Downhill & Uphill:
The Arc of Big Businesses Collapse and Courage
1. The Illusion of Permanence
We rarely believe that giants can fall. A platform we use daily, a device we depend on, a digital home where we write, talk, store, share — these seem as permanent as gravity. But history has always laughed at permanence.
In the early 2000s, if you said Nokia would be irrelevant in ten years, you would be called a fool. Even when the cracks began to show, denial was stronger than reason. There’s a comfort in believing things will last. But permanence is a user’s illusion — and downhill is often invisible until it becomes terminal.
2. The Nokia Syndrome – Death by Comfort
Nokia’s downfall didn’t happen because it lacked engineers or funds. It happened because it believed it had time. Its UI stagnated. Its management grew insular. Even as iPhone and Android gained ground, Nokia stuck to its guns — feature phones with clunky software, tied to an ecosystem that felt ancient.
There were moments when common sense almost surfaced. When Android was clearly dominating, a suggestion was floated to launch Android-powered Nokias. But the Polish CEO reportedly quipped:
“That would be like peeing in your pants to stay warm.”
It turned out he didn’t just lose the warmth — he lost his trousers too. Nokia’s refusal to adapt wasn’t boldness. It was hubris dressed up as strategy.
3. Symbian – A Phone OS That Couldn’t Become More
Symbian was never meant to be a full-featured mobile OS. It was designed to handle calls and text — that’s all. But as competitors brought in music, maps, email, and apps, Symbian was pushed beyond its original design. The result? It bloated, broke, and slowed.
Instead of rewriting from scratch or embracing something new, companies layered features on a legacy core. Developers hated the complexity. Users hated the lag. What was once lightweight and efficient became a lumbering relic trying to wear a spacesuit.
The lesson? A foundation built for one era rarely survives another.
4. BlackBerry – The Cost of Arrogance in a Connected Age
BlackBerry offered a brilliant closed-loop communication platform — fast, secure, and ahead of its time. But it misread the shift in power. When Google and Apple began offering free, open, and beautifully integrated services, BlackBerry stuck to charging users extra to use basic email. It relied too long on its corporate moat, ignored app culture, and tried to pivot far too late.
It finally launched BBM as a separate app — but only after the world had moved on. WhatsApp, Telegram, and others had long replaced BBM in people’s pockets. The idea came too late, and the execution couldn’t matter anymore.
As one blogger presciently wrote in 2012:
“Ships do not sink just because of weather. Similarly firing a Captain of a sinking ship does not brighten chances of its survival.”
5. Vodafone India – A Shell of a Network with an Empty Lobby
Vodafone’s business model was already under strain. But before data killed it, bad customer experience drove users away. High-paying postpaid customers — the ones telcos value most — were made to wait in long queues, humiliated, and treated as numbers, not people.
As documented in 2012, Vodafone’s staff were often indifferent, untrained, or outright dismissive. Loyalty walked out first — long before the debt arrived.
And behind the scenes, the company owned no real infrastructure. It was, as another article put it, a shell company built on billing, not service. On top of it, its staff oblivious of competition continue to behave like Prince and Princess and run customer service like a Royal Court requiring customers to wait holding any arbitrary token while staff inside is giggling or polishing nails. You can’t park your customers in a queue and expect them not to move on.
6. Modern Warning Signs – Grok, Ubuntu, and the Coughing Ones
Collapse never stops. It just shifts forms.
Grok 3, ambitious as it may be, remains confined to the appendix of X (Twitter). And no matter how powerful the model, it can’t grow while being fed by a volatile, controversial, and curated platform. Intelligence demands a diverse diet. Otherwise, it becomes a loud echo chamber.
Ubuntu, once beloved by Linux users worldwide, forced its Unity interface on users. The move alienated its core base. People left for Linux Mint and other distros that valued usability over ego. It wanted to be on mobile screens but it ended up vanishing from desktops and laptops. It was a reminder that vision without listening is just noise.
7. The Uphill Counterpoint – Café Coffee Day and Malavika Hegde
But not every story is a tragedy.
When V.G. Siddhartha, founder of Café Coffee Day, died by suicide in 2019, the business was crushed under the weight of over ₹7,000 crore in debt. The corporate world braced for collapse. But his wife, Malavika Hegde, stepped in. She took over the reins with no drama, no headlines — just determination. As CEO, she streamlined the business, reduced debt significantly, and restored stability. She didn’t rebrand. She didn’t perform. She simply led.
Her leadership wasn’t loud — it was lived.
In a world full of visionaries who crash, she quietly landed the plane and then took it off into profit.
