Do Indian companies understand technology?

DellOutlet on Twitter

DellOutlet, a Twitter profile mainatined by Dell on the popular social networking site, has announced that a viral redirection of visitors to their online sales portal has resulted in revenues of $3 million since 2007. Although this figure is only a minute fraction of the world’s second-largest PC-maker’s annual revenues, it is also a prime example of how Twitter can benefit the growth of businesses by letting more people from across the globe come in contact with information they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Ever since Twitter’s conception in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, the site has grown at an alarming rate which recently stood at 1382%. Unique monthly visitors stand at 6 million, and the number of users is estimated to be 4-5 million. Although Dell’s success story is a rare one given the number of companies with Twitter profiles, the ease with which the money (as well as business) has been generated tells that many other such stories are possible too. The only glitch, which no one other than Twitter can see, is that Twitter makes no money out of it.

In order to better understand the need that has driven such services to exist, we must remember that as technology advanced with only Moore’s law to hold it back, the time taken for the average human being to perform a routine task was reduced to a large extent. This made it possible for many people to do more in a single day, giving rise to multi-tasking and increased productivity. Much of this progress involved the use of the internet, which in turn gave rise to the concept of an ‘enhanced business’ – a business that was run from just a website. Then, as hundreds of millions of websites began to crop up within months, the real edge in the competition was realised by the leaders to be the amount of time each viewer spent on their websites. Today, this is estimated to about 60-100 seconds. Therefore, nobody has the time to sit and read through all that you’ve written, but just enough to give all of it a cursory glance or, if you’re lucky, a quick skim. With Twitter, a cursory glance is all that’s needed to get what you want.

The question is, why haven’t many Indian companies jumped onto this wagon? Given that self-promotion takes the front-seat while networking and messaging grab the focus, Indian giants that are capable of generating considerable business are steadily missing the one chance to make their presence felt in the now-burgeoning online Indian youth community. What the Indian consumer sees in one day is imporant. He may or may not see it tomorrow, and what interests him today will decide what he does tomorrow. The network becomes set in needs and wants as more and more decisions are made concerning ones likes and dislikes. Therefore, larger the network, the more rigid it will be at its roots.

Take, for example, the case of Jet Airways. Their Twitter profile has no followers because they have no updates. People have no way to begin a conversation with the airline, which is, at most times, what they will look for from a copmpany that can profit from only good customer service. In the first week of May, Kingfisher Airlines joined Twitter and made its presence felt by constantly updating not only about things like flight timings and cancellations, which people already know, but also about in-flight experiences. Another good example of such activity would be TCS.

In India, there is a subconscious tendency within larger companies to cling on to age-old ideas when it comes to bucking up on public outreach. Many still believe in the thunder of an advertising blitz, while there are few who give greater credit to the quality of the idea being projected. The understanding is still young which says that if the idea is good, people will like it. The number of Indian companies on Twitter is very small when compared to those from abroad; this fact doesn’t only speak of our reluctance to embrace new technology, but also raises more questions as to whether we really understand them. Because only when we do, do we realise our true potential.

The rubber band effect

The business logic depicted above is a familiar sight to all of us. Like everything in this universe, the global economy bears a semblance to the source and sink model of being. When the currency is money, the source becomes the ‘source of money’ and the sink becomes the ‘consumption of money.’ The consumption of money is not literal: the reason money is a currency is because it is one fundamental unit that can comparatively measure up one object against another with great convenience. For example, say an apple costs Rs. 5 and orange costs Rs. 2.50. In the previous barter system of goods-exchange, the traders would have to weigh them against each other and then begin the transfer of goods – as many apples would be given as oranges that weighed the same amount. But, with money on a third scale, it’s easier to see that twice as many oranges need to be given to obtain a said quantity of apples.

So, as an extension of that logic, we have the researchers, the manufacturers, the logisticians, the warehouses, and the retailers between the source of money and the sink of money. Although fairly general, the above chart can be made to specific for a given set. Different sets exist today. An advertiser for Adidas’ deodorants will target the youngsters in the local population; that would make the set ‘demographic’. In another example, Nokia’s 1100 series of mobile phones were designed and built for users in India: they came cheap (target: large middle class), had a rubber cover (target: rough users) and had anti-slide sides (target: people living in humid areas). In this case, the set would be ‘geographic’. However, these sets are confined to the consignment of products. The money that goes into all of this, it needs a completely different classification. Combining money and politics, we have different currencies. By employing one currency as being the benchmark (ex. Gold, USD), even they could eventually be purchased and sold.

Later on, as the concept of taxes, duties and customs built up around such original principles, money itself became a commodity. With the advent of this commoditization, nations began to safeguard their economies more carefully as their respective currency became a strong determinant of their progress and development. This was when someone in some corner of the world, most probably from one of the first world countries, suggested the opening up of local markets to international competitors. Now, according to me, this suggestion has 3 aspects.

1. The local manufacturer is now exposed to a very large number of competitors, some of whom are MNCs and veterans of aggressive marketing, fuelled all the more by fat wallets. (BAD)
2. The local consumer now faces many more choices than he originally bargained. In place of just the Nike shoes, the consumer will now see Adidas and Power as well. As an added bonus, the encroachers will now sell at prices similar to those of Nike’s just to stay in the loop. (GOOD)
3. The knowledge pool.

Points 1 and 2 I’m sure you would have read about a million times, over and over again. The prioritization of one over the other is the core of most persisting disputes on globalization today. However, point number 3 struck me some time back when I was talking to a friend, and his ideas about micro- and macro-communities, within the framework of an open market, which work together (as parts of a network) to minimize the adverse effects of the business idea.

Let me take up a suitable example here. Consider the local weaver in a secluded region in south India. Prior to the advent of globalization, the weaver would have enjoyed the presence of a small, but sufficiently loyal, local market. However, when the doors of this market opened to foreign investors, an MNC begins to infringe on his share of the sales, thereby leaving the weaver at a loss. The consumer cannot be blamed for it is not his decision; the government of the nation can, however, be blamed only to a partial extent. Although it is an unsaid duty of theirs to protect their local talents, the opportunity will be seized which delivers more for less at some point of time – it is inevitable. However, over a period of time, the market (i.e. the pool of consumers) is bound to become accustomed to the variety. Most people will begin to be able to identify their needs and wants, and the corresponding products, more accurately. This is because, in a market with a monopoly, the customer will have to suffice with what the company can make. If there are too many companies and too many competitors, the generated variety of the products itself will become self-allocated – as that which one needs, that which one wants, and that which one desires.

At this juncture, if the weaver was to emerge again (with supplementary governmental funding to restart his business), he will now be exposed to a larger version of his small-and-loyal market which was present earlier. Thus, if one were to wait for the effects of globalization itself to dissolve into a pool of information, the knowledge pool thereby generated will condense all of the world’s peoples into one large market without altering the response they had earlier on. It’s just like a rubber band: if there is a stiff one, you stretch it as much as you can without snapping it, and when it gets back to its original position, it will be more flexible than before. The only bad thing about this idea is that no one knows for a fact as to when this condensation will occur, and therefore how long the local talent will have to live off the local government’s money.  

When cricket lost

CSK’s victory march has been well plotted over the last few days, with their successive toppling of the Royals (Rajasthan), Chargers (AP), Daredevils (Delhi) and Kings Eleven (Punjab) allowing them to jump to the top of the standings table aided solely by their solid run rates. As with the 2008 season, MS Dhoni, the captain of India’s international cricket team, is leading the Super Kings. The team is owned as a franchise by India Cements, and was known in early 2008 for their generous bids for recruiting Dhoni and English all-rounder Andrew Flintoff into the side. When the Indian Premier League was held in India last time round, the burgeoning expectations of the local crowd itself allowed for the game (a shortened version of the one-dayers) to assume an elevated position in the sporting calendar of the nation. Money people never knew existed exchanged hands as elaborate auctions were setup for “purchasing” sportsmen. The country’s then prevalent cricket scenario suddenly assumed the face of a slave market, wherein players were being pushed around by those with the fatter wallets, fortunately or unfortunately being tied to their respective teams by a contract that existed solely on paper, bound to serve just for the money rather than for the love of the game.

The goal of the IPL, so said the authorities, was to “expose the local cricketer to international competition” [paraphrased]. The Twenty20 format was chosen just so the tournament could be done with quickly enough, at the same time ensuring that money was not lost anywhere in between – money that was present in the one-dayers as advertisements. As the popularity of the Twenty20 grew, so did that of the IPL. People no longer seemed patient enough to wait for the results of a 5-day Test match. Although it seems too late to appeal to them that there’s a reason it was called a “Test”, one apparently cannot resist quick results. The crowd has become fonder of the effects rather than the cause itself; for the players on the ground, it is the game that matters, the sportsmanship that they found exhilarating as youngsters. But for the man, woman and child behind the fence, all of this is unpalatable, ergo unfathomable, ergo impossible. When they could have sit at home and watched everything play out on the television, why come to the stadium? Does it make a difference?

Survival of the tweep!

I just realised why some people in college here don’t give that much of a damn as to whether they miss classes or not – they just wanna clear it year after year: it’s because they’ve discovered the internet and what it can do. In fact, I myself was inititaed into the world when I suddenly realised I had to open a website of my own. Don’t ask me why, I just wanted to. So, I opened Chrome and began to hunt for hosts. I finally landed on Rediff, and Rediff told me annual hosting would cost me Rs. 500 per annum (that’s about $10). After that, I sat down thinking as to what I would write on. I could just go on writing the same things I write in this silly blog, but I decided that I needed something concrete, and something that would hold my interest for the years to come. And then, I truck gold. It wasn’t that I hit upon a lot of options I could choose from, but that I hit upon just one. Entertainment and media. Surprisingly, this world has more people who are worried about the content than about the design, more people who are worried about the content than the place where it’s finnaly gonna end up, more people who are worried about the content than getting the right people to read it. But I don’t wanna know how that came to be. All I was interested in was the fact that I had struck gold.

To survive in a world inhabited by people who live longer online lives than offline, you don’t need a master’s degree in anything. You just need an internet connection, loads of free time and an imagination that isn’t held back by the laws of physics. You need to be able to think like no one else does. Furthermore, with that internet connection of yours, you need to be only at a few places to start with. You need to be in Facebook, which should serve as a useful intro to Twitter (which should lead you to Twistori if you’re bored). After that, you could have a blog or a site of your own that told the uninitiated the world the same things I’m telling you now (but I don’t mean you’re uninitiated; of course you are!). The internet, by bringing together millions of people at a place where they can all stand and look at each other without seeing any of the physical differences between themselves, tells you that anything is possible. Money is not an issue. As long as you think, and believe, that whatever you’re thinking or doing (which is everything from cooking to launching rockets) could be useful as information to someone else, you’ll be making money. And don’t worry, you won’t ever get lost, get beaten up, go shame faced or any of the many other things that happen to people who prefer to run their businesses with only brick and mortar. Unfortunately, I have a gut feeling that I’m going to be skipping more classes because of this fortunate revelation.

Sorry dad.

The Year In Pictures

2008! (picture pile)

2008! (grid, and better clarity :P)