Social Media Marketing in India

Does Social Media actually working in India? Is Social Media Marketing the only facet of social media? Can you help your business through social media in India ? What should you be doing if you want to market yourself, or your brand for that matter, on social media? These are some of the questions that have been on my mind recently.

Regus, a provider of workplace solutions with over 1,100 business centers in 85 countries, recently published a study that explored the role of social media in customer acquisition. Based on input from senior managers and business owners around the world, the study found that almost one-half of small businesses are successfully connecting with prospects through social networks.

The worldwide survey also ranked countries who found success in customer acquisition in social networks. With 14 countries reporting, an average of 40% reported that social networks were indeed ripe for converting prospects into customers. At the very top of the list, 52% of businesses in India reported success followed by Mexico, Spain, The Netherlands and China with 50%, 50%, 28%, and 22% respectively. The US ranked 7th with 35%.

1. India – 52%
2. Mexico – 50%
2. Spain – 50%
3. Netherlands – 48%
4. China – 44%
5. South Africa – 43%
6. Germany – 41%
6. Australia – 41%
7. US – 35%
8. Canada – 34%
9. France – 33%
9. UK – 33%
10. Japan – 30%
11. Belgium – 27%

A report in Afaqs by Kapil Ohri discusses how a small brands like restaurants, juice centers and dental clinics in India leveraging the social channels like Facebook better than Big brands. It’s interesting to note that these brands are leveraging Facebook for customer engagement and to drive sales” not just creating fans by numbers.

It does make business sense to spend towards promotional activities in various forms of media, thronged by maximum number of people wherein lays your target customer.

One such new medium that has cropped-up, against all odds of conventional media offerings, is social networking sites. These new generation of sites, like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are attracting maximum number of ad revenues spending among other online mediums.

Social networking sites are fast emerging as the most influential medium of promotional activities for the corporate world globally.

Instead of promoting business through other traditional mediums, the corporate world is increasingly tapping innovative business prospects with their links from sites like Facebook, Twitter and even Linkedin.

ITC's clothing brand Wills Lifestyle is using Facebook and other sites to identify the latest trends among young members. Its Facebook fans can upload pictures and use discussion forums as the company looks to catch the young fashion vein.

"Trends change very frequently, so the real time research on these sites (social networks) are really helpful," said Atul Chand, CEO of ITC's lifestyle retail business. "The contribution can wary from colour schemes to textures to designs," he added.

ITC's Chand said Wills Lifestyle is looking at directly involving its consumers in product development and designing. The band is also pushing online sales through its member community on Facebook. "It's an additional revenue channel. Online sales are almost equal to business made from one store," he said.

Kishore Biyani-led Pantaloons is currently present on Facebook and it plans to extend it to other popular sites too.

"We regularly track the sites to be in touch with the latest trends," said Rajan Malhotra, president - retail strategy, Future Group that owns Pantaloons. Although the brand is not directly involving the consumers now, Mr Malhotra said it is definitely looking at it. "It has become essential."

Analysts say the trend is here to last. A number of brands are concentrating on 'you' to build their images to woo the new consumer empowered by interactive media.

Online presence offers an informal research, which is real time unlike the earlier times, when retailers had to depend on second-hand research reports," said Pinakiranjan Mishra, retail analyst at Ernst & Young.

With several netizens, particularly the geeks, preferring to shop on the net and also making revelations about their personal tastes without inhibitions, brands can ill afford to ignore the power of the mouse and 'YOU'. All sales are not made on the shopfloor, after all.

What do you think?

Mobile Innovations in India

Innovation isn’t thinking about bright new ideas but using ideas from one section and applying it to another. Several innovations that I came across in India truly fits the description. Let’s look at two such  mobile innovations and how they impact our society.

Nano Ganesh:

To operate the irrigation pumps, villages and rural locations in India are often marred by fluctuations in power supply, difficult terrain, fear of animals on the way to pumps, hazardous locations of the pumps along the river or water storage beds, shock hazards, rains etc. Nano Ganesh is a GSM Mobile based remote control system exclusively for the use with water pump sets in agriculture areas.



The need of Nano Ganesh aroused from the routine problems faced by the farmers in operating the pumps. A farmer has to simply dial a number dedicated for a Nano Ganesh set and then punch his on or off code for the control of the pump set. It can be connected to any existing electrical starter and motor pumps. Hence, there is no necessity of replacing the pumping set. With bulk of our GDP coming from agriculture, I think products like Nano Ganesh are super-important to keep the sector blooming.

On the deployment of the system, a pre-set code is given to the farmer to switch on/off the pumpset. In order to switch on the set a farmer has to call up the number of the mobile phone attached in the starter panel. One can confirm the availability of the power in the pumpset by a long beep sound, which will be signaled from the receiving end during the call Followed by the confirmation of availability of the power, the caller has to dial a preset code provided for the user to switch on the pump set.

Once the code is dialed the user has to confirm his function by a feedback tone and then cut the call. For switching off the pumpset, the same process has to be repeated and a different preset code is entered to switch off the pumpset.

To make the phones easily accessible to the farmer community basic phones like Nokia 1100 have been deployed. The modem is also available with a theft proof inbuilt device called ‘Nano Ganesh Hanuman’, whereby its installation will also ensure alert in case of theft attempt near the pump area related to pumpset cable, panel or pump itself.

Priced between Rs.560 and Rs.1700, more than 5,000 farmers are using the application.

GreenPhone

An ecofriendly software application, developed by New Delhi-based Mobimonster 2.0, GreenPhone allows one to save on the phone’s battery and charger life.

Greenphone alerts you to several power consumption modules of your phone so that you can remove the charger or shut down the unwanted services to preserve power and in turn help saving the environment.

Greenphone has advanced algorithms that help the software quickly get call back from the device when the battery is “optimally” charged, Bluetooth, WLAN are active and there is no data transfer and when the backlight is not in use, Greenphone shuts it down.  Greenphone aims to alert the user by means of SMS so that you know when the phone is using resources which are not required.

The firm allows users to download the application free for trial, but charges $15 for constant use.

Mobile Apps In India

Since the advent of mobile phones, courtesy Dr Martin Cooper of Motorola, in 1973, the journey of these little portable devices has been a remarkable and unique one. It has been a long way for the antenna carrying cell-phones to go all touchy-feely today.

The upcoming variation in the world of mobile phones is applications development, more popularly knows as mobile apps.

Mobile apps enable cellular phones (and other portable or hand held devices like the iPad or Amazon's Kindle or India's very own Olive Pad) to download apps and software like music, videos, games, e-books and numerous other forms on your mobile handsets.

While the mobile apps industry has been immensely popular and has a widespread market in foreign countries like the US, Sweden and Japan, India is still to catch the fever. The global market for mobile apps is huge and has been expanding faster than ever.

Gartner says consumers will spend $6.2 Billion in Mobile Application Stores in 2010, and forecasts that worldwide downloads in mobile application stores to surpass 21.6 billion by 2013. Free downloads will account for 82 per cent of all downloads in 2010, and will account for 87 per cent of downloads in 2013.

India is yet to catch up with the hysteria of apps industry that has engrossed an international crowd. The pace in India, though consistent, is slow.

A Knowledgefaber prediction says that though India is lagging behind in the usage of mobile downloads and software uses, there is a vast market for the apps industry in the Indian market in the near future.

With 400 million mobile phone subscribers, and the growth showing no signs of plateauing, India is expectantly being touted as a mobile hot spot globally. Today, mobile has become the only medium to reach out to a large part of India's population. No consumer business worth its name is ignoring the potential of reaching out to customers through mobile applications, for customer service, marketing and of late for transactions. By and large, that is what is driving Indian enterprise mobile applications adoption in the initial phase of the market rollout.

Adoption in the intra-enterprise space is low but gaining momentum. We are still at a stage where only a few sectors like retail and BFSI are using mobility apps for conventional areas like sales force automation, transaction management, etc.

A new entrant on the mobility street has been the government. Governments across India are busy mobilizing their operations and their workforces. The sector has emerged as an enthusiastic consumer (of mobile enterprise apps), and has niche requirements of developing its wireless capability, especially for domains of security, reliability, and scalability of its operations. Another area that the government is exploring is tracking and locational services.

Distribution Platforms

The digital distribution platforms for mobile devices mainly provide mobile software to mobile devices. The most popular apps distribution platforms are Apple App Store, Blackberry App World, Nokia's Ovi, Google Android and Palm App Market.

1. Apple App Store: Launched on July 10, 2008, with an estimated number of available apps of 225,000 (June 2010). The device platform used in App Store is iOS and it allows individual developers to publish content. The download count by July 2010 was 5 billion.

2. Google Android: Established on October 22, 2008, Android offers around 90,000 available apps. The download count of Android's apps is one billion by July 2010.

3. Nokia Ovi Store: Launched on May 26, 2009, Ovi provides 6,118 apps as on February 2010. The download count is 10 million. Symbian and Java based phones support the download from Ovi Store.

4. RIM App World: Started on April 1, 2009 by RIM, by June 2010, it had 7,422 available apps. The device platform is Blackberry OS.

5. Microsoft's Windows Marketplace for Mobile: Launched on October 5, 2009 it has 376 apps to offer. Supportive on devices with Windows Mobile.

6. Palm App Catalog: Palm/HP's apps market was established on June 6, 2009 and within a year it has 3,281 available apps. Almost 64 million is the download count via App Catalog which uses webOS as its supportive device.

Distribution Platforms in India

Airtel launched its apps store named 'App-Central' in February 2010. App-Central, powered by Cellmania, provides more than 1,250 downloadable apps in around 25 categories like entertainment, e-books, games, travel, photography, themes, utilities and social networking sites. Airtel claims to be the first in India with mobile market place.

Aircel's 'My Aircel' apps launched in January 2010 and can be easily downloaded in a Symbian or Java supportive mobile phone. This operator-based apps store created with the help of Infosys Technologies on the Flypp platform provides access to entertainment, sports, videos, social networking sites to name a few.

Reliance Communications said the first version of its apps store would go live for GSM customers by the end of February 2010, and by the end of March 2010 an expanded version would be available to its CDMA customers as well. The apps would be available through its data portal RWorld 2.0. It will be 3G ready data-portal with world class content management system supporting all the latest features available on mobile handsets.

Vodafone has also officially launched its Mobile apps Store in India. After its official launch on February 15, 2010, today Vodafone Mobile Apps Store offers over 800 apps under various categories like entertainment, utility, finance, social networking, games, etc. Vodafone has already introduced improved convenience features such as 'tabbed browsing' with 'Newest Apps', 'Top Apps' and 'Just for You Apps' which offer a customised set of apps as per consumers' preferences.

With the advances of leading operators in the world of apps industry, it won't take the others to follow shortly and the competition would result into an extensive growth of the apps stores and the market.

Indian mobile users are mostly satisfied with basic apps like making calls, sending texts and MMS and at the most downloading themes, ring tones, music and videos occasionally. Downloading bigger apps and software is still awaited in the Indian market in a wider space.

Moreover, the Indian market and the users being price sensitive, the cost of downloading the apps has to be brought down by the service providers and the mobile manufacturers before more and more users get attracted to apps store.

The slow speed of 2G or 2.5G technologies is another reason for a low inclination to download software and apps. Though 3G has already stepped in, only state-owned operators BSNL and MTNL provide the service in metropolitan and big cities. While several countries in Europe have already started using 4G technology, India is still to get equipped with its processor 3G, and that makes a major difference in the influence of mobile apps industry.

The Mobile Entertainment Forum or MEF suggests that the second quarter of 2010 will have 21 per cent of all mobile entertainment revenues from mobile apps industry only. Much of the credit for the boom in mobile apps industry goes to Apple Inc. App store which holds a high ratio in the apps business. With the iTunes stepping in to the global scenario, the entire device ecosystem has undergone a revolutionary change.

And needless to say, Google's Android is the new kid in the town and it would soon evolve as a market giant in the days to come... so be prepared!

India, being a trend following country, wouldn't take much time to open the door to embrace a full-fledged mobile-apps market. Given time till a maximum of 2012 we promise the world to make the apps industry overcrowded with downloads!

Be it the hype, be it the research or be it the growing awareness, Indian users wait for smart apps soon to make their phones as well as living smarter than ever before!

Blackberry Business Application Development – The Next Big Thing?

It's enough to look around and see the booming increase of mobile phones and handheld computers; almost everyone has at least one cellular device, if not more. Increased simplicity has caused 'premium'-featured models to be introduced to the 'entry-level' customers. Today business-people actively perform functions on mobile devices that were formerly reserved for laptops or netbooks.

Netbook sales took off over the past few years, and for good reason: these tiny, light computers were tailor-made for the mobile user who increasingly performed most office-related activity online. Netbooks provide some of the convenience and functionality of a full-fledged notebook while weighing less than half of even the lightest units and boasting battery life that can in some cases take you through an entire day without recharging.

But many netbook users quickly bump up against the limitations built in to this form factor. Screens are cramped, and processors are barely adequate for running Windows. In addition, a notebook computer - even if tiny and lightweight - is still a notebook computer, requiring you to stash it, and the inevitable accessories, in some bag that you have to carry around with you.

Evidence of the mobile craze is everywhere. According to a survey by Synovate, a global marketing and research firm, 70 percent of users surveyed in 11 global markets use their hand held mobile devices for non-voice data applications and one-third use them to access the Internet.

According to Dataquest estimates, the total market size of enterprise mobile applications in India stood at Rs 560 crore in FY 09, up from Rs 347 crore in FY 08 a growth of 61%.

Mobile application development is a huge boom in the technology sector. These applications have expanded the use of wireless technology immensely. The new developing applications have bought the revolutionary changes in the use of mobile phones.

Competition is getting tough day by day with ever changing technology and increasing demands for more advance applications, innovation in this field is key to success. Several companies have entered in the field of development of mobile applications and they are introducing the latest apps based on the new technologies with ever increasing benefits.

A reputable web application development company that specializes in software application development can develop mobile applications to integrate your business transactions through mobile or wireless devices and content delivered systems. A mobile application developer with a solid background in project analysis, documentation, test plotting, and project maintenance can help you on the way to your making revolutionary mobile applications.

Business Mashups, a software development company headquartered in the the city beautiful, Chandigarh, is extending its software development services and this time for the latest BlackBerry platform.

Business Mashups has been one of the pioneers on the IT market to offer bespoke software development services using web technologies. Among the most requested solutions are business applications and sophisticated web-based systems. No matter what type of business need it is, Business Mashups leverages industry standards from HTML to AJAX, works alongside with Eclipse, NetBeans, and Java Development Environments.

The BlackBerry product line, created by Research in Motion (RIM), includes handsets and software both for individuals and businesses. The integration of smartphones and software provides advanced access to emails, notes, tasks, contacts, and many more.

With all the mobile platforms targeting their app store towards average consumer, enterprise mobile applications market in India has still not reached a critical mass, but is gaining momentum.

Business use of mobiles requires a different set of features, namely strong email support, web browsing, a good screen, software support and local connectivity options.

Blackberry was created with business use in mind. Blackberry wins for business use and security. Besides its e-mailing and call functions, blackberry developers have now provided applications to make the Blackberry a handy asset to both the small and medium sized businesses. The access to various third-party applications for the Blackberry has made it a vital toll in today’s business environment.

Business Mashups has long identified with the trend by providing offshore blackberry development services. Our experts can create appealing applications over different BlackBerry OS Platforms. Whether you need BlackBerry Apps Development for Store, business automation application, sales force automation, transaction management or intranet applications such as executive MIS on mobile, CRM,etc, we have a team of qualified hands to meet your blackberry mobile application development under your budget and timelines.

Mobile Application market in India

India has huge mobile application requirements. An initial look at the market place throws up large number of consumer segments in need of immediate access to important information. Mobile applications is a major development area in India and has resulted in software firms creating or enhancing their efforts in telecom operations. The earlier withdrawal of attention had resulted in a lag in the learning curve with respect to new processes. Companies are again scrambling to make up for it through redoubled efforts.

With 400 million mobile phone subscribers, and the growth showing no signs of plateauing, India is expectedly being touted as a mobile hotspot globally. Today, mobile has become the only medium to reach out to a large part of India's population. No consumer business worth its name is ignoring the potential of reaching out to customers through mobile applications, for customer service, marketing and of late for transactions. By and large, that is what is driving Indian enterprise mobile applications adoption in the initial phase of the market rollout.

That is both good news and bad.The good is that when the adoption becomes mainstream, it would suddenly see exponential growth. The bad news is that this is also the reason why the transition from a hype cycle to an adoption cycle is taking so much time. Today, the market size of enterprise mobile applications in India is a very small fraction of the potential.

According to Dataquest estimates, the total market size of enterprise mobile applications in India stood at Rs 560 crore in FY 09, up from Rs 347 crore in FY 08a growth of 61%. While that growth figure looks quite impressive, it is on a small base and I believe that it will accelerate for the next few years.

There are two reasons why the enterprise mobile applications market has still not reached a critical mass. First: the adoption is happening more on the front-end, which typically requires a longer decision cycle as well as longer implementation time. Secondly: most integrators in the enterprise space are still trying to push traditional mobile applications which have worked in developed markets, which are B2E or B2B applications, and are targeted at enhancing productivity and efficiency, as part of their solution to the CIOs.

2008 saw significant take-offs in customer facing applications such as m-banking, which was launched by many large banks through downloadable midlets, WAP sites as well as through SMS. Then there was m-payments, where India is now being seen as an early adopter, as well as a lot of other m-commerce applications.

Major players in the application space include Mobiquest, ValueFirst, Obopay, Mospay, CanvasM, Mindtree, Spice Digital (earlier Cellebrum), Telenity, Netxcell, among others.

The adoption in the intra-enterprise space is low but gaining momentum. We are still at a stage where only a few sectors like retail and BFSI are using mobility apps for conventional areas like sales force automation, transaction management, etc. Field force automation and integration, mobile transaction management, asset tracking and management, bill payments/receipts, ticketing, Intranet applications such as executive MIS on mobile, are currently in vogue. However other areas like CRM, remote data collection and management, queue buster solutions, integrated handhold solutions with other technology solutions like RFID, location-based services are also fast catching up.

Vertical-wise
Its a well known fact that the first and primary adopter of enterprise mobile applications has been retail. The next rung is occupied by BFSI and pharma, and they are closely followed by the transportation and logistics department.

A new entrant on the mobility street has been the government. Governments across India are busy mobilizing their operations and their workforces. The sector has emerged as an enthusiastic consumer (of mobile enterprise apps), and has niche requirements of developing its wireless capability, especially for domains of security, reliability, and scalability of its operations. Another area that the government is exploring is tracking and locational services.

Apart from these, there are a lot of sectors that hold huge potential for effectively deploying enterprise mobility solutions. Some of these can substantially contribute towards crafting the success story of enterprise mobility. One of the most promising sectors is healthcare. From blood bank tracking to bedside monitoring to real-time monitoring of surgeries, healthcare is one area that holds tremendous scope for deployment of mobility solutions. The other potential verticals are defense, aviation, energy utility, and telecom.

The Challenges
While even sending bulk SMSes to the sales force was considered to be a mobility sort of adoption (and a large number of our SMBs are still in that stage) a couple of years back, we have now evolved to reach what the experts call the email stage. A major chunk of enterprise mobile applications in India right now is mobile email. So clearly, maturity is an issue, and on that front at least, the growth rate speaks volumes about the potential that the Indian market holds.

That apart, because market maturity will only come gradually, the biggest challenge in the way of enterprise mobility applications is the security of data being transferred. Most vendors concur that the first question their customers put up is related to the security of data being transmitted. They want to ascertain how reliable their mobility solution is.

However, experts insist that security vis-a-vis mobile applications, is no longer an issue that cant be dealt with effectively. That is because most developers are now taking care of security issues right from the stage of inception.

The other big factor, that has been especially relevant to the Indian market is the low RoI, that leaves little incentive for application developers. And though a lot of players have mushroomed in the application development picture, a lot of them are targeting the overseas market, rather than the Indian one. The Indian market is more lucrative for VAS application developers, given the consumer base.

Apart from that, integration is another issue. Although most mobile applications are a sub-set or even an extension of the business applications, their integration with the overall IT infrastructure remains a challenge for most enterprises, especially for mid-sized ones. And with unified communications being the buzzword across the industry, the convergence between voice, video, and data points has become more crucial than ever. Thus, one of the biggest ailments seems to be patching-up of the pieces. Accommodation of an application in the existing infrastructure has always been a yardstick for success in India. But enterprise mobile apps, though displaying an integration drive, are yet to reach that stage of seamless integration.

Unless that happens, it is difficult to expect that intra-enterprise applications would really take-off.

Pakistan illegally modified Harpoon missile and P-3C aircraft

The Obama administration has accused Pakistan of illegally modifying the Harpoon anti-ship missile and maritime surveillance aircraft P-3C for land attacks for potential use against India, validating New Delhi's fears that Islamabad was using US security aid to beef up its military against it.

The Obama administration, reported The New York Times in a front-page story, lodged its protest in this regard with Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in June, adding to the tension between the two countries.

Quoting unnamed officials from the administration and the US Congress, the daily said Washington has also accused Pakistan of modifying American-made P-3C aircraft for land-attack missions, another violation of United States law.

The Obama administration's accusation confirms New Delhi's stand that the US military aid is primarily used by Pakistan to strengthen and build up its army against India.

External Affairs Minister S M Krishna earlier this month said that India has conveyed to the US that all forms of aid provided to Pakistan is "invariably directed" against New Delhi and providing more arms to Islamabad will not help the peace process in the region.

"We have told the US that particularly in case of Pakistan, whatever aid in whatever form has been given to them is invariably directed against India and this has been emphatically registered with the US government," Krisha had said, reacting to the US' plans to provide more military aid to Pakistan.

PIL challenges ban on Jaswant book

Five days after the state government banned Jaswant Singh’s controversial book ‘Jinnah-India, Partition, Independence’, a public interest litigation (PIL) was filed in Gujarat High Court on Monday, challenging it. This PIL may come up for hearing before a larger Bench headed by the chief justice later this week.

Raising the issue of fundamental rights of citizens to access the book, citybased activists Prakash Shah and Manishi Jani have challenged the notification issued by the government forfeiting and prohibiting publication, sale and circulation of the book under section 95 of the CrPC.

They have termed this as a “colourable exercise by Narendra Modi government with political considerations in view of the approaching by-elections.” They have dubbed this as “an example of defective exercise of power” as the notification does not provide concrete grounds for banning the book.

In fact, the petitioners have argued that the reason that government fears communal instigation with denigration of Sardar Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru doesn’t stand at all because the two leaders do not form a class that could be incited for rioting as per section 153 B of IPC.

Maintaining that they do not share the political ideology of expelled BJP leader, the petitioners have demanded revocation of ban on Singh’s book by stating that it’s a historical work and Singh has dealt with the subject purely from historical point of view and avoided offensive and abusive language. The petition demands an immediate stay on the government’s decision and urges the court to allow the book to be made available for reading in Gujarat.

India's "Missile Woman"

Popularly called 'Missile Woman', Tessy Thomas was first assigned to the Agni program in 1988 by 'Missile Man' and former President A P J Abdul Kalam, after she joined the Defense Research and Development Organization, . The missile will propel India towards having powerful ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) capabilities.

An expert on 'solid system propellants' which fuel the Agni missiles, Tessy is a B.Tech from Thrissur Engineering College, Calicut and M.Tech from Pune-based Defence Institute of Advanced Technologies. Tessy has been associated with the Agni program for around two years now. She is currently based at the Advanced Systems Laboratory.

Tessy Thomas, who was made the project director of the 2,500 km Agni II missile last year has now been appointed as the project director of India's most ambitious missile, the 5000 km Agni V. The missile is slated to be tested for the first time next year.

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Budget 2009 live

We are bringing you the budget 2009 live courtsey Nautanki.tv who are streaming it in association with UTVi and Facebook.

Funny Equations

SSC + HSC + BTech + MBA = UNEMPLOYMENT

An Idea + An Idiot = A Dot com.

One Chinese gymnast = India's Gold Medal tally since 1896

4 weeks in Switzerland + London + New Zealand + Canada = a 4 minute song in Hindi movie.

Ajay Devgan + cosmetic surgery + acting ability + personality + own production company = Kajol...

Rona dhona x Bewafai x Badle ki aag = Your mum's favorite serials.

Amitabh Bachchan + Jaya Bachchan - Talent = Abhishek Bachchan

One engagement + Two weddings + Three wedding songs + Four hundred Relatives + A house bigger than Buckingham Palace = One Sooraj Barjataya Film

Reading mails all the time + no replies = Silence of the Lamb!

Software Engineer, Qualified Employee + No Work = Forwards

News: India Inc. taps Gay Market

There is some good news for the LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bi-sexual Transgenders) community in India. Signaling a major shift in its once unyielding stand, the government of India has for the first time indicated it's willingness to review the 150 year old law that makes homosexuality a criminal offense.

And corporate India is boldly tapping into the hitherto 'under the carpet' gay clientele. India's first LGBT Pride Store, fittingly called Azad Bazaar (www.azadbazaar.com), is set to launch online operations in a fortnight.

Two women entrepreneurs from Mumbai co-founded the store after encouraging response to exhibitions held at parties in Mumbai and Delhi.

The store's philosophy is to "create ways that members of the LGBT community and its supporters can make statements of freedom and pride while still having fun with naughty one-liners" explain the gutsy entrepreneurs.

50 per cent of their customers are straight and none of the products offend Indian sensibilities. The products range from slogan T shirts, mugs, key chains and earrings to butch biker wristbands, leather cushions and shot glasses.

Total Ten: The Movie

It took Hollywood nearly five years to open its first feature film on the attacks of 9/11. Bollywood moves at a much faster pace: Its first film on last year's Mumbai attacks will be completed within nine months of the deadly events.

An Indian film company is to depict the execution of the alleged only surviving gunman from the Mumbai terror attacks, despite the fact that his trial is still ongoing.

The producers of Total Ten say their film will tell the true story of 21-year-old Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, the Pakistani national who stands accused of 166 counts of murder and waging war against India. The title refers to the number of people in the terror squad said to be responsible for the three-day rampage of co-ordinated violence that, in addition to the deaths, left more than 300 injured in India's financial capital last November. The movie will also highlight the response of the Mumbai police.

"Top Ten's" producers say their film will not affect the outcome of the trial; they said they are only showing the inevitable. "The outcome of the trial is a known fact," producer Sugath Kumar said. "It's just that the government is going through the motions and making it look as just and transparent as possible. Kasab will be hanged. However long the law takes, we are just showing the eventuality. That's it."

Spoiler Alert: This film is expected to raise controversy because, at the end, Kasab is prosecuted and hanged. In real life, Kasab's trial is being conducted in Mumbai with only a judge and no jury because of security fears. Charges against him include "waging war" on India and, if convicted, he faces the death penalty.

The trial was delayed several times in the past few months after Kasab's court-appointed defense attorney was dismissed because of "professional misconduct." After another delay, a new attorney was appointed and the trial is expected to last at least four more months, meaning that the real outcome of the trial will be determined after "Top Ten's" expected run at the theaters.

Starcast: Rajan Varma, Mushtaq Khan, Aroon Bakshi, Shiva

India’s wealth gap impedes growth

India needs to curb a concentration of wealth or risk becoming hostage to a corporate oligarchy that will depress its rapid economic growth.

A study funded by the Asian Development Bank found that, by early last year, India had 50 billionaires who together controlled wealth equivalent to 20 per cent of gross domestic product and, reportedly, 80 per cent of stock market capitalization.

The report warned that this concentration of wealth and influence could be a hidden time bomb under India’s social fabric.

India’s corporate sector is hailed as one of the most dynamic within emerging markets, with groups such as Reliance Industries leading the expansion of the country’s oil and gas sector and Tata Group acquiring overseas companies.

But critics say the greater prosperity from market-driven policies introduced since 1991 is also leading to glaring wealth disparities in India.

Per capita income is about $1,000 (€715, £625), but many in its population of 1.1bn scrape by on much less.

In Mumbai, where more than half of the population lives in slums, Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man and chairman of Reliance, who is ranked seventh on the Forbes global rich list, is building a 27-floor family home at a reported cost of $1bn.

The report warned that the creation of oligarchies was a common trap in developing countries that often prevented them from realising their potential.

It said India needed to develop an effective competition commission and strengthen regulation to prevent crony capitalism as well as foster greater transparency in the allocation of land and infrastructure projects.

Indian retail needs more liberalization

Among the 30 emerging markets, India has become the number one hotspot for global retailers for the fourth time in five years. Global consulting firm A T Kearney's eighth Annual Global Retail Development index has ranked India first in terms of attractiveness as a retail destination followed by Russia and China. India wrested back the top honors from Vietnam, thanks to factors like low inflation and a fall in rents especially in 2 and 3 tier cities. Since GDRI is geared to helping retailers take investment decisions on the basis of criteria like economic and political risks, the report also suggests a broder interest in the Indian economy.

In a recession-hit world, Asian giants like India are being viewed as key to a global recovery. India continues to notch impressive quarterly growth rates. Its domestic demand driven economy has a competitive edge over export led economies. It has a growing and brand conscious middle class, along with an expanding luxury goods clientele. All this has been water off the back of a parliamentary standing committee that's asked for a ban on retail FDI. The committee also objects to large domestic corporates doing business related to grocery, fruits and vegetables. Foreign-Indian partnerships, seen as allowing 'outsiders' backdoor entry , are opposed. The old bogeys are raised: the supposed death of mandis and corner shops as well as job loss.

The fact is that Indian firms not only survived the challenge of foreign specialty in retail, they became more competitive. Nor did the shops around the corner of unorganized retail die out. Big retailers, foreign or domestic, are wrongly projected as bad for farmers and consumers. Supermarket chains can augment farmer's earnings many times over through direct purchase of their produce. Today, it is middle men who gain at the cost of farmers and consumers. Moreover, post-harvest infrastructure in India related to warehousing and processing operations needs improvement. Thanks to poor cold chain management and distribution networks, an estimated 40 per cent of the country's fruit and vegetables are annually wasted. So, in both farm and rural non-farm sectors, the need to increase investment can hardly be overstated.

Go native arguments make little sense in the face of global interest in setting up shop in India. If anything, India's $400 billion retail industry is underdeveloped, with organized retail comprising only 5 per cent of the market. Given that the Manmohan Singh led government seems to recognize the need for big-ticket private investment, the retail roadmap should include further liberalization in single brand retail as well as opening up the foreign multi-brand retail. Mom 'n' pop stores coexist with malls and supermarkets the world over. Why should it be any different for India?

Emerging Trends in HR: RPO

A new addition in the series of BPO, KPO, and LPO is RPO i.e. Recruitment Process Outsourcing. In coming years India is going to face a talent crunch of half a million people. That increases the demand of RPOs.

What is an RPO?

RPO stands for Recruitment Process Outsourcing. It also stands for Research Process Outsourcing but here we are dealing with the former.

If there is one problem that is seen as the biggest hurdle to the growth of organisations across the world and across sectors, it is talent scarcity. As part of the HR function, recruiting is the most crucial and time consuming function of any HR department. This leads to a complete transformation in the way the recruitment function is perceived by organisations around the globe. This emanates from the simple logic that when companies across worldwide are trying to focus on their core functions and outsource all non-core functions, why shouldn’t recruitment be outsourced to the experts too? Having said that, it isn’t difficult to understand why Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) as a concept has gained such popularity in a span of a few years. Initially companies expressed reservations, since recruiting the right individual is so crucial to an organisation’s success. Companies soon realised that with talent crunch becoming a perennial problem, its time to bring in the experts. The RPO segment is today the fastest growing global segment for HRO firms. IT companies are among the early adopters of this trend. In fact, the high level of activity seen in this space leads several analysts to believe that the time for multi-million dollar deals in the global RPO space has come.

Around 70% of the main HR activities (Training, staffing needs, ensuring performance) suffer due to the constantly increasing pressure on the HR department to fill in the vacancies. Majority of organizations spend a lot of time (around 60%) in sorting resumes and finding candidates from job portals and other sources. This is where RPOs come into play. Recruitments are outsourced these days so that the organization can concentrate on its core competency areas to save time and increase productivity level. RPOs bridge gaps between demand and supply of talented people. The RPO services include searching candidates from internal database and job portals, resume screening, response handling, corporate intelligence research, database maintenance, skills testing, and analyze market trends and recruiting market, etc.

While RPO is new to India, it is already a big industry globally and some estimates suggest it is worth $30 billion. The RPO wave is catching up fast in India. As the Indian labor markets become more and more competitive, RPO is fast becoming more of a common solution. It is claimed that a greater impetus for RPO is provided by the shortage of skilled labor. Although there is abundant pool of labor (3 million/year) in India, only 10% immediately hirable - lack of language skills, lack of practical experience, lack of cultural/interpersonal fit, mobility are some of the factors because of which shortage of skilled labor is faced by organizations and RPO is utilized by some to fill this gap. The Indian labor market too has become increasingly dynamic: workers today change employers more often than in previous generations. De-regulated labor markets have also created a shift towards contract and part-time labor and shorter work tenures. These trends increase recruitment activity and encourage the use of RPO model.

RPO Models:

1. Pure sourcing: It includes providing support services to on-shore based recruiters.

2. Full cycle recruiting: It includes all the activities that come under Recruitment Process like sourcing, screening, etc for both temporary contract as well as permanent positions.

ADVANTAGES:

• Reduces process variations
  
  
• Increases sourcing timeliness and expertise
  
  
• Improves quality of resumes
  
  
• Decreases time to fill
  
  
• Gives better leverage of technology
  
  
• Improves candidate nurturance
  
  
• Improves applicant tracking
  
  
• Enables meaningful reports

CRITICAL REQUIREMENTS :

For any managed services model to work there are some critical requirements or must haves like :

1. Executive sponsorship of the project. Any business model innovation requires the executive to champion internal resistance into acceptance.
   
   
2. Clear Partnership Definition - A detailed and clear scope of work to be defined before agreeing on to the terms. The managed services agreement will have the scope of work documented & agreed upon.
   
   
3. Clarity on the role & the deliverables from the onsite resource & the same to be documented & mutually agreed upon.
   
   
4. Mutually agreed expectations to be jotted in the agreement. Prepare a project plan with defined recruitment process & get a consensus on the same.
   
   
5. Historical data to be made available so as to help prepare a project plan blocking all possible loop holes and deciding on the key deliverables.
   
   
6. Its imperative for the success of this arrangement that we have a buy in from each person involved in the project from Clients side and everyone understand that the intention is to meet the numbers and nothing else.

One of the major tenets behind RPO is that there should be the ability to create a significant candidate pool to draw on for their clients. By doing so, the RPO vendor is able to turn around job requisitions more quickly and efficiently than a single employer. At the same time true RPO players need to invest time in follow-up surveys, compiling benchmark data, gauging hiring manager and employee satisfaction post hire and determination of quality of hires. By examining data relating to employee satisfaction, retention rates, and others, RPO providers can improve the recruitment process.

Over the past few years, RPO services have been chiefly employed by IT, retail, finance and insurance and engineering sectors. The trend seems to be gaining ground not only among big organisations but also the small to mid-sized companies. Since RPO affects an organisation’s business growth and success, the organisation should have a detailed understanding of the concept and also of the expenditure for the recruitment process. This helps to identify the processes that should be outsourced, and which RPO is best suited to the unique requirement of the company. Industry studies in the USA show that within two years, 58 percent of the Fortune 2000 companies will rely on this model. This further strengthens the point that RPO is indeed the answer to the recruitment woes of organisations globally.

Advantage India

Research firm IDC forecasts staffing and recruitment spending to reach $92 billion globally by 2009 (Source: ERE media study) and RPO services stand a good chance of garnering a large portion of this spending. India, with its huge talent pool and its rich experience in the outsourcing industry, can indeed ride this wave of recruitment process outsourcing. Although the Indian domestic RPO market is still in its nascent stage, global RPO providers are seriously evaluating the option of offshoring their RPO needs to destinations such as India. RPO providers which were early-adopters of an India-based model are now reaping the rewards.

Why India is transforming Bharat

I read an article in a newspaper that put the question - who says India is no more a golden bird? It further points thatIt is clearly evident that India has become the golden bird again. The sensex is going higher and higher and is about to touch the 15,000 point mark, GDP is growing at a rate of 7.5% against the estimate of 6.9%.

Another article says that there are 260 million Indians(193 million in rural areas and 67 million in urban areas) who are still living below the poverty line, according to India's first Social Development Report.

I am in a dilemma after reading these two articles. I do not whether I should rejoice for the development of my country or I should feel sad for the pathetic condition of my countrymen.

The great divide Between India and Bharat across four key sectors

Telephones
Rural teledensity is just 1.67% as compared to 25.90% in urban India

Power
Punjab shines with 99.87% of its rural homes wired but it is just 17.82% for Orissa

Water
Out of 638,596 villages, 217,000 do not have access to safe drinking water

Roads
Only 55% of villages are connected by road

It's not an easy divide to bridge. The gap between the towering sky-rises of affluent India and the unglamorous one that goes to bed hungry can't be measured in mere kilometres. Much of the new India regards the other with less sympathy, more scorn, a burden on the country's glittering future. The India that has caught the world's imagination is the one that boasted the world's fastest growing population of dollar millionaires in 2008; the one that has supplied Silicon Valley with some of its brightest minds; the India that notched up an astounding growth rate.

But a new breed of do-gooder is set on blurring the boundaries between the two worlds. Senthil Gopalan, a 36-year-old mechanical engineer, has earned himself the epithet 'Enga Ooru Shivaji' (Shivaji of the village) after superstar Rajinikanth. The actor returned from the US to play reformer in the Kollywood blockbuster 'Sivaji The Boss'. Senthil, likewise, chucked a well-paid job in Detroit, and returned to a new career in Tamil Nadu - social work. Using all his savings - Rs 30 lakh - he set up Payir, a non-profit trust in Thennur near Trichy. Payir has already built a hospital in the village, which is in one of the state's most backward districts. Now, it will focus on education and employment "if we still have the money to keep going," says Senthil. Last month, his blog nearly carried an obit for Payir but "a friend pitched in with Rs 1 lakh and the work went on". In yet another part of Tamil Nadu, there is Rangaswamy Elango. He studied at IIT Chennai and gave up a promising career at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research to do voluntary work in the village where he grew up.

Today, Koothambakkam, near Chennai, owes much of its transformation to its Dalit sarpanch. Roads, drains, toilets and 100% enrollment till Class IX - it's a model village. "I saw inequalities and injustices while growing up and I knew I wanted to do something about it," says Elango. His work has inspired 13 other MCAs and M.Techs to quit India for Bharat. "They are using my village as a laboratory so that they can take this experiment with development to other parts of the country."

So is corporate India serious about the business of doing good? The Azim Premji Foundation, funded by the head of Wipro and the Akshara Foundation and Arghyam Trust established by Rohini Nilekani, wife of Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, are proof that Indian tycoons are increasingly ready to invest in Bharat.

To some extent, Indian business isn't just about making money any more but also about being sharp enough to achieve social goals. But what of the fat pay cheque? "It's not so difficult to live without money," says Senthil who traded his flat and Volvo for a hut without electricity.

Many share his drive and dynamism, in what Ranjana Kumari of the Centre for Social Research a calls a "promising sign". She says, "India and Bharat are two different habitats living in contradiction. There is an urgent need to end disparities and bring them closer."

The kings of yore used to mingle with commoners incognito. Legend has it that Rana Pratap shared coarse millet-bread made by a Bhil woman while wandering Mewar. Akbar often went around his kingdom in disguise to find out the real state of his subjects. The difference today is that when modern India's political and corporate princelings visit Bharat, everybody knows. A sign of the times?

Adapted from Why India is meeting Bharat by Neelam Raaj, TNN

News: India Inc buys 143 US cos in 2 yrs

The greater engagement of US with India seems to have benefited the former during the economic downturn as thousands of Americans managed to save their jobs when Indian corporates went on a major acquisition drive in the US.

During the last two years, Indian companies acquired 143 US firms across various sectors. While 94 deals were concluded in 2007-08, in the following year when the economy was on the downturn, Indians bought as many as 50 US entities that were on the verge of closure, saving thousands of jobs.

A study, jointly conducted by Indian industry association FICCI and Ernst & Young, said Tata Chemicals, Wipro, Reliance Communications and Firstsource Solutions were some of the top Indian entities that were involved in bailing out US companies in the red.

The report released on Thursday said IT & ITeS, manufacturing and pharmaceuticals were the prime sectors in which most of the deals were formalised. Indian companies from the IT sector have over the years been aggressively expanding in the US market.

The deals were predominantly debt financed with cash being a popular mode of payment. "This trend probably extends from India Inc's traditional preference for cash transactions in the domestic merger and acquisition space," the report observed.

The Ernst & Young report says the boom in the Indian economy in the last three to four years made the domestic companies cash-rich which provided them with access to more capital than in the past.

Interestingly, one of the key factors, as the report cites, behind more acquisitions has been the liberal policies introduced by the government and RBI for overseas investments.

According to RBI data, in 2007-08 the total outbound investments of Indian companies amounted to $18 billion. In the first half of 2008-09, at least 2,000 proposals valued at $9 billion were cleared for overseas investments in joint ventures and wholly owned subsidiaries.

Source: ToI

What ails e-commerce in India

The slow growth of e-commerce in India stands in contrast to the booming market for mobile connectivity. Internet and broadband penetration is growing, yet the explosive growth that is possible in this vast country of 1 billion people remains elusive.

A report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI) estimated the size of the business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce industry in 2007 at 92,100 million rupees (US$2.10 billion), up around 30% from 70,800 million rupees (US$1.62 billion) the previous year. The figures include some consumer-to-consumer (C2C) categories such as online auctions and classifieds.

But India lags a long way behind other countries in the Asia-Pacific region when it comes to e-commerce transactions.

In many ways, India should have been an ideal market for e-commerce. The country is vast, and getting timely supplies to tens of thousands of retail outlets spread across the hinterland is never an easy task. The movement of goods through several layers adds to costs and can easily be disrupted by weather or the poor infrastructure across the nation.

Yet retail trade is booming in towns and cities, and malls are the flavour of the season. Indeed, most of the country’s leading business groups, including Reliance Industries, the Tata group and the Aditya Birla group, are all investing in huge brick and mortar retail businesses.

The online retail market has received comparatively less attention. “Online sales are a small fraction of retail sales in India…less than 1%,” says Dr. Subho Ray, president of IMAI.

Conventional reasoning cites poor penetration of broadband, the building block of e-commerce, as a key reason for poor online sales. India has just 4.57 million broadband subscribers, up from 2.47 million a year ago, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). The growth in these numbers is nowhere near the boom seen in mobile telephony, which boasts almost 300 million subscribers, up from under 200 million a year ago.

Dr. Ray reasons that broadband penetration is not picking up because the supply side has not yet seen value in selling online in India.

“Because there is very little e-commerce happening, penetration isn’t increasing fast enough,” he says. Most of the bigger retail brands do not sell directly and prefer to sell through dealers and retail stores, he adds.

India has not had a tradition of mail order selling, and so the entire business of selling to end consumers is built around a system of dealers, sub dealers and traders that distribute products to the remotest stores with marginal cost additions. Traders form a powerful and highly competitive group, and have virtually taken over the distribution system. On the one hand they have rid manufacturers of the trouble of getting products to market on time, but on the other they have made manufacturers highly dependent on the trader community to reach out to the corner shop.

Dr. Ray sees this as one reason why sellers are not pushing online. “One part of the story is that you do not wish to antagonise your dealers and so prices are often not indicated online. This has to do with the way retail marketing is organised in India. The other side is our complicated array of taxes, like local sales tax vary from state to state, and even city to city,” he says.

Traders would sometimes circumvent these with local contacts and intelligence: for example, sometimes billing some goods with an address on the outskirts of, say, Mumbai to save local area taxes, and hand delivering the products from Thane city next door.

But perhaps the most critical barrier to e-commerce is the lack of credibility and confidence in the process of buying online. This is made worse by reports of just how poor service can be. And since there is no provision for escrow intermediaries under Indian law, there is little that consumers can do to redress a grievance. Complaints like late delivery, delivery of wrong products and outright misrepresentation are far too frequent to be ignored by prospective buyers.

Another major hurdle is logistics. “We do not have any integrated logistics system for seamless movement of goods. This is as much true for offline sales as it is for online,” Mokshagundam says.

In addition, consumers are often unsure of product quality, timely delivery, and worried about online security when paying by credit card. A report published earlier this year by eMarketer, which researches e-business and emerging technologies, says India’s “online payment system lacks credibility”. Worse, there appears to be no immediate perceived benefit in buying online, because prices can often be higher than in physical stores where discounts can be had through dealers.

A litany of bad experiences has been recorded by the Consumer Online Resource & Empowerment (CORE) centre, which runs with the support of India’s Ministry of Consumer Affairs to help consumers resolve complaints of deficient goods and services.

“There are many cases where the order is booked, the money withdrawn out of the bank and the goods have not reached the consumer,” says an official at CORE near New Delhi. “Some of the online businesses run customer care services that can keep you on hold for more than 30 minutes at a time.”

However, rising incomes and busy schedules mean India still is a fertile ground for growth. Indian online research firm JuxtConsult says 80% of all Indians with online services now “shop” online: they either window shop or actually buy online. It says 23% bought products in the past six months, and of these 92% have bought a travel product online.

Wireless broadband could also boost uptake. WiMAX proponent Intel in August announced support for the “Connected Indians” programme by government and industry in India to facilitate the provision of Internet access. Intel also signed an MOU with India’s largest telco BSNL to help deliver WiMAX solutions across India.

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) and several other travel portals are among those now offering solutions on mobiles, reasoning that wider penetration of mobile services could lead to more deals happening through handheld devices. But mobile-based e-commerce is yet to catch on in a big way. Only a very small number of railway tickets, for example, are booked through mobiles says IRCTC.

Business-to-business e-commerce services have also been slow to take off. “The B2B e-commerce sector, even more reliant on seller volume than the B2C market, has been slow to gain followers in the Indian market,” say Datamonitor analysts in a recent research note. “However, with India pushing to become a major manufacturing outsourcing destination, the B2B e-commerce market is experiencing an upswing thanks to sunrise sectors such as pharmaceutical manufacturing, construction and equipment manufacturing. Lack of market leaders both in the B2B exchange and escrow space, however, may dampen prospective growth.”

On track: e-commerce progress in India

The bulk of B2C e-commerce business in India comes from the travel segment, pushed by the emergence of low cost carriers. The runaway success story comes from an unlikely player, part of a government-owned giant that moves the Indian economy on its tracks: the Indian Railways that runs the second largest railway network in the world and is spread over 108,700 track kilometres. Its subsidiary, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), stands out as one shining example of just how much e-commerce can achieve in India.

The IRCTC ticket booking site records more than 100,000 transactions a day. It issued 3.3 million tickets in the holiday season in July this year; and it reported turnover of 17,000 million rupees (E269 million) in its last fiscal year and is on track to double that this year. “It is all about providing value,” says IRCTC’s general manager, operations, Sanjay Aggarwal. “There are many disadvantages for a consumer booking online: we ask him to spend to use the Internet, the transaction can be interrupted because of power or connectivity failure and there could be disturbance in delivery of the ticket. So the value we provide should be greater than the inconvenience of all this.”

Long queues are common at ticket counters in India, and it is not possible to check as many options as it is when you are surfing the IRCTC site, says Aggarwal. In addition, IRCTC has appointed some 30,000 agents to enable those without Internet access to book tickets.

Aggarwal says the average transaction size is less than 800 rupees, and over 70% of its customers book non air-conditioned class of travel. In addition, IRCTC’s payment reversal system means a wait listed ticket—issued if another customer cancels—that is not confirmed by the date of the journey is automatically refunded in full.