e Magus

A simple relationship framework between people and technology

For past few days, I was busy tying up with a logistics fulfilment partner for my Ecom company www.celebstall.com .  I was also reading articles about how the drone technology will be used for commercial purposes. Google, Amazon, and many other players are working towards the last mile dash through drone delivery. In future, literarily, things will fall from the sky :) This made me wonder, can such a model exist in India? India is never far behind, when it comes to replicating success of any such initiatives, especially those undertaken by Ecommerce / technology companies. But replicating the delivery through drones will be tricky. Here are few random reasons why I think it will not work in India The drone might never reach its destination - wires, wrong address, stolen in mid air, bird attack, getting tangled in a kite thread No place to land…especially in the metros .. There are no open spaces (most houses open to the main road) & access to the apartment rooft...

I ’m not sure why am I even writing about this. It is mid-March and there would be 1000’s of articles forecasting what will happen this year. Do I need to add more pixels to the ones that are already there? Well, maybe...or maybe not. Having worked in the digital marketing for so long, I’ve realized that we tend to forecast the same thing over and over again like - the mobile story, online video, the King content, etc - and guess what, most of the time this holds true - like statement written on stone :). The following are what I’d want to add on to what other Digital Marketing pundits have predicted: Digital story-retelling: For long brands in India have looked at online as a place to create and publish content. Most social media activities too are loosely based on content distribution and ‘engagement’ (from contests to customer service to games). The most popular stories are children’s story or mythology - and the reason for their popularity is that it is simple and easily ...

For the past few days, I’ve been working on an online media plan for a client. It has been almost 5 years since I had actively been involved in making media plans. I realize nothing much has changed – then & now… Media planning, we have been made to believe, is a mixture of art + science. What the ratio of the secret mixture is like the Coke recipe formula – everyone knows it is there, but no-one is aware what exactly it is. 5 years back, media planning was mostly about impressions (CPM), Clicks (CPC), and Leads…. The ROI’s were mostly about Click through Rates (CTRs) and effective CPCs… It still is. 5 years back, the tags and weight of the creative were an issue with most publishers… it still is. A normal flash file of 25KB to 35KB is what most of the publisher accepts. It seems like the broadband penetration has done nothing good to the quality of ads that can be served. 5 years back most ad serving tools reported the performance, basis the type of inventory, time, g...

Well, after long delay and many missed deadlines mobile number portability (MNP) has come to effect. It is almost 2 months since MNP is in effect and there has been some traction in terms of people shifting from one service provider to another. Some of the obvious impact of Mobile Number Portability are: - The customer service and network offering would become better; - Parity on the cost / packages On other hand, I think there could be far more subtle impact on the current mobile marketing environment. 5 changes that i foresee are:- - There could be increase in network locked phone schemes (Handset + Connection)...where-in high end phones are offered for lower prices - Increased Value added services. Companies would offer access to exclusive content so as to keep the customer engaged with content and thus create higher exit barrier - Annual subscription packages, in form of widgets and data which would get discontinued when people shift the service provider - Common denominators acro...

2010 has started off with a lot of promise when it comes to digital marketing. I have seen a sea shift in terms of the clients pro-actively seeking digital marketing ideas and solutions from the agencies. Some reasons for the same could be: - The user base of internet has grown to an extent, it can be called as a mass media. Reports say that the Internet users in the country is over 71 Million - The traditional news mediums (TV and Print) are quoting from twitters and blogs that has increased the awareness of these platforms. Quotes (nay tweets) from popular personalities (nay tweeps) are the source of information and content for many of the newspapers and TV channels… What iamsrk is saying, or the recent tweets from iplt20 (Lalit Modi) and shashitharoor has made twitter a household name.. - A phenomenon called Facebook has spread like a pandemic. In today’s world – People have started taking up professions which most will never plan to do in their real life – Farming, Cooking, Mob…et...

The Yahoo! ad campaign in India is on for about 4 months... (Its You campaign)... I was wondering how successful this campaign has been in terms of increase in users of Yahoo! India, and also in terms of visitors to the site... While I have no authentic data on the above, a quick glance into Google Trends for Yahoo India website gives a very sorry picture.. The chart shows a steady decline in the Unique visitors to the Yahoo website since starting of 2009... While one thing to note is that Google Trends do not consider sub-domain, and will only be tracking the TLD (Top Level Domain).. it still is not a good sign for Yahoo! This resonates with my thoughts that Internet Time is a limited resource for the users in India... The growth in usage of social networking sites is cannibalizing into the usage of other Internet websites.. A Google trend chart (given below) on Facebook & Twitter would confirm its rising popularity. While I wait for authentic source of information - I would go wi...

Google has released the latest Zeitgeist for 2009. While the overall results shown are predictable (basis the different headers)… there are some things which were interesting. Let’s have a quick recap of important happenings in India over the past one year – - General Elections (by far the biggest event) - Indians win at Oscar - The Budget presentation (during the time of recession) - Interest in the Economy (the ripple effect of the global economic scenario) - And of course: the staple diet of most Indians – movies, cricket, celebrities Google search queries correlate to the above happenings with Budget 2009, Election Results, Slumdog Millionaire etc., all being the top search queries of the year. However, some interesting search queries too were to be seen. ‘Bhuvan’ too was seen to be the fastest growing search query. Launched in Mid-August, Bhuvan, the ISRO’s Geo-satellite, which can zoom to 10 square meter (similar to Google, or Wikimaps), would have been of interest to many. I hav...

For all those (including myself), who have been complaining about the low penetration of Internet, and the great digital divide in India... here is what Airtel has to offer.. Targeting close to 200,000 subscribers by this year end, this would soon become an important platform for people in the fringes of the digital divide to adapt to technology... I feel this would be lapped up eagerly by both the businesses and individuals.. Gist of article: Low-cost computing and broadband penetration in the country is set to get a boost with Bharti Airtel, India's largest telecom operator, launching a low-cost online computer powered by Microsoft and Nivio. Priced at Rs7,999, the Airtel Net PC is a plug-and-play online computer with a 15-inch LCD monitor, mouse, and Nivio companion (which enables the PC to connect to a backend Linux-run server for storage and applications). To read more click here

Some random thoughts on what ails Internet advertising in India - 1) Internet advertising always comes as an after thought in client's campaign 2) few publishers control most of the traffic and ad revenue 3) Always have been sold on 'performance' parameter... branding was never considered as an option 4) In India Internet has been synonymous with 'Free' - even the marketers demand it 5) Penetration has been a perennial problem 6) cost per reach is still higher compared to other mediums 7) Tracking and optimizing the campaign is expensive... and client's mostly are not willing to invest or pay for the same 8) No standards - in rates, measurements - varies from publisher to publisher 9) success stories of internet advertising are by and far few & rare 10) Most restaurants (digital ad agencies) believes in the presentation (creative) not the cooking (science/strategy) of what they serve 10.a) Most of the online campaigns are half cooked dishes served to the cli...

Who do you think is the real winner of the India General Elections? Is it the UPA, the Congress Party, the 500+ MPs, or us, the citizens of this country? Well, I think the real winner happens to be the Media. The television channels and the newspapers that have been covering the elections for the past 3 months They started with the election coverage… on the spot coverage, studio interviews, expert talks, the voter feedback, election bus, you name it, they have done it… it gives the media huge amount of content, and many prime ad spots in FCT, including the political parties Then come a week of great debate (or shall I say the tall tale)… Reams of newsprint and thousands of minutes of airtime was dedicated to what the election analysis experts were calling the Exit Poll… and the possible political permutations and combinations…. The tall tales were of the various numbers the parties would get… the possible look of first, second, third, fourth, and other fronts… who they would support, w...

I have read this news article - wherein Google takes Internet to the villages in India. They have an Internet enabled bus that will camp in villages and experience the villagers to get a flavor of the Internet... Once a villager is convinced, and finds the immense potential of the Net, they might just adopt the medium in one form or another... Hmmm...a nice way to bridge the great Indian 'Digital Divide'... but, reminds me of an old Hindi saying "Rahne ko ghar nahin, sara jahan hamara" Will these people who struggle with the lack of basic amenities and infrastructure.. find Internet of any use that will change their day to day struggle. What value add would Google search engine give to these people?? Interesting though, I will need to follow this project of Google and see its effectiveness.. For the news article - read here Cheers Santosh

I-Cube is one of the most exhaustive reports available on the Indian Internet Market, which covers information areas like Internet usage amongst the households, Internet usage amongst businesses, Broadband status of the Indian market, content preferences, cross media consumption, public access, and online entertainment A Snapshot of the report I-Cube 2008: Internet usage in Indian households report offers interesting insights on the emerging pattern of Internet usage among Indian families. The report reflects on the Internet penetration rates as well as the characteristics of these families in terms of disparate profiles and affluence levels. Signaling a gradual growth, the total Internet population of India for the year 2008 stands strongly at 55.5 million users. India's urban Internet population has grown by 19% to reach 50 million (all India estimate) compared to 42 million in 2007. Of these 50 million Internet users (urban), 36.5 million are 'active users' who log on to...

There was this big hoarding screaming about the launch of Blackberry Storm by Vodafone. "SMS STORM to 111".. This was a phone I was waiting for, and did not buy into the iphone hype that was there a few months back. SMS i did. and I got a nice auto response saying someone would be in touch with me in 48 hrs.. The hours have extended to 240, and the promised call has not yet come.. This is what i call the great Indian Digital Divide. Wherein the technology is making huge strides forward... but the personnel service still belongs to the pre-independence years As long as this last mile connectivity is not fixed... digital mechanisms will not be effective :( Vodafone, I am happy to help you in this regard :) Cheers Santosh

techTribe Says Referral Job Site Not Working Out, Looking For A Buyer techTribe, backed by Canaan Partners, is now exploring options like finding a strategic partner or a buyer. The business model for online recruitment based on referrals is not “working out”, techTribe CEO and Founder Rohit Agarwal admitted in an interview to VCCircle. The company is now exploring options like a strategic partner or a buyer. San Francisco and New Delhi-based techTribe was founded by serial entrepreneur Rohit Agarwal, in 2006. Before starting techTribes, Agarwal was co-founder and VP of marketing and business development at Webify Solutions, which got acquired by IBM in July 2006. The company hoped to make money by becoming a referral job portal. It had received an undisclosed amount of funding from Canaan Partners, US-based Miven Venture Partners and The Entrepreneur Funds in 2007. “The model for referral recruitment as we had planned is not working out,” said Agarwal. Read more Will we be looking at ...

The objective of this Report is to provide an operational, on-the-ground perspective of the future of 3G and BWA services in India, and is based on extensive industry inputs from carriers, handset OEMs, network OEMs,VAS providers and policy makers. The Highlights of the report include: * 89.9mn 3G Subscribers (including 67.5mn handsets and 22.4 modem subscribers) by 2013 * 3G subscriber base will represent 12% of the overall wireless subscriber base contributing USD 15.8bn in service revenues in 2013. * Annual 3G device sales are estimated to reach 81.3mn in 2013, with replacement market contributing to 52% of device sales in that year. * 3G ARPU is projected to reach USD 18.3 by 2013 with revenues totaling USD 12.8bn in the same year. Data is expected to contribute 29% to 3G ARPU from handet users. * The overall broadband subscriber base (including wireline,3G modem and BWA) is projected to grow to 46.1mn users by 2013 with an overall PC installed base of 75mn. Total 3G modem subscrib...

Strange.. Most of the Internet stats report from India claim that India has an internet user base of 30 Million to 38 Million. But to quote by Internet Governance Forum - India has been ranked fourth among the top ten nations in the world with 81 million internet users even as the world aggregate touched 134,85,72,040 by the end of 2007. For reading the entire article click economictimes.com I do not know the methodology which was followed and how the figures were arrived to.. But at 81 Million users, we can emphatically say that Internet in India is no longer a medium for niche audience, but is a 'mass' media. It is high time that we marketers recognize this and have a proper online marketing strategy - and not do online campaigns as an after thought. Cheers Santosh

The US Elections and the results have been historic. The way the campaign was fought and the results there of, are the cocksure way of the way the wind blows. Much more the results (it was a foregone conclusion that the anti-incumbency votes would prevail in this election), I was keener on the way the election was fought. The use of Online and digital media in the US election was awesome. It will be talked about and replicated in the developed world and maybe in countries like India too. India is going in for its General Elections in early 2009. In the meantime there are lot of states that would be going to elections. The elections in Delhi are slated for end of November. Already candidates sending emails to residents of specific locality has come in news articles. India has substantial online users (close to 35 Million) and a large population who have mobile phones (over 300 Million in the last count). Reaching out to this audience would be of paramount importance to all parties. From...

I have got this forward. It made me proud that our national anthem is getting recognition it deserves. However giving little thought made me wonder why would UNESCO get into a country's pride... Every country's National Anthem is the best national anthem for its citizen... so the whole thing about being awarded the best national anthem sounded far fetched.. Searching the UNESCO site did not give me any information in this regard... Also the google search (keywords: UNESCO, JANA GANA)gave about 5000 results and mostly it was directed to blogs and groups.. nothing to a credible source of article... I guess, this is a hoax mail that is going on... The award is a FAKE... but its viral effect is for REAL Cheers Santosh

Last few weeks I have been busy doing 2 things: Talking to various ‘online’ ad agencies on various projects Trying to sell to a client the importance of having a kick-ass website Most of the ad agencies have a long list of ‘great’ work done in terms of website creation. Some were really good, but most of them were template stuff. All of them gave a list of clientele (usually an US or European Client). It kind of got me interesting. I kept asking them various questions on the website creation and design.. The thought, the strategy, etc… Most cases the owners were not giving any proper response to some basic questions… This one takes the cake: Question: how do you know that the website you created is a successful one? Answer: It has to be successful. The client has paid me the monies. The unfortunate part is that most of the agencies who build websites do not put any thought into it. A part of the blame would also go to the clients, most of them just want an online presence, where peop...