India - Long time, no see

There is a new series called ‘Kahani mahabharat ki” on TV.

“Kahani” has a few extra a’s and e’s to use the great power of numerology to make mythological serials popular in India. I was looking forward to seeing this fantastic story again on TV. I have seen the earlier one and quite liked it – the story and the characters makes normal actors look better)

The spellings put me off. The tired look on the actors turned me off. The background music was tiring.

The cameraman is on E, because he is never tired in showing zoom ins from weird angles. Again and again. The script seems to have been written by some panwallahs in their spare time. Overall, this team of unimaginable collective talent seems to have succeeded in converting the Mahabharat into what seems to me like a saas bahu drama in costumes. Maybe that is what they intended.

There is a show on radio called “Tu sabki Baja” on a radio channel which encourages people to “Bajate raho”. I remember getting slapped for much milder language while in school.

Looking around, I think I grew up in a different country.

I grew up in the 80s. (Some people tell me that the process is not over yet).
I grew up in an India where an evening out did not mean drinking. It meant going out for a “picture” with parents, then having south Indian or Chinese food and coming back home with a kulfi. Even into college, it meant a movie, dinner, conversation and a walk. Maybe I was just very uncool and did not know about it.

Entertainment was one channel and a VCR. Mahabharat and Ramayan meant finishing everything before 9 on a Sunday, which happened on its own as you woke up at 7
Actually, a TV producer today needs all the help getting Mahabharat to work on TV (hence the extra a’s and e’s).

I wonder if my kids will not understand me. I don’t think they will like me too much. On a positive note, I think I understand my parents a bit better with every passing day. I think I am still growing up.

What about ecommerce in India?

So then I have been around for about two months now and I have a laptop full of presentations made to CEOs, Marketing heads, product veeps and so on... I have met quite a few people in the internet space - actually the people I have met are more from a marketing background and less from an internet marketing background.
This is a good thing for those in the business of knowledge arbitrage. But is it?
I think that it is best if a company which can spend Rs. 50 crores on online marketing spends it. It does not matter if Envigo - online marketing par excellence gets a share of this money or not. This seems counter-intuitive, but it is not so. The reason is this - A big corporation (or a small firm with VC money to burn) will spend this kind of money only when it sees positive, sustainable and reliable returns. It will adapt its systems and delivery mechanisms to deal with such kind of additional volume. Apart from the marketing funds, such money would also drive further investment within the company. In other words, it is not easy to deal with 100% more bookings overnight. So, the investment and the effort behind it will mean that the company is going to stay in the online arena. Even if Envigo does not get to see the money directly, eventually the benefits will trickle down. The benefits will be in the form of greater acceptance of this media and a general willingness to try this out. It will also be in the form of competitors lining up to replicate such successes. It will mean a gradual reallocation of funds towards online channels - for the firm and for the industries in which the firm operates. That is how it begins to start looking rosy for Envigo.
A lower ROI - because of sub-standard agency work or simply because of cleverly negotiated contracts does not help anyone except for the agency negotiating such contracts. And such joy tends to be short-lived. This is because the client will wisen up, with agencies not eating such low hanging fruits more than eager to educate the client .
This is why a great team of people, who may be in different online marketing shops, delivering exceptional results in a consistent fashion is what is needed. The online marketing pot is supposed to grow and grow - read this. It needs to grow faster. Such a team will generate that confidence and make client pockets deeper.
The good news is that in a lot of firms, the internet is the next big source of customers. This is because the customer is increasingly adept on this medium and she demands and expects to engage with her basket of brands on the internet. Things are very unorganised - Where to drive traffic from, how to measure returns, which channels to use and how much to pay an agency - but such things are a necessary companion of early stage growth. (For example, when the railroads were growing in the US in the 1800s, there was a time where you had to change your train 8 times between Philadelphia and Charleston - a distance of about 800 miles - because of different rail gauges).
In such a scenario, with rapid growth, unorganised service providers and service seekers, what should a marketing agency try to do to become bigger and better?
Not surprisingly, the same factors would help an agency which would help any other company, say in manufacturing. What is key - Motivation, Innovation and Agility. Self-driven employees who strive for personal improvement and client satisfaction, an open culture which supports cooperation and fosters innovation and an overall nimbleness in the way work flows in the organisation to deliver client requirements on time and show results.
Growth, in my opinion, will be delivered not by superstar business development (sadly, this is my current job at Envigo) but by a robust sales funnel and client management - all supported by well designed processes.
Processes are the oxygen at Envigo today. After closing the first round of business development, we are now taking stock of what went right and wrong and are writing out what to do next time around.
All the best to us!

What is online marketing?

Every few days, I meet someone and have to explain what I do for a living and it gets a bit irritating because very few people seem to get it.

a1: so what do you to?
a2: I work in an online marketing agency.

a1: (blank)
a2: Well we advise clients on how to spend money online...

a1: (Eating something and looking away)
a2: It is like how a regular marketing agency works - Suppose a company has a million dollars and wanted to spend it in selling more soap. They would go to a marketing agency and ask them for a media plan. The marketing agency would tell them how to market their soap, which TV channel and programs to use for advertising and how much to spend where. An online marketing agency that for an online audience, with a website owner as a client and online audiences as a target audience.

a1: so you are selling soap online? (between mouthfuls)
a2: we can help a client sell whatever he wants to

a1: Hmmm. So what do you do then?
a2: (imaging a car crash in slow motion) grr.,..

I get to play a2 about 50 times a month.
Below is an answer with the eloquence it deserves.

Online Marketing is a set of activities undertaken on behalf of a client or an employer to:
1) help drive online actions
2) in the most cost effective manner and
3) to track and report online actions.

Online actions could vary from a Purchase, Lead generation, email quote request or just viewing a website or a banner.

Cost effectiveness would mean:
3) What was the cost of buying traffic from this specific traffic source (How much did the click cost?)
4) How much did it cost for a given source to drive an online action. Remember that traffic is not bought for traffic's sake (not any more) but for driving a particular online action.
5) How much money was made as a result of this online action? (what was the value of the sale which happened?).
6) If 5) is greater than 4), then we turn up the knob for the given traffic source. If not, the knob is dialled down.

To make every one a bit more calm, there needs to be a system of accurate tracking and reporting:
7) Such reporting would provide data for questions 1 to 5.
8) it would also help us do 7) for every single link, website and campaign.
This set is the set of things an online marketeer does. It has a certain deterministic appeal to it. It also has a real world uncertainty about it. Every campaign shows a diminishing marginal return after a point. Every campaign has an elasticity - price, volume, conversion all change. Thankfuly, every campaign has its own predictability as well.


The interface with the client involves providing answers for the following questions:

1. Which set of online mediums/websites to be used?
2. How much to spend on each such website?
3. Which kind of commercial arrangements to be set up - Pay per click, pay per view, pay per action and so on...
4. Which creative formats to use?
and 5. How to track and run reports so as to measure what is going on?

What makes a good online marketer:
- To understand the nuances of reporting systems
- To have a good eye for detail
- To be a natural flair for analytics
- To be able to work in a team

This, in a nutshell, is online marketing. This is what we do!

Road rage!

This post is going to be a long crib - a vent about life, justice and anything else that might come into my head as I write this post.It all started because of something else, but then I had to drive about 250 kilometers over the weekend, all in and out of Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Faridabad and Greater Noida (Yes, even Greater Noida).
I have been thinking about a post on the traffic, but thought that it would be too much of an ex-non-resident thing to do. But then, this weekend tippeth the cup over.
There are so many things wrong, I am not sure where to start.
I will list some of my favourites:
- Red light jumping
- Red light creeping
- Wrong side driving with lights on
- Switching on headlights to tell the other side that they are coming first
- Selecting an incorrect lane on a red light
- Speeding
- Selecting an incorrect lane on the expressway
- Not stopping when it makes civic sense and common sense to stop
- Blocking the left lane at a red light

The main problem here is that there is no incentive to conform, no disincentive for misbehaving and strong incentives to misbehave!

Are these not the kind of things which the government is supposed to set right?
- The Gurgaon expressway cost Rs. 7.5bn (or Rs 10.0 bn), however, travel times which had fallen have shot back up thanks to the toll bridges. The Toll bridges take an average of 15-20 minutes to clear up.
Reasons:
- Bad design - no clear signs, no punishment for people found in the wrong lane (Cash payers in the tag lanes and so on)
- Bad behaviour - people always try to get into the shortest lane
- Bad planning - Toll costs are Rs 16, Rs 49 etc which few people carry. the toll booths do not have the forms for the getting a tag

I feel sorry about this. For a few reasons in no real order of importance.

I go to Delhi using the MG road. The traffic on this road has gone up because of the toll being implemented on the expressway. Was the expresssway not supposed to be a boon to all traffic heading out of Delhi into Gurgaon and beyond.
Secondly, is this not a very sad waste of money if the travel times actually go up. Long ago (1996), my dad had an interview with someone at Gillette who told him that it took him 50 miutes to go from Vasant Kunj to Bhiwadi. It takes someone about 80 minutes today to get to Bhiwadi (and there are 6 more lanes to play with than in 1996).

A small fraction of this is my money. And some of it is yours. If anyone I knew spent my money in such a bad way, I would take my money someone else (Is this what immigration is all about?).

I wonder if we could make the NHAI sweat a bit more for such blunders.

Moving on the brighter things, I have a personal yoga instructor, India still being one of the few places in the world, where such luxuries will not burn my pocket. Anyway, she has exercises for everything. The usual objectives are boring - weight loss, tone-up, stamina - she has exercises even for hair growth, sleeping better... I wonder if she would have something for "I dont know what to do now" or with love. Imagine going to the yoga teacher with a broken heart, hearing her reply to your query (with the strings of the sitar being strummed in the background), “Do surya namaskar and the pranayama along with these other allied asanas five times every morning at four am.” Wonder if such a thing exists in Yoga. It would make Yoga more popular than all the self help books about life, love, relationships, rebirth redundant. It would help reduce icecream sales. It would also give gyms and other fat loss related money making schemes a run for their money, the link being: heartache > icecream > weight gain > weight loss programs > new boy > heartache.
If only...

Whatay Whatay fun!

About time I started writing again, there are just too many things happening and I want to document all of them. This blog will remain my personal blog inspite of earlier plans to find another domain... so now I need to think up of a cool new name for an industry expert(!) blog. The last few days in London and the trip back deserve one blog entry each - it will be nice to store these memories in text format.

The online marketing agency - UK and India started its operations in Delhi with a small team and small facilities but with big ambitions. Initial work includes search, consulting, affiliate management and some web design.

Bombay and Delhi are fun - there is just so much energy all around. The food tastes good, the women are prettier and crazier, my low bar seems just right (for those who know). I went partying but what happened after the partying was more memorable.

I was taking a new phone connection and I was asked how many I need for the new company. The guy then went on to ask me if I had already hired these new people, or if he could help me get a few. "It is easy sir.... Marketing people are easy to find!"
Imagine that - Orange and Vodaphone providing head hunting services while you are filling up a form for a new phone.

Mobile rates are low and are getting lower. Internet speeds are getting faster - 8MB broadband is there for the taking. Flights are full, on Sunday mornings at five am and on Thursday afternoons as well. I booked a Bombay to Delhi flight, when I was actually trying to go from Delhi to Bombay and supplied some entertainment to the ticketing women of Simbldy Deccan.

I do miss London. I miss my space. At the same time, I love my space being squashed out of shape by those in my life in India now. The title of this post is from a radio jingle which plays on one of these FM channels and I can't help but smile at how well this captures some of what I feel every day. So what if I have to spend two hours in a car every day.

The country of my birth and the land of my people, Welcome back into my life!

Digboi and Back

Well I am stuck in something I can not say what and I have 38 minutes till I am free again. So I thought I might as well take this time to talk about something nice happening after all.
This website, which had been dormant for a bit and I had been facebooking for my social networking daily fix, came alive when I got in touch with ST. ST, for those who dont know me well enough or even very well, used to be my bets bud when I was about 10. We have done some of the craziest things together. One evening, we decided to pay a visit to this river which was in the neighbourhood. We cycled for about 35 minutes which was a reasonable distance for ten year olds, especially when we were not cycling but walking with the cycle, reached the river, bathed and came back. Neither of our parents noticed two slightly dirty boys going off into the woods and coming back looking somewhat cleaner.
Ledo and Bargolai and Digboi and all these smaller towns (?) were wonderfully magical places which I had the good fortune of living. You could post letter to my father, with only his name and Ledo, Assam written on it without an address. It was so small. It was nice and laid back and sleepy and tucked away in this corner of the country where there were hills and rains and rivers and more of the same all over. Now that I live in a big city, I sort off understand why people here want to head off to the hills or spend six months in Africa. I did my nature stint while growing up and never really understood its value till my city stint started (and is not going to end for a while)
Back to the original point, I got in touch with ST. And thanks to the child of connected graphs, low programming costs and cheaper internet called social networking, I got in touch with loads of others from school - RP, TD, CP, GSG and so on... It was nice. The fact that they also remember me was nicer. I always used to wonder if they would, and now I know.
It is a nice feeling to know that someone else also is witness to your life. and old parts of it.
There... have run out of time, but can end this post now.

The Tale of Three Cities

The good thing about blogging irregularly is one has plenty to write about. At the same time, since one blogs after long intervals, one might miss upon some of the things once had decided to write about, because of a fickle memory.
Let us call this the rate of buildup b and the rate of decay be called d. The decay would also be proportional to the memory buildup. I can sniff a differential equation now onwards and I will keep my mouth shut on this topic now.
Anyway, there were quite a few things to write about. I visited Gurgaon, Mumbai, Delhi, Mumbai, Gurgaon, London, Chicago and New York in that order...
Gurgaon is a testbook case in how to grow very fast in the worst possible manner. From being a sleepy little town about ten years ago, it is the outsourcing and ITES hub of North India. To be fair, such growth would stretch the infrastructural muscles of any city, but it has overwhelmed Gurgaon. There are roads, but the roads exist only for cars and more cars. There is between little and no public transport, depending upon where in Gurgaon you are. As a results, cars and more cars is all you get. There is an eight lane expressway between Delhi and Gurgaon, but it has kilometre long pileups...
Mumbai is now my favourite large Indian, probably because I really enjoyed the time I spent there (which had nothing to do with the city). Anyway, my two bits about Mumbai is that the people seem nicer and are more down to earth and polite. I also get this feeling, which I absolutely love, that I am part of a Hindi movie when in Bombay. No, the movie is not about me or about anyone I know. I am more like that person in a movie, who is crossing the road in a movie where two people have just fallen in love, or the guy who gets out of the lift, while the hero gets in on his way to his office, and things like that. It is this perpetual peripheral movie feeling which I can not kick off and absolutely love. I used to think that I have not watched too many movies, but now I am of the opinion that I watched enough.
Mumbai, or rather one of its new residents, did give me a parting shot, which I will not forget for a long time.
New York... ah New York. I loved it. I was there for about 50 hours, and I loved it. I got to watch the US open, went to the WTC memorial website, lost the camera with which I took pictures, walked on the Brooklyn Bridge, heard, spoke and ate American and so on and so forth. There were times when I felt the same peripheral movie feeling, only this time the movie was in English, but I pushed it away. There was so much to do and see. New York is a world city - there is everyone from everywhere there. No matter where you are from, you would find your neighbours from back home in New York. Such things make a city a great place to be, not only because you find your own roots there, but you get to see everyone else's also I guess. I think this is what makes Mumbai and London a cool place to be too.

[Housekeeping - My site got a PR upgrade to 2. Let us see how this helps this.]

What Abouts India?

Have a look at what is happening in Pakistan today -
- Strong influence of religious inspired forces in political and social issues
- Targetting of womens rights, eradication of womens education
Pakistan politics and underlying social factors have been slowly but surely heading towards this abyss of social mayhem for quite some time now. The slow deterioration of law and order is a testament to the tendency of the politics of religion.
India, sadly, is not far behind, although the flavour here is different. The minority feels threatened. Godhra did not help. The riots after that and the continued apathy of the government, the resounding victory of Narendra Modi in the next election - every thing went like one reinforcing nail after another that the majority has grown teeth. To assert our weight is fine - but denying access to livelihood and justice is not. Driving 12% of our population to desperation is not. It is just plain foolish.
I do not think that this amounts to, or has to amount to appeasement. What it does amount to is re-estabilishing the rule of law - people like this (The Gujarat ATS cop) should be made an example of. There should be tighter laws passed for mixing religion and politics - segregation, inciting people, rioting et al. Again, not appeasement, but simple Math. (Earlier, the minorities had this going, now about 84% of 1.1bn people are a target market, so tougher regulation is the need of the hour).
Hinduism and India are both essentially plural in nature. This is what has made both exist despite all odds. Hinduism is a bunch of different things to different people. For my mother, it is the bedrock of her existence and is part of her daily routine. For many of my generation, it is a way of understanding our culture and our parents without being overtly religious. What I believe to be true and ironical is this - India would not exist very well as a Hindu state, because it would end up like Yugoslavia or dozens of other such example. India exists and confounds critics no one asserts his identity as anyone - a hindu, a muslim - sometimes not even as an Indian. When that starts to be replaced by millions of people clamouring to stand apart, India as a whole falters and falls.
The outlook of a generation is shaped by the prior generation. Most of what I know and think to be right or wrong is a sum total of all that I read and talked about while growing up. If we all worked very hard on our children, they would each turn out to be like Mr. Modi or blind Anti-Modis. My point here - we could quite easily lose this good thing which have going here - democracy, rule of law, separation of state and religion, army under civil rule and so on... (the ITES miracle comes further down the list)
How bad can it get? From a few thousand terrorists/freedom flighters in Kashmir, to about 10000 Taliban causing mayhem in Afghanistan (at its peak, when they won the country), imagine a vast land with about 100 million angry and wronged citizens.
How to get to such a place from here and now - 20 years under systematic appeasement of the majority and dismantling the fabric of this country.

Scary eh?

Travel ... These days!

We are going to be launching a travel blog - the idea being that people working here travel a lot and research their travel well and also go to unusual places, ,or go to the usual places but do unusual things, usually - so why not let our dear customers read about it and maybe even teach us a thing or two.
Getting blogs was easy enough and so was the design and development, however, this is the first time that my team is making something which is on the website and IS customer facing. Therefore the butterflies.
I caught a really cool movie over the weekend - Life... in a Metro. According to the movie, the following are true:

• The world is very small - everything is interrelated
• Almost all married men have affairs
• Married women are less likely to have one, , compared to men, but for the right man, why not
• Men are not emotionally involved in an affair, all the involvement is to ensure the woman does not bale out on them
• Women are always emotionally involved in relationships, whether they realise it or not
• Kangana Ranaut is hot, though she can not speak English very well. (Who cares - reminds me of "Talk!!!! who wants to talk!?!"

The music works wonders - Pritam (composer) and Syed Qadri (lyrics) reinforce their comfort and command over this genre of music which has been the domain of Pakistani bands. The songs take place in the movie, with the performers visible, but not part of the story with the characters going on with their lives.
I love Hindi movies!!!!
PS - So when you listen to "In Dino", remember where you first heard about it

Happy Birthday to You

Today is someone special's birthday and I am using this medium to record it for a bit longer. I hope this year brings all the joys and happiness you have been waiting for and that you find contentment! And the sunny skies above - also for you..

I started reading the Catch again... the Catch, in my world, is Catch-22. For some unknown reason, I have lost count of the number of times I have read this book. I sometimes worry about why I like this book. the main character - he cannot be called the 'hero', because he is far from 'heroic' - John Yossarian is quite cool, slightly mad and subversive, very very rational and full of nonsense. I am not sure if the fact that I like this person, worse, identify with him is a good thing. He thinks a lot, he does not want to die a meaningless death, he could not care less abot his country or the war.. he does stand up for his friends and helps people and falls in love (or only lust?) but he is also egotistical* and impatient.

The book itself does not lend itself very well to chronological ordering. Each chapter is about a person and spans any length of time. Overall the story is about 2 years long and is told with 42 characters (chapters). In fact, the flow of time is stretched in numerous sentences itself, when the sentence starts in the present, and jumps into the past and then stays there for the rest of the chapter!

I read this about the Catch somewhere and it makes sense - You will either love it or hate it.

* thanks Shahid!