in my mind which if you hear you'll go crazy. I won't be sharing all that now. I slept on the seat for sometime. The caretaker informed Mckinsey HR. They came to talk to me. I explained what happened and my theory. I was super powerful in the way i spoke. They got freaked out. They contacted my parents. My parents contacted my uncle who stays in Chennai. My uncle came to Mckinsey guest house and took me toh his place. Below is a picture from my uncle's home.

 I was mentally exhausted. I was also in some kind of zen state. 

My brother came in from India and we decided to take me to Bangalore to meet the psychiatrist who was treating me. My father joined us in Bangalore. We went to the clinic but couldn't meet him. Finally, my father arranged to get me consulted in a mental health care center in Kottayam, Kerala, India. We flew to Kerala. To cut the long story short, I was admitted into Mandiram mental heath care center and subjected to extensive psychiatric treatment and diagnosed with BIPOLAR disorder. To date, I'm still on medication for this. What I do so wrong? Was it wrong to want to help people to make myself happy? Was it wrong to dream big and put in that never ending infinite effort to achieve my dream. Isn't that what we're taught when we're kids?

Below are few pictures from the mental health care center stay. My parents stayed with me. You cannot possibly imagine the shit I put my parents through for this dream of mine and I owe to them for staying supportive.

3 weeks of intense psychiatric treatment. Tagged as someone with bipolar disorder. Medication given for life. 

After the treatment and medication, my mental sharpness reduced drastically. Some of the medication induced weight gain. From 90 kgs then, today I'm at 155 kgs weight which has created additional health issues. 

I did not know whether i should continue my job at Mckinsey. I lost focus on my vision. I decided to quit Mckinsey and try to figure out how start the first business for the infinte loop model, altbough I lost interest in the vision. I had enough. I couldnt take it anymore. But my gutmeter still pushed me to quit Mckinsey and be unemployed.

Unemployed phase from Feb 2018 to Dec'21

I tried my hands at different startups but nothing worked out.My focus and mental sharpness was lost. I was back to being a confused mind knowing very well I'm a confused person. I tried doing a resume making service business. My end goal was to make the entire process of creating a resume enabled through AI. But in 2018, AI was not a thing. So, i ended up making manual resumes, which was very cumbersome but i had to create some income to survive. Luckily, my parents could accomodate me at home and they weren't dependent on me. 

Parallely, I was getting older. Parents wanted to get me married through the arranged marriage route. But i was someone with bipolar disorder. So my parents were finding it hard to find matches. There was one girl i really liked. We spoke for a month over calls and I wanted to tell her about my condition in person when we met. When I did, she also rejected me and I again went into a state of depression because of which my medication dosage increased and that again affected my mind and body.

Long story short, after quit Mckinsey until Dec'21, I was finding it hard to do anything meaningful because i wasn't clear what to do in life.  I also got married to Merin who is a doctor. She was born and brought up in Dubai. Because of stupid Indian government rules, she couldn't practice in India because of which I decided to move to Dubai.  After extensive searching, through a referral, I ended up getting a contract position as a business analyst in Emirates NBD bank, Dubai. 

Dec'22 to Present - I'm currently a Sr. strategy manager ate Emirates NBD bank, Dubai. I slowly started getting back focus on my vision. For that I wanted to start Business 1. For that I needed a co-founder who i found through an online platform. And we built JoPrep Version 1 - the same AI resume service idea I had 4 years back. I had not communicated my long term vision, motivation etc. to my co-founder till now. The letter I sent to my Co-Founder is my pitch for us to start Business 1. I hope he accepts. 

The strategy formulation is complete. The hard part is over. Now, it's fun time. It's time for implementation. 

Get ready people. The world is going to change and it will happen in our lifetime. 

Problem : Creating a World Organization to ensure sustainable happiness of the people and enable disruptive economic activity

• Invest the revenue from this first product into another product faced by the same target market, tap that market, and use this logic on an infinite loop to solve more and more pressing problems for society creating a peaceful world with high economic activity as well. So pitch to the customer that the price they'll be paying for your first product is an investment they're making for a better future for themselves.
• There will also be cross investment of revenues from each products into the other products so as to make these products affordable to masses, raise their standard of living as well and in the process finally achieve world peace. It will take years. But the core strategy has been set. 
• Consult for promising startups passionate about solving market problems, use the innovation engine designed from the theory to redesign their business model. This will increase their company valuation manyfold and once valuation is increased, I can get equity from that and invest that in solving pressing problems like affordable healthcare, quality education, clean tech, traffic solutions etc
• Setup CBS (Capability Building Services) within the new world organization I will be setting up to act like a motivational powerhouse that provides the mental energy for the planet to function optimally just like electricity runs a building. 

To my professors who asked me what if the gutmeter wants the person to suicide or drink all the time or do drugs - My take on it is no matter what the individual has to follow the gutmeter. After hearing my theory and logic, I believe the rewiring of your mind will commence but will be not be completed because societal barriers will pull you back to the old mental programs that run you. But these constraints will be released with time with my solution. And everyone's minds will be opened up. Even after that, if an individual feels like committing suicide, my take on that is it is his/her life. He should do what the gutmeter says. Simple example, even today if i ask someone to just blindly follow the gutmeter, he or she might feel like suiciding. That thought at that point of time is logical and the correct thing to do and what makes the individual happy. But next moment, the same gutmeter might point him into a different direction making him think of the pain of ending his/her life. Then acting on that thought by not suiciding becomes the right thing to do which make the person happy.. If the gutmeter is so strongly pushing the person to suicide and none of the counter thoughts are working, and at the time of taking poison or jumping off a building, the person's gutmeter still says that's the right thing to do, and he/she acts on that, that's what makes him happy. This is a debatable topic. I have really strong points of view on this and we can may be talk about this later offline. 
I feel that the first real problem that was created in the history of the universe was humans creating money as a tool for transactions after the barter system. I wouldn't blame them. Money was measurable and transferable. That coupled with millions of societal conditioning on the minds of people has created today's messed up world. 
Once my solution is implemented, there will be infinite amount of money in circulation and people will eventually feel there is no need for money as everyone will start having infinite money. The need for money will gradually start going away and people will help out each other out of brotherly love and compassion. Gradually, money will be removed from the system and the original problem of money being created so many years back will be solved. This will lead to the global financial sector going down completely. Until then, money will definitely be a tool needed for society to function 
In one of my previous posts, I had spoken about the divine mind body connect. Everyone will eventually reach a state of figuring out the mind-body connect, get connected to the universe, access infinite potential and at that state we'll all live forever. 
"Humans have limited timespan on earth. Humans will die" - That's again another illogical societal conditioning planted on the minds of people and that thought runs on an infinite loop in the mind throughout a human's lifetime and becomes a self fulfilling thought and makes him prone to diseases and kills him eventually. Once you're connected to the universe through your gutmeter, you'll have complete conviction that you're here to stay forever which is time = infinity. 

There is so much I haven't discussed here.  I've thought extensively about this over the last decade. If you're very curious to know all that, I can only tell you that I'm not conveying that now for your own good because there has been extreme amount of thinking that has gone behind creating this solution. So, trust me - You'll know it at the right time ! And am extremely sorry for the length of this content. This is the best I could do. 

If you want to connect,  you can reach out to me over 

Linkedin | Instagram | Facebook

During my 4 year break, I was doing part time teaching for fun :)

Teaching my nephew PHP programming. Wasn't as much fun as I thought it'd be

Since I was feeling extremely lonely over the last 4 years, my friends have been mainly my nephews and nieces. Adults are complicated people. Kids are pure happy people :)

You have crossed the Bridge of Logic and reached the Gates of Paradise. I am your gatekeeper:)

Welcome to the Future. Welcome Home everyone. 

If you're not sure what to do, Just listen to your gutmeter.

I have the entire future in my mind. If you stretch your mind, you can also visualize how the future will unfold. 

It'll take time for your mind to be freed of societal notions and conditioning. Especially considering that existing structures in society will take time to change but it will change. We'll all be living together as a family in the company that we'll together be creating in the process. 

The company/family will be called "Our Home Inc."

I am no different from anyone of you. I make mistakes, I bleed when i get hurt, i drink, smoke, smoke up once in a while and do everything that you also do. Probably the one word that made all the difference in my life is the word infinity. Ever since I heard that word for the first time in my life, I've always used it along with the word "effort". For everything I want in life, I will put in my maximum infinite effort which means I will never ever ever give up until I get what I want. The mental resilience I've built over the last decade is something I doubt anyone on the planet ever would have had. (I don't have data to back up this statement, but this is what my gutmeter is saying) I feel like i've created a mental fortress in my system that helps me solve the most complicated of problems like a super-computer. 

It's because of pure luck that this word infinity entered my life. Yes ! My valuation is infinity. But so is yours because you know what i know ! Everyone's valuation is infinity. Life is extremely precious and you can't humiliate universe's divine gift of life by putting a stupid number to it like 1MN$ or 70B$. Everyone's true life valuation is infinity because you cant put a price tag to life.

And it's true. Paradise/Heaven is here on earth/our infinite universe. It was just about someone putting in that infinite effort to stretch the mind to break from all barriers.

I am just like you. It was pure random luck that the word infinity got into my dictionary. It could easily have been you in my position. Point being I don't want you to think that i'm someone special. Please consider myself just as a friend who had a unique life experience and he's just sharing it with you. I hope you understand.

Thanks for taking out time to read through this. I feel alive again, I can now focus on other goals like my health, completing Einstein's work, be a chess grandmaster, form a professional rock band, learn tennis and win a grand slam hopefully and some goals which are beyond the understanding of current science. I can eat my favorite foods again. I can finally sleep peacefully, now knowing that the load is off my mind and even if something happens to me, my kids or someone motivated enough to carry forward my work can take this up. 

I feel like I've got my old life back. Phew ! What a relief ! 

Hope to meet each one of you sometime someday. Thanks again for sparing time to read this. Means the world to me.

You guys are going to kick a** and live splendid happy lives and together, we'll take make the world a beautiful home for us. 

If you want to join the dream time, rather our "Home" team please enter your details here. As and when opportunities arise when the strategy gets played out, I'll get in touch with you. You don't need to worry about stupid resumes and your universities of study. All that you need is a desire to create change and the commitment and dedication to see your life goals fulfilled. 

Join the Home Team

Once, again, Welcome Home everybody!

Thanking you for your time and wishing you all the best.

Warm Regards,

Jojy

Happy living :) 

Other stories which you might like

0. Who am I and why have I started this blog? The Big Bang

1. How I stunned my Comms. Professor at IIMB - Academia promoting corruption

2. Case Solution: How to hit on a girl/guy in a pub - Pickup Consultant

3. Case Solution: How to nail ANY interview - Taking Control of any interview

4. How I created a band that did not exist to follow a random girl I did not know - The Yoyo story

5. How I thew a massive surprise party for my parents - Priceless

6. How I had a blast of a time during my exchange term at IIMB (Sep - Dec 2015) -  Eurotrip 1