Shivam Shankar Singh

Every 6 months, I get one of these messages and it's an absolutely incredible surprise!

Penguin India published "How to Win an Indian Election" in February 2019. I stopped following sales long ago... But the book still keeps selling!

A post on publishing and startups...

Initial days, I was constantly looking at sales figures and Amazon rankings... Wondering what I could do to promote the book. But then I moved on to other things, including a second book. Now, the only way I find out how the book is doing is royalty statements every 6 months.

But crazily, the royalty statement comes later. The bank transfer comes before the actual statement. And it's always a surprise figure! Every once in a while, I also get a copy of the book from Penguin. They send one copy any time the book is reprinted! And it's already on its 6th or 7th print run!

All the talks, events, tours aside... What made the book such a bestseller was word of mouth and genuine appreciation from readers! That's what has kept it selling so well, almost 5 years down the line! We've done zero publicity in the last 3.5 - 4 years. I hardly even talk about it. But like clockwork, it continues to sell!

In a world of cash burning startups, discounting and insane advertising spends, "How to Win an Indian Election" is a great reminder to me that a great product, in this case a good book, will do a lot of heavy lifting on its own!

The sign of a great product in any space is the same: it should be so good that people just buy. You shouldn't need to sell it!

This is one project I've worked on that found true Product Market Fit. And what founders say is true... When you find PMF, it's quite magical!

The customer, in this case the reader, is so delighted with it that they become a spokesperson for your product all on their own!

Thank you everyone for the tremendous and continuous support! Wishing all of us Product Market Fit, and such tremendous organic traction in all our future endeavors! It's truly an incredible feeling.

Tl;dr - The aim should always be to build something so great that your customer becomes your spokesperson and sells the product for you! All of the marketing strategies and growth hacks are great, but the target should be an incredible product that delights. 😊 🙏

We often sees huge debates over India's market size. Startups often claim India to be a 140 Crore people market. Some really successful founders though, like Nitin Kamath (Zerodha) and Sameer Nigam (PhonePe), put it at 100 Million.

There are a lot of ways to estimate the size of the Indian market, but a very simple one is to look at India's direct tax data - the data of tax returns. That's what I did for the latest available Central Board of Direct Taxes data, which is from AY 2018-19.

From this datapoint - India is still a tiny market. A lot of potential to grow for sure, but as of now, the population earning big salaries or running high earning individual businesses is still minuscule.

How minuscule?

If you have a salary income of over 10 Lakh rupees an year, you're in a super rare group of just 40.12 Lakh people, in this country of 140 Crore people!

And even if you earn over 2.5 Lakhs, you're in a pretty rare group. Craziest fact of all though... if you have a business earning over INR 10 Lakhs an year in profits, you're EVEN rarer!

Please read the full post for the exact numbers. I plan to do a more thorough exercise into figuring out just how big the Indian Middle Class is, using the various data sources available. Let me know what a good proxy data for estimating this is in your opinion. Will collate it all and make an estimate!

Earning more than 10 Lakhs an year? You have no idea how rare you are. In this Memo, we delve into India's direct tax data to figure out just how many people earn over what amount. Dive in to see where you stand.

As US-China relations worsen, there is more and more talk of a multipolar world, with countries like India, or EU as a whole leading a potentially separate pole.

The crazy truth, there isn’t a multipolar world order being built up at all. In fact, there isn’t even a bipolar world for the most part.

The world we have is one where the US leads defense and new technological innovation, in large part thanks to its huge capital markets that are willing and able to fund innovation. And China, that leads global manufacturing. Today, China controls more of global manufacturing than the US did at its peak, right after the second world war.

Some graphs and charts in this week's Memo, showcasing just how dominant China is in global trade, and how that dominance continues to grow even as the world talks about "decoupling" and shifting supply chains out of China.

A Multipolar World Order? As US-China relations worsen, there is more and more talk of a multipolar world, with countries like India, or EU as a whole leading a potentially separate pole.

The Military Information Warfare Technique for Controlling People - Reflexive Control Explained

In this week's memo, we explain a “uniquely Russian” information warfare concept. Based on maskirovka, an old Soviet notion in which one “conveys to an opponent specifically prepared information to incline him/her to voluntarily make the predetermined decision desired by the initiator of the action”.

It's like the movie inception, where you implant an idea... And that idea implanted in someone's head compels them to voluntarily do what you wanted them to do in the first place!

We break down how it works through a simple story from the Panchtantra!

The Military Information Warfare Technique for Controlling People - Reflexive Control Explained Reflexive control is a “uniquely Russian” concept based on maskirovka. In this week's Memo we explain just how the technique works.

Ever wonder why some pieces of misinformation get so entrenched in people's minds that no amount of fact checking can ever change their opinion?

Ever thought about how narratives are actually built? In this episode of The Memo, I've coverd a simple Information Warfare framework. This framework will explain to you the basics of running an influence operation.

Please do subscribe to The Memo as we'll be covering more Information Warfare frameworks in the coming weeks, and deconstructing real world IW operations!

Learn the Information Warfare Framework Shaping Your Reality | The Memo | Shivam Shankar Singh Book: The Art of Conjuring Alternate Realities: How Information Warfare Shapes Your World: https://amzn.to/3np2U5HIn this episode of The Memo, we cover the O...

I spent the last weekend moderating a panel of experts and discussing China - US relations, its impacts on South and Southeast Asia and the future of the region…

Got some extremely interesting insights, and I’ve shared the Top 5 most counterintuitive ones in a video!

From US-China relations worsening, to protests working in China, a reorientation of the social contract Chinese citizens have with the state to what supply chains reconstituting means for the world… do watch and subscribe!

Top 5 Takeaways from Experts on China | The Memo I spent the last weekend in Singapore moderating a panel on Geopolitics and China's role in Southeast Asia for the National Committee on US China Relations a...

After a prolonged period of conflict, the Taliban successfully regained power in Afghanistan in 2021. Pakistan, which had a substantial investment in the Taliban, appeared to welcome the outcome, viewing it as an opportunity to exert influence over the region and counteract India's growing dominance.

In this episode of The Memo, we explore how things have turned out for Pakistan after 18 months of the Taliban taking over Afghanistan.

Has Support for the Taliban backfired for Pakistan? | The Memo

In this episode of The Memo, we explore the political and economic dimensions of China’s greenhouse gas emissions problem.

Most of the world by now has realized that fossil fuels have to be replaced if global warming is to be halted. We’ve basically accepted coal and fossil fuels as a major political and economic problem that we must overcome if we’re going to both fight climate change. But China doesn’t seem to have realized this just yet, and it’s a big problem — especially for China, but also for the entire world.

China is now the world’s chief emitter of carbon dioxide, absolutely dwarfing the emissions from the U.S. and way ahead of all of the European Union and India!

As for us living in the rest of the world, we’re just going to have to recognize that our future lives and the catastrophic impact that climate change has on it, will be in large part shaped by the decisions made in Beijing. We explore why China remains heavily coal dependent even when it has the capacity to install clean energy power generation infrastructure.

Do watch, comment and share.

China's coal dependence destroying the planet | The Memo In this episode of The Memo, we explore the political and economic dimensions of China’s greenhouse gas emissions problem. Most of the world by now has reali...

Is the US dollar losing its position as the global reserve? In this episode of The Memo - we explore the history of reserve currencies and evaluate if the US dollar is really under threat owing to recent global developments.

China’s role in the global economy has been growing since the 1990s. This has prompted China’s government to consider how to promote the use of China’s currency, known as the RMB or Yuan, in global trade. At the same time, the US has imposed sanctions on Russia, withdrawn from Afghanistan, given up leadership on key global issues like the environment and made several other policy moves at the international level - many of which have nations around the world concerned. We explore what the future of the US Dollar looks like.

End of the US Dollar: No Longer the Global Reserve Currency China’s role in the global economy has been growing since the 1990s. This has prompted China’s government to consider how to promote the use of China’s curre...

We’ve all heard of India’s upcoming “demographic dividend”, but ever wonder what that really means? What does India’s population look like and what will it mean for the country’s future?

We answer this and more in the first episode of TheMemo - Demographics of the New Largest Country in the World!

Please like, share, subscribe! Also reach out to me if you have ideas for episodes. We take submissions from freelancers!

Demographics of the New Largest Country in the World On January 17 2023, India became the most populous country in the world with a population of 1.417 Billion, edging out China’s population of 1.412 Billion. I...