Pranav Bhasin

Last week, I was at the NASSCOM BPO summit and I couldn’t help but notice that quite a few of the sponsors were government agencies or information technology representatives of other countries:

a) Royal Government of Bhutan
b) UK Trade and Investment
c) Information and Technology Association of Jordan
d) Scottish Development International
e) IT Enabled Services Secretariat Ghana

Of these, the one that caught my eye was Jordan, primarily because this was the first time I was seeing a middle east country projecting itself as an outsourcing destination. Apparently, the Middle East and North Africa ( MENA ) region has been slower than others in capitalizing on the growing wave of outsourcing, but is fast catching up now.

Rejo Sam, whose company Global Equations is helping Jordan build business relations in India mentions that outsourcing business in Jordan is expected to reach about $250 million in the next 3 years under a new programme “Turn to Jordan… your Smart Shore Destination”, a joint public-private sector venture that seeks to attract investments to the sector in the Kingdom and promote privileges and factors that encourage opening business in the outsourcing sector in the Kingdom.

Later in the evening, I happened to meet Kofi Worlanyo from Ghana, and as I joked about having an equivalent of NASSCOM in Ghana, I was really in for a surprise when he handed me his card. His card said:

Kofi Worlanyo
CEO
GASSCOM ( Ghana Association of Software and IT Service Companies )

What more can I say after that, but it does look like the MENA countries are now beginning to position themselves very strongly as an outsourcing destination and the existing players in the market will have no other option but to move up the value chain and find newer niches for themselves.

And the world continues to get flatter, with each passing day!

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?