Tuesday, October 11, 2016

'Rekka': Idli chic with oregano flavour

'Rekka': new age gangsta chic in Tamil. Dimpled hero with a stubble and golden heart disproportionately bashes comical bad guys and celebrates small town family values. Bashfully bold lady love  is a cross twixt rustic daddy's girl and romantic urban belle. Mall meets Mela. Vijay Sethupathi and Lakshmi Menon make a fine pair with an engagingly vulnerable appeal. This is what software does to Jallikkattu country.

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Jio Beta! Is RIL hiding a secret sauce?

Reliance Jio is creating a flutter in India's telecom market. Mukesh Ambani seems to be using a late mover advantage by going in for aggressive pricing because he has not spent much on buying spectrum, in contrast to big incumbents such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and idea. This gives his Reliance Industries Ltd more elbow room in terms of flexibility.
At the same time RIL is targeting 100 mln customers in a short span of time. He can hope to play the volume game. But where will the profit come from?
My guess would be that it would come from data science.
By being flexible on handsets, adding content and using smart software to figure out profit opportunities, a retail-savvy game can be played.
Here is how.
By combining Lyf-branded house phones, partnerships with low end brands like Intex and content providers, RIL can get high volume semi-rural consumers.
Reliance Retail can be the e-commerce play using supply chain management efficiently.
There is also room to create, procure and manage in-house content. Remember, Ambani controls Network 18 and Viacom 18 is famous for Nagin serials!

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Iraivi - Mini review

Saw Iraivi by Kartik Subbaraju who earlier directed Jigar Thanda, a comically chilling exploration into the hitman next door. Powerful tale blending feminist views with theft of temple idols in a metaphorical embrace. Many plot twists and much violence makes it skid. But KS is Tamil cinema 's unique  blend stylistically mixing Sudhir Mishra, Anurag Kashyap and of course, Tarantino. He explicitly recognises the influence of writer Sujatha and director K Balachander. A deft mixture of art with crime, realism with everyday entertainment, misplaced machismo of weak men with emerging assertiveness of empowered women and visual motifs with hard-hitting dialogues makes the overcooked plot still worth it.