Category: Thoughts

Branding 101 for Digital Brands

In this post I shall talk about brands as I understand them and as they are applicable to digital brands. Please note that this list is still in beta and will evolve with time. Your feedback would be really appreciated.

This is required because we need to stop looking at startups as just startups but serious businesses where branding plays a vital role. Often, the way you look at the business makes a lot of difference to way you work.

Coming to the point, I think there are three principles. Utility, Emotional Connect and Relationship that goes beyond just one product.

A: Utility

  • Customers never talk about a brand they are going to use. They talk about the action they will perform. What problem does the brand solves?
    • I need to book and air ticket. I will use Cleartrip.
    • I need to upload slides and show them to friends. Let me use Slideshare.
  • The brands that can make themselves synonymous to utility invariable become the leaders.
    • Can you Google the data on number of Internet users in India?
    • Can you Slideshare your presentation please?
  • The utility could be functional, mechanical, emotional, psychological or any of those –al things.
    • Using Twitter helps me stay in touch with friends on the go.
    • I use FB because the elite Internet users in India are on FB.

B: Emotional Connect

  • A customer will use a brand that he can associate himself with.
    • I like Apple products because they stand for innovation, user interface and simplicity.
    • Google stands for open culture. I am an open source evangelist and hence I will use and promote Google initiatives.
  • If possible, the association with the brand should elevate the status of the user.
    • Google could have invited everyone when they launched Gmail. Limited invite was a way to get traction. All limited launches are like that.
    • Alltop gave away batches like “featured on alltop”. People displayed these batches because it was a way to show off that you belonged to the best of the category (as rated by alltop).

C: Relationship extending beyond single product

  • The relationship should start with one product and when the company launches more products, I should be aspiring to buy them too. This is very important for creating sustainable businesses that go beyond one time relationship.
    • My relationship with Apple started with an Ipod. I have already bought a MacBook and have pre-ordered the iPhone.
    • I started using Google as a search engine. Then I started using groups. Then it was Gmail. And then calendar. The list continues.

Which one of the three things are valid about your brand? If it does only one, how can it do other things?

Please give your feedback to me at saurabh.garg+digitalbrands@gmail.com

Startups and Youth – 5 Questions and Answers

Vivek posted a very interesting post on Venturewoods and here is my comment on the same.

Hi,

This post could be true for me I could change the location to Mumbai.

Comments by other people have been really interesting and here are my 2 cents on the same.

1. How do you balance the pay packet for a potential employee? Please give two scenarios – (a) You are self funded. (b) You are financially backed by an angel or a VC.
A: If I was self funded I would not have a lot of money to give away. I would be forced to look at things like equity or just share in profits. If it was a VC funded, I would have made adjustments for employee costs in my business plan and hence I would have money. Also my understanding tells me that most VC funded startups HAVE a lot of money.


2. Would you consider the prior experience of a candidate from a different domain, or would you simply consider him/her to be a fresher from your company’s perspective?
A: Tough one. I think depends on what person brings to the table. He could bring his experience, his learnings, his background, his perspective, his contacts, even things as intangible as his enthusiasm. If he brings something that I desire, I will make sure I will recruit him.

Talking about fresher or experienced, in a startup personally I dont think I need to have that kind of categorization for people. I want people for skills, not for showing off. Moment I start talking like that I become a lazy, slow moving company.

3. What kind of commitment would you expect from the new hire? What kind of notice periods/bonds would you look at?
A: No notice period. No bonds. Commitment – believe in the idea and evangelize that.


4. What are the legal aspects which you would look into before hiring someone? Would you do extensive background check on the candidate or rely on references or just hire him/her for what value they can bring in?
A: I would want to hire without checks. For me checks waste a lot of time and for a startup, time to market is really crucial. Once we start working, we can always figure out in due course if the person was appropriate or not. And if at a later stage, he is found inappropriate, we can easily part ways.

5. Would you have an age criteria to hire? In other words would you believe that a 21 year old could be as valuable as a 40 year old?
A: No age criteria. Yes a 21 year old can be very valuable. How? You just asked 5 questions that a 40 year old would have never asked. And when you are 21, you are not scared to ask those questions. And thats a huge things to have. There are more areas like understanding of the market from a teenager’s perspective, contacts with more fresh minds and top of everything else enthusiasm and confidence that young people have.

Visit to Cannes

A sleepy town along the beaches of south of France,
where every one has a convertible car,
at least one super bike,
and few trophy wives,
where all the “brands” from Gucci to Gabana have their store,
where everything is charged at a super premium or more,
a town called Cannes.

Wah wah … impromptu poetry. 😀

On a serious note, I am currently attending the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival 2008 at Cannes (my rants from the fest can be found here). So far its been awesome fun.

I am here till Saturday and then its back to Mumbai. More updates on the trip once I am back to Mumbai.

Haasil – The Movie

Bollywood is known to release the maximum number of movies in a year. And most of them are forgettable. A lot of them go onto become big hits and send the cash registers ringing. And then there are times when a movie creates a whole new world. The way people think. The way people talk. They way people perceive cinema. One of them is obviously Sholay. The other one is Haasil. I cant really compare the two but Haasil deserves its place along side any other acclaimed movie in the history of Indian Cinema.

The plot is really simple. Its about a small town in India where people are happy go lucky and go about their own tasks. Its a typical story of a young guy. Its a typical story of a pesky father. Its a typical story of a guy in love with a girl and trying to express it. Its about a typical university in India where student politics is more important than the academics or anything else. Then its the typical story of hatred, envy, love, politics, corruption, anger, wars and other such things.

And this is where all the typicalality ends. The story is interesting and compelling enough to captivate the audience. The dialouges are impressive and more importantly their delivery makes every small scene a cult. To the extent that I will probably call each scene a conversation between two characters. Characters who are small yet giant. Who are incapable by themselves yet can do anything if situation demands. Performances by Irfan Khan and Ashutosh Rana that can put any other actor to shame.

Personally, for me, the best two conversations are “Pandit hum der na lagaenge maarne main” and “Hum to ShivJi kay bhakth hain, saara zeher humein hi peena hai“. Although I don’t support piracy, the entire movie is available here for watching online and free download.

Haasil fans, please share your stories. And please note that this is not a movie review.

Links
Orkut Community for Haasil Fans
IMDB on Haasil
Wikipedia on Haasil

1V1: Whether vs When

Next in the 1v1 series. Whether vs When.

Today I will talk about Whether and When. Most of the times when you want to take a decision, there is often a debate between whether and when. You argue on things like “Whether you will do or not”, “When will you do it” etc..

I think the use of these words greatly affects the decision.

The WHETHER questions by its very nature brings along uncertainty and with it a possibility of not doing it. You might do it. You might not. You will ask more people about it. You will seek more approval for the idea. And in the end you might or might not do it.

Moment you start asking WHEN question, the whole paradigm changes. You have already made the decision. You are going to do it. If not now, later. But you will do it. And this decision makes all the difference.

What do you think you will choose when making decisions? Whether or When?

Originally posted at Saurabh Garg @ Thoughts

What is life?

Got this as an sms from a friend.

Life means : A winter evening, 4 friends, mild rain, 4 pegs of vodka.
Life means: 100 bucks of petrol, 2 rusty old bikes and an open road.
Life means: Maggi noodles, a hostel room, 3.25 AM.
Life means: 1 prep leave, 1 book, 8 duffers.

Now life means: old friends, separate cities, separate lives and endless sms to stay in touch..

He couldn’t have been more true.

Human Thinking – Decision Making – Well Read Person

With this post I am starting another Label called Human Thinking. I will be writing on things that I think are applicable to human thinking – way we think and act (rather REACT) in certain situations. These would not be backed by any kind of research or data. These are just a collection of thoughts and my thumb rules.

This one is about people who are very well read and are supposedly looked upon by everyone else.

People who read a lot might be at an advantage in a lot of situations. But they are at some disadvantages at times.

For example, if they encounter a familiar situation, the first solution that comes to their mind intuitively is one that they are familiar with (because they have read things that are similar to those situations). This solution could be optimal, suboptimal and even non-applicable in a lot of cases. And this is where their disadvantages from reading a lot comes in.

People might think that by creating this section on my blog, I am limiting my OWN thinking.

Inspired from Prof. Ray Titus.

More Rational thoughts on the reservation policy in India

The last piece I wrote was an emotional outburst. This is more rational argument on reservations. I shall try to figure out the impact of reservations, thoughts on what could have been done and finally is there any hope?

Ok why reservations in the first place?
Reservation was the card played by the VP Singh govt. when they decreed for the first time that India needs reservations to help the lower castes. Some people credit their win at the centre to this card only. Obviously its a thing of past and no one can say what really happened. After-all history is written by people who win the battles.

I am not saying that reservations is a card that is played when you want to elections. You actually want to help the backward classes. You are motivated by general upliftment of the country.

Is it really going to help?
I have my doubts. These doubts are based on following observations.

  1. I don’t have numbers but I am told that at engineering colleges of repute (not the ones that are opened in small homes on outskirts of Bangalore), the candidates admitted from reserved classes don’t pass at all. Most of them flunk in first and second year and stop studying thereon.

  2. Then a lot of seats for reserved categories are filled with people getting less than 10% marks. End of the day education is about quality of students and maturity of interactions between them. If there are 53% people from general categories and average scores of 80, and 47% of people with average scores of 20, what kind of discussions are we talking about?

  3. There seats remain empty because there aren’t enough applications in the first place to grant admission to people belonging to reserved categories. If an institute can intake 100 students and it has to start a course with 80 students only because we could not find enough people to take reserved seats, aren’t we depriving other students of an opportunity to study?

Obviously I don’t have numbers to prove or reject these claims. Can someone help me with this?

To end this chapter (if I may say), honestly I don’t think that reserving more seats is going to help. They should rather try to find out why do people from these classes perform this bad in the first place. Is there a flaw in the primary education system? Is it because they assume that education for them is going to be easy and hence no need to put in effort?

What will be the impact and what could be possible outcomes?
Impacts would be many-fold. For the students that avail this opportunity, students that are now deprived and the country itself.

  1. Reservations means that only the best from the education system get into quality higher institutions. What happens to people who were average? They would have to settle for below average education. And because of this, they would miss the opportunity that could have transformed them from average to exceptional.

  2. This also means that general quality of education will come down. Not because people from reserved categories cant perform or they lack intelligence. But because they are not equipped to face higher education. Mind you a person can be intelligent and ill-equipped at the same time.

  3. Brain-drain might be back. And with a bang. I can already foresee a lot of talented budding doctors, engineers leaving the country in search of a place where their talent is respected. Not their castes.

  4. All the hoopla about FDI and India’s growth story might be in for a rude shock. If I was Microsoft or Google or Suzuki for that matter, I would not want to set shop in India because I know that finding good people would be tough and costly. It would also mean that business environment is unconducive. And once the growth story stops, then its a debate for another day if the country would grow or not.

Is there a way to help backward classes?
Getting a reservation done at under-graduate level does not guarantee that the life standard would improve. This move might create a large work force that is unemployable. And this would bring in more frustration. You are educated and cant find a job. From personal experience, I know for a fact that there is no feeling worse than that.

So what can we do to change things for people who have been oppressed? To start with I think we need to change the way they live. A child learns as much from his parents as from his surroundings. How about taking a cue from Madarsas and Gurukuls and replicate this in mainstream? These are the places where gurus preach and teach kids about virtues of life. Make them aware of the world around them. If we cant provide quality education to these kids at formative stages of their lives, how about making the system unconventional.

I used to work with an NGO called Pratham and they used this concept really beautifully. They would take a community and teach all the underprivileged children there. Mind you – underprivileged, not the reserved category. And they did it very well. That model runs on a self-sustaining model and is awesome. Can share more details if someone is interested in knowing more about it.

What can be done to mark protest against this move?

  1. How about getting talking to all bloggers to write about it? At least the ones with reach like Mutiny, DesiCritics etc.?

  2. Can this be a topic for blogathon? Anyone from their team listening/reading?

  3. Help YFE and other forums with online propaganda and marketing.

  4. Make an online task force and spam news websites with comments, thoughts and opinions. And make these quality comments so that they have to raise it on their prime-times. Knowing Indian media, they would anyways do anything to hike their TRPs.

  5. I am strongly against any kind of mass agitations that stops the normal functioning of the country. I voiced my opinions on the medico strikes, batti bandhs etc. I think I was wrong when I took that stand and I need to change. Now I am neutral to it. Is there a strong case of a mass agitation?

I am simply out of ideas. Can someone please put forth more thoughts so that we can actually do something constructive rather than just debating? Another peril of Indian education system is that we start debates and never finish things. Lets come forward with solutions rather than talking about things.

To end this on a light note, I was thinking about way forward for people who advocate reservation

  1. Just education is no point. We need to reserve places on the buses also. How about roads? Special clubs for reserved categories. Does someone remember ‘Dogs and Indians not allowed’ posters? How about ‘dogs and unreserved not allowed’ posters? Come to think of it, this could be an awesome article.

  2. Now that we have reservations for SC, ST, OBC, how about talking about reservations on the basis of religion? region? height of a person. Imagine – we only accept applications from people who are 5 feet 7 inches and weight 150 KGs.

  3. How about creating small states for every simgle category that you can identify and then ruling over them? Who wants 29 states. Lets split India into 19043 states all with homogeneous people. There could be a state for people who are bald and have Sharma as their surnames. Oops what about ladies then? Will they marry inter-caste, inter-state? Will these be approved?

Please understand that views submitted are personal only and might be flawed. Please help me see the correct picture.

Crossposted

Thoughts on entrepreneurship

I was reading this presentation made by Axis Holding’s Kuntal Shah at VCCircle’s event at Pune.

One of the slides had this quote …

I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon…if I can. I seek opportunity…not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole; I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of Utopia. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat. It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act for myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations and to face the world boldly and say: This, with God’s help, I have done. All this is what it means to be an entrepreneur.

Although I dont agree with God part but I couldn’t have said this better. And re-affirmed my belief in entrepreneurship. Something to cheer up post reservation news.

Thoughts on Twitter

Randy asked this question about Twitter on LinkedIn. Here is my answer.

Quick answer to your question would be Yes. It is advisable to use Twitter. It helps in dissipating information quickly and to a fairly large set of audience. I would say twitter can be compared to a crowd where everyone has a mic and everyone is talking simultaneously. Some have larger mouthpieces and some have very small.

I am a fairly active user on twitter and still to come across a business where they use twitter. Some companies advertise about it but that is all. II havent seen it being adopted by a company per se.

For your research, I think you should talk to people @ techcrunch where they use it extensively to promote their posts. Guy Kawasaki used it to market alltop.com. A guy proposed his girlfriend for marriage on twitter. People use twitter but users are sporadic at best.

Also, I think we should look at the bigger picture beyond twitter. End of the day its about a platform where you can get the largest audience. These platforms have come and gone. It started with Internet, moved onto myspace, then facebook, now twitter. There would be another platform tomorrow (I have no clue what it would be but there sure would be one). We should be ready to harness these platforms rather than focusing exclusively on one single platform.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you want me to elaborate.

Regards,
SG

P.S.: Posted a link to my twitter page.