VC Circle Bengaluru Investment Forum

Posted on March 26, 2010 by Pranav Bhasin

This week, I was invited by VC Circle to be a part of the panel discussion on “Bengaluru’s Ver 2.0 Technology Story” in the VC Circle BengaluruInvestment Forum.

The discussion was themed around how the technology story of companies in Bangalore is in a next generation transition and was ably chaired by Jessie Paul. Other eminent members in the panel were Sanjay Nayak of Tejas Networks, Sean Blagsvedt of Babajob, Manohar Atreya of o3 Capital and Sunil Maheshwari of Mango Technologies.

The discussion started with Jessie doing a recap on the formation of software services industry in India as a result of globalization and posing a few questions to the panelists.

Sanjay, who has raised 5 rounds of private financing till now added that companies in the west are more focussed on marketing and adoption of products whereas companies in India are more focussed on building great technology. He emphasized that technology does not build great companies, great marketing does. He also stressed the need of participation by the government to help take the sector to the next level and push India into the reckoning as the hub for software products.

Sean emphasized on the fact that while the services industry was timely and was responsible for creation of a lot of jobs in the market, it has not done anything for the masses. Until we setup an infrastructure where it is easier for entrepreneurs to come in and create companies out of India, we cannot move to the next level. He also stressed that the current venture funding setup seems to work in the west but may not be suitable for India where a lot of companies can benefit from a small amount of capital vs a few companies benefiting from a large amount of capital.

Sunil added that companies that do not wait for the next game changing opportunity to become obvious and drive change will be the ones that will be successful. He cited the example of iPhone which was conceptualized by Apple with zero experience in mobile device area – the product has been extensively copied by competitors but no one has been able to dislodge Apple from the slot it has occupied.

Manohar gave his perspective on the venture business where he said that venture funds are in the game to make money and hence they remain extremely choosy about their investments. He also pointed to the fact that venture industry in US started in early 70s whereas the one in India started in 90s – as a result, the industry is still in its learning phase and will take some time to mature. He advised entrepreneurs to be patient, persistent and remain passionate about the idea and be prepared to slog it out for a year and a half to receive capital for their venture.

For my part, I added that to build a successful business, you need to have a combination of Market + Idea + Capital. With the mobile phone market exploding in the past few years, this creates a lot of users and plenty of opportunity for new business to use it as a channel to enable their services. In 2000, a similar proliferation of web services led to the dot com bubble, but the market seems to have learnt from it and the investment in mobile companies, though growing at an encouraging pace is not yet showing the signs of a bubble.

The salient points from the discussion were summarized by Jessie and followed up with questions from the audience. Overall, it was great connecting with the fellow panelists and I had a good time in the panel and overall at the VC Circle conference.

Social Media Club Bangalore Double Bill ( contd.. )

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Pranav Bhasin

Continued from the previous article here.

The second meetup was a panel on “Building social platforms for social activists” involving Jasmine Shah (@jasmine441) and Parul Gupta (@NGOPost) moderated by Gaurav Mishra ( @gauravonomics ). After a quick introduction by Keerthikiran (@keerthikiran), there was a passionate discussion between the panelists with references to how they use social media for their respective causes.

Here are some bullet points from the discussion:

NGOPost membership jumped from 1k to 25k when they got a Google Grant for free Adwords ads
Jasmine explained Janaagraha’s REED framework for improving urban quality of life
Social activism platforms like NGOPost and Janaagraha can bring about much needed change wthn our country
Why create a social platform when you can use Facebook or Twitter? Because each community has a unique soul
How important is local language for a social platform built for social change? It’s important but not easy
Janaagraha will build the critical mass of people who any cause can leverage
We see google translate is a great way to localize content
The internet is global. Why limit a platform to a country (like ngopost) or even a city (like janaagraha)? Web platforms need to build offline volunteer networks & real instituions to really bring about real change
How important is it for corporates to support social causes? How can social platforms be designed to encourage this?
How can social organizations shift the discussion from problems to solutions?
How can social organizations use the internet to engage older citizens & not only the youth?
Do overlapping web-based social initiatives dilute activism, instead of promoting it?
Overlapping mediums if coupled well, will actually generate more buzz. at the same time, one should have a hub
How do you use social platforms to bridge the gap b/w talk & action?

Here are a few photos from this meetup ( all pics here ):

Social Media Club Bangalore Double Bill

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Pranav Bhasin

Its been some time since I reported an event on my blog, so I thought why not start with this weekend’s Social Media Club Bangalore meetup.

The Social Media Club Bangalore was started around 2 weeks back when Vijay ( @amnigos ), Hrish ( @dhempe ), Freeman ( @freemanindia ), myself ( @amnigos ) and a few others met up at Jaaga and shared our coordinates and learnt more about each other. This week, Gaurav Mishra ( @gauravonomics ) was in town, so SMC Bangalore got a double boost and hosted two back to back social meetups.

The first meetup was a panel on “Indian web 2.0 startups targeting the global market” involving myself ( @pranavbhasin ) and Vijay ( @amnigos ), morderated by Kaushal ( @ksarda ). There was a good crowd turnout with the discussion and queries delving into very practical areas of using social media to promote a startup. Some of the bullet points from the discussion are ( in no particular order ):

Social media is about conversations, not conversions
Have tangible and measurable goals for your social media campaign, but do not link them directly to user acquisition
It is possible to get trial enterprise users via email marketing, but difficult to convert them
Indian audience behave differently than global counterparts online in giving feedback – Indians only give feedback when there is a problem whereas global audience will give feedback when they like something too
Indian startups targeting the global market well: Zoho, Deskaway, FusionChart, Dimdim
Indian users will pay for a physical product but will not pay for a subscription
If you plan to start up, focus on revenues from day 1 – not every company can scale to the size of a facebook
Tips for startups: launch quickly, test multiple designs, ask users for feedback, iterate endlessly, build in virality
Brands should use the social media effectively. They should not spam users based on certain keywords
Agencies need success stories from multiple markets before they recommend a new social platform to clients
The only way for a social platform to grow cost effectively is through invites from present users
Non-users always give positive feedback
Figuring out a revenue model is more important than acquiring users
Mentions on big tech blogs only result in temporary traffic peaks, not long-term users

Here are a few photos from this meetup ( all pics here ):

The summary of the second meetup will follow in the next post ( going up in a few mins ).

5 ways social media can help Indian companies go global

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Pranav Bhasin

Since Thomas Friedman wrote “The World is Flat”, going global has an added charm to it. And while there are plenty of opportunities at home, Indian companies are increasingly looking to acquire a global footprint and establish their leadership in other countries too.

But isn’t going global really expensive? How do I know whether there is a market for my product outside? How do I find the right kind of partners to talk to? I don’t even know their language, how do I setup my team? These are just some of the questions that come to mind as soon as you start thinking about a global company.

Thankfully, social media has changed the world and provides answers to some of these questions. While there is no perfect solution, no way to completely avoid the risk, here are the 5 ways in which you can leverage social media to your advantage if you are thinking of going global:

1) Test the waters

Before you make any decisions, understand more about the market you are looking at. Find out the names of your competitors in the target countries and set up twitter search alerts for them. Identify the keywords that define your business and setup twitter alerts for them for the target country.

Listen in to conversations on these channels for a few days to understand the intricacies of the market and the key problems that the users of existing product face. This is a quick, free and easy way to see whether your product will fly in the market or not.

2) Connect with potential customers

Users on twitter are extremely candid and will typically rant about something they don’t like and praise something they like. Once you have an understanding of the market, the next step is to talk to some of the people who are reporting problems about existing products.

Assuming that your product solves the problem they are talking about, briefly suggest your solution to them and see if it interests them. If you are able to establish a conversation with someone, you may also want to ask them to try your product ( assuming it is accessible over the internet ).

This is an extremely effective way of having conversations with your potential customers and getting some real feedback about your product.

3) Network, network, network

Every market, in every country has a few people who have a great reputation – when they speak everyone listens. These are typically industry experts or domain experts. In addition, there are a lot of independent bloggers who are very influential in their sphere and are extremely well networked.

Find out people like these in your market and start talking with them. Get one of them interested in trying out your product. If they have feedback for you, listen to it carefully and go back to them after you’ve implemented their feedback. What is important here is to establish a relationship of mutual trust and respect with the other person, so that when you have something worthy of being showcased, you have someone who can spread the word for you.

Remember, there is a thin line between networking and spamming – don’t cross that line otherwise you will have them on the other side. Also note that this is a time consuming process that generally takes a few months – make it a part of your daily routine.

4) Build your channels

So far, we have talked about speaking with customers and industry experts. In addition, social media is a great way to find prospective partners. Almost every business has some identity on twitter and facebook, be it large or small and by using social media, you can get in touch with them without physically being present there.

So find your potential partners there and have conversations with them. If a mutually beneficial partnership is possible, you can even sign all legal agreements by passing around scanned documents over email. This way, you can actually start doing business in another country through a partner without spending a lot of money.

5) Build positive reputation, but don’t ignore the negative

We have already talked about listening in to what customers are saying about competition. Now that you are doing business in another country, wouldn’t you want to listen in to what customers are saying about you? Setup your social media alerts and pay attention to every conversation where you or your business is mentioned.

Its unlikely that all the conversations will be positive, so it is important to pay more attention to the negative conversations and alleviate their causes. Remember, internet has a long memory, so handle the situation gracefully, solve the problem being discussed, have a conversation with your customer about it and you will most likely have a happy ending there.

Originally published on the NILF Blog.

Can you market a rolex?

Posted on December 30, 2009 by Pranav Bhasin

One thing I have always marveled at is the ability of watch companies to market their products. Imagine the odds in front of them:

1) The product was invented in 1800s and has reached a stage beyond innovation ( except for the ones in James Bond movies ) – can’t sell watches based on differentiators anymore.

2) Everyone already owns at least one watch – market is already saturated.

3) New breed of devices and cellphones make it redundant – who needs a watch when you have a cellphone and are on twitter 24×7.

How much harder can it get? And yet they manage to sell watches by the dozen.

But how? Well, look at the rolex ad on the left for instance. It talks about piano, seduction, soul and what not – none of these have anything to do with a watch. But all of these are words that have been carefully chosen to connect with prospective buyer of this watch.

As I looked at a few more of these ads, one mistake that we internet marketers do often became very clear. As internet marketers, we are often too focussed on selling our product by highlighting how the features our product offers are better than the competition. While this approach works for some companies that grab the attention of sufficient early adopters, most other companies struggle and keep adding on feature after feature in hope of selling their wares.

Its time internet marketers start looking at customers and thinking about what would grab their attention about your product. This will not only make them better marketers, but may also give some brilliant insights about the target segment that would have otherwise been elusive.

A low down on google swirl

Posted on November 18, 2009 by Pranav Bhasin

When google announced a preview of google image swirl I was compelled to check it out. After all lifeblob is also in the business of photo discovery and it is always good to know what other companies are doing in this area.

The preview is neatly built in flash and presents a very interesting visualization. This reminds me of a similiar visualization they did earlier for a “wonder wheel” view of navigating through search results. The part that I did not like though was that exploration ends very abruptly – perhaps this is because they are running on a limited data set and will not be a problem in the final version.

That brings me to the question – what is google trying to achieve through this? Is it just a ploy to counter the advances of microsoft in visual search or is there a bigger agenda behind this?

My verdict: There is a bigger agenda here. Read On.

1) Searching through images is not an easy task and given that google’s key focus is search, they would want to establish a big lead in the image search market as well. So far, google image search attempts to identify duplicate images so that they do not present duplicate results to the user. With this kind of a visualization however, google lets you explore variants of the same image so that you have more freedom to choose the one that fits your bill.

2) This is an excellent way to provide more visual detail around a searched topic. Imagine a wonder wheel kind of icon next to your regular search results, clicking on which opens up the image swirl widget and lets you see photos related to a search result.

3) Search is intent driven – you type in a few keywords and then choose a result that matches your intent. Google has used this information very effectively for its regular search to verify that the results being shown match the user intent and also to improve its data mining algos to continuously improve the results.

Images suffer from a terrible handicap that they don’t have any metadata to organize them and google typically relies on information around the images, tools like image labeler and some level of image analysis to understand what they are about. By presenting the results in a visualization like this and watching user interaction patterns, google will get excellent information about images and to improve their image search.

4) Navigating through images this way is very enjoyable and gets people to spend more time on google properties. Now, that may not necessarily align with their standard way of measuring search effectiveness ( its counterintuitive, but google wants you to spend as little time as possible on its search pages, which is their metric for measuring how good their results are ) but hey, the more time they spend here, the more time they are off Microsoft’s visual search and thats a good thing . Plus, the metrics that apply for text based search may not apply for visual media search anyway.

What do you think about this?

Forum Nokia Developer Conference 2009

Posted on November 9, 2009 by Pranav Bhasin

FNDC09_Logo This is the time for technology events in Bangalore. The latest one that I heard of is the Forum Nokia Developer Conference 2009 that is happening on Dec 7, in Bangalore at Hotel Taj Residency.

This year’s event promises to be very special with live demos, real-life mobile application stars who ‘wowed’ the world with their mobile applications to win fame and fortune, and much more. Also, explore how Nokia’s new Ovi Store ensures developers have easy access to publish applications and content to millions of Nokia devices through a unified publishing channel.

Get to know the dynamic technology platforms for creating truly compelling user experiences. Get to learn new skills, new connections, and new ideas to create tomorrow’s technologies. You can find more details at http://bit.ly/FNDC09 .

And last but not the lest, there is a Nokia N97 up for grabs too. So check it out!

He is a great Guy

Posted on October 28, 2009 by Pranav Bhasin

Guy Kawasaki is in Bangalore and yesterday I had the opportunity to meet him in the tweetup at Nasscom Product Conclave. He is a very friendly person and went into great detail on the strategy he uses to market AllTop over twitter.

Now, I have great respect for him as a person and as a thought leader, but there are some things that I did not like about his talk.

But before that, here are the things that I liked:

a) Insight on into how automating your tweets can save you a lot of time and effort.
b) Stats on how tweeting the same post at different times of the day can almost double your hits.
c) Emphasis on the basic twitter principle – provide value to your followers.

Things that I would have loved to hear in the talk:

a) How to build a complete marketing strategy around twitter and other social media tools?
b) How to measure the return on investment – even though twitter is free, you spend time on it and that costs money?
c) How does twitter compare with other online marketing media in terms of value for your investment?
d) How long does it take for your twitter activity to start bearing fruit?

Things that I did not like about his talk:

a) Too much self-promotion – alltop and tweetmeme appeared over hundred times in the talk.
b) The proposed strategy of using alltop content to generate tweets seems like self-fulfilling prophecy. Makes me think if the real purpose of the talk was to talk about twitter or to make everyone in the room build alltop pages.
c) His strategy would work for twitter users like him that have a very high following ( because they are a celeb, role model etc ) but what about tweeters who have not acquired that status yet?
d) His strategy is synonymous to twitter spam – I believe that sooner or later, filtering systems will be built on twitter to filter out spam and that will be the end of this strategy.

What is your opinion of the talk? Do you agree with my assessment here – do let me know! BTW, here are some shots that I took during the tweetup:

Find all the Guy Kawasaki NASSCOM photos here!

Business cards and networking

Posted on October 27, 2009 by Pranav Bhasin

Most startups underestimate the power of business cards as a marketing tool.

The death of the traditional business card is the writing on the wall. With linkedin, twitter and other social media tools making networking so painless, who needs a business card anymore. Plus we all have phones with a few GB of memory that carry our contacts and music all in one device. Die business cards, die and save us some trees – that is how I thought till a few days back.

This was until I was looking to contact an aquaintance that I had met in a previous networking meet. I was sure I had saved her contact details in my mobile, but I just couldn’t remember well enough to locate her. Thats when I remembered her “very visually distinct” business card that she had given me and it took me no more than 10 minutes to surf through heaps of business cards I had collected over time to get the details.

And then it stuck me hard – there is something about a business card that does not exist in the electronic media. Its the visual cue, the colors, the distinctiveness, the style, things that get into the subconscious of human mind and make it memorable. A neat business card with an attractive graphic is an amazing tool to get people to remember you. Plus, people never really throw away business cards, so there is always a chance they will be able to find you when they need you. Spend a few more bucks to get a double sided business card and you have enough space to give people a message that you want them to remember about your company – a perfect branding tool.

With the NASSCOM conclave starting in Bangalore tomorrow, I got around today to designing business cards for my company in a way that they strongly advertise our photo discovery service – http://www.lifeblob.com with a memorable message around it. Do you think I did a good job – let me know?

Pranav Bhasin

Sparkling thoughts on mobile, social media, upcoming trends..

Author Archives: Pranav Bhasin

VC Circle Bengaluru Investment Forum

Can you market a rolex?

A low down on google swirl

Forum Nokia Developer Conference 2009

Business cards and networking