Archive Page 2
There have been a lot of debate in the past about decoupling theory about emerging and developed economies. Now everyone knows the truth about this theory. I am just going to present some data on this
Here is the comparison chart of BSE vs NASDAQ vs DOW. You can see the trend and take your own decision.
bse-vs-nasdaq-vs-dow (last 1 year)
I will also present some more data on BRIC economies that can help you to take the decision on decoupling theory.
| Countries | India | Brazil | China | Russia |
| Total Export | $150.8 billion f.o.b. (2007 est.) | $160.6 billion f.o.b. (2007 est.) | $1.217 trillion f.o.b. (2007 est.) | $365 billion (2007 est.) |
| Biggest Export partners | US 17%, UAE 8.3%, China 7.7%, UK 4.3% (2006) | US 17.8%, Argentina 8.5%, China 6.1%, Netherlands 4.2%, Germany 4.1% (2006) | US 21%, Hong Kong* 16%, Japan 9.5%, South Korea 4.6%, Germany 4.2% (2006) | Netherlands 12.3%, Italy 8.6%, Germany 8.4%, China 5.4%, Ukraine 5.1%, Turkey 4.9%, Switzerland 4.1% |
| Total Imports | $230.2 billion f.o.b. (2007 est.) | $120.6 billion f.o.b. (2007 est.) | $901.3 billion f.o.b. (2007 est.) | $260.4 billion (2007 est.) |
| Biggest Import partners | China 8.7%, US 6%, Germany 4.6%, Singapore 4.6%, Australia 4% (2006) | US 16.2%, Argentina 8.8%, China 8.7%, Germany 7.1%, Nigeria 4.3%, Japan 4.2% (2006) | Japan 14.6%, South Korea 11.3%, Taiwan 10.9%, US 7.5%, Germany 4.8% (2006) | Germany 13.9%, China 9.7%, Ukraine 7%, Japan 5.9%, South Korea 5.1%, US 4.8%, France 4.4%, Italy 4.3% (2006) |
| Hongkong Export Partners: China 47%, US 15.1%, Japan 4.9% (2006) | ||||
| Data from : CIA World factbook | ||||
I wish that this economic downturn reverses its’ trend soon.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
In the last post, I wrote about factors that will help online education in India. It seems that there has been frenzied activity in online education space in last few months. I will evaluate these websites in this post.
I browsed through google and found following online education websites. This set might not be comprehensive set but should give you an idea about this space. These websites are:
| Website | Business Model | How do they make money | Verdict |
| 24×7guru.com | Provides online assessment platform for students studying from class X to class X. Students can take online diagnostic and assessment test in science and maths and evaluate their progress. Assessment tests understanding of the student about a particular subject. Currently website offers tests for CBSE, ICSE and few state boards. | Website uses a subscription based model where students have to take a subscription to use online assessment platform. Subscription fee for a year is in between Rs. 1000 to Rs. 1500. | A great business model as this does not replace school education but compliments school education. A great idea and I am positive about this website. |
| extramarks.com | Provides online lectures, quizzes, ask an expert and social networks for students. Students can choose one or more options. You can use any service by spending few points. Students can also earn points by answering questions. Syllabus is based on NCERT. | Website sells points and earn money. It also sells online lecture packages. | Pretty complicated website without focus. They tried to build everything from giving online lectures to build social networks.This website will compete with schools, coaching centers and social networks. Social network idea where students can answer questions and earn points might catch up. I am pessimistic about the future of this initiative. |
| Learninghour.com | Provides online tutoring in certain subjects for CBSE, ICSE and few state boards. One can take 12 hourly, 36 hourly packages and yearly packages. Online tutoring lessons are recorded and students can use these lessons later. | Students pay for the hourly packages. For example: 10 tutoring sessions for class X -maths will cost Rs. 3202. | I liked the website. Focus is on online tutoring. They will compete with the schools so if a parent is not satisfied with the school or city does not have good schools then students can take these services. |
| tutorvista.com | I tried tutorvista.co.in but could not get India specific answers | ||
| egurucool.com | Provides online reading material, simulated tests in maths/science for NCERT boards | You have to pay according to the course you pick up. For example: XII- Maths will cost you around Rs. 6067.44 | I am not very enthusiastic about this website as you can download a lot of NCERT content free from World Wide Web. |
I see two main hurdles for online initiatives:
1. Non-availability of computer and broadband internet connection in Indian house-holds barring few metropolitan cities in India. It is ironical that most of the non-metro cities do not have good schools so online initiatives can be a big hit in these cities.
2. Reaction of Schools : Not many schools provide online platform but with companies such as http://www.broadllyne.com/, this is not far when schools like DPS (Delhi Public School) or CMS (City Montessori School) come out with online version as they have all the infrastructure with them
I wish best of luck to all online education initiatives.
Filed under: Education, India | 2 Comments
Tags: India, online education
Let us start with few facts about India (by September 2007):
- 550,000,000 people are less than 25 years of age
- 60,000,000 people are internet users
- 2,520,000 people have broadband connections
Growth of internet has been slow in India with most of the internet users accessing internet through internet cafes. But with the recent economic growth and computer prices going south, this trend is changing very fast. According to market researcher IDC, computer shipments rose by 20% in 2007 to 6.5 million. Broadband internet charges are going down and this will spur the growth of broadband connections in India.
Computer was considered a life style item few years ago but slowly computer is being associated with information and knowledge. This change will be most important change to spur the growth of computer sales as every middle class house hold will like to buy computers for education purpose. India’s 50% population is below 25 years of age and potentially they all need education to become productive and valuable citizens. This makes education sector very attractive to entrepreneurs and VCs.
Once internet penetration increases among Indian households, online education will be a next phenomenon among Indians. VCs have rightly put money on the online education initiatives and education is considered to be the third hottest sector among VCs in 2008.
There are few other factors that will help online education in India.
- The change in the economic and social setup has encouraged nuclear families. Both parents are working to get better standard of living, leading to possibilities that parents do not have time to teach kids. Initial solution was to send the kid to coaching / tuitions. Such centers did exist but students spend more time on traveling and less on studying. Moreover, safety / accidents are other factors that parents do not want to send children to these education institutes.
- An other factor could be hesitation. This particular word is relevant to each age group, as they fear insult. People around us know less but are keen on making fun of some body more. Online portals are very efficient in this regard as they are on one-to-one basis. Henceforth, students can ask queries without feeling shy.
- Online portals will also solve the time management problems of working / busier individual as he can schedule his classes when he has time.
- Traditional schools/coaching provide very few opportunities where teachers can work on the needs of each student while online education portals can analyze individual student with the help of games, tests (analytical and subjective) and thought expressions. This analysis will lead to better segmented services for each student. This will also lead to better development of each child and we will have a better India. (This is analogous to brick and mortar stores where stores had limited shelf space to fulfill the needs of majority of buyers. but online book stores have infinite shelf-space so they can fulfill each individual need)
Filed under: Education, India, Internet, Middle class, online education | 3 Comments
Tags: online education, internet penetration, Middle class, India
Let us complete following sentences:
Microsoft is —————- company.
Yahoo is —————–company.
I asked the same question to few friends. They all said that Microsoft is a software company while Yahoo is an internet company. Do you guys also think same?
I wanted to test my hypotheses so I downloaded recent annual reports of both the companies.
Microsoft’s annual report says:
“We develop and market software, services, and solutions that we believe deliver new opportunities, greater convenience, and enhanced value to people’s lives. We do business throughout the world and have offices in more than 100 countries. We generate revenue by developing, manufacturing, licensing, and supporting a wide range of software products for many computing devices. Our software products include operating systems for servers, personal computers, and intelligent devices; server applications for distributed computing environments; information worker productivity applications; business solution applications; high performance computing applications, and software development tools.”
While Yahoo’s annual report says:
“Yahoo ! Inc. together with its consolidated subsidiaries is a leading global Internet brand and one of themost trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo ! is a focused on powering its communities ofusers, advertisers, publishers, and developers by creating indispensable experiences built on trust. We seek to provide Internet services that are essential and relevant to these communities of users, advertisers, publishers, and developers.
I went further and counted the words “software” and “internet” in the most recent annual reports of Yahoo and Microsoft.
Software: This word is found 187 times in Microsoft’s annual report while same word is found 22 times in Yahoo’s annual report.
Internet: This word is found 124 times in Yahoo’s annual report while same word is found 36 times in Microsoft’s annual report.
I personally think that DNA of both companies is very different. Microsoft is known for its’ software products while Yahoo is known for great internet products. Do these perceptions matter in the business world? I think that perceptions matter a lot for customers as these perceptions shape brands over the time and are real strength behind brand value. When companies diversify, they lose focus, they also lose their power. Just think if “Rolex” is acquired by “Verscae” then will you buy “Versace” watch?
Microsoft did not have internet strategy in 90’s. They acquired Hotmail and got into internet business. They are still spending a lot of money to acquire “Online Services Business”. This is Microsoft’s revenue for “Online Services Business” for last few years:
| (In millions, except percentages) | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | Percent Change 2007 versus 2006 | Percent Change 2006 versus 2005 |
| Revenue | $2,474.00 | $2,299.00 | $2,344.00 | 8.00% | -2.00% |
| Operating income (loss) | $ (732) | $ (74) | $402.00 | * | * |
Microsoft is losing money on this business. They want to acquire Yahoo and be a market leader in “online services business”. I think that internet is a different beast than software business. Both have different philosophies and different focus. Different business strategies are required to tackle different businesses. One can not put legs in two boats going in different directions. Microsoft charges money on each software while internet philosophy is different. Google, the most dominant force on internet, provides so many software services to customers free of charge. Microsoft wants to win this war by acquiring Yahoo. I think that this acquisition will destroy value for both the companies. Steve Ballmer should read the case study on Ralston Purina and Eveready. Ralston bought the battery brand in 1986 from Union Carbide. Eveready was already number one, with 52 percent of the market. Slowly, Eveready started losing market share under Purina and lost its’ market leadership. Ralston spinned-off Eveready in 2000 as a separate company. Steve Ballmer is doing the same thing that was done by Ralston in 1986.
A more credible strategy for Microsoft would be to spin-off “Online Services Business” and get a different management (new CEO) to take care of the new business. Just think for a moment that you are Steve Ballmer with two major product lines (software and internet) and each of your major competitor (IBM, Apple and Google) has just one product line, then you are at a disadvantage. Your competitor’s CEO can give full attention to the problems at hand. You have only one-half of a CEO to run things.
Filed under: Internet, finance | 2 Comments
Tags: Acquisition, Microsoft, Yahoo
Social Networking Sites – Future
Personally, I think that time of generalist (fits all) social networking sites is over. This is time of vertical social networking websites. As technology progresses and market expands, specialization clicks in. We can see that happening in each market space. Same will happen in social networking sites.
Time has come when we will see a lot of vertical social networking sites. Fropper is already an Indian example of vertical social networking site specializing in relationships/dating. There are already few other websites with vertical focus. We will see more sites coming up with the similar concepts. Following categories will appear in the recent future:
- Social Networking sites made around linguistics and geographical identity
- Social Networking sites made around common associations (schools, colleges, religion, hobbies)
- Social Networking sites made around common need (parenting, education)
- Social Networking sites made around different age groups (Teen, Adults, Baby boomers, Old)
- Social Networking sites made around different professions (physicians, engineers, finance professionals, sales)
- Social Networking sites made around different social groups (lesbian, homosexuals, HIV patients)
All these websites have to create infrastructure so that each group can create relevant content for that group. These websites have to devise a way so that they can verify (for example: sales networking site can ask interested guys to send their business cards) and make sure that only right people join the group. This means that interested users need to know the value that they will gain by joining these vertical networking sites. These websites will be a -dream come true- for advertisers and marketeers ,as, they do not need to do segmentation while doing advertising and websites will command high price per click.
Filed under: Internet, Social networking | 1 Comment
Tags: vertical social networking websites
Indian Social Networking Sites
Social networking sites are new craze in the online advertising. Facebook, Myspace and Orkut are new craze among online communities. These websites are among the top 10 websites today in the world in terms of traffic.
As internet is becoming more affordable among Indians, more Indians are registering them selves with the Indian Social Networking websites. Indian demography is also favorable to the popularity of these websites. Orkut is the most popular social networking website in India. But orkut is not an Indian website. In last two years, a lot of new sites have come up to target Indian users. These sites are made specially for Indian community. Now, it has been more than two years since most of these websites came on Indian Internet space so I am going to analyze these websites. Let us see that what is future of Indian social networking websites. I have tried to analyze four websites on this blog. These websites are Yaari, BigAdda, Fropper and Desimartini.
First let us see that how they have performed in last one year. I have used “traffic” and “pageviews” as parameters to compare these websites.
Clearly BigAdda is picking up among all these 4 websites. Now let us compare these websites in terms of pageviews.
Above graph shows that all of these websites are loosing momentum. More people are coming on these websites but they are seeing less pages on these websites. This is not a good sign for Indian social networking websites. I also wanted to have an experience of these websites so I registered on these websites.
YAARI : Yaari is hindi word for friendship. Name of the company provides Indian touch to social networking sites. It was started by Prerna Gupta in June 2005.
Positives:
- Hindi name
- Provides free mobile scrapping
- Gives i-pod free (How long can you attract traffic by distributing i-pods)
Negatives:
- Ugly looking website
- Google Advertisements scattered all over the place
- Received bad publicity for email spamming
- Do not see any connection to Indian-ness on the website
VERRDICT:
This website can not sustain itself in the long term. I think that this is destined to die in near future.
Bigadda (Adda means place in Hindi) is funded by Reliance (Anil Ambani). This website obviously has big money and funded by big guys.
Positives:
- Well developed web-site
- Nice design and UI
- Has all the features such as photo/video/music/addas/forums/blogs
Negatives:
- Do not see a context or theme for content
- Not enough things that culturally or personally show Indian-ness
- Slow
- I would love to see features such as : when you write the name of your school then it shows that there are already x members of this school/class registered…
Verdict:
- Nice design, better UI, and has all the required features for successful social networking site
- This website is here to stay because it is supported by reliance
- They should create a theme (context) and should organize content with the theme
- They need to do a lot of innovation and add features that make it Indian social networking websites if they want to compete with Orkut and other social networking sites
Fropper is started by the guys who own Shaadi.com. This web site’s focus is on relationship/dating/marriage.
Positives:
- Being focussed always pays – I think that this is a good move towards making a vertical social networking site
- Partner Program – This can go a long way in getting the right kind of traffic
- Relationships/dating/friendship – These are hot issues for Indian demography
- Supported by Shaadi.com
Negatives:
- Pay money to chat with the online members
VERDICT
- Focus on “relationships” and young Indian crowd will make this site successful
This website has been sold to HT by its founders. But I do not think that HT has done any thing after buying the website. I do not know what is HT’s strategy for the future of this community site
Positive:
- Have games / fun on the site
- Have all the basic features that are needed for the community website
Negative:
- How does this site fits with HT’s web strategy
- Site says that 18 yr and older are allowed to be a member of this website but I could login with my DoB in 1993 …This is ridiculous
Verdict:
- Depends on HT’s web strategy
One more thing that I want to focus is “Terms and Policy” on any website. Please read them before registering yourself on any website. Here are some examples:
Yaari.com
1. The email address(es) that you supply to use this service will only be used to send invitations to connect with you on Yaari. By registering for the Yaari website, and by giving Yaari member’s email address and password, a member agrees to the Terms of Service and consents to allow Yaari to automatically send an email from the member to member’s contacts, encouraging member’s contacts to register for the Yaari website. Invitation emails will be sent on member’s behalf, with the ‘from’ address set as member’s email address. Yaari will never store member’s email password.
2) Notice Regarding Commercial Email
MEMBERS CONSENT TO RECEIVE COMMERCIAL E-MAIL MESSAGES FROM YAARI, AND ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT THEIR EMAIL ADDRESSES AND OTHER PERSONAL INFORMATION MAY BE USED BY YAARI FOR THE PURPOSE OF INITIATING COMMERCIAL E-MAIL MESSAGES.
Although Yaari does not claim ownership of content that its Member’s may provide to Yaari, by providing content to Yaari, Members automatically grant, and represent and warrant that they have the right to grant, to Yaari a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, and fully sublicenseable, license to use, copy, perform, display, and distribute said content.
DESIMARTINI.com
- We may, but have no obligation to, remove Content and accounts containing Content that we determine in our sole discretion are unlawful, offensive, threatening, libelous, defamatory, obscene or otherwise objectionable or violates any party’s intellectual property or these Terms of Use.
- DesiMartini.com reserves the right to use your mobile and demographic information such as age, sex and location to conduct targeted mobile marketing campaigns even for third parties wishing to advertise using our database. DesiMartini.com also reserves the right to sell this information and also the entire site to a third party if a third party is desirous of purchasing this information.
Filed under: Internet, Social networking | 7 Comments
Tags: Social networking
Adobe unveiled photoshop express today. Adobe joins the likes of other online including Picnik or Phixr that offer photo editing and sharing. Express provides web-based picture editing platform to online users. This is in beta phase and adobe has opened it for mass users. Adobe will also accept users’ feedback to provide features in the final release that will happen in 2008. Adobe has notified that final product will also be a free service with 2 GB space. Free service is a must to have feature to get mass audience acceptance. This will Advanced users can take a premium service.
There are some other cool features that will encourage the mass acceptance:
1. Easy to use – a demo showed that a picture could be edited in minutes (I have not tested it myself)
2. Photoshop Express provides users to connect with popular online services like Facebook, Photobucket or Picasa (Flickr will also be added shortly). This will increase the acceptance rate of this software.
I hope that this platform will provide common users a nice experience of picture editing. When I tried to join the adobe photoexpress then first it asked me to install Adobe Flash Player 9. I did not like this obstruction. Adobe would have allowed me to register without installing Flash 9 and would have asked to install Flash 9 later.
Filed under: Internet, media | Leave a Comment
Tags: Adobe photoshop express, Internet, media, picture editing, product features, Product management, web based
Internet has become an important marketing channel for all kinds of businesses. Enterprises spend a lot of money and resources so that their websites rank higher in the search results. A lot has been already written about the search engine optimization. Search engine optimization helps to rank one’s website higher than competitor’s website, when a customer puts a search query related to your product or service on any of the search engines.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process by which one makes one-self (or one’s products or services) visible to the customers. This is a marketing initiative and should be considered as a part of total marketing strategy.
Search engines use complex algorithms to index the web-pages. In common parlance, search engines crawl on the internet and index the web-pages based on the keywords they find on one’s page. When a customer goes to any search engine and types a keyword then search engines show pages that they find most relevant.
Our goal is simple. We want to rank our website higher than our competitors ‘. But at the same time, we want to make our website useful and customer-friendly. For now, we are focusing on the first goal here.
We can be successful in our goal by focusing on the following points:
1. Choose the search engines that you want to focus on
2. Select right keywords
3. Create web-pages that search engines can read
4. Put keywords on your web-pages at the right places
5. Register with the search engines
6. Few other tidbits
a. Use web analytics tools to track everything on the website
b. Linking from other resources
First let us talk about the search engines. Fortunately, there are very few search engines available. Most important search engines are: Google, Yahoo Directory, MSN Live Search, AskJeeves, Inktomi, AllTheWeb . Google is the most popular search engine and holds more than 50% of share in search marketing. Yahoo and MSN ranks second and third in the market share. We do not need to follow different strategies for each of the search engine and this makes our job a bit easy.
Most important point in the SEO is choosing right keywords. Keywords are the words or phrases that are used by customers to search service or product. There are few strategies that could be used to find the right keywords.
- Find out your 5 nearest competitors (or at most 10). Go to compete.com and find out the top keywords that are used to search the customers’ website [Alternatively you can also use Alexa or wordtracker ]
- You will get a fair idea of the keywords that customers use to search competition. Once you know these keywords then you can start playing with the keywords. You can use Google Keyword Tool to find combination of words or phrases that are used with the keyword.
- Talk to the customers and talk with your team to choose the combination of right keywords (make phrases or combine words intelligently)
- Some times customers mis-spell these keywords while searching. Make a list of such keywords
- Rank all the keywords in terms of importance
Now, we have to put those keywords on the web-page. But, before that make sure that our web-pages can be read by the search engines. A lot of cool and jazzy technologies are still not readable by internet search engines. We should avoid them on our websites. Few important things that we should remember are:
- Do not use dynamically generated pages. Most of the search engines are not comfortable while crawling dynamically generated pages.
- Search engines like to read static html pages so our main pages should be made in static html
- Do not use Javascript for navigation purposes on the website [Put javascript outside base html document]
- Avoid flash, plug-ins, session ids and images as search engines can not read these information
- Avoid putting text into images
- Avoid dangling pages
- Do not use frames and tables. Search engines do not like them
- Use plain text as that is most effective with the search engines
Once we have made sure that our web-pages could be read by the search engines, we come to the next question. Where we should put the keywords (or keyword phrases) on the web-pages? Make your keywords noticeable to the search engines. Most important rules are :
- Most important keywords (combinations of keywords or keyword phrases) should be put in the title tag of each page. A title could be 50-75 characters long with the spaces and comma.
- Important keywords (combinations of keywords or keyword phrases) should be put in the description tag of each page. A description could be 150-200 characters long with the spaces and comma.
- Optimize your body content. Arrange page’s body content such that important keywords contains several of them close together with a call to action and other benefits.
- Use meta keyword tags to put less important keywords. You can also put mis-spelled keywords in these meta tags. Do not use more than 15 words in meta tags
- Use keyword tags to navigate or provide links to other pages
- Each web-page should have relevant keywords in title, description and meta tags
Once you have completed all these activities then you should also register on the search engines. Use Google Addurl to register your website on the Google. Similarly, you can also register with other search engines.
There are few other things that will help you in the longer run to make your web-site more effective.
1. Track everything on your website. You need to track things such as search engine queries that are bringing traffic to your website, number of unique views, bounce rate, time on site, number of pages viewed etc. Put web-analytics tool on your website. Google analytics provide free tools that could be used.
2. Links from other websites also bring a lot of traffic and help you gain higher rank with the search engines. You need to find out that who is providing links to your website. You can use Yahoo and Google to get an idea of the number of links to your site. You can also use these tools to find the links to your competitors’ website. You should always find out that which links are providing you most traffic (use analytics tool). Always remember that links from authoritative and relevant sites provide you more leverage with the search engines. These links also bring right traffic (traffic that you want) to your website. You should always try to get links on such sites. Bloggers are also becoming important source to provide links to your websites. Find out which bloggers write about you and your competition. These bloggers can be best evangelists for your services or products. It will be a nice idea to provide beta versions of your products (or details of service) to these bloggers so they can independently write about your products or services.
All these points should help you in the process of search engine optimization. If you find out that you are not getting expected results then check and modify few things that you have been doing.
Filed under: Internet | 3 Comments
Tags: Internet, Keyword, Search Engine Optimization, SEO
