Literally.
A new way of drying off after a bath is here.
Unlike wrapping yourself in layers of Turkish bath towels, turn on the air.
A new design appliance for bathrooms is the all-body dryer.
As opposed to the hand dryers that have become reasonably popular in public bathrooms.
The advantages are obvious. Go from wet to dry in a matter of minutes.
After luxuriating in a hot shower, hot blasts of air blow at you from all directions to dry you off.
So you don't end up creating wet puddles walking all the way from the bathroom to the wardrobe.
If it works as promised, hotels will line up for it because they can simply do away with having to wash, dry and replace the towels everyday. That's a significant cost saving, apart from removing a source of the mess in the rooms.
The only question is whether they will be power hogs. In which case, the savings from buying and maintaining towels evaporates.
All said and done, the idea is worth trying. On rainy days and in winters, the damp smell of towels lingers long in the air.
And there's nothing as dispiriting as having to wipe off with a damp towel.
The first versions of these ideas usually leave a lot to be desired. And some crucial questions are still not answered.
How long do you have to stand in front of the airstream, for example. And when you see the design, it's air being blown at three levels. What happens in the middle, and most importantly, how do you dry off the hair on your head?
Well. it may not be wise to drop that bath towel, yet. For a few years at least!
A single woman ed tech business
Did you ever think that TikTok and Instagram could be used a teaching platforms?
Miss Excel has been doing just that.
She creates Excel training courses on these platforms, and they have been a runaway success.
They range in price from $297 all the way down to $5.
What exactly is going on here?
It isn't as if there aren't enough tutorials on the Microsoft website.
Or even on YouTube.
Excel courses are quite easy to find and a Google search will net quite a few options.
It's probably got to do with the way Miss Excel engages her audience.
She dances, pirouettes and sets her promotions on Tik Tok and Instagram to music.
Corny when you think about it. For example, videos show ' Conditional formatting' and a headline like 'Does your spreadsheet match your outfit?'
There's no reason whatsoever for the colours on the spreadsheet to go with your clothes but she does things like this - get the excel sheet background made from the pattern of her clothes.
You aren't going to be able to read any numbers on those sheets, but like they say, it's 'fun'
Makes you wonder about all the teachers slaving away in classrooms and earnestly rustling up courses that go deep into the subject.
And here's a young lady tripping on Excel to say pretty much what you can find on several sites if you do a little digging.
It helps, of course that once things go viral on TikTok , it propels the course to the top making it highly visible.
So GenZers looking to learn Excel must be instantly hooked. Someone speaks their tongue.
There are days when she earns as much as $100,000 dollars .who says life is fair!
What the $100 billion in UPI transactions mean for banks
The change was swift.
The pandemic drove more people and businesses to digital payments.
Traditional banks are the foundation for the entire system.
And that became the problem which could balloon into a threat in the years ahead.
While banks are the ones approving and managing transactions, they have become invisible to users.
As long as net banking was an option, a user had to log in on a fairly regular basis to manage payments.
With apps like Phone Pe and Google Pay, that is no longer necessary.
If banks get relegated to the background and become the invisible middlemen, their long-term prospects are squeezed.
They have to rely on aggregators for their most profitable businesses like loans for vehicles or personal loans and slowly, get cut out of the reckoning.
A small announcement the other day passed almost unnoticed. That SBI would be adding a Rs.99 charge to EMIs on every purchase. This was over and above the interest payment - a flat charge.
This leads to customer resentment because a customer sees no value in making the payment.
It is a sign that SBI wants a part of the action on payments and they are willing to risk the wrath of customers because they don't have an option.
The writing is on the wall - banks thought that payments were merely transactions and loans were their main product. But if people don't need you for payments, they could look elsewhere for loans as well.
The payment facilitators are building the wall between consumers and banks - how this will play out remains to be seen.
Subscribe now and I'll send some interesting stuff on branding, behavior and markets to your inbox every week. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.
Share this post