Manish Anand

Mere observer who is trying to learn. Also building USTRAA @theustraa

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

AI ROI is looking a lot like marketing ROI

[Jaya Gupta @JayaGup10]

https://t.co/eUp5waUIwl

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

AI infra as public goods.
Like National Highways.

[Rohan Paul @rohanpaul_ai]

Sam Altman is basically saying OpenAI does not want to be just another high-margin software company selling AI tools.

The bigger ambition is to become the core intelligence infrastructure layer for the economy.

i.e. OpenAI wants to sit underneath companies, products, workflows, agents, consumer apps, internal automation systems, developer tools, and business processes. Not just as a chatbot. Not just as an API.

But as something closer to an “intelligence meter”, where people and companies consume AI the way they consume electricity, cloud compute, or internet bandwidth.

The key point is about margin philosophy.

Altman is saying that AI may not remain a very high-margin business forever. As models get smarter, switching from 1 AI to another becomes easier. A company can ask an agent to migrate code, replace workflows, test alternatives, and move faster than before. So defensibility may not come from locking customers into a single app.

It may come from becoming the cheapest, most useful, most reliable intelligence utility at massive scale.

That is a very different OpenAI strategy than “build the best AI app and charge premium prices.”

The real strategy sounds more like, that OpenAI wants to align itself with the success of the whole economy. If companies automate more, build more, sell more, ship faster, and create new products using OpenAI’s intelligence layer, then OpenAI grows with them.

This is closer to an infrastructure business than a normal software business.

The important part is that Altman seems comfortable with OpenAI becoming a huge low-margin company, as long as it becomes deeply embedded in global economic activity. That is a very Amazon Web Services-style idea, but for intelligence instead of cloud servers.

So in the future the winning AI company may not the one with the fattest margins, but the one that becomes the default meter for intelligence usage across the world.

---

From "Stripe" YT channel (link in comment)

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

Real risk is 30 years khaali baithna post retirement.

[Sandeep Jethwani @sandeepjethwani]

If the 40 crore retirement number I shared shocked you, this post is for you.

Here is what I said. If you are 40 today, spending 2 lakh rupees a month, with no EMIs to service, and you want to retire at 60, you will need 40 crore rupees.

The comments had a lot of pushback. The number feels impossible. It is not. Let me show you why.

Two assumptions drive this number. Inflation and life expectancy. Both are higher than what regular retirement calculators assume. Both are right.

Start with inflation. Retail CPI in India is 5 to 6%. That is the inflation of atta, dal, and bus fare. It is not the inflation of an affluent household.

Private healthcare in India runs at 12 to 14% every year. Domestic staff wages in metros are growing at 10 to 12%. Premium school fees, international travel, club memberships. All of these inflate between 8 and 10%. Blend them and you get 9%. That is the real inflation rate of an HNI lifestyle.

Now life expectancy. Most Indians plan their retirement assuming they will live to 75 or 80. That is what national averages suggest. But national averages are pulled down by infant mortality and rural data. They have nothing to do with how long a healthy, affluent Indian actually lives. For a couple aged 65 today, there is a 71% probability that one partner reaches 85. A 44% probability that one reaches 90.

Now the math.

2 lakh rupees a month at 9% inflation becomes 11 lakh 20 thousand rupees a month at age 60. That is an annual spend of 1.34 crore.

Plan for 30 years of retirement. Your retirement portfolio which is focused on capital preservation (60% fixed income: 40% equity) earns 9%. Your Inflation is also 9%. Your real return is zero.

So corpus needed equals 30 multiplied by 1.34 crore. That is 40 crore.

Here is the good news. This number is not as far away as it looks. At 12% returns before retirement, 40 crore at age 60 translates to roughly 4 crore today for a 40 year old.

The point of this message is not to scare you. It is to make sure you understand the silent erosion of purchasing power that inflation causes.

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

at the same time signalling to all government institutions (~10% of their deposits at the time) and other institutions - that - their money will always be safe with IDFC First Bank

[Karthik 🇮🇳 @beastoftraal]

This is fairly surprising, but also a smart move by IDFC First Bank! The news of the Rs. 590 Crores fraud first surfaced on Monday (February 23, 2026) as reported in almost all newspapers. The news of the bank's share slump was up the next day (February 24, 2026). There's more news about the fraud today too, but the bank seems to have done something fairly unusual today in terms of corporate communications - a combination of internal action, followed by a mix of PR + advertising to salvage its credibility.

First, it took an internal action to pay Rs. 583 Crores to the Haryana government even as the investigation related to the financial fraud is ongoing!

Second, it announced this move to the stock exchanges, as it must. But the bank has *used* this otherwise official letter as an opportunity to talk about itself in terms of being 'customer-first' (rightly so, having earned it in this instance)

But the most interesting thing is the third action. The bank decided to also release the letter to the exchanges as a full-page advertisement in many newspaper (that also carried the bank's action as 'news')! It almosty feels like the letter to the exchanges was drafted while also planning to release it as an advertisement!

This is actually smart thinking. Even though the RBI has said that the fraud seems isolated (as against a structural governance issue like IndusInd Bank) and is not a systemic issue, the news of fraud, widely reported in the last two days, enabled by collusion among a few employees, points to lapses in internal controls and affects the bank's reputation and credibility.

Where any other bank would have wanted to lay low, letting PR do the heavy-lifting (reactively), IDFC First Bank seems to be playing on the front-foot by releasing the letter to the exchanges as an ad too, in a move to bolster its credibility! So, even those talking about the fraud may now talk *also* about the bank's confidence in being open about it, while repaying the full amount by giving the customer (Haryana Government) the benefit of the doubt.

Smart, timely thinking by the bank's communications team!

#corporatecommunications #publicrelations #PR #advertising

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

💡

[Dilip Kumar @kmr_dilip]

Completed 15years around entrepreneurship and kinda convinced that pain is a key ingredient for surviving as a founder. Being close to the pain matters more than being good at problem solving. Pain creates non optional insight and removes ambiguity when you start building. It comes naturally to founders who grow up seeing broken systems firsthand and feel inefficiencies as users and not observers. There’s no abstraction layer between the problem and their life. This creates urgency and urgency beats intelligence in the long run.

Pain sharpens problem selection. It pushes founders to pick problems that persist and avoid interesting but unnecessary ideas. Pain sets the tempo. You move faster, tolerate less bullshit, and don’t wait for perfect data. Startups need this speed.

And you need to feel the pain to survive the boring middle of the journey where most startups die. Founders close to pain stay longer, care more, and endure the mess, because quitting means returning to the same pain. Your pain is the unfair advantage.

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

@ivishaltejwani @nikhilkamathcio this guy?

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

🔒✔️...🗝️🤞

[Deepinder Goyal @deepigoyal]

Q7 – Is this a correlation or a causation?

Our hypothesis proposes causation through a mechanism grounded in vascular science, fluid mechanics, anatomy, and decades of sparse research on posture-linked variations. We are using our $25M fund to actively commission research that tests the causality that we are hypothesizing. This is how science progresses.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

@JohnRou63401193 @xai

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

👌🏼💡

[Stanley Tang @stanleytang]

Over the past few years, DoorDash Labs has been building one of the most sophisticated autonomy stacks designed for the real-world challenges of local delivery.

Today, we're introducing Dot, the first commercial autonomous delivery robot to travel on bike lanes, roads, and sidewalks. At one-tenth the size of a car reaching speeds of up to 20 mph, Dot is purpose-built for local commerce.

Together with our new Autonomous Delivery Platform, Dot is the next step toward a more efficient, sustainable, and accessible delivery ecosystem for everyone.

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

@ravihanda How do you feel when you get up and you have nothing to do. Overtime how has this affected your real contentment level

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

💎

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

Be teachable.

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

5/n these ppl may also be customers of @Rainmatterin portfolio companies...offer exclusive stuff & discounts....from these portfolio companies to your base only...on weekends when mkt is closed...give space to these offers on your homepage...

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

4/n if you assess reaching to this base is the prob statement

make a movie and post it on YouTube for free. Remember the movie Padman. say what you wanna say.. entertain ppl...it lives in YT forever... Bollywood works in india
@Nithin0dha

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

4/n if you assess reaching to this base is the prob statement

make a movie and post it on YouTube for free. Remember the movie Padman. say what you wanna say.. entertain ppl...it lives in YT forever... Bollywood works in india
@Nithin0dha

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

@Nithin0dha 3/n you have super abnormal profits... without knowing legalities --> can you offer low ticket + low time duration+ instant cash during month end to people+ off course 1 click basis..again. offer exclusively to your base. Hope this helps

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

bcme more usefl to your cust

Lee Kuan Yew: “Singaore didn't have the resources. We had to find a role for Singapore in the international economy. We had to make ourselves useful - to America, to Europe, to Japan. If we were not useful, no one would care what happened to us

[Nithin Kamath @Nithin0dha]

Question for founders & marketing folks: Can brands still rely on the same tactics and strategies that worked in the past, or do changing times demand new strategies?

Here's the context: Our AUM share is growing (people with more money trust us), but our demat share is shrinking (fewer new accounts).
The people with money are sticking with us, but many others aren't opening accounts with us 😬. Most likely, the newer and younger, and people from tier 2 and 3 towns, are probably investing elsewhere.

The challenge is that once people pick a platform, they rarely switch. And we have constraints that our competitors don't:
We won't advertise.
We won't offer account-opening incentives.
Broking is cyclical by nature

So, how do you grow when you can't play the traditional acquisition game? The obvious answer may be "content," and we have significantly improved on it, but it's hard to measure the impact.

If you were in our shoes, what would you do?

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

@Nithin0dha 3/n you have super abnormal profits... without knowing legalities --> can you offer low ticket + low time duration+ instant cash during month end to people+ off course 1 click basis..again. offer exclusively to your base. Hope this helps

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

2/n can you make filing of tax returns super super easy on zerodha app. Offer this exclusively to your base

[Nithin Kamath @Nithin0dha]

Question for founders & marketing folks: Can brands still rely on the same tactics and strategies that worked in the past, or do changing times demand new strategies?

Here's the context: Our AUM share is growing (people with more money trust us), but our demat share is shrinking (fewer new accounts).
The people with money are sticking with us, but many others aren't opening accounts with us 😬. Most likely, the newer and younger, and people from tier 2 and 3 towns, are probably investing elsewhere.

The challenge is that once people pick a platform, they rarely switch. And we have constraints that our competitors don't:
We won't advertise.
We won't offer account-opening incentives.
Broking is cyclical by nature

So, how do you grow when you can't play the traditional acquisition game? The obvious answer may be "content," and we have significantly improved on it, but it's hard to measure the impact.

If you were in our shoes, what would you do?

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

@Nithin0dha random ideas
1/n Make the portability of demat account super super easy --> can you then offer these customers who have their demat account with you - BNPL service - exclusively

[Nithin Kamath @Nithin0dha]

Question for founders & marketing folks: Can brands still rely on the same tactics and strategies that worked in the past, or do changing times demand new strategies?

Here's the context: Our AUM share is growing (people with more money trust us), but our demat share is shrinking (fewer new accounts).
The people with money are sticking with us, but many others aren't opening accounts with us 😬. Most likely, the newer and younger, and people from tier 2 and 3 towns, are probably investing elsewhere.

The challenge is that once people pick a platform, they rarely switch. And we have constraints that our competitors don't:
We won't advertise.
We won't offer account-opening incentives.
Broking is cyclical by nature

So, how do you grow when you can't play the traditional acquisition game? The obvious answer may be "content," and we have significantly improved on it, but it's hard to measure the impact.

If you were in our shoes, what would you do?

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

✨

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

This four dogs have been taught to wait for their slower sibling, before starting their meal.
https://t.co/ga2GQA2eL7

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

💡

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Herd theory: you don't need to convince everyone, just a few.

[Manish Anand @hsinam]

✨💡

[Hitesh Oberoi @hitobs]

India has over 100+ million students from Grade 6 upwards and perhaps 200-250 million students in school. Our education system suffers from outdated content, teacher shortages, and uneven quality. It’s time to bring AI to every student and teacher not as a luxury, but as a basic right. #AIForEducation