Coffee House and More

 Recently visited Indian Coffee House and was reminded of times we used to go there in student days, because it was what we could afford. Still looks pretty similar, though it has moved one street away, from M.G. Road to Church Street. Ideal to while away some time chatting, without yuppies on their laptops (if you want those, go to Starbucks and spend more too). Or simply having your coffee and drinking it too. Simple eats are also available, like a Dosa or Bread Omelette, or a cutlet. Not too crowded, for the same reason, that yuppies have found a new haunt, and kids these days are rich.

Vintage stuff, like many haunts such as Higginbotham's on M.G. Road. Gangaram's used to be another one. I bought most of my Wodehouse books there. But my new favourites are Blossoms and Bookworm. I actually found 5 Rex Stouts there-incredible. Also read a Le Carre story after hearing of his passing away recently.

Meeting a Bookworm

 I have a few bookworm friends. It's a great pleasure meeting them, and in Bangalore, I try to meet at Church Street, where you can worship books at at least 5 places of worship- bookstores, I mean. So it was that Anushka and I met at this interesting spot, which incidentally has been turned into a pedestrian zone and you can therefore see a lot of creative uses of the street by vendors, street musicians and so on. Here is photographic evidence of our meet..because when you get tired after book-shopping, you need a cup of tea to refresh yourself. So we tried some at Tea Villa. The crispy corn with water chestnuts was good too, and reminded me of Indore's Sayaji hotel. I must say she is a good photographer!

Ten Motion Arts and Digital Marketing

I am writing a case on Digital Marketing done by Ten Motion Arts, a company that also makes films. Founded by Abhinav Kamal, they were an early entrant into the Digital Marketing space, and have done well for themselves. They offer a package deal, doing both promotional films and digital marketing for clients, which gives them an edge over rivals who can do one of these, not both.

It's always a pleasure to see what entrepreneurs are up to. This entrepreneur now has a second company called MyTingli, which vets information about colleges and promotes them among aspiring (engineering/management) students. They use a drone to shoot videos of campuses, giving good aerial views in addition to usual shots at the ground level. They recently acquired a vest-based shooting camera called a steady-cam, which makes it easy to shoot moving objects, action, without a tedious set-up of camera movements. Sports and thriller/action sequences are usual applications.

Also, on the side, met a few of my ex-students from IMT (Pallavi Sharma, Sreeram and Gowri, Anupriya Pandit), and some old friends- Avinash Mulky at IIMB and Prabhakar, who's a semi-retired entrepreneur from my MBA days.

Also went to a historic site (for pub-goers)- the corner of Church Street where Ramada Pub, India's first pub (to my knowledge) started in 1982/83. I was a student in Bangalore then. It is now called Church Street Social.