Nirmal Prasad

“Settling Down” Is the Most Outdated Idea in India. We’re still told to get a safe job, stay stable, avoid risks, and “settle.” But in 2025? 🔸 Skills expire fast 🔸 AI reshapes careers 🔸 Growth is nonlinear 🔸 Comfort kills ambition Settling isn’t security. Settling is stagnation. If you’re not reinventing, you’re falling behind. If you’re too comfortable, you’re already losing. Stop asking: “When will you settle?” Start asking: “How fast are you evolving?” Because today, the real risk… is playing safe. #CareerGrowth #MindsetShift #EvolveDontSettle #IndianWorkCulture #FutureOfWork #PersonalGrowth #CareerMindset #Adaptability #AIEra #StayHungryStayFoolish

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𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙘 𝙌𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 : "𝙎𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙬𝙚 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙙𝙪𝙘𝙩 𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙚 𝙤𝙧 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙮 𝙛𝙤𝙘𝙪𝙨𝙚𝙙?" I've watched this question destroy more companies than any competitor ever could. Here's what nobody tells you: Both answers are wrong. The real question is WHEN. ━ Let me share a household case study unfolding in Indian retail right now: 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗵𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝗾𝘂𝗶𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗺𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗰 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲: Hit (Godrej) - Entered racquet market ~2020 Mortein (Reckitt) - Launched racquet ~2023 All Out (SC Johnson) - Introduced racquet ~2024 Odomos (Dabur) - Even the topical repellent specialist These companies built market leadership with coils, liquids, and creams. Now they're all selling electric racquets at ₹400-600. Chinese brands offer identical functionality for ₹200. Yet consumers consistently choose the premium option. ━ This isn't coincidence. It's calculated strategy. For two decades, Chinese manufacturers dominated the electric racquet segment. Cost-effective. Functional. Ubiquitous. Meanwhile, these brands appeared to ignore the opportunity. Were they missing market signals? Lacking innovation? Neither. They were building something more valuable: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝟯𝗫 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴. Consider the progression: 1980s-2000s: Establish category expertise 2000s-2010s: Build household trust 2020s: Enter adjacent markets at premium positioning They didn't rush. They waited until customers would pay for brand assurance. ━ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝘀𝘆𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗕𝗲𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗶𝘂𝗺 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 When customers choose Odomos racquet over generic alternatives, they're not purchasing superior technology. They're investing in 40 years of family health protection. Same components. Same functionality. Triple the investment. But when health is at stake, trusted brands command price premiums. The Strategic Framework: 𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝟭-𝟯: Foundation Establish core product excellence. Build initial market credibility. Resist diversification pressure. 𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝟯-𝟳: Market Leadership Dominate your category. Notice customer requests for adjacent products. 𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝟳+: Strategic Expansion Launch complementary offerings. Maintain premium positioning. Leverage accumulated trust. ━ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲: Successful expansion isn't about market opportunities. It's about earning customer permission. Each of these brands could have launched racquets a decade ago. They chose to wait. That patience translated into sustainable competitive advantage. Some interpret this as limited vision. Others see missed opportunities. Market leaders recognize optimal timing. The most valuable businesses aren't built by pursuing every opportunity. They're built by understanding when to act on them. P.S. → Four companies. Different timelines. Identical conclusion: Brand equity compounds over time, and patience pays premium dividends.

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If you can convert anything to numbers, you can probably solve it. Recently, I was in a conversation with Garvit Agarwal and Aadhar Chandiwala, the founders of Kulfi. Their app downloads had picked up noticeably. My first assumption was simple: they had cracked product-led growth. That wasn’t it. Turns out, they had cracked content. More specifically, what kind of content to put out on different platforms and how to track the conversions from each one. They had done this well on Instagram and walked me through the engineering behind it. That conversation brought me back to something I’ve seen repeatedly: if you put engineers on a problem, they’ll find a solution. Most problems become solvable once you convert them into numbers. You break them down. You go granular enough. A formula starts to emerge. From there, you can engineer toward the outcome you want. Not certainty but higher odds.

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India needs a Chief Design Officer. The U.S. just hired Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia to redesign 26,000 federal web portals. One vision. One team. Citizen-first. Meanwhile in India? Every state is rolling out its own clunky apps and portals. Same services. Different bad UX. Confusing forms and broken flows — and frustrated us. Our bureaucrats are brilliant at policy (?) — but they’re not product people. And they shouldn’t have to be. We have world-class product and tech CEOs - ✓ Sundar Pichai ✓ Satya Nadella ✓ Arvind Krishna (IBM) ✓ Nikesh Arora (Palo Alto Networks) ✓ Thousands of Indian designers at Meta, Netflix, Uber. We've our own design heavyweights Rahul Saini Chief Design Officer at Paytm Gaurav Joshi Head of Design & Research, Disney+ Hotstar Divye Bokdia, Head of Product Design & Research, Upstox Saurabh Soni, Head of Design, Razorpay One of you should build one killer national product and design team. One vision for citizen services. One standard for usability and accessibility. Make govt services feel like Swiggy/Blinkit, not Internet Explorer in 1990. Do it Pro bono. Build in public. Open source.

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Pratik added the last limited edition watch to shopping cart, checked out, and poof... App logs him out Post login limited edition watch is gone 🤯 This chaos escalates when traffic spikes and app's reputation tanks as complaints flood in Problem: Inconsistent user sessions Solution: Smart load balancing Here’s how smart load balancing saves the day Stateless Load Balancing     - Treats every request as independent - No memory of past interactions - Scales horizontally with ease - Uses simple algorithms like Round Robin or Least Connections Stateful Load Balancing     - Remembers client session data - Routes recurring users to the same server - Essential for shopping carts, multiplayer games, or real-time dashboards - Requires session persistence (e.g., sticky sessions) AWS Elastic Load Balancer supports both modes 🤔 over to you, which type of load balancer I have shown in the diagram? Let me know in the comments! 👇 --- You've got System Design skills but showcasing them in 60 minutes interview is a completely different challenge for e.g. where to start? How much time to spend on HLD vs LLD etc Let me share a FREE 7-day email course that provides a step-by-step framework for acing your 60-minute System Design interview 📣 Join 1500+ subscribers and sign up for the course at systemdesign.engineer, to learn time allocation to demonstrate full range of design skills

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#kolkatastory #underpaidEngineers #raiseyourvoice It’s frustrating, even demoralizing, that in 2025, a 10–15 LPA salary is still considered "standard" for Sr. Software Engineers 10+yrs in Kolkata. It’s not about greed, it’s about dignity. A good engineer spends 8–10 years building skills, solving tough problems, learning constantly — they should be able to buy a car, support family, save, and grow. 📢 Founders of Kolkata, Listen Up Stop comparing your salary benchmarks to 2015. If you want world-class tech, you need to pay market rates. If you can’t afford it now, compensate in ESOPs, profit shares, or let engineers work part-time/freelance to supplement income.

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Proud to help power conversational AI at scale for JioHotstar — transforming content discovery into real-time, personalized engagement for millions across India. https://lnkd.in/gjnaZDmA

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Engineering excellence meets advertising innovation Behind every smooth user experience is robust engineering. Truecaller Play represents months of technical innovation – from seamless integration to real-time optimization. The challenge? Delivering rich, interactive experiences without compromising app performance or user experience. Our engineering team has built something truly special. Key technical achievements: - Native format integration across all devices - Scalable infrastructure supporting our massive scale - Billions of daily impressions - Seamless user experience across all touchpoints What excites me most? We've created a foundation that will support countless future innovations. This is just the beginning. #Engineering #TechInnovation #TruecallerPlay #ScalableDesign

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This shift from search & filters to conversation is exactly what the next wave of users needs, especially beyond metros. Engineering, at its core, is about solving complex problems with simple, intuitive solutions. "vaani” is a great example of that philosophy in action bringing natural, conversational commerce to millions. Big unlock for accessibility, discovery, and user trust. 🚀 #meesho #VoiceCommerce #DigitalIndia

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It is going to solve a biggest dilemma of "what to watch" and I wish it also supports answering question from long running series which comes in parts with months of gaps where I needed to rewatch the previous season once again to build the "context" :) #jiohotstar #chatgpt #openai

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The cost of convenience is most often privacy. More than money itself. Eg. Identity - Aadhaar - Surveillance in wrong hands Travel - DigiYatra - Private company and surveillance possibilities Health - ABHA - Medical record sharing Financial Data - Account Aggregators - Data leakage and concentration Why do you need centralisation of everything? It all leads to only 2 things - surveillance (in the name of trust) and taxation (to add to the burden of common man). The funny thing is, people often don’t really understand what privacy is. Then fall for digital arrest, cyber scams, surveillance like Pegasus spyware, etc.

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How can I ride the AI wave through public markets in India? I asked this research question on ChatGPT 5Pro: "Which industries and subsequently type of companies will benefit substantial from the introduction of AI in mainstream business? Research recent past results of public companies, earnings calls of ceos and cfos and discussions to provide insights What’s the purpose of this report? As a public market investor in India, I want to get ahead of the curve and invest in publicly listed companies (from any industry) that will benefit from AI in their earnings over the next few quarters, thereby providing an edge for investing in them before the market catches on." The answer is available to read as a PDF in the link below! (Gimme feedback if this helps you and you want more! Also, if you wanna partner with me on researching and investing in Indian/Global markets, just ping or write me at alok@Games2win-dot-com #Dhandhekibaat https://lnkd.in/dp47ZCVZ

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India just redefined AI-powered commerce. And it's not about chatbots. It's about trust, scale, and guardrails. On Oct 10 at Global Fintech Fest, NPCI, OpenAI, and Razorpay announced a collaboration that could change how 500M+ Indians discover and pay for products. But here's what excites me as someone building AI systems: This isn't just about AI agents processing payments. It's about building AI commerce infrastructure with: ✅ Compliance-first design - Built on India's trusted UPI rails ✅ Conversational commerce - Shop in your language, pay instantly ✅ Responsible AI at scale - Guardrails embedded from day one ✅ Financial inclusion - Bringing AI benefits to tier 2/3 cities The questions I'm asking: 🔹 How will AI agents verify user intent for high-value transactions? 🔹 What guardrails prevent fraud in conversational checkout flows? 🔹 How do we ensure AI doesn't push unnecessary purchases? 🔹 Can this work seamlessly across 22+ Indian languages? 🔹 What's the compliance framework for AI-driven financial decisions? Why this matters: We've seen AI content generation scale globally. But AI-powered commerce at India's scale—with built-in payment infrastructure and regulatory alignment—this is uncharted territory. If done right, this could be the blueprint for responsible AI commerce worldwide. My hope: That we build this with the same rigor we built UPI—user-centric, secure, and accessible to every Indian, not just the tech-savvy few. Kudos to Pragya Misra, Dilip Asbe, and the teams at National Payments Corporation Of India (NPCI), OpenAI, and Razorpay for taking this bold step. To fellow AI builders: How do we ensure AI commerce agents are helpful, not manipulative? Where should the guardrails be? This is the conversation India—and the world—needs to have. #AICommerce #ResponsibleAI #UPI #FintechInnovation #IndiaStack #AICompliance

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A simple idea to help delivery personnel. And how I explored it with AI! Every day, I notice something that’s easy to overlook but adds up in small inefficiencies across cities like mine. I live in an apartment, and almost every time a delivery person from Amazon, Zepto, Swiggy, Blinkit, or Zomato steps out of the lift, they pause. You can see the split second of uncertainty: do I go left or right? Sometimes they guess correctly. Other times, they go one way, realize it’s wrong, and have to backtrack. It got me thinking: in a world where we can track our lost gadgets with precision (thanks to things like Apple’s AirTag), why don’t we offer the same precision to delivery personnel who are trying to get a hot meal or urgent package to our door? Imagine if delivery apps could provide step-by-step indoor guidance, right from the lift to the correct door: “Exit left, second door on the right.” A simple arrow or mini floor guide, just like your phone guides you to a lost device. And imagine if we could build this without needing complex indoor mapping everywhere: By using GPS and learning from past deliveries. Or by integrating with apartment management apps like Mygate, assuming they can share floor plans securely. How I explored this idea using AI Lovable opened up free access to an “AI showdown” where I could test drive Anthropic's Cluade, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Google's Gemini side-by-side. I used this chance to: 1/ Frame the problem clearly 2/ Brainstorm technical approaches 3/ Explore what’s feasible in India (no open floor plan data, but potential in GPS + crowdsourcing + apartment app APIs) Think about the simplest prototype I could build to test this. It was fun to see how each model approached the problem slightly differently from privacy considerations to creative ways of gathering data. I’m now sketching a prototype workflow that relies on GPS + past delivery learning as a first layer and uses API integration with apartment management apps where possible. This is Part 1 of my exploration. In Part 2, I’ll share which AI model gave the most insightful or practical outcome for this idea and why. If you’re working in this space at a delivery app, a mapping company, or an apartment management platform or if you just find this interesting, I’d love to connect and exchange ideas! A small ask: The next time a delivery partner looks confused on your floor, maybe guide them. How would you solve this? Drop your thoughts! #ProductThinking #AIForGood #LastMileDelivery #SmartCities #UXDesign #DeliveryInnovation #UrbanTech #IndoorNavigation #StartupIdeas #TechForIndia #LovableAI #Prototyping #OpenAI #ClaudeAI #GeminiAI #Innovation #DigitalTransformation #NoCode #MapTech #LogisticsTech #FutureOfDelivery

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Presence Reflects Growth — Not Just Experience Over the years, we often tell ourselves that "hard work speaks for itself." And to a large extent, it does. Skills, experience, and results form the foundation of professional success. But there comes a point in every career — especially mid to senior level — where what you've done is silently judged by how you carry it. Recently, I observed a subtle but powerful moment in a hiring interaction. The candidate — seasoned, capable, and technically strong — walked into the interview room. But from the very beginning, it was evident that something didn’t click. Not because he wasn’t qualified. Not because he lacked experience. But because his presence didn't signal his potential. His appearance, energy, and communication hadn't evolved with his experience. While his resume told a story of growth, his presence didn’t align with it — and that disconnect affected how he was perceived. This isn’t about being superficial. It’s about understanding that perception is part of performance, especially at higher levels of responsibilities. So what does it mean to let your growth "show"? It doesn’t mean pretending to be someone else. It means updating how your external presence reflects your internal journey. Here's how professionals can bridge that gap: 1. Signal intentionality through appearance You don’t need luxury brands, just clarity in dressing. Clean, professional, and role-appropriate attire sends a signal that you’re intentional and aware. 2. Refine your communication Senior roles aren’t just about execution — they’re about influence. Clear articulation, confident pauses, and active listening can often communicate more than technical answers. 3. Show growth through posture and energy Your posture, eye contact, and tone are constantly communicating — even when you're not. Leadership is often first felt, then heard. 4. Stay aligned with the evolving context No matter how experienced you are, the industry moves forward. Keeping up with trends, language, and tone shows you're still growing. In essence, presence is not about performance — it’s about preparedness. As you move up in your career, technical depth will open the door — but presence decides how far you’ll go inside the room. Closing Thought: "Experience earns respect.Presence earns attention.Together, they build trust." #Leadership #CareerDevelopment #PresenceMatters #EngineeringLeadership #ProfessionalGrowth #SoftSkills #CommunicationSkills #TechCareer

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Seeing Shop the Look officially go live brings back a lot of memories. The idea started as a simple question during a discussion: if we can already achieve “see it, get it” in images, why can’t video go one step further? A few of us kept exploring that thought, breaking it down, challenging assumptions, and gradually turning what felt like an idealistic concept into something worth seriously validating. The 2024 company hackathon became a particularly special moment. In 48 hours, we built a working demo and stitched together the core loop. That showcase didn’t just help the idea gain visibility — it was the first time we could truly see it in action. It was no longer a slide or a concept note, but something tangible that actually worked. I still remember the excitement of that 0-to-1 moment. What followed was a much longer and more complex journey. Taking an early prototype and evolving it into a scalable, production-ready product required deep cross-team collaboration, constant iteration, and many thoughtful trade-offs. It’s the kind of progress that only happens when multiple teams align and keep pushing forward together. Ideas often grow through a relay of contributions — someone raises the question, someone validates the direction, someone hardens it into a system, someone brings it to market. I’m grateful to have been part of the early exploration, and truly happy for the teams who carried it forward and made it real. There’s something special about seeing a question once sketched on a whiteboard become a product serving real users. Looking forward to watching how this space continues to evolve. https://lnkd.in/grgbpY58

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Everyone keeps asking how AI will disrupt business. Meanwhile, some companies are just using it to quietly print revenue. This week, Bajaj Finserv’s Rajeev Jain shared that it analysed nearly 2 crore customer calls using AI. The outcome? Around ₹1,600 crore in incremental business. Pause on that. Two crore conversations were always happening. The data was always there. What changed wasn’t volume. It was interpretation. Instead of treating calls as support cost, they treated them as signal. Where customers hesitate. Where they’re confused. Where intent is hidden inside conversation. That’s AI as listening infrastructure. And it’s not just one company. HDFC Bank continues investing in AI-driven fraud and risk systems to reduce loss ratios at scale. ICICI Bank is expanding AI-led underwriting and personalised offers to improve approvals without inflating risk. Globally, JPMorganChase uses AI to scan contracts and risk documents in seconds work that once consumed thousands of human hours. AI isn’t replacing people. It’s compressing inefficiency. It finds revenue hiding in operational noise. Curious to understand, where do you think businesses are most underestimating AI’s revenue impact today? Link: https://lnkd.in/gKuPZFus #Ai #Fintech

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