Rainbow nation... Cape of Good Hope... last piece of land... safaris... Nelson Mandela... So many thoughts come to your mind when you talk about South Africa. Today I did a series of amazing interviews with people who are connected to South Africa in some way or the other on "Eyes on travel" - a special episode for CNNNEWS18,  about discovering that amazing country. From the one and only Jonty Rhodes, who spoke about all the adventure sports that he's experienced - abseiling,  paragliding, sky diving and bungee jumping - to actress & film maker Pooja Bhatt, who spoke about the short period that she lived in Cape Town on her own and how she has also filmed there. I also spoke with the South African minister of tourism, Derek Hanekom, about his views on safety and the India-South Africa connect, while Go Beyond Travel's Shantanu Chand shared his tips on making the best of a safari excursion in SA. And finally Roxanne Bamboat (The Tiny Taster) told us what's...

This is a message, a forward rather,  that I received via WhatsApp. While some of it might be far fetched, most of it will see the light of day soon. Let me know what your thoughts are. ____________________________________________ In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they got bankrupt. What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 year - and most people don't see it coming. Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on paper film again? Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore's law. So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a long time, before it became way superiour and got mainstream in only a few short years. It will now happen with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agric...

Hey, So this is a cool App (so to say) that I came across. Actually, my friend discovered it and added it to our WhatsApp group.  It's called " Max " a personal assistant on WhatsApp. So we're all on multiple WhatsApp groups and we make plans with our friends for dinner, movies, cricket matches, etc. " Max " can be a tab of all the people who have said they are "In" or "Out" for the event and also sends reminders. The best part is that it's not an app that needs to be downloaded. All that the group admin has to do is add the number of Max to the group. Once that's done, anyone can schedule an event and the others reply "In" or "Out". It's a FOC service. Has anyone used this service? How's the performance? Any other options for this kind of a service? It's kind of freaky that a bot somewhere is scanning all your msgs and also has a copy of all the msgs posted on that group. Won...

Did you read my last blog post about the need for an app or website to keep travelers updated about delays in flights and my thought that Makemytrip.com or any other company should offer this service? How coincidental is it that I ended up interviewing Deep Kalra (Founder & Group CEO, Makemytrip.com ) for the Emerging India series 10 days after posting that thought? In its 10th year the Emerging India Awards (presented by ICICI Bank and CNBCTV18 ) continue to honour the best SMEs in the country and as a build up to the awards, I met 7 industry stalwarts and got them to mentor some promising SMEs. Today, I met Deep Kalra as he played mentor to Pushpinder Singh (Co-Founder & CEO of Travelkhana.com ) . Using Travelkhana.com a train traveler can book a meal online and have it delivered to his seat in the train, at a station of his choice. While talking about business sustainability (the theme of this episode), Deep spoke about the 4 P's of business sustainab...

After Bangalore, Pune and Kolkata we touched down in Delhi to talk about digital disruption. Digital disruption helped me in my travel as well, since my flight from Mumbai to Delhi was delayed by 2 hours owing to fog. While sitting in the plane on the Mumbai tarmac, I saw a tweet from Indigo Airlines saying that flights had started taking off from Delhi, and then in under 5 minutes the captain came on the PA system and announced that we would finally be taking off. This is a small example, but this could be a great opportunity for Makemytrip.com or similar companies or even a new start up to develop a business around providing travel updates- flights or trains delays, road traffic jams, etc - pan india.  Anyway, back to the symposium, the keynote speaker for the evening was the former President of NASSCOM ( the premier body for the indian IT industry) Mr. Som Mittal .  He spoke about how Voice as an activation tool is coming up and will make a marked difference in...

As a build up to the Emerging India Awards presented by ICICI Bank & CNBC TV18, I caught up with Vinita Bali (former MD of Brittannia Industries) to talk about diversification, whether SMEs need to diversify & if yes then what’s the best way for them to accomplish this. We shot with her at the lawns of the beautiful Leela Palace in Bengaluru. A pleasant breeze accompanied our conversation as Ms. Bali stated that SMEs need to first identify whether they really need to diversify before they blindly jump onto that bandwagon. Especially in a country like India, where there is such a huge untapped market, SMEs should be focussed more on expanding in their existing market before looking at diversification. But that said, when diversifying, SMEs should be cognizant of their strengths and do in depth research about their new market they want to get into before getting their feet wet. For the 2 nd part of the shoot, Ms Bali & I were joined by the VP, Sales & Marketing...

Do big symposium - Kolkata 18th December 2015 As the anchor/moderator for the Do Big Symposium presented by Tata DoCoMo business services and powered by CNBC TV18, I was in the city of joy - Kolkata -recently for our 3rd pit stop of the series. With a strong turnout of approx 200 delegates, the evening began with the Managing Director of SREI Infrastructure Hemant Kanoria addressing the audience about his views on digital disruptions. Some of the key points of his address: * The Holy Trinity of Hindu Mythology - Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh - are also disrupters in their space * Technology can be used to provide employment in rural areas * His company allows customers in rural areas, who dont have access to banking services, to use their product offering (S-Cash) to buy products * Essential to digitise so as to make it easier for your customers This was followed by the MD of Tata Teleservices Ltd., N. Srinath's presentation on digital disruption which began with a thought prov...