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Interesting Post
Where Are India’s Innovative Companies, Products and Solutions?
India produces some of the brightest minds in technology, science and medicine yet has not demonstrated any truly large scale and breakthrough innovations in those fields. more here
I mean…..why NOT fill the gaps?
The Churchill Club’s annual Top 10 Tech Trends Dinner discussion post is here. The panel has some cool VCs in it. The post has important predictions and some cool factoids
Lots of mobile devices related predictions. Go read the full thing.
(7 votes, average: 2.14 out of 5)
Loading ...Here are pointers to the articles so far in this series:
MIT India and Urja have also generated a great deal of discussion, which I welcome you to read and participate in.
Lucid is a new piece, and I expect, will generate similar discussion soon.
Hi - Last date for submitting entries for TiE Canaan Challenge has been extended to 25th May.
We are seeing a good response. Also, CNBC TV18 has been roped in to feature the Winners and the working of Challenge in three series.
Regards,
Mukul
A nice little stat to chew on a sunday morning.
PS : “Transit” refers to Public/mass transit systems.
(6 votes, average: 1.83 out of 5) Loading ...Another day, another idea. This time, it is TrendWatching.
I define TrendWatching as a disciple where one observes (not sees), engages people in conversations (not interviews), identifies what is popular (not market research) and finally using these popular social objects to help businesses.
Why TrendWatching?
Market research as we know it is dead. I have huge reservations against the very premise of market research. If the respondents know that they are being researched, they more likely would come up with made up stories rather than answers. Then there is an entire issue about intelligence and commitment of the research agency. How do you know that interviews were actually conducted? How do you know that there are no errors in recording? And other millions questions like that.
TrendWatching can be the future of market research. Although it has been there since early 1990s and there are numerous companies making decent money predicting trends, yet it is still not taken seriously. Companies in India don’t even know about it. And hence the opportunity.
Predictions made by trendwatchers might or might not be accurate but they are far superior than a traditional market research. Trendhunters have been reported to be very accurate in predicting trends, fads and about-to-be-cult things in technology, pop culture, fashion, entertainment, media and youth.
How can one benefit from TrendWatching?
If you are a business and you know whats in vogue, you can use it for your brand to get new customers and keep existing ones excites. It also helps make your brand more relevant, pertinent and contemporary.
Its like looking in the glass ball and getting a perspective on things that would be cult in years to come and your business and brand can use these inputs to succeed. If I can draw an analogy, in all facets of life we have people who predict the future based on some logical assumptions. Institutions like meteorological departments, astrologers, stock traders, policy makers, governments, economists etc. so it all the time. Why not do it with business? And if you are accurate even at 1% of times, there are immense gains to be made.
If you are an individual, you can figure out what is in vogue and you would not be known as a drab person. It will elevate your social status in your peer group.
How to go about TrendWatching?
It involves using Malcolm Gladwell’s now famous work titled The Tipping Point. It assumes that there are certain people who are very much involved into one activity and are experts by the virtue of their indulgence. If we bring few such experts and let them talk to each other, we can have interesting observations. There is no real innovation happening with these methodologies. Most of these are simply making incremental changes to what people in other evolved economies are doing.
The biggest stumbling block and (as Michael Porter would put it) the entry barrier to this business is access to these people. You need to be able to identify these people, get them to work for you and get into a conversation. And moment we talk about people being a key criteria, we are talking about emotions and uncertainty.
End Notes
I see immense business potential with TrendWatching in times to come. Especially in India. This is one of those businesses where capital required is minimal and business can generate awesome cash flows.
I invite readers to share their perspectives on this. Please be critical. And as always, post reproduced from personal blog.
(3 votes, average: 1 out of 5) Loading ...I recently did two interviews with two very different but passionate entrepreneurs: Deepak Shenoy, co-founder of Moneyoga and Dr. Girish Saraph of Vegayan Systems. Over the past year or so I have spent a fair amount of time talking to both of them and have followed their journey as entrepreneurs.
Deepak and I have spoken at length about entrepreneurship, startup environment, Bangalore, etc over the phone, but never got around to meeting over that cup of filter coffee in Bangalore. Blame it on the messy traffic congestion in Bangalore that precluded me from going to his part of town! Deepak is a passionate and seasoned entrepreneur and it was great fun interviewing him. In the interview Deepak made some great points about entrepreneurship in India.
Girish is an academician turned entrepreneur that I met at the TiE Mumbai conference in 2006, where I interviewed him the first time around. He was very excited at having won the TiE_Canaan Challenge for that year and was looking forward to going to INSEAD Singapore to spend 6 weeks there. I remember how Girish patiently and methodically answered all my questions about the software his company was building and gave me the big picture overview that also helped me in getting a better grasp of his company. Methodical is the word that comes to mind when I think of Girish since that trait or character is reflected in the manner in which he has plotted the course for his startup and in the way he did this interview that I did earlier this week.
From the news today (sorry, no link)
Reliance Industries has shut all of its 1,432 petrol pumps in the country after sales dropped to almost nil as it could not match the subsidized price offered by public sector players. The company owned less than 3% of the 36,936 petrol pumps in the country. Of the total retail outlets, state run Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum own 34,304 pumps, while the remaining belong to private sector Essar Oil and Shell India.
”Reliance has informed that sales at their retail outlets was negligible due to selling price differential between private and public sector ROs, leading to the closure of all their 1,432 pumps in the country with effect from March 15,” petroleum minister Murli Deora informed the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.
Public sector currently sell petrol at a loss of Rs 13.97 a litre and diesel at a discount of Rs 20.97 per litre. This revenue loss is made up by the government through issue of oil bonds and subsidy share from upstream firms like ONGC and GAIL.
If this sounds ominous, Goldman Sachs economist Arjun Murti dropped a bombshell by writing,
“The possibility of $150-$200 per barrel seems increasingly likely over the next six-24 months”
To add to all this bad news on the Crude oil front, rupee has breached the 41 mark. The price action is very swift and a bit unnerving.
If these trends persist, are the Indian businesses operating on wafer thin margins (textiles, airlines, farming) sustainable ?
It appears that these low profit margin businesses are the biggest employers of Indian Masses ?
(6 votes, average: 2.83 out of 5) Loading ...Cast Away is an awesome movie. You see it and you come back with two things. One, Tom Hanks survives the lonely island. And Two, he is a FedEx employee and he delivers that Wilson ball in the end.
Then there is a book called How Starbucks saved my life. You read the book and you again remember two things. One is making tough decisions. And two how Starbucks helped a guy discover what he wanted in life.
Both these, the movie and the book are awesome pieces of entertainment. People have seen these, talked about these and recommended these to their friends. On a standalone basis both of them are pieces of art. And most probably, both were original productions created by individuals without any influence by the company they talk about. And this is where the idea comes. What if both of them were sponsored and paid by the company they talk about?
I have been thinking about a company that creates these branded entertainment products for money. Obviously there are limitations and issues but none that stops the company from flourishing. Please note that this is very different from product placements in media. This is creating the product first and then inserting the brand.
Business Need: Advertising as we know it, would be dead very soon. People would start filtering advertisements automatically and recommendations from influences would start loosing meaning. then what? The solution lies in creating media around brand. Think of The Truman Show done at a smaller scale.
Possible Entertainment Options: This could be a very very long list. Starting with movies, television shows, radio shows to print media (newspaper, magazines, books, travelogues etc.) to interactive media (Internet, blogs, websites), others (computer games, hotspots, retail). The list is long.
Problem Areas: There are quite a few. Biggest one is obsolescence. Once an entertainment outlet is used for a brand, it becomes difficult to innovate and use the same medium for another brand. Then there are other petty issues like it being very expensive for brands. We are talking about professional book writers, movie makers, gaming companies working on the brand. We can explore cheaper options like blogs and websites but how many consumers of a brand like say Rin, be on Internet? They would be on TV for sure.
A lot more thought needs to go in place. I have about 4 more pages of random thoughts and comments. If anyone is interesting in talking more about it, please let me know and I shall share those docs.
Any opinions? thoughts? Crossposted
This is a new series in which I invite readers to take a journey with me into the future through the minds of multiple entrepreneurs, who by addressing the opportunities I see today, will perhaps shape the future of India.
But in this series, we will close our eyes, and exist in this future, and BE each entrepreneur. To read the first of these posts, click here.
Enjoy!
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