Where was I, when Innovation was disrupting the world ?

The theme which drives me as an entrepreneur is “Apply technology for the the benefit of greater good”. I have seen disruption in ‘execution of day-to-day activities’ due to evolution in 'application of technology' in the last 10 years, more so than before. All the tasks which were done manually or handled in an unorganized manner are made efficient and effective with the help of technology. Buying things, getting services or watching favorite shows through Internet has become ubiquitous. I was thinking about the days when the online world did not exist and wondering how innovation has evolved in the Internet domain, right in front of my eyes over time. 

When I completed B.Tech in 1995, the Internet has just come into the main stream. AOL and Yahoo started just then. I did know about internet but accessed it rarely from computer centre in college.

Google started its journey in 1998. I completed my M.Tech at that time and got placed through campus @ DE Shaw Private Limited. Jeff Bezos was taking e-commerce to new heights by that time.

While I was busy dabbling with ‘cutting-edge’ technologies like Bluetooth, J2ME and J2EE, there was a dot com bust and only the best-of-internet survived. I knew about Indian Services companies like Infosys, TCS and Wipro. Owing to my interest in development activities around networking, I joined in IBM, after declining a similar offer in Sun Microsystems.

In 2001, I worked on ‘app-store’ for Reliance on device-side. I was thrilled with the reach of data services from Reliance, through the app-store model. Globally, only NTT-DoCoMo was following that model, especially with J2ME. I did apply for a patent on bluetooth-based LAN model for such data services (which could be used in Malls etc) which was published. I did see the potential for such models in future.

I did work with different kinds of pervasive devices – palm pilots, internet appliance devices and other embedded systems. I was always thinking about why IBM does not adopt a particular strategy, but never did it occur to me that I could step out of IBM and start my own venture in any of those areas. 

In 2004, when Facebook was created, I read a few news articles about it. I was interested in launching a services company at that time and not a product or SaaS company. My exposure to enterprise technologies and strong knowledge around architecting solutions using IBM middleware were the primary reason for that. 

In 2008, app store models have come into existence. Apple and Google dominated the scene. I was excited that the model I fancied about a few years ago, is implemented by someone in the market. It still did not occur to me that I could drive such solutions through my own venture !

Even when I stepped out of IBM in 2011, smartphone and Internet penetration in India was just on the upward trend. With the evolution of these two in the next five years, most of the activities executed in non-tech world started going online. I happened to watch companies with ''mobile first" strategy.

Bus/train/flight tickets, movie tickets, house rentals or sales, groceries & vegetables, jewellery,  apparel and other lifestyle essentials are all available online in India now. All kinds of services like taxi-hailing, wedding photography, AC repair or house painting can all be fulfilled through apps on mobile. India has almost ten Unicorn companies (companies with valuation more than 1 billion USD) now.

The BIG questions is – why didn’t I get any of these ideas in the last 20 years, when I was doing my so-called ENGINEERING course or working in MNCs in CITIES? How did I let pass so many disruptive ideas !? :-)

I got several answers for that question, but couple of them stick out prominently. The first one being lack of awareness about starting a venture of my own at different stages of career. I haven’t come across anyone who jumpstarted their career as an entrepreneur and succeeded earlier in life. None of my family members had a business background earlier. I did not have the opportunity to interact with any MBA grads for sufficient time to know about the business fundamentals. The news about new companies being formed to solve a specific customer problem was non-existent in those days. The idea of opening a business is equivalent to opening a shop in neighborhood, which is primarily to earn good money. As acquisition of personal wealth was never a true motivator in life, it did not entice enough to start on my own. 

The second major reason being the culture in which I was brought-up. We are used to the culture of ‘passive consumption of things’ and ‘contentment and sharing of what we have’.  We were never encouraged to ‘create anything new’, forget about ‘thinking big’. The idea of making a difference in the world or creation and distribution of wealth was never discussed amongst family, friends or in school. I am ever grateful to my family, friends and teachers for being with me and taking care of all my needs though.

I believe the above two reasons – lack of awareness and brought-up culture – inhibited the action of starting on my own, but not innovation. After adequate experience and exposure, I was driving innovation in terms of solutions within a constrained environment. But that does not provide satisfaction for a person hungry to innovate for a broader and bigger impact. Does it?

Mobile Advertising in 2013

It is interesting to know that Google has pioneered Internet Advertising across the globe and its empire primarily gets to innovate and expand because of its thriving advertising business. The advertisements (ads in short) started in print medium long back and after evolution through different formats has moved into television domain. With the dawn of Internet followed by search and social media revolution, it made absolute sense to present the ads through this medium as well.

With the access to Internet changing from Desktops / Laptops to Mobile devices - smartphones and tablets - the need to shift the ads to this new form-factor of devices has become inevitable. The challenge in placing ads in mobile devices is the size of the device screens. With so little real-estate space on-screen to show the main content, there would be little left to display ads.

There are quite a few opportunities to tag along ads under 'Mobile' advertising:

1. Ads along with web content (news sites like Times Of India)
2. Ads interspersed along with the content (like in Facebook)
3. Ads in fixed position - typically bottom - in any mobile application including games and education content
4. Ads along with multimedia content (like in Youtube)
5. Classifieds Applications (like sulekha or yellowpages)
6. Deals Applications (Dealchaat)
7. Video Ads (what facebook plans to launch shortly)

8. Ads sent as direct sms messages or embedded into free sms messages
8. Location-based Ads

With more content being consumed on the mobile devices now, certainly there would be more scope for ads placement in the context of various mobile applications in future.

The Ad ecosystem typically consists of Advertisers (like HUL and MakeMyTrip) and Publishers (like Times Of India and Rediff) with Ad-Networks (AdMob from Google, InMobi) to bridge them. From the functionality perspective, not much has changed in the Internet ad-world for the last few years; but, there is significant improvement in the business models, reach or coverage and analytics on the ads showcased to provide performance reports.

With convergence of traditional media (print, television and radio), communications (telecom networks) and Internet, the scope for more ad-business in Mobile domain is only bound to increase in future.

I might buy more Noodles or Panneer in a neighbouring outlet soon, influenced by the contextual Ads on my Mobile :-)

E-Commerce - Product Strategy - 2

In India, travel bookings was the first segment that has triggered the e-commerce interest. They started with reservations in trains and slowly expanded into other areas like flight and bus ticket bookings. Being one of the biggest railway networks in the world, "the need for easy availability of tickets" was a growth driver for this e-commerce site. If there is such a pull in the market, the e-commerce venture around that domain would not need extensive marketing budgets.

Sometimes the need for a category of items would not be very obvious in the market. In such cases a marketing survey needs to be conducted to understand the demand for that category in the market.

Once the domain is identified, the next step would be to identify the categories (electronics, books, apparel etc.) and corresponding items (cameras, home appliances, regional language books, T-shirts etc.).

It might not be a good idea to start with a bang and make available lot of items. It would be prudent to start with the items which have 'market pull' than 'market push'. The best example would be flipkart, which started with only books and expanded into many other categories slowly.

The other factors which can help decide on the categories and items:

1. Where can the items be procured from? Who are the major suppliers and what kind of 'credit-support' can they provide?
2. What is the roadmap for categories and items? Do we diversify (books, electronics, home appliances, apparel etc.) or operate in a niche area (socks, shoes etc.)?
3. Can the items be procured 'just-in-time', which can help with 'drop-shipping'?
4. What is the demand level for each item? This should help identify 'which items' and 'what quantity' needs to be stocked in warehouses.
5. What is the durability of the items? Are we talking about perishable food items or long lasting books?

6. What is the validity or expiry date of the items? We could be talking about outdated fashion items or pharmacy drugs here.

7. In which all regions and locations is there a demand for the items? Some items might be of more interest for people in rural areas. In this case, the order fulfillment needs to be though-through for last-mile dispatch of the items.
8. What is the price at which the items would be sold? There are certain items which can provide good returns on volume sales, while there are also luxury items which can be sold at premium. For cost-sensitive markets like India, determining items with correct pricing becomes even more important.
9. What does it take to deliver the items to the customers? Are the items big in size and needs special vehicles to carry the goods to the end-customer?
10. Does it need a 'call center' facility? If so, what should be the size of such facility in terms of number of people and where should it be located?

As can be noticed, the entire life-cycle of the products from 'procurement' through 'order' and 'cash' has to be thought-through before deciding on the product categories and items.

Needless to say, e-commerce play involves as much of defining good business strategy as the supporting technology. Though the end customer interacts through Internet medium and sees the e-commerce website as the face of the company, the back-end operations are quite important too.

E-Commerce is a long term play and needs deep-pockets in most of the cases.