💥Chennai Express
and other updates.
One of the books I read early on is The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis. Martin Scorcese made a movie of the novel in the 80s and that was my first ‘Scorcese movie’. So it was with great expectations that I picked up Zorba The Greek by Kazantzakis as my first book to read this year. I’m about halfway through and there’s an interesting exchange of ideas happening between Zorba and the author— much of it deals with temptations of the flesh and such.
It’s going to be a fun read before I dive headlong into an exciting week in Chennai, the place I call a happy fudge of great food and even better software. Before moving on to what’s happening in Chennai, here are a couple of links you might like.
⚡️⚡️My top 10 book recommendations of 2019
⚡️⚡️Sagely advice on how I read and you should too
So what’s happening in Chennai? SaaSBhoomi, Asia’s biggest SaaS conference. I’m hoping to record some shows for the Use Case podcast with my co-conspirator Ravish and also bring you some insights on what’s happening with Indian SaaS.
If you missed my chat with Rajan and Ravish’s talk with Sanjay on SaaS, definitely give it a listen. You can check out the show on your browser or Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or other podcast apps. Our podcasts are free and paying subscribers get bonus content.
🔥🔥🔥Speaking of which: For our paying subscribers this week Ravish has written up a fantastic analysis of Resso, the music streaming app from Chinese tech behemoth Bytedance. It’s really a deep dive into Resso’s playbook in India, the competitive landscape of the music industry and if it can make it in the market. If you’d like to read exclusive pieces like these and access our archives which has some real gems, become a paid subscriber. Or as our favourite bard Dandelion (Jaskier) puts it: toss a coin to your witcher. We’re slaying some real big m̶o̶n̶s̶t̶e̶r̶s̶ topics there.
Here’s a screenshot from the analysis to give you a sneak peak. There are many more such frameworks, data points collected from different sources and analysis of Spotify’s financial statements to break down the topic in it.

Check it out here:
Decoding Bytedance’s strategy to tap India’s music app market- Detailed Analysis
It’s been only a few months since we started this newsletter and podcast. We’re very close to hitting a thousand subscribers and we’d love it if you could help us get there. Give us a shout out on social media and ask your friends to subscribe if you like what we do here.
That’s it for now. Expect dispatch from the frontlines of #SaaSWars next week.
Over and out.
JPK
