Online Banking in India

What made you enter the online market space ? What prompted you to take up this present assignment?

There is tremendous opportunity in the Indian online market space. For instance buying flight tickets and shopping online was not popular a few years ago. Today people realize that transacting online can be safe, cheap, and can be done within a few seconds. Bankbazaar.com makes getting a great loan bargain as easy as buying an air ticket. Customers using our site will appreciate how much thought we have put into every little detail, which will make the process of applying and getting a loan a hassle free experience. It can help them save precious time and money. We expect a large percentage of consumers from channels such as bank branches and agents to migrate to BankBazaar.com .

Today there are a number of websites that claim to give customers instant loan rate quotes, when they actually just collect customer information and sell them to multiple banks and Direct Sales Agents. In such a scenario, we see a need for BankBazaar.com. Our innovative talent pool drawn from the world’s best colleges and companies are constantly seeking the best possible ways to offer an easier and faster online experience for customers.

I took up this assignment because my team is driving pure innovation in India. We are exploring options that no other financial marketplace in the world has ever attempted before and our goal is to build the world’s premier financial services marketplace (made in India).

What is different about BankBazaar for the customer ? What is different for a prospective employee ?

On BankBazaar.com the customer can instantly get customized competing offers from India’s leading Banks and NBFCs on our secure interface. We are the first neutral provider in the world to have innovated in partnership with leading financial institutions to provide this real-time offer capability. This information is

Continue reading “Online Banking in India”

The World's Largest Analytics Networker

1) What prompted you take a career in science, and what has been the reason you stuck to it, and been a success in it ?

I was doing mathematics for fun at a very young age when my friends were interested in sports, cars and movies. When I finished my master, I was approached by one of the professors to pursue a PhD program. It was in statistics (image analysis, bayesian clustering), and I thought that choosing statistics rather than number theory  or numerical analysis would increase my chances of getting a job after presenting my thesis. At that time, my favorite subject was indeed number theory – I was even published in J. of Number Theory. After earning my PhD, I moved to Cambridge, then North Carolina, then the Internet industry – with a very interesting detour into finance and risk management / fraud detection between 2002 and 2005.

2) AnalyticBridge is the world’s largest network for analytic professionals ? What prompted you to build it, what were the critical milestones, and what is your vision for it ?

It is a convergence of multiple factors. The feeling that the startup I was involved with at that time wasn’t doing well, the fact that I had a large network (thanks in part to LinkedIn) and that I discovered Ning.com (while browsing recruiter networks) on February 16th, 2008 – the date AnalyticBridge was born. I decided to create and grow AnalyticBridge very fast, both through networking, quality content, and significant paid advertising. I hope that within 5 years it will be five times bigger in terms of members, and even more profitable

Continue reading “The World's Largest Analytics Networker”

The World’s Largest Analytics Networker

1) What prompted you take a career in science, and what has been the reason you stuck to it, and been a success in it ?

I was doing mathematics for fun at a very young age when my friends were interested in sports, cars and movies. When I finished my master, I was approached by one of the professors to pursue a PhD program. It was in statistics (image analysis, bayesian clustering), and I thought that choosing statistics rather than number theory  or numerical analysis would increase my chances of getting a job after presenting my thesis. At that time, my favorite subject was indeed number theory – I was even published in J. of Number Theory. After earning my PhD, I moved to Cambridge, then North Carolina, then the Internet industry – with a very interesting detour into finance and risk management / fraud detection between 2002 and 2005.

2) AnalyticBridge is the world’s largest network for analytic professionals ? What prompted you to build it, what were the critical milestones, and what is your vision for it ?

It is a convergence of multiple factors. The feeling that the startup I was involved with at that time wasn’t doing well, the fact that I had a large network (thanks in part to LinkedIn) and that I discovered Ning.com (while browsing recruiter networks) on February 16th, 2008 – the date AnalyticBridge was born. I decided to create and grow AnalyticBridge very fast, both through networking, quality content, and significant paid advertising. I hope that within 5 years it will be five times bigger in terms of members, and even more profitable

Continue reading “The World’s Largest Analytics Networker”

Bollywood Review -Rock(ed) On

This is a cool movie. Mix great music, lovely acting, all the right dudes and dudettes. Bet it will take you to your college festivals where the music was loud and thus nice, the hair was long , we wore jeans that were NOT ironed, and the future was a hazy thing in the past. Its about the investment banker called Farhan Akhtar (yes the path breaking director himself) whose wife finds his stash of 
rock band memorabilia.

An indie style movie with a mainstream cast.

Cut to the past, and forward to the future, this is about how friendships change, nostalgia, good music, and how ageing poets can sometimes get a second chance to get their chance in the spotlight. And Arjun Rampal gets to do a cool lead guitar act, while Poorab and Luke (MTV VJs )chip in with sidekick show. Reminds you of the beatles, Parikarma and what not. This movie rocks on and on.

Go watch it.

or stick to investment banking.

India and the Internet:SimplyMarry.com

What prompted you to enter the internet media space, and what qualities do you think made you succeed in it.

I just loved the internet since I started using it, somehow I always felt this is the medium for me. I created a portal long time back and then joined an internet firm. The best thing about the medium is that the product, marketing, content and sales are close-knit than in any other medium. Another great part of it being it’s flexibility, you can create lot of designs of experiments at almost zero cost, and implied risk.

Whatever little success I have had is because of my passion for the field, which has given me a sound understanding of behaviour of web consumption. I think consumer behaviour is the key here, which has to driven by great data interpretation skills, which is basically the level of understanding of the medium.

What’s your most challenging project ever (anonmous details)

My most challenging project has been the C2C engine success challenge. This is a case of concurrent profiles, threshold traffic, registered traffic, returning traffic and overall site engagement metrics. Now this is tough t build and tough to break as well, still very tough to build. The returning traffic is a component of current traffic, which makes it a chicken and egg story in C2C domain. This is the toughest part, the “engagement metrics” forecasting is the key, and you can never be precise on this, the engine needs to be fueled on scientific data analysis, industry trends, consumer research and believe it or not, lot of heuristics. And if you go wrong, you can waste millions of dollars for

Continue reading “India and the Internet:SimplyMarry.com”

Poetry Books :Online Orderable Anywhere

Using Self Publishing On Demand Website , www.pothi.com (an Indian start up and pioneer in the on demand publishing space) ………………..here are both my poetry books.

You can order them online (including international shipping at

http://pothi.com/pothi/book/ajay-ohri-corporate-poetry

and http://pothi.com/pothi/book/ajay-ohri-case-i-dont-see-you-again