Kanupriya Sindhu

If it has to be a morning in B’lore, it has to be @ Nandi Hills!

June 22, 2009

Yup, I strongly feel so esp. after my recent visit to Nandi Hills. This was not my first visit to this absolutely serene place which is just 60 kms from Bangalore but the difference this time was that I had an overnight stay at the hills there. Thanks to our friends who insisted to stay there at night & then enjoy the quietude of that place. I must say that the difference in experience was startling.

My in-laws side of family is here right now & we wanted to take them to some silent & calm place. Now what better place than Nandi Hills which is so close to Bangalore & yet seems to be so far from the regular hustle-bustle of the city. I’m sure anybody who has lived in Bangalore for even few months would have definitely gone to this place at least once. But I’m not sure how many of them would have done the mistake of doing a day trip like us? Trust me, if you really want to enjoy this place you need to experience the morning of Nandi Hills. I don’t remember when was the last time when I had breathed such fresh air, felt such lovely breeze, seen such picturesque sunrise & played amongst such vivid clouds. The descent of cloud outside our rooms or on the plateau was such that the literal phrase “playing with clouds” seemed to be absolutely real at that moment. Have a look on the following pictures, & you’ll know why I say now – “If it has to be a morning in Bangalore, it has to be @ Nandi Hills”:

To add to this quaint experience, the weather that day was simply awesome. Heavy rains with that typical smell of wet soil all around! Ahhhh :-). If you wanna go for a short & economical break from Bangalore, then in this weather, Nandi Hills is surely one of the perfect options for you.

Other Details of the place:

About Nandi Hills: The Nandi Hills or the hills of the Nandi have been named after the bull of Lord Shiva. Also known as Nandidurga, it was the summer retreat of Tipu Sultan in old days.
Distance from Bangalore: 60 kms
Best mode to travel: By road, route is very simple & driving experience is great.
Route: Now with international airport at Devanhalli, one hardly needs to write directions for this place. It’s on the same route, after Devanhalli, you need to take a left (there is a sign board having a left arrow for Nandi Hills at that turn) and keep going straight.
Places to Stay: One of our friends had arranged our stay in “Nehru Nilaya”, a govt. guest of indian Horticulture Dept. and it was really-really good considering its price. Room ranges from Rs. 260 – Rs. 1000/- plus taxes, only catch is you can’t book these rooms on phone or online. You’ve to physically go to Lalbaug in Bangalore to get the rooms booked. Apart from these, there were lots of other good accommodation options too on Nandi Hills, both at the foot as well as on top of the hills.
Best time to visit: All year, though if you’re one of those who enjoy rain then May-July is the perfect time to go. It’s really scenic at this time.
Places to see there: The best thing which you can do at this place is relax in the mid of nature, it really refreshes you after a hectic week of work. But if you want to explore this place further, you can check out Yogi Nandishvara Temple, Suicide Point, remains of Tipu fort, Amrit Sarovar & Brahmashram. This ashram is a small cave with very cool temperature inside and is a good place to sit silently & have a tryst with your own self.

Facebook URLs – Good for personal branding

June 16, 2009

Which one sounds better? http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=123456&ref=profile (dummy id) or http://www.facebook.com/kanupriyasindhu? Clearly 2^nd one, isn’t it?

With 3 million URLs in first 14 hours itself, Facebook’s launch of its username URL is definitely outdated news now. I was also one of those who decided to grab my username URL immediately but before I got my personal one I actually decided to create it for the brand I work for. Now there are many pages for this brand already on Facebook, one created officially by me earlier, some created by employees, some by fans of this service & some by dissatisfied customers, so this immediate rush to grab the official URL was definitely to ensure that the organization only gets the actual name before anybody else. And now that I’ve got it, I think I definitely like this feature. Here are some of the reasons why I think it’s a cool feature esp. from branding perspective:

It’s a good feature for individual branding. We use our social media URLs on different communication platforms & a URL like http://www.facebook.com/company (dummy id) is easier to promote as compared to http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1122334455 (dummy id)

A branded URL will definitely help in climbing the ladder up in SEO. Just google your name / username & you can see the result.

A formal URL will now finally help in distinguishing an official page with others. Earlier distinctions used to be just on the basis of some profile id numbers and there was hardly any individuality in those URLs.

Considering their huge popularity, it was one of the must-have functionalities which Facebook was lacking behind as compared to say a linkedin or twitter. Though late in its launch but still it’s a welcome change from Facebook. In case you’ve not set your username URL till now, go & grab one here.

Indian Writing in English

June 10, 2009

I happened to visit a prominent book store recently to buy some books as gift for a friend. After surfing around here & there, I thought of checking about latest addition through the store manager himself.

Me: Hi, can you recommend me some latest light reads?
Store Manager: Sure mam, what kind of language?
Me: English. BTW I always thought you keep only English books, do you’ve books of other languages too? I’m also looking for a very popular hindi title.
Store Manager: Sorry mam, we keep only English.
Me: Oh, so you asked what kind of language?
Store Manager: I meant you want to check out “Actual English” books or “Indian Writing in English”?
“Actual English” or “Indian writing in English”!!!
Me: Anything will do, show me some recent best sellers.

The manager showed me a stack of recent bestsellers & well the shelf consisted of maximum books by Indian authors only. Considering the fact that I’m an ardent fan of Indian writing, at one hand I was happy to listen to a separate categorization like “Indian writing in English” but at the same time this thing of “Actual English” or “Indian Writing in English” sounded nothing less than some sort of label for Indian authors. I think it was the word “actual” which created all the difference in terms of image! I was surprised to listen to it esp. because it was coming from a store manager himself!

Another incident was while chatting with this friend of mine who asked me to recommend her some romantic reads but immediately added – “don’t tell me one by an Indian author, they don’t have variety. And the language is also too desi”! “NO, I don’t agree” was the quick response which came out of my mouth.

Its years now that Indian authors have come of age. In fact as far as writing talent is concerned, India has always been a rich country since centuries. Think of the origin of the likes of Kabir, Tulsidas, Rahim, Mira Bai to the likes of V.S.Naipaul, Upmanyu Chatterjee, Amitav Ghosh & Kiran Desai, hasn’t India been there on the global literati roll forever??? Yes, a noticeable difference is definitely the trend of shifting language, thanks to all globalization & exposure to international culture that more & more Indian writers are writing in English now. Not only they are writing in English, rather they are creating a mark across continents with their stories & presentations. If you ask me as a reader, I think now-a-days every second book which I read is by an Indian author. And I totally enjoy it; I get whole lot of variety, I find the characters to be more relatable, plot to be more enjoyable & language to be absolutely at par with any other international author. To add to that in case the authors use some kind of local languages& phrases in between, then it’s nothing less than a mast tadka on dal, such seasonings give the book an additional flavor all together.

I was under the impression now that gone are the days when it was sort of uncool to read an Indian writing & if you’ve to flaunt a book you have to definitely take any other name apart from Indian one. But labels like “Actual English” and “Indian authors write too desi” leave me wondering once again. Are we still living in the age when Indian writing in English is not considered at par with other international counterparts? Do you still think of “Indian writing” as a separate label??? Well, all I can tell such people who have this opinion is to dive into the ocean of Indian writing seriously & then only you will have an estimate of the real depth of it. Yes, there are some crappy ones too but so are they there in those so called “Actual English” collections too.

Luck has bid its final adieu

June 2, 2009

Hope seems to be fading away,
Optimism is on the verge to betray;
Life is painted all over blue,
Luck has bid its final adieu.

Nothing seems to be going right,
Peaceful days are out of sight;
Problems are many, solutions a few,
Luck has bid its final adieu.

Shattered dreams n grit weakened,
Life seems to have reached a dead-end;
Now I don’t know what to do,
Luck has bid its final adieu.
– Kanupriya

This picture is one of my acrylic paintings done last year & as far as this post is concerned, ummm very unlike of me to write something in this style. Initially I wrote a post about absence of “Mr. Luck” from my life in a general paragraph style but few editing here & there has given it a shape like this. Wondering what could be the reason for the same – maybe I’m into lots of poems these days esp. hindi ones as I am working on typing & editing whole lot of poems of my mom or maybe it’s my gloomy & introspective mood! Hmmm…

Lost Laugh!

May 29, 2009

29th May – An unforgettable day, a historic day, a day which just left us numb & shaken & blank. It’s exactly one year today since I would have had a:

A laugh,
A hearty laugh,
A carefree laugh,
A true laugh,
A loud laugh,
A wholehearted laugh,
A laugh like this;

A guilt free laugh! Yeah, today even if I laugh there is an immediate guilt, an inner guilt, a guilt of realization that I’m actually laughing without Amitesh Bhaiya & Kishu! It’s exactly one year today when Amitesh Bhaiya left us all shattered & traumatized. But as if that was not enough, God decided to take Kishu also away just after eight months, leaving me, Ma & Kaushik mourning and devastated forever. Can life change like this so much in just 1 year? Yes, it does…kya se kya ho gaya!
Bhaiji (As we used to call Amitesh Bhaiya lovingly): Saying that we miss you will be an understatement, in fact we never have forgotten you even for a moment to miss you. Remembering you today badly on this dreadful day & pray for the peace for your soul…

Note: In the pic from left to right – Amitesh Bhaiya (though not blood relative but far closer to me than my own brothers), Kaushik (my youngest brother) & Kishu (my younger brother who left us this February). This pic was taken last year when we all had met during a festival for the last time “together” at my native place.

Why marketers should use Twitter?

May 28, 2009

Update on 30th May’09:

I had personally joined twitter more than a year & half back but was not an active user of the account then. Initially, I just used to read updates from the people whom I was following & then slowly got into posting my updates too. In fact I became totally active (rather addictive ;)) almost after six months of opening my account & the more involved I got into this the more I realized the power of it. Very soon I opened an account on behalf of the company where I work & started tweeting about the updates of my company. Well, what started just as an update mechanics is now converted into a full-fledged customer interaction medium. I’m totally amazed at the viral effect & the potential of this medium from promotion & customer engagement point of view. I occasionally keep on reading about twitter & it’s phenomenal growth etc., but based on my personal experience with twitter I think I have come to a conclusion that this medium is definitely a must for every new age marketer who wants to be in touch with his net savvy (or shall I say tweet-savvy) customers. Here is why:

Creating & Tracking Brand Buzz: I have found twitter to be one of the best mediums for being updated with what people are writing about your brand. I’ve used other popular alert services including the ones for twitter too but I find the “search” option on twitter to be really a smart way of being updated about “at the moment” buzz of your brand. It surely gives a real time insight into your customer satisfaction, dissatisfaction, needs & gaps of your service.

Word Of Mouth (Or Tweet of mouth :-)) : While a negative tweet definitely harms your image but a positive tweet followed by different retweets surely leads to excellent word of mouth marketing. There is this one guy who was having problems with our service, I read his negative tweet which he had written just 2 minutes ago, I immediately escalated it to our internal service delivery head & in next 5 minutes the guy got a call from our service head. The guy got so impressed that he immediately tweeted about the power of twitter w.r.to. customer service. In next 15 minutes when his problem was solved he ensured to mention the prompt action taken by our company in so many tweets of his and was all gaga about the service attitude & brand promise of our company. Thanks to all his retweets which gave us a positive boost to our brand that day. After that my SD head ensures to search for keywords related to our service every 2 hours 🙂

Competition Tracking: If your competitor is also active on twitter, then toh wah bhai wah! Isko kehte hai chandi ho jana! Easiest & fastest way to be abreast with what competitors are doing as well as how many customers are dissatisfied by your competitors is to search your competitor related keyword in twitter. I’m telling you it’s a very effective medium for competitive taka-jhaki 😛

Customer Feedback / Suggestions: It’s definitely a very quick medium to seek feedback before any new launch or for announcing any new update / feature / product etc. And thanx to tweet-savvy customers they give you some very genuine feedback immediately.

Potential Targetting: Highly effective medium to reach out to potential customers too, check out who is looking out for your kind of service & reach the potential TG in a smart way.

Serious word of caution: When I say it’s an effective medium for marketers to promote & engage, this does not mean it should be used as a free tool for SPAMMING. Beauty of twitter is that twitter users till date DETEST spamming a lot. So, don’t go ahead posting only URLs or your service related promotions. You’ll only lose the interest of your followers & it just takes a few micro seconds to “unfollow” your brand. If it is fast method to engage, it is equally fast to un-engage. So, think again before you start abusing this medium. Key is to interact, talk, engage personally & tweet something which your followers can look forward too :). If you’ve captured the attention, you can definitely promote your brand in a more involved way.

The Jane Austen Book Club

May 27, 2009

Well, finally finished reading this book & it was like yawwwnnn! It definitely gets listed in my “drag-gone” category; yeah it was draaaaggggging & finally was gone after lots of effort! Uh the thought of writing about this book itself makes me feel zzzzzzz. But still I will write about it in the interest of those who can pick up this book reading all the good testimonials mentioned on its cover. In fact I had picked up this book with lots of expectations myself esp. because had heard whole lot of good things about the movie based on this book & secondly the cover page of the book really hard sells it to be a great reading. My general assumption is that if it’s a movie based on any book then generally the book is better to read as compared to watching the movie but guess I was wrong in this case. Book was definitely not worth the hype.

As the title suggest, “The Jane Austen Book Club” is a story of six members of a book club who meet & discuss Jane Austen’s novels once a month. The group consists of 5 women – Jocelyn, Sylvia, Prudie, Allegra, Bernadette & 1 man – Grigg. Jocelyn who is the initiator of this book club believes that it is essential to reintroduce Austen into your life regularly & that’s why she starts this book club. Each of their monthly book club meeting unfolds their own stories & some association with Austen’s novels.

Personally speaking I loved Austen’s novels & hence thought I might like a book which is based on a book club of Jane Auten, but then I will say I was disappointed. Mainly because this book lacked the grip to hold my attention, after a few pages itself I lost my interest & found the flow of the book to be very confusing. Till last I could not understand the main point which author was trying to make. I know it was meant to be a light & fun read but somewhere it never served that purpose. So, from my side it’s a thumbs down for this book totally.

Other details of the book:
Author: Karen Joy Fowler
Price: I had bought it a dirt cheap price in a book sale 🙂 but think the original price of the book is Rs. 560/-
Special Note: It took me 7 weeks to drag & finally finish this 243 paged book. Reason – couldn’t read more than 10 pages at one go!

I’m off to “Marrying Anita” now, was supposed to read “Outliers” but guess I need to read a funny book after this Book Club thingy before I go for a serious read 🙂

Kingfisher Holidays – IPL promotion

May 25, 2009

It was the last commercial break during IPL last night & guess the 1^st ad being aired in that break??? Well, it was for a holiday site asking to book tickets for South Africa to catch live IPL match! :O – yea that was my first reaction esp. because it was from brand none other than Kingfisher who was promoting kingfisherholidays.com with call for action to book tickets NOW to catch live IPL (don’t remember the exact text, else would have loved to post the same here J)!!! LOL, book tickets at the time when the finals of IPL was hardly 5 minutes away :D, wondering were they offering some “reach SA on a blink” kinda service or what! Curious enough I landed on their website today only to find their IPL banner running on the home page till now. Looks like the group is too busy grieving over the loss of RCB to change the communication till now. If it was at one place it could have been understood as mistake or oversight but if their home page is having the promo banner (scrn shot taken on 25^th May’09 at 7:15 pm) saying this, they what can I say? Wake up guys, wake up!

Kingfisherholidays

Kingfisher Holidays had partnered with DLF IPL 2009 & were offering some exclusive tour packages for South Africa to all cricket fans. While the idea was good & I’m sure they would have gained good traction out of it but then while managing their communication I think they should have taken care of implementation bit more closely. If at all they wanted to utilize the last slot too to promote their holiday portal, maybe they could have done it in a better way like a general brand message thanking all who used the portal to travel to SA or a different call for action instead of this. Hmmm…execution guys, execution!

Updates from Marketing Chit-Chat: 21st April’09 – 25th May’09

May 25, 2009

Posted these on Marketing Chit-Chat in last few weeks, would love to see you there:

Kingfisher Holidays – IPL promotion: It was the last commercial break during IPL last night & guess the 1st ad being aired in that break??? Well, it was for a holiday site asking to book tickets for South Africa to catch live IPL match! Read More…
Zoozoos popular than celeb endorsers?: Well, it’s Zoozoos & only Zoozoos all over, be it any marketing meeting which I attend or a casual chat amongst group of friends, “zoozoos” is definitely one of the topics which has to crop up in any such marketing discussion these days. Read More…

If it has to be a morning in B’lore, it has to be @ Nandi Hills!

Indian Writing in English

Luck has bid its final adieu

Lost Laugh!

Why marketers should use Twitter?

The Jane Austen Book Club

Kingfisher Holidays – IPL promotion

Updates from Marketing Chit-Chat: 21st April’09 – 25th May’09

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