Stories @ Scale

Akshay K. Vemuganti

Published in

Billion Digital Buyers

3 min readJun 27, 2019

Dear Friends -

I am picking up my blog after a few months, so would like to apologize for the long break, just got busy with life :)

So I wanted to reset the dialogue and conversation, and really go back to the core purpose and context to why I started ‘Billion Digital Buyers’.

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Since childhood, I’ve always been fascinated by greater than life characters:

The famous Movie Stars like Al Pacino, George Clooney, The Rock, Salman Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan.
Indian Cricket Players like Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid.
Many global CEOs of large multi-national companies like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, Dara Khosrowshahi.
Companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, Netflix, Amazon, Uber in the tech sector.
Stories like Titanic, StarWars, Avatar, Harry Potter, Bahubali, Game Of Thrones in the movie business.

These great people, products, companies, movies basically consciously or sub-consciously have become sort of my digital and physical heroes, hugely influencing and shaping my mental model with their content, lives and the work they do that creates this incredible global impact.

There is something magical about these stories that capture our heart, move us with emotions and mesmerize us with their idea, offering and delivery, leaving us more inspired than ever before.

So my main motivation was to channelize these thoughts, push myself to think harder, in a domain that I knew the best: the retail business. And that’s how Billion Digital Buyers was born first, as a retail blog. I started writing about my learning’s and observations in Omni-Channel, Mobile, Payments, eCommerce etc from my IBM consulting days (2013–2017) on my red-eye flights.

Then an eBook in 2018.

Now an Audible in early 2019.

The great Indian actor, Shahrukh Khan in his Ted Talk profoundly summarizes the movie business as the “business of selling dreams”. And I was perhaps selling my dream, that when you blend a product or a story with a billion digital buyers, I think the real impact can be felt, which eventually will become Stories @ Scale.

And if you think about it: all these great things above start with an idea, the initial thought, which gradually grows into a script, a prototype, which then is architected by a team, then funding, takes a creative shape, forms a corporate structure, then leaders creating this sustainable culture. This compounding effect is what I’ve always felt that makes creative capitalism so special.

Charlie Alvare, my banker friend from Los Angeles, says you need 3 things to really build a great business: Idea, Team and Capital.

The world is full of bring ideas, we all know the famous quote “the brightest minds never moved out of their parents basement” But, what separates the sustaining businesses from the rest is the operational, financial discipline and relentless pace at which the team gains market penetration.

My dad, Ramesh Vemuganti calls it the 3P’s: Passion, Patience and Perseverance.

Stories @ Scale

Written by Akshay K. Vemuganti