This is how success feels like!

Eko recently won Tech Awards, one of the world’s most prestigious award (often referred as the oscars for the social enterprise industry).

My colleague Anupam shared his experience from the event as, “It was a great experience at the tech awards gala, with a room full of silicon valley execs and VCs. The net worth of that room would be a couple of billion dollars! Their planning and organization was meticulous. There was a 150 ft long screen as the backdrop and Vinod Khosla himself was tweeting

This was the Oscars for the Social Enterprise space and all of us have worked through the past few years to have got here. But above all, lets thank God, our investors, destiny and providence”. What a splendid messaging!

The video below shows Abhishek sharing his experience and journey at Eko, while Abhinav candidly hearing him.

I probably watched this video 10 times, smiling and slowly forgetting all the mountainous  challenge that look ahead at Eko for a while. Abhishek looks so bright and full-of-emotions and probably that’s how success feels like.

A 30 something guy whom I met a few years ago as part of a small group, inspired each one in the group to nurture a billion dollar dream and to make this world a better place. Just 4 years and to be able to closely see how determination and hard work can make dreams come true is absolutely a pleasure that comes to a chosen few.

I feel proud for Eko and for the team. This achievement also forces us to think that, “It’s probably easy to make a buck, it’s a lot tougher to make a difference“.

Official release of Tech Awards video can be seen here.

Visit Eko CSP to get your next job

Today, Eko in partnership with Babajob has launched Job alerts service for blue collar workers through cellphone. In addition to the banking services, Eko’s customer service points (CSPs) are now empowered to connect job seekers in their vicinity with suitable employers. It is such a nice feeling to think about what great differences such simple service can bring to the common man.

Eko, Babajob, Job Alerts, Mobile, Retail

This launch is a reflection that Eko is truely an open platform and desires to extend an effective last-mile distribution in the form of across-the-counter interface integrated with an efficient and real-time payment gateway to more such services. This is just the beginning.

Many congratulations to Babajob team for developing such an interesting service. We hope that consumers find it interesting too.

Targetted Re-marketing – The Power of Network

Just a few days ago, I and Aditi went on to purchase a 32′ LCD TV at the SONY showroom in Lajpat Nagar market here in Delhi. The TV had an MRP of 49,999/- and their salesman gave us 20 dedicated minutes, explained about all the models very well and almost convinced us that it’s the best gadget in town.

Upon bargaining, the last price that he offered to us was 46,900/-, 0% Finance, No processing fee and a free subscription of Tata Sky for 2 months. Still at the end of our conversation I decided not to invest immediately coz we wanted to do research first on the options available in the market (one of those 10000 bad reasons that we give) and he just allowed us to go.

After that we checked out a few other outlets as part of our research. Later, we went on to buy other stuffs like washing machine, floor mat, water purifier etc. Bottomline is that we were still roaming in the Lajpat Nagar market for another 2-3 hours.

What I’m wondering is let’s say SONY wanted to offer further discount to me if I don’t go back to them within an hour? Is there a mechanism to do a perishable targetted re-marketing?

How good would it be if my movement within that marketplace could be tracked; for instance which are the shops that I’m entering after leaving one shop. Let’s say if all these shops had an OOH media/ equivalent, it would enable SONY outlet to bombard me with an Ad to avail further discount. Because I was almost prepared to do the investment, the continual marketing campaign has the potential to stimulate me to do the investment.

Targeted Re-Marketing

Owing to competition, it is a very common practice in our usual life to offer discounts at the time when the customer is on the verge of leaving the premise. However, when one-on-one personal negotiations are involved, many a time it’s the human ego that accounts for denial for further discount on the face though the seller still has the intention to convey further discount.

Interestingly, eventhough all the shops are the part of a single network called “Lajpat Nagar” there is no tracking of the user that’s happening in the real world and I feel that this is where digital world has the edge. On the internet for instance, if I move from one webpage to another, I carry an identity either in the form of an IP or the cookie setup on my machine that can be tracked, simlarly in the mobile world I share the same base station and the mobile number.

Good news is that, Google has just done it for the marketers – leveraging the power of their own Google Adwords Network. This is just so amazing! So close to the real world practice.

It would really be interesting to see how such a model can be scaled down to either the brick and mortar real-estate network or the mobile network. For me it’s a great tool to do targetted marketing for the perishable needs.

Perhaps the last mile of advertising world.

What Google did, makes me sad

Recently, Google launched landmark-intelligent driving directions for Indian subcontinent and evangelized it globally via four blog posts (1 | 2 | 3 | 4) as an innovative approach to make driving directions better and more meaningful.

When I read the news, I had mixed feelings. On one hand it gives me pleasure that our innovation “landmark-intelligent driving directions” is recognized globally, while on the other hand it’s a big disappointment about how Google has articulated the whole story (refer below)

“ … During a trip to the Google engineering office in Bangalore, our driving directions engineers got a chance to learn firsthand how drivers navigate in India. We discovered that street signs or names tend to be less important than landmarks … … In India, we have a lot of great landmark data available through user-entered “Points of Interest” in Google Map Maker …”

I feel sad for our young and small team, who pioneered the whole concept, put everything in our lives at stake to chase a dream of “changing the way directions are consumed in India and globally” and actively evangelized the idea since 2007 at multiple platforms (Proto, Barcamps, MoMo Delhi/Bangalore, NASSCOM), covered highly by various media groups (like CIOL, ET, CNBC, NDTV, i.t. Magz, Pluggd.in, WebYantra, Sahara Samay and plenty of reputed bloggers) including spending time in educating the Google India team about the suitability of landmark-intelligence based directions to Indian conditions.

Today I understand what my history teacher used to say – “History is always written by the winner of the war”. Seems Google is so keen to take credit for this innovation that they did not even care to mention our brief interaction and their own acknowledgement that this was truly innovative.  For a company with the corporate motto – “Don’t be Evil” this shocks violently. It would have been really nice to see such a respected company patronizing a young and creative team rather than stealing credit in this manner.

I don’t say that Google can’t come up with the similar idea but the fact that it has already been validated and tested over the years can’t be ignored and whole world can’t be duped with the charming story that Google formulates about how their Bangalore engineers observed the problem to eventually bring this innovation to ground.

But one thing I have learnt in my entrepreneurial journey is to pick myself up when I am down, brush off the dirt and get going again and think of what newer opportunities such incidents bring along.

How Google’s launch can be good for RouteGuru?

1. It is certainly motivating as the Google’s launch is a big validation for the fact that landmark-based driving directions are the way to go in countries like India. Google’s buzz brings a lot of credibility to our vision. In fact, we’re already seeing new interest in our technology and business.

2. Learning that the leading independent analysts have pointed out that Google has implemented the concept already established by RouteGuru is very motivating. For us it’s a moment of pride that we could foresee, envision and implement a concept that Google ended up implementing almost 3 years later. Please refer to the links below:

Google Maps Mania,

Pluggd.in

3. A few appreciations and partnership interests have come our way from various parts of the world e.g. North Africa, UK etc. acknowledging our vision, strengths and the splendid work done, soon after this news went public. We’re very happy to see recognition by those who may not have known us otherwise at all. I wish I could let the whole world know about it.

4. Google is struggling to build leadership position in China, Japan and Korean markets for search. Perhaps we can partner with the local search leaders and offer them competing solutions to better Google’s offering.

What now?

This comes as no surprise as it was only a matter of time before one of the Internet giants realized the strategic importance of “landmark intelligence within driving directions”. Many of our admirers, friends, regular users, bloggers and journalists are contacting us to learn, “What now?”, “What it really means for RouteGuru?”, “Is it really the end of story?”

I candidly want to communicate that it’s a good lesson for us about what can it really mean when big companies talk to you and how we end up communicating many things unknowingly. It’s an emotional hurt to see someone else reaping the benefit of an innovation pioneered by us and for the small entity that we are, we can only feel helpless.

However, this certainly is not the end of story. On the contrary, it opens up newer opportunities with the global markets waking up to the concept and we hope to build alliances to fight with anyone in our expertise area (I’ll soon write in detail about why I feel the Google’s story looks fluffy and why RouteGuru still has a better solution than Google).

After a period of lull, I feel energetic again and confident that we will come back much more strongly soon.  Stay tuned for more.

Back to start!

Good to be getting back to Blogging again.

With so many observations, thoughts and changes in life, I’m really looking forward to much more meaningful knowledge sharing with the fundamental focus of documenting it for the future.

Changes

Renaming the Blog name from “Indian LBS Insights” to “Thinking @ The Bottom of Pyramid” – While Indian LBS industry is maturing gradually, I find my thoughts and heart graduating faster to think more towards where the masses are i.e. The Bottom of Pyramid, hence the name.

New Design (CUTLINE BY CHRIS PEARSON) – I feel that it makes sense to refresh the visual experience with the new name and fresh focus in place.

Focus

From now on I’ll focus mostly on unearthing the elements to creating and building consumer businesses at the BoP w.r.t. India, concerns for innovation focused organizations and some inspirational content.

As always, any direct feedback would be great to have for improvising myself.