Insights
Notes from the field.
Essays on ethnography, qualitative research, and the patterns we keep seeing in Indian consumer behaviour.
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15 September 2026 · 3 min read
When the biggest business risks don't show up on a dashboard
At a Chennai fish market, almost everyone involved had grey or white hair. What an ageing workforce can signal about livelihoods, skills and resilience.
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15 September 2026 · 5 min read
What if Gen Z isn't buying products at all?
Gen Z often buys confidence, recognition and trust, not products. Bourdieu's idea of symbolic capital explains why, and what it means for brands.
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8 October 2025 · 1 min read
Why D2C brands need ethnography, not another survey
Surveys can tell you what customers say. Ethnography tells you what they do. For a D2C founder making product decisions, the second answer is the one that matters.
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22 September 2025 · 1 min read
WhatsApp as a research instrument
Why a ten-day WhatsApp diary study captures the long tail of customer context that no one-hour interview can.
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5 September 2025 · 1 min read
The tier-2 customer is not a smaller version of the metro customer
Most D2C brands extrapolate from Mumbai and Bengaluru and call it national. Two weeks in Indore and Coimbatore will change your mind.
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19 August 2025 · 1 min read
Focus groups are overrated. Here's what we run instead.
Focus groups produce confident answers to the wrong questions. For behavioural research on digital products, there is a better default.
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30 July 2025 · 1 min read
Reading the room: what to notice in an Indian home visit
A field-notes primer for founders joining their first ethnography visit. What to watch, what to leave alone, and what almost always matters more than the interview itself.
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