Carl Sagan FOREWORD to the Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time

We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world. We give little thought to the machinery that generates the sunlight that makes life possible, to the gravity that glues us to an Earth that would otherwise send us spinning off into space, or to the atoms of which we are made and on whose stability we fundamentally depend. Except for children (who don’t know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spend much time wondering why nature is the way it is; where the cosmos came from, or whether it was always here; if time will one day flow backward and effects precede causes; or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know.

There are even children, and I have met some of them, who want to know what a black hole looks like; what is the smallest piece of matter; why we remember the past and not the future; how it is, if there was chaos early, that there is, apparently, order today; and why there is a universe.

In our society it is still customary for parents and teachers to answer most of these questions with a shrug, or with an appeal to vaguely recalled religious precepts. Some are uncomfortable with issues like these, because they so vividly expose the limitations of human understanding. But much of philosophy and science has been driven by such enquiries. An increasing number of adults are willing to ask questions of this sort, and occasionally they get some astonishing answers. Equidistant from the atoms and the stars, we are expanding our exploratory horizons to embrace both the very small and the very large.

In the spring of 1974, about two years before the Viking spacecraft landed on Mars, I was at a meeting in England sponsored by the Royal Society … to explore the question of how to search for extra-terrestrial life. During a coffee break I noticed that a much large meeting was being held in an adjacent hall, which out of curiosity I entered. I soon realised that I was witnessing an ancient rite, the investiture of new fellows into the Royal Society, one of the most ancient scholarly organisations on the planet. In the front row a young man in a wheelchair was, very slowly, signing his name in a book that bore on its earliest pages the signature of Isaac Newton. When at last he finished, there was a stirring ovation. Stephen Hawking was a legend even then.

Hawking is now the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, a post once held by Newton and later by Paul Dirac, two celebrated explorers of the very large and the very small. He is their worthy successor. This, Hawking’s first book for the non-specialist, holds rewards of many kinds for the lay audience. As interesting as the book’s wide-ranging contents is the glimpse it provides into the workings of its author’s mind. In this book are lucid revelations on the frontiers of physics, astronomy, cosmology and courage.

This is also a book about God... or perhaps about the absence of God. The word God fills these pages. Hawking embarks on a quest to answer Einstein’s famous question about whether God had any choice in creating the universe. Hawking is attempting, as he explicitly states, to understand the mind of God. And this makes all the more unexpected the conclusion of the effort, at least so far: a universe with no edge in space, no beginning or end in time, and nothing for a Creator to do.

Carl Sagan (1934-1996) wrote this introduction for the first edition of ‘A Brief History of Time’, in 1988. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking-a-brief-history-of-time-foreword-carl-sagan-astronomer-a8256241.html

National Startup Day 2025: Celebrating Entrepreneurship and Innovation in India

India's entrepreneurial landscape has witnessed an extraordinary transformation over the last decade, a journey that is celebrated each year on National Startup Day, observed on January 16. This day is not just a celebration but a testament to the country's commitment to fostering innovation, creativity, and economic growth through its burgeoning startup ecosystem.

The Genesis of National Startup Day
National Startup Day was instituted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2022, marking the anniversary of the Startup India initiative launched in 2016. This initiative aimed to catalyze a startup culture and build a robust ecosystem for innovation. Since its inception, Startup India has transformed the nation's approach to entrepreneurship, with the number of startups soaring from just over 340 in 2016 to an impressive tally of over 1.59 lakh by 2025, according to the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT).

Driving Forces of Innovation
The spirit of entrepreneurship in India has been fueled by various government and private sector initiatives:
Startup India Scheme: This flagship program offers tax exemptions, funding support through the Fund of Funds for Startups, ease of doing business by simplifying regulations, and incubation support. It has been pivotal in nurturing startups, especially in sectors like biotechnology, agriculture, and renewable energy.


Sectoral Growth: India's startup ecosystem is notably diverse, with significant contributions from technology, healthcare, education, and now, a booming biotechnology sector. The biotechnology and life sciences sector, for instance, added a record-breaking 1,776 startups in 2023, showcasing a 59% increase over two years.

Support Systems: Programs like the Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), National Initiative for Developing and Harnessing Innovations (NIDHI), and the Startup Accelerator of MeitY (SAMRIDH) have provided crucial infrastructure, mentorship, and financial support.


Celebrations and Impact
National Startup Day 2025 is marked by a series of nationwide events, including startup exhibitions, mentorship workshops, and pitch competitions, which serve to inspire and connect the community. The day underscores the government's vision to make India a global hub for entrepreneurship, highlighting how startups are not just businesses but significant drivers of job creation, technological advancement, and solutions to societal challenges.


Awards and Recognition: The National Startup Awards and similar accolades celebrate the most innovative and impactful startups, encouraging a culture of excellence and ambition.

Educational and Networking Platforms: Events like "Udyamotsav 2025" and various roundtables facilitate networking, learning from industry leaders, and fostering partnerships between startups, investors, and academia.


Looking Ahead
As we celebrate National Startup Day, the narrative is not just about what has been achieved but also what lies ahead. With the theme for 2025 emphasizing sustainability and inclusivity, there's a clear directive for startups to integrate eco-friendly practices and prioritize diversity in their growth strategies.

India's journey from the 81st to the 40th position on the Global Innovation Index is a testament to the power of startups in redefining the economic landscape. The aim is to keep pushing this boundary, making India not just a participant but a leader in global innovation by 2030.


Conclusion
National Startup Day 2025 is more than a celebration; it's a reaffirmation of India's commitment to its entrepreneurs and innovators. It's a call to action for every startup to strive for excellence, innovation, and societal impact. As India continues to evolve, the startup ecosystem's growth will be integral to shaping a self-reliant, innovative, and inclusive future. Here's to the relentless spirit of Indian entrepreneurship and a future brimming with possibilities.

References - 

1. https://www.startupindia.gov.in/

2. https://www.startupindia.gov.in/content/sih/en/international/go-to-market-guide/indian-startup-ecosystem.html 

3.https://aim.gov.in/

4.https://nidhi.dst.gov.in/

5.https://msh.meity.gov.in/schemes/samridh

6.https://www.wipo.int/en/web/global-innovation-index

7. https://yukti.mic.gov.in/Udyamotsav

Jeff Bezos: ‘It’s harder to be kind than clever’

Below is the full transcript of Jeff Bezos’ commencement address to Princeton’s Class of 2010 (which struck a nerve with me) :

"As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle, and do other chores. We also watched soap operas every afternoon, especially “Days of our Lives.” My grandparents belonged to a Caravan Club, a group of Airstream trailer owners who travel together around the U.S. and Canada. Every few summers, we’d join the caravan. We’d hitch up the Airstream trailer to my grandfather’s car and off we’d go in a line with 300 other Airstream adventurers. I loved and worshipped my grandparents and I really looked forward to these trips. On one particular trip, I was about 10 years old. I was rolling around in the big bench seat in the back of the car. My grandfather was driving and my grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked throughout these trips, and I hated the smell.

At that age, I’d take any excuse to make estimates and do minor arithmetic. I’d calculate our gas mileage or figure out useless statistics on things like grocery spending. I’d been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can’t remember the details, but basically the ad said “every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life.” I think it might have been two minutes per puff. At any rate, I decided to do the math for my grandmother. I estimated the number of cigarettes per days, estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I’d come up with a reasonable number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmother on the shoulder and proudly proclaimed, “At two minutes per puff, you’ve taken nine years off your life!”

I have a vivid memory of what happened next and it was not what I expected. I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. “Jeff, you’re so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates, figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division.” That’s not what happened. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know what to do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather, who had been driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. He got out of the car and came around and opened my door and waited for me to follow. Was I in trouble? My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quiet man. He had never said a harsh word to me, and maybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”

What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy — they’re given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices.
This is a group with many gifts. I’m sure one of your gifts is the gift of a smart and capable brain. I’m confident that’s the case because admission is competitive and if there weren’t some signs that you’re clever, the dean of admission wouldn’t have let you in.

our smarts will come in handy because you will travel in a land of marvels. We humans, plodding as we are, will astonish ourselves. We’ll invent ways to generate clean energy and a lot of it. Atom by atom, we’ll assemble tiny machines that will enter cell walls and make repairs. This month comes the extraordinary but also inevitable news that we’ve synthesized life. In the coming years, we’ll not only synthesize it, but we’ll engineer it to specifications. I believe you’ll even see us understand the human brain. Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Galileo, Newton, all the curious from the ages would have wanted to be alive most of all right now. As a civilization, we will have so many gifts, just as you as individuals have so many individual gifts as you sit before me.

How will you use these gifts? And will you take pride in your gifts or pride in your choices?

I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that Web usage was growing at 2,300 percent per year. I’d never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles, something that simply couldn’t exist in the physical world, was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old, and I’d been married for a year. I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn’t work since most startups don’t and I wasn’t sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie, also a Princeton grad and sitting here in the second row, told me I should go for it. As a young boy, I’d been a garage inventor. I’d invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn’t work very well out of an umbrella and tinfoil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I’d always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.

I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I was going to start a company selling books on the Internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park, listened carefully to me, and finally said, “That sounds like a really good idea but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn’t already have a good job.” That logic made some sense to me and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing and I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all. After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my passion, and I’m proud of that choice.

Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life, the life you author from scratch on your own, begins. How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make? Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions? Will you follow dogma, or will you be original? Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure? Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions? Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologize? Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love? Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling? When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless? Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder? Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?

I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story. Thank you and good luck! "

Here is the video link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=371&v=vBmavNoChZc&feature=emb_logo

Salesmanship

90% of deals are lost due to poor follow-up

Anyone can send out an introductory email or make the first sales call. It takes discipline and a well thought-through sales process to stay focused, nurture prospective customers and close deals. Invest in technology that will keep you on track.

Millennials and Banking : An Indian Prespective

Millennials - the fastest growing customer base : A Banking PoV 

The fastest growing customer base is changing the way banks do business. Born between 1980 and 2000, Millennials are the largest generation in Indian history . 

It seems like every company is trying to tap into the Millennial market. And for good reason: this year, Pew is predicting they will overtake the Baby Boomers in number, with around 75 million people in the U.S. under 34. And they are reaching an age of independent consumption, starting to have children, and becoming a presence in the workforce.

By 2021, millennials will make up over 50% of the work force in India.  

But they don’t think banks have what they need. 

• 71% would rather go to the dentist than listen to what banks are saying .
• 53% don’t think that their bank offers anything unique
• 68% say that the way we access our money will be totally different in 5 years
• Nearly a quarter cite lack of a mobile app as the main barrier to bank engagement                        

Millennials want digital solutions to manage their money and help them build their finances. 

Digital Natives - 77% say their mobile phone is always with them . 

• 3x Three times more likely to open a new account with their phone vs. in person
• 61% say that mobile has made tracking and spending their money better
• 67% Vs. of millennials 50% of other customers want digital budgeting tools from their bank 

Banks that offer digital services are better positioned to engage Millennial customers which includes -

• Mobile Payments
• Budgeting tools 
• Mobile banking 
• Wealth Management 

Saturday Night Live recently featured a sketch poking fun at Millennials. It opens with a young woman frantically texting on her iPhone, approaching her boss and asking for a promotion. The boss asks how long she’s been with the company. She replies, “Three days.”

While pithy descriptions of what makes Millennials unique are presented as self-evident and seem to have a ring of truth to them, very few are supported with solid empirical research. On the contrary, a growing body of evidence suggests that employees of all ages are much more alike than different in their attitudes and values at work. To the extent that any gaps do exist, they amount to small differences that have always existed between younger and older workers throughout history and have little to do with the Millennial generation per se.

Everyone gets it. Conventional wisdom holds that Millennials are entitled, easily distracted, impatient, self-absorbed, lazy, and unlikely to stay in any job for long. On the positive side, they’re also looking for purpose, feedback, and personal life balance in their work. Companies of all kinds are obsessed with understanding them better.

The fascination with Millennials has given rise to a new consulting industry. Hundreds of firms, speakers, authors and individual experts are vying for a share of the “Millennials are Different” segment of the $150 billion-a-year global HR consulting market. A dizzying array of books, seminars, and articles such as Ties to Tattoos and “Dude, What’s My Job? Managing Millennials in Today’s Workforce” promise to help turn generational differences into an asset. There’s even a consultancy that specializes in helping other consultants hone their message to tap into this lucrative market.

For millennials, pressing social problems are not just the preserve of philanthropists or governments. Millennials consistently cite social impact as one of the most important roles of business. Of all the generations alive today, millennials are the most willing to trade financial return for greater social impact, according to “Millennials and Money,” a 2014 study from Merrill Lynch’s Private Banking and Investment Group.

These opinions matter. Millennials are poised to share in the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in human history — one widely-cited estimate puts its value at $41 trillion in the United States alone by the year 2052.

If you reach Millennials now, they will likely stay as loyal customers as they become ready for traditional bank products and services.

Banking on Blockchain - Literally!

Blockchain has been a topic of discussion ever since its inception in 2009 as the underlying technology for Bitcoin. If market hype is any indication, blockchain — the underlying technology for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin — is poised to solve multiple challenges facing the banking industry by enabling faster, secure and more transparent transactions.

The disruptive potential of blockchain is widely claimed to equal that of the early commercial Internet. A crucial difference, however, is that while the Internet enables the exchange of data, blockchain could enable the exchange of value; that is, it could enable users to carry out trade and commerce across the globe without the need for payment processors, custodians and settlement and reconciliation entities. 

Ever since the first Bitcoin transaction was carried out in January 2009, the digital cryptocurrency has been a topic of debate. While banks and regulators have largely remained wary of Bitcoin, the underlying technology of blockchain and distributed ledger began attracting the attention of banks and startups by the end of 2015. 

When it came to investing in this technology, 50% of the banks surveyed have already invested in blockchain technology, or will do so in 2017. In terms of degrees of adoption of blockchain technology, 15% of the banks are innovators, 35% are early followers. The rest (50%) that are waiting for the technology to mature, are late adopters. While average investment in blockchain projects in 2017 is expected to be $1 million, the innovators have already invested funds over $10 million. These investments not only support blockchain initiatives, but also explore use cases beyond the traditional realm of cross-border remittances, clearing, and settlement.

There are three reasons why you need to know about Blockchain:

1. Blockchain technology doesn't have to exist publicly. It can also exist privately - where nodes are simply points in a private network and the Blockchain acts similarly to a distributed ledger. Financial institutions specifically are under tremendous pressure to demonstrate regulatory compliance and many are now moving ahead with Blockchain implementations. Secure solutions like Blockchain can be a crucial building block to reduce compliance costs.
2. Block-chain technology is broader than finance. It can be applied to any multi-step transaction where traceability and visibility is required. Supply chain is a notable use case where Blockchain can be leveraged to manage and sign contracts and audit product provenance. It could also be leveraged for votation platforms, titles and deed management - amongst myriad other uses. As the digital and physical worlds converge, the practical applications of Blockchain will only grow.
3. The exponential and disruptive growth of Blockchain will come from the convergence of public and private Blockchains to an ecosystem where firms, customers and suppliers can collaborate in a secure, auditable and virtual way.                                                                                                                                                                                         It is no longer a question of whether banks will adopt blockchain; but more of when and how they will implement it. Financial institutions and technology providers can feed off each other's ideas and experiments, while identifying areas of focus and avoidance. This will allow banks to identify and build key skill sets and use the collective knowledge to create a blueprint that will ease the seemingly inevitable transition to a blockchain-driven future.                                                                                                                                  My belief is that banks must experiment with the technology in a controlled environment to discover the value it can bring in their context and based on the outcomes of the experiments commit towards production deployments and slowly crafting their organization's blockchain adoption strategy.

Chatbots - The advantage

With the rise of the mobile, always-on consumer, it is easier than ever for customers to demand immediate responsiveness from brands. Companies are expected to deliver fast, reliable customer service across channels and are under pressure to incorporate new tools and processes to engage with customers wherever they are.

Fielding messages into traditional help desks has historically resulted in longer wait times and a disorganized messaging experience for support representatives. Enter the chatbots. Chatbots assist in solving simple, quick-response needs, leaving more time for customer service representatives to focus on complex customer demands and high-touch interactions.

In recent years, bot-enhanced customer support use has increased, due in part to new technology that allows businesses to easily identify and resolve customer problems through messaging services. As bots continue to grow in popularity, experts speculate whether the automated technology has arrived or still has a long journey ahead. While that debate will likely continue for some time, here are a few things companies should keep in mind as they invest in bot-enhanced support.

Bots are a-changin’

Bot development has changed a lot since the mid-2000s, when virtual assistants in Live Chat were all the rage. Back then, customer questions were answered by pulling from a predetermined directory of responses. Naturally, these responses were oftentimes unhelpful and out of context. Studying those first bot interactions has led to advancements in intelligent technology, making way for developments in natural language understanding (NLU) which seeks to understand the intent behind questions. Paired with advancements in artificial intelligence (A.I.), today’s technology is helping bots “think” rather than regurgitating pre-assigned answers. Furthermore, A.I. powers tools such as “deep learning,” which analyzes public customer information and helps customize bots for ultimate customer service.

Twitter was one of the first platforms to embrace social messaging for business-to-consumer (B2C) communication. Now we’ve seen companies such as Facebook, Google, and Microsoft open their platforms to bot and app developers. With the public showing signs of “app fatigue,” the hope is that chatbots will provide a gateway for brands seeking to engage customers on a more personal level. While the technology is far from perfect, these are exciting advancements in customer services.

Bots and humans: the perfect relationship

The ideal customer service offering combines the power of bots and humans. The bottom line: When a customer reaches a point of frustration, an automated response just won’t do. There will inevitably be some situations that bots simply aren’t trained for. Businesses will have to choose the right use cases for automation and build in the right handovers, or escape hatches, to let customers talk to human operators when it’s sensible to do so.

Human responses are essential in training bots to answer the “tougher” questions. Interactions between representatives and customers provide a loop of responses for bots to learn from. The support products of the future will alert human operators when the A.I.’s confidence level is low. By taking over in those situations, the human agents will not just assist the customer, their responses will also help the A.I. learn. Over time, this knowledge will organically help to expand the bot’s capabilities.

Keep in mind, however, that bots are still just that… bots. Those with human-like personalities (e.g. Siri), while entertaining, can be downright frustrating if they deliver limited functionality. Leveraging bots as a means to enhance the customer experience could be the best way to manage customer expectations and ensure stronger customer relationships, but the key is designing a bot flow that gives customers the option to reach a real person, if that becomes necessary.

All bots are not created equal

When it comes to deploying the right chatbot for your business, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Companies have to ensure that the bots they integrate have the scale, technology, and intelligence to handle their specific tasks. As with all customer service interactions, it’s critical to understand the user’s intent to best support their needs. This may take more than the simple automated responses that a lower-tech bot can provide and may require a messaging platform that is integrated with customer records and leverages powerful automation, analytics, and integrations.

Messaging is viewed as the customer communication channel of the future because it’s more immediate than email, yet more convenient than calling a company or going to the website to live chat. Whether deploying tools to help streamline questions for a small business or providing around-the-clock service for an international corporation, bots must be able to deliver fast response times and manage high volumes of conversations.

Today, customers require increasing levels of personalization. For some companies, this first stage of bot-enhanced support has allowed them to reach customers where they are. Amex bot for Facebook Messenger, for example, lets consumers see real-time purchase alerts and key information about American Express benefits — bringing personalized and proactive support right to their devices.

While this phase of bot technology is certainly a step in the right direction, there is still so much more to learn. With an understanding of the rapidly changing technology, a focus on providing a human element, and a plan for deploying chats at scale, the future of chatbots for your business is bright.