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Fear

April 15, 2017

It’s been more than a month now.

Medically speaking, I am recovering and much better than that day.

That day when people gathered around me, lying in a blood pool weren’t even sure if I was alive.

If I was alive, would I survive?

If I survived, would I be fine and normal again?

Many ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ that suddenly clouded our life within a fraction of second. That second when our car met with a fateful accident on Chennai — Bangalore highway.

Was it an accident? What was it? I try to recall the details often but everything, oh so vague! Husband and my brother were seated on the front seats of our Ecosport while me and my 5 year old leisurely sprawled on the back seat. Something happened and even before we could realize, the car hit the left divider and then the right and then toppled once, twice….was it the third time when the locked back door broke and I got thrown out on the highway? Was it just then that I managed to push my son further inside and save him from being thrown out? What exactly happened at that time? It was all blank for me, sort of a weird white in front of my eyes. I hear from others that the car toppled perhaps multiple times before it skidded to a halt. No one remembers the count. The only thing I know after seeing the pictures of our car or talking to police and doctors is that I am thankful that my family is safe and I am alive. My son, husband and brother got some bruises and I even though critically injured, am still thankful that I am alive!

Ford Ecosport— The car is beyond repair now but thankful that it’s sturdy structure could save us to some extent

What all did I experience at that moment or that day? Perhaps I will take some more time to have the courage to jot it down. It’s all scattered and jumbled up in my mind but keeps coming back to me in multiple formats.

Dealing with bad accidents or trauma is not new to me. Like many others, I have had my own share of lows and brutal misfortunes in life. Though this time, something has been incredibly difficult to deal with and something that’s not fading with time.Read More

Happy New Year

January 1, 2017

Reflections — captured randomly one fine evening in Goa

End of previous year & beginning of a new year… this joy & celebration & enthusiasm to welcome the year. While I join the celebration and enjoy the fun, I also end up wondering why? Why this zeal to welcome a new date? Why this eagerness to greet this day? After all, isn’t it just another calendar date? Why to make new resolutions only on first of January? Would it make any difference if new resolutions were to be made on first of March? Why this keenness to start things today and not on any other day of the year? Is a calendar date really that important to start something afresh? A beginning can be anytime, anyday, any moment, why this strong urge for the beginning today?

While I sit back and reflect, I realize once again that it’s not the rational or logic that can give answers to every why of ours. Perhaps for certain things, it’s just good to rely on our belief and have that faith — faith on new beginnings, faith on magic of those beginnings. Somehow the magic of beginnings always remind me of these beautiful lines by Meister Eckhart:

“And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust in the magic of beginnings.”

So, cheers to yet another beautiful beginning, yet another new year and let’s hope this new year proves to be as magical for all of us as we are hoping it to be today.

Happy New Year to You & Yours from Me & Mine 🙂

Calling all Women Entrepreneurs

June 7, 2012

This post is especially for women readers of my blog. Women’s Web team is conducting a survey on ‘Women and Entrepreneurship’ in India. The result of this survey would be shared freely on their website. The team feels that with more women in India starting businesses than ever before, it’s a good time to understand what are the factors challenging women as entrepreneurs, and what they need to succeed. This study will be useful to existing / aspiring women entrepreneurs, advisors and or anybody who works with entrepreneurs.

So, can I request all my women readers who are running their own businesses to take out few minutes of their busy schedules and respond to their survey here? The more the participation, the better the analysis. So, please support by responding to the survey as well as spreading the word. Thanks!

Indian Product Management Association announces its launch

November 24, 2010

Finally there is something exclusively for the Indian product management community :-). PMs in India would be glad to know that IPMA (India Product Management Association) has now formally announced its launch. This association will be inaugurated on Sun Nov 28th 2010 in Bangalore by  Ramkumar Narayanan, Vice President of Product Management, Marketing and User Experience at Yahoo. Ram will also be the first speaker of IPMA’s monthly speaker series and in this event he would be expressing his thoughts on – “How to build killer products for global markets from India.”

More details on the speaker session: There are growing number of software (consumer, enterprise, mobile) products that are made in India and marketed globally, including emerging markets. Mr. Narayanan will talk about what is different about building products in India and how to come up with successful Go-To-Market strategies for emerging and mature markets. More interestingly, Mr. Narayanan will also share some of the insights and best practices behind creating killer products that wow the customers.

About IPMA: India Product Management Association (IPMA) is a not for profit, grassroots organization. IPMA’s mission is to Foster product design and innovation and Catalyze product management talent in India. IPMA organizes monthly speaker series, workshops and more for professionals interested in product management and marketing. For more information about upcoming events, visit indiapma.org

In case you’re interested to attend this launch event, you can register  for it here.

India leads ad spend growth in Asia-Pacific

November 17, 2010

Indian consumers are spending more and so it does not come as a surprise if Neilsen’s recent report states that India is leading the ad spend market in overall Asia. Indian consumers have now the pocket to spend and the willingness to upgrade; be it any class of the society there is this inner need and aspiration to move up to the next level of lifestyle amongst most Indians. They are aware of the global trends and are looking at mediums to garner more info about latest products & fads. Lots of Indian & global Brands do recognize this ambitious consumerism in India and are not hesitant now on spending their bucks at the right place. They know that as long as they are able to create that appeal, fulfill their needs and cater to their aspirations, they will get the results on their spends. Here are some interesting facts from the report which further highlights the increasing statistics of ad spend in India:

According to this survey, India saw a 28 % year-on-year growth and a 32 % growth in the second quarter of 2010 as compared to last year in ad spend on mainstream media (via). Overall, across the 12 markets in Asia Pacific the Q2 ad spends showed a 15 % lift over Q2 2009, and a 17 % lift in the first half of 2010 over the same period in 2009. Of significance, is the fact that after the first half of 2009 which saw a minimal 3 % lift over 2008, the first half of 2010 recorded an impressive 20 % increase over the ‘pre- global financial crisis’ period of 2008. India recorded a 33 % increase in the first half of 2010 over the same period in 2009.

Across the region, advertising spends are highest on television, but the largest proportion of India’s media spend was garnered by newspapers. Newspapers are also the highest ad spend growth drivers in India, growing at 32 % year on year; the highest percentage growth for newspaper ad spends across all 12 markets covered in the Nielsen survey. Overall, newspaper ad spends grew by 17 % year on year in the region.

Television followed newspapers in spend growth and grew at 24 % in India and 16 % regionally. Amongst mainstream media, magazines saw an 8 % Y-O-Y increase in ad spends in India and a 9 % growth across the 12 markets in the Asia-Pacific region.

Bollywood Online Anti Piracy Partners: Marketing Initiatives to Reality

September 14, 2010

When I watched Dabangg last weekend, the first thing which caught my attention was a new category of opening credit – “Online Anti Piracy Partner”. Oh yes I do notice the opening credits and brand mentions :), blame it on my previous job which was actually into entertainment industry and as a part of my role I also used to look after brand alliances there. So coming down to this online anti piracy partner, I’ve been observing the increased usage of this term with every movie now and so when I saw a brand mentioned in the opening credit for this, it looked like a positive change. Indeed great to realize that Bollywood is now taking smarter technological routes to deal with piracy and there are branding efforts to give due credits to the partners who are supporting the industry in this cause.

But then I read this article today about Dabangg’s piracy, so Dabangg not only broke records in terms of BO collection in its opening two days, it also broke records of pirated distribution in the first two days. Within 15 hours of its release in India, over 50 websites were showing the entire movie of Dabangg. In 24 hours the numbers were over 200. Within 72 hours of the movie release, over 150,000 downloads were done in high-conservative assessment. In terms of dollar value at a 10 dollars ticket price, it is 1.5 million dollars (US) in the first 72 hours that has been lost. In Indian Rupees it comes to approximately – 6.8 Crores, an amount that could easily finance a couple of movies. With figures like this, it actually becomes the largest value of piracy in the first three days of a Hindi movie’s release. Those were the details of just online downloads, how about pirated DVDs? Even DNA reported availability of pirated DVDs of this movie within first two days at all prominent markets in just Rs. 50. In Bangalore, in fact the pirated copies are available for as low as Rs. 30.

Well, seems like regardless of all the marketing initiatives and consumer awareness programs to educate people about piracy, the problem remains as grave as earlier. In fact with digital distribution and increased internet usage by consumers in India, the access to online pirated content is getting easier by the day. At one hand internet is a boon to this industry when it comes to movie marketing or celebrity PR but on the other it’s a bane as well when it comes to illegitimate distribution of the content. Despite embracing technology and adopting software solutions to combat the piracy, till now nothing seems to be working for Bollywood to deal with this issue. Wondering what could be the bigger reason for this – lack of strong legal policies against piracy of content in India, strict bodies to enforce the existing laws, no strict action against the caught cyber criminals or the general attitude of ‘why pay when it’s available for free‘ of Indian consumers who are ok to compromise with quality if something is available for free?

Ebooks invading print industry

August 31, 2010

Some post updates:

  • My last post on “Aided Social Media Engagement” has been reproduced by VCBytes, I had added some more content to the new post, you can read the full content here.

  • Me new post at Pluggd.in on “Digital version of books invading print industry“: The next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, the world’s most definitive work on the language, will never be printed because of the impact of internet on its printed book sales. Such announcement by 126 year old publishing giant definitely gives out signal towards the digital invasion in the world of print industry. It’s yet another sign that the speed and ease of using Internet reference sites, their ability to provide desired content at just one click are phasing out printed books. But whether printed books will be completely phased out by digital content or will digital remain as another content presentation format of printed books is yet to be decided as most of the publishers don’t see print to die down completely in coming years. Read More…

Ebooks booming globally but print yet to stay in India

July 28, 2010

In my last post itself, I had written about ebooks picking up faster than estimated internationally. But as I had thought, the trend of physical vs. ebooks sales does not seem to be following the same curve in India. Here is an update on e-book industry in India which came in press recently – Craze for ebooks yet to catch on in India

So, Indian publishing industry is still gung ho about the printed books only. Despite the prices being dropped in India, Amazon Kindle has managed to sell only 2000 numbers locally which is very meager if we compare it with overall Kindle sales globally. We even have a more economical version of ebook reader ‘PI’, but even there the sales do not seem to be impressive enough to give reasons to publishers to launch digital version of their books.

Predictable, isn’t it? Despite being so heavily into digital medium,for everything else, somehow as a consumer this whole digital book stuff and a separate device to read such books always leaves me wondering on the feasibility of overall ebook industry in India on a larger scale. Not that it would never pick up, in fact Indian consumers are undoubtedly the most unpredictable ones, but I think digital book adoption is still years away as far as Indian market is concerned. Now think of these points:

  • In a market which is so heavily dominated by movies or books piracy and considering the price conscious mass consumers of India, isn’t a separate device and that too of minimum Rs. 10k to read digital books a difficult blockage for e-book adoption?
  • Even if you buy one and the device needs internet connectivity, then where are such easily accessible connections for you to download the books on the go?
  • I’m not even sure how many consumers actually pay for original copies of printed books in India? Will this digital version of the books actually accentuate the chances of digital piracy?
  • Will it help if text books are launched as digital versions in some high end schools for better market penetration in India?

Don’t you think that as far as this industry is concerned, the buying behavior of Indian consumers will take some time to change and adapt to the digital world? Well, ebooks are definitely outselling physical books globally but from the current state of this market in India, seems like print industry is definitely going to stay for some time now. And I’m happy for the same because as I always say, I prefer to read books (esp. fiction ones) in a printed book format only :-). Thank god, Indian consumers like me don’t need to worry about changing our consumption pattern so soon.

E-books outselling hardcover books: Slow extinction of physical book industry?

July 21, 2010
Until few months back, Amazon used to sell 48 Kindle copies for every 100 physical copies of books that it offered in both formats. But the figures definitely seem to have taken a dramatic change now.

Amazon.com, one of the US’ largest booksellers, announced on Monday that for the past three months, sales of books for its e-reader, the Kindle, has outnumbered sales of hardcover books (via).

Now Amazon is selling 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for which there is no Kindle edition. The figures do not include free Kindle books.
As far as overall digital book sale is concerned, even there is an upsurge. In past four weeks, sales rose to 180 digital books for every 100 hardcover copies. Amazon has 630,000 Kindle books, a small fraction of the millions of books sold on the site.
The growth rate of Kindle sales tripled after Amazon lowered the price of the device in late June to $189 from $259 and as per the Association of American Publishers, e-book sales have quadrupled this year through May.

Amazon had earlier also predicted to sell more of e-books as compared to physical books  and the recent statistics undeniably cast a notable change in favor of their estimation. There is definitely need for this product in certain consumer segments, moreover e-books are eco friendly and easier to store as compared to the physical ones. So, does this mean physical books are on their slow path to extinction now? What about avid readers like me who still prefer to read the physical books? Will the affordability, accessibility and convenience factor to store books affect my consumption behavior? Though Kindle as such has not been doing that great in India but considering the book market in India (India is the world’s third largest English language book market and has been growing at about 10% per annum for several years) and availability of more affordable products like Infibeam’s Pi, will the global trend of e-book outselling physical books apply to Indian market too? Would be interesting to observe some statistics from Indian e-book sellers to come out with a better comparison between international vs. domestic market but as of now from all the global trends, e-books definitely seem to be picking faster than estimated and that too in a short span of time.

Supplemental Education Industry : Educomp enters the business

April 2, 2010
A decade or two back the word coaching or tuition was an option for the weak students, but now it is as much a norm for any student (esp. the aspirants of exams like IIT, AIEEE, PMT etc.), as say a senior school passing certificate. From board exams to school tuitions, IITs to medical, CAT to GMAT, there is demand for coaching classes at all education and income levels now. Read More…