Of love, life and the internet

What’s been buzzing in the world of social networks?

- Google Buzz: Well my class unanimously agreed that Google Buzz is late in the game but Google had no choice. Read Jeremiah’s take on this strategy and the impact on the stakeholder spectrum (facebook, twitter, SEO etc.). Personally, I agree with both but I’m intrigued about how this fits in with the story for Google Wave.

Social Gaming
- A quick mention of ibibo. One of the largest desi social networks. Recently they’ve launched a marketing blitz on ‘Why play akele? Play social games at ibibo’. Reminds me of a childhood PJ. What did the lonely banana say to the other banana. “I am a-kela“. But hats off to ibibo for the first strong positioning statement from an Indian social network. Desi Martini, Big Adda, Fropper, iTimes… they’ve all tried bollywood masala and failed to make a dent into facebook and orkut market share

- We all know Zynga (of Farmville and Mafia Wars fame). Well they’ve opened an office in Bangalore and that made front page news in all major dailies.(that’s a bit much!). However our very own Rodinhood has lots to say about the space. (Side note: Rodinhood is by Alok Kejriwal of of c2w and g2w fame. I met him way back in 1999 when I was still in college. He treated us to a nice breakfast and was beaming proud of running one of the few dot coms to survive the crash. I guess he realised the B2B mantra way before the rest of the online junta)

Love is in the air
For some reason I added ‘Love’ in the title of this blog. With V day last week, I guess I have to give it due share of importance. Check out this winner ad from Google. (and yes… I couldn’t resist the pink and red border)

Paying the Price of working in India
Paypal got suspended in India. That’s huge. Reserve Bank of India - would you have done that to an ‘offline’ player like ICICI?

Is your brand listening?
Real time feedback is the single largest lesson for brand positioning on the internet. I was pleasantly surprised with NEO Sports recently. Have a look at this twitter conversation and how quickly you can win back trust just by acknowledging the customer respectfully. (Read bottom to top)

@ameyamhatre thnkfully, they’ve acknowledged my protests. let see how they mend their ways.

Thats prompt,thanks!RT @NEO_Cricket: @nareshb all your points have been noted and ll be fwded to the concerned person. Thnks for ur feedback

an appeal to ur reason (& MBA bosses) @NEO_cricket : adding an extra second to two to ur ad slots don’t increase a brand’s mindshare

wud @MMXSurprise like it if I don’t buy their xcllent FB fone just cos @NEO_cricket ’s prgrmming (cutting short coverage for ads) sucks?

to brands advertising on @NEO_cricket : Watch where you r treading, you are causing resentment amongst your customers

a sincere msg to @NEO_cricket : not allowing a proper closure to an over by stretching ads is not world-class programming

Social Media Marketing - Welcome to India!

Courtesy Aditya ‘Dean’ Dikshit and Rajat Maaker, I’ve found the inspiration to overcome inertia and come back to my blog. Rajat says I need to write down my predictions so that one day I can say ‘I told you so’. But the tipping factor on this lazy, second saturday of the month, afternoon was the movie ‘The Crupier’. It’s about a writer who gets a job with a casino - takes part in a robbery scheme but still manages to place his bets well enough to pull it off.

So here’s my piece today on taking bets in life or more specifically - in business.

Latest Opportunity Obsession:
To make a short story long, during our visit to the US in September, I noticed the prevelance of hand sanitiser gel dispensers in almost every public facility - airports, hotels, public bathrooms, lounges, corporte offices etc. etc. Not to forget, the small travel size bottles in almost every lady’s purse. Then you think about the convenience factor and that once someone starts using it, it’s hard to stop. Think about the scare factor - Mothers concerned for their kids. Lifebuoy soap sales are up 30-40% since they linked their advertisements to prevention of H1N1. Swines…

Now in India, within the last 45 days I’ve seen 3 new big brands entering in the space and the radio in Pune and Bangalore (at least) are constantly playing ads. However, the market is huge and still in the nascent to growth stage. Plenty of bucks to be made. Hotels, Offices, Schools, Restaurants are still open fields. Heck - Let me go ahead and make my audacious bets.

- I predict the market will grow significantly for the next 5-7 years.
- The urban institutional sales will peak in about 18-24 months.
- Once that has happened, some ‘chik shampoo’ dude will come along and introduce sachet size packets for sanitiser gel and sell them for Rs. 1 (or thereabout) to consumers. Middle Class Mother’s will start putting a packet in lunch boxes for the kids. The rich kid’s schools will have dispensers anyway
- A new player will emerge through a quick gain in market share. This player will either be bought out or will diversify heavily within its first 3 years.
- In 2015, free packets will be distributed to the poor (ok ok…too much)

Quoting the line from Rocket Singh - ‘Risk to spiderman bhi leta hai… main to sirf salesman hoon.’ Ok - that didn’t really make sense (…In the movie or in real life)

My other prediction is the boom for Single Malt Whiskey in India: No Brainer!

To conclude the post, my biggest bet is now on context based social networks. Large - small, generic - branded, public - private… Every single trusted relationship or network will be moving some parts of their interactions and transactions online. With the diversity in consumer tastes, preferences, needs and desires there’s place for a quite a few people to help provide those platforms and tools.

People say ‘there can only be one Facebook, one Twitter, one Google Wave’. My only answer is that large corporations by definition are ‘feature focused’ to cater to mass markets. Small startups find opportunities in being ‘customer focused’. A few marquee customers, some references and you’re ready to roll.

3 years from now, I could be eating sour humble pie .. but then the bet’s worth it

Got a first taste of the startup scene in Delhi at bcd7. My brother recommended the event and it turned out to be a pretty good Sunday. Free breakfast, Free lunch .. Free T Shirt - you can’t go wrong! For the tweeters/ twitterers(#bcd7)

Overall, I was impressed.

The host - International Management Insitute.

The host B. school IMI was impressive and the entrepreurship club (Ecell) seems very progressive. They have been doing live projects with startups (next one in November). There’s a John Mullens seminar coming up. Top that with barcamp and I give them full marks.

My 3 favourite startups - phokatcopy, videotap and imo

1. Phokatcopy - A startup is as good or bad as the founding team. The ideas will change, the model will get modified - so it’s basically what the people are like. That’s where I believe that Harsh Narang has what it takes to make this a good business. The company essentially provides free paper (good quality, non-wood based) to the photocopy wallahs at the colleges. The paper has ads on one side and they are meant to use the back side to copy. If the student spends Rs. 20 or more on phokat copy, he/she can re-deem that money through mobile talk time, ice creams, clothes etc. Every 100th phokatcopy user wins an ipod.  The advertising medium is novel - repeat viewing for same ad - extremely targeted for the segment. Every player in the game is incentivised.
2. Voicetap- The basic premise here is that they provide access to experts for any and every subject. So in case you’re not getting any joy from google or you’d rather talk to a person then all you have to do is add getafixx@voicetap.in to your gmail contacts and say ‘hi’ in the chat window. Young dynamic team. Look out for a new site and launch in Jan. They’ve got a phone based model as well. Their revenue model is based on payments from corporates for the branding they get out of promoting their experts.
3. Imo - Out of 50 finalists at TC50, there were about 48 from US and these guys were the only ones from India. The company has made an iphone app which can then use the phone like a joystick or mouse for PC games. The future versions aim to make it as good as the wii experience for any PC game. The went on to win the best presentation at TC50. Watch the video on the site - it’s pretty funny!

While some people were asking ‘What’s TC 50?’, for me this company is the hottest thing in India right now. Keep an eye on these kids!

Here are the top results from TC50 this year.

Hello folks (plural is optimistic, given that the analytics predict all of 0.23 of a person reading this post today)

As the London summer sun’s been kind the last week, I’ve been doing my own wandering around and thought I’d share some bits:

Two new startups that I like

• bookfresh - You know how you like making online reservations for your restaurant online. Well, this allows you to book an appointment for ‘anything’ - your barber, plumber, dance class, psycho- therapist… open APIs, SaaS model…  watch out for these guys.
• aardvark - enabling human touch to online queries through your network of friends. check what pluggdin has to say. Quite a cool bot.

News from the week

• alootechie - games2win getting 13mn visitors a month
• alootechie - komli says CTR is not effective measure for success of online marketing (surprise surprise)
• Google blog - Adsense for mobile launched..
• Tech Crunch - iporn is finally here with iphone 3.0 (maybe now my SEO will kick in and this blog will get more hits!)

Blog of the week - www.gapingvoid.com. Cartoons on the back of business cards. Is this the new Dilbert?

Acronym of the week - HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion)… ever noticed how decisions are taken in a corporate setup?… Ashok would know a thing or two about ’stakeholder management’ in big companies

Take from the week - Wanna be a millionaire? Think of any micro business process that is done by any and every business out there.. from that super set…think of the ones that can be done online…  can you create that process into a service through an open API based model? for e.g. appointy or google calendar offers the calendar process as a service, bookfresh offers reservations and scheduling, hmmm… top of my head here are some ideas… voice mail? employee reference check?

(the author knocks his head back as he visualises the millions pouring in.. and decides to celebrate with strawberry youghurt)