All that glitters may be gold this diwali – Indians to go online for shopping?

Update: Catch my latest post on pluggdin:

• All that glitters may be gold this diwali: It’s that time of the year again which most Indian marketers wait with bated breath, there is festivity all around and thanks to better market condition, Indian consumers are looking forward to splurge this festive season both in offline as well as online shopping. Read More…

Wish all readers a ‘bagful’ (after shopping ) & prosperous diwali!

Vertical to Horizontal: Web18

While assessing some more shopping portals for promoting the festival gift voucher of my company, I landed on www.storeguru.com, the e-commerce team from web18 had contacted me earlier for placing our product there and I had thought I will take it up further during peak season. But the moment I opened the site today morning, I got the following message:

 

So, aggregation is in the season? www.storeguru.com has become http://shop.in.com! Infact yesterday only I had noticed another development of in.com. As a part of my job, I do give a quick glance to all entertainment industry headlines every morning and www.buzz18.com is one of the sites which come into my this list of regular visits. And since I’m a very regular visitor of this site so it didn’t take me much to notice that www.buzz18.com has now become http://buzz18.in.com/.

 

Well, quite a lot of development at in.com! We saw lots of online as well as television advertisement followed by some noticeable alliances with entertainment programs and now this movement of their vertical portals like Buzz18 and Storeguru to in.com. So, is web18 group moving from vertical portals to a horizontal one? I’m not sure of the exact objective of web18 for doing the same. Strategy of one horizontal portal or multiple vertical portals has different pros and cons, but I think the decision of consolidating one horizontal portal will definitely benefit in.com from traffic point of view. It will surely help in.com in selling higher traffic figures to advertisers and hence negotiate for better deals. Looks like a good movement but lets see if this aggregation helps in.com compete with the already existing horizontal players in India like Yahoo, Rediff etc.

Internet shopping boom in India

Well, Rakhi season is here and as expected all my inboxes are flooded with promo mailers from different e-commerce sites about online Rakhi hampers and packs. After going through different mailers and hampers on offer, I settled for one of the Rakhi packs from rediff.com shopping portal. I have been sending Rakhi through online shopping for last 5 years I think. Though it is bit expensive than the normal post / courier service but I still prefer it over those primarily because of delivery guarantee and presentation / packaging. I have faced some irritating issues earlier when Rakhi was not delivered on time even after couriering it well in advance and once I remember I had sent the Rakhi and a small gift in a very beautiful packet only to come to know later that my brother had only received Rakhi in an open envelope without any gift inside . So, considering the assurance and convenience which I get while sending it through these e-commerce sites I find it to be justified to spend those extra bucks for it.

But I must say unlike few years back, this year it took me some time to make my purchase decision mainly because every online shopping was having some or other interesting thing to offer with almost nil price differentiation. Another interesting thing to be noticed was the way packets were described in these portals, instead of simply saying packet consists of 1 Rakhi, 1 card, etc. most of them were focusing on the packaging and the relevance of it to the tradition of Rakhi. Ehhh quite attractive and strong marketing so to say. E-commerce sites are learning it well to push online shopping esp. during festivals in India. Despite the price curve moving steeply upwards during peak season these sites are very much able to sell their products as there is a certain set of TG in Indian market now who is becoming used to the convenience of online shopping.

Infact last week only I had read an interesting article in ET about internet shopping catching up fastly in India. As per the statistics, eBay India is selling one product a minute and its not only software or tech product which is being sold, rather its surprising to know that one of the most common products sold online is jewelery. Here are some other interesting figures from that ET article [dated 3^rd Aug'08] about eBay India which reinforces the surge of internet shopping in India.

• On an average day a piece of jewellery is sold every seven minutes, a coin or note sells every 16 minutes, a stamp sells every 19 minutes, an apparel sells every 22 minutes and a book is sold every 27 minutes on eBay India
• 70-75% of buyers on eBay India are from age group of 25-30 years.
• It is jewellery that is the most sought product on this site.
• Buying trend wise electronic gadgets are popular among male buyers and jewellery is the obvious choice of Indian women.
• Apart from jewellery, apparel category is the other area which is a favorite among women buyers.

Apparel and jewellery being bought online in India, online shopping is really catching up then

Internet rejuvenating Indian Art Industry!

Yesterday while just casually browsing through ET, one piece which caught my immediate attention was how internet is changing the face of Indian Art Industry. Indian Art and Internet, oh wow what a lovely combination as both happen to be my special areas of interests – art out of passion and internet out of profession J. I immediately stopped over to read the complete story and I was quite happy to observe the shift which is happening even in Indian Art Industry because of this overall internet revolution. Not only artists are using Internet for reaching out to different markets but they are also using it for expanding their canvas of inspiration. While offline stores, galleries and exhibitions give artists a chance to promote large number of creations at one go but at the same time Internet gives them a very wide avenue for promoting their work to right kind of TG across different geographies at a very economic cost. Most importantly you get to see work of other people, you can discuss and share feedback with like minded people as well as it provides ample opportunities for an artist to study and research the subject of painting thereby expanding his / her creative horizon. While downside of it is definitely there with more chances of plagiarism and piracy but as per me the positive aspects of it outweigh the negative ones.

Indian Art industry is moving ahead quite positively and thanks to the internet exposure that prices of Indian works are growing northwards. As per an estimate by the creator of The Fine Art Fund, Phillip Hoffman, the size of the Indian market has grown from $2 million to approximately $400 million in the last seven years and to add to that as per Yamini Mehta, director of modern and contemporary Indian art at the London-based Christie’s, “Indian art is becoming a part of international consciousness, which is why we have seen a spectacular growth in this field”. More and more people outside are looking out for Indian masterpieces and famous artists are getting unimaginable prices too. Early this year M.F. Husain’s “Battle of Ganga and Jamuna” sold for $1.6 million in New York! $1.6 million…this is seriously some money man J.

As an amateur artist with a strong passion towards painting, I have always believed in the power of internet for promoting Indian Art to the right TG. Personally speaking I paint out of hobby and have never tried doing it commercially but I know of many good and senior artists who earn their living through art only and I know how difficult it is for them to meet their ends because of low potential in the local market. I know of this friend of mine who is a very good senior level artist but she was always confined to the limits of Indian Market. One fine day I helped her in building a website and we put her paintings in sites like e-bay etc. Though there was no miraculous result which happened immediately and of course she didn’t make any earnings in million dollars but results were not bad either. She started making money slowly out of online selling and atleast she gets lots of leads now through her website of people interested in learning painting from her. She has got steady income and now she keeps on telling everybody about power of internet and how it can help them in reaching out to wider sphere.

Reading that article in ET with the word “industry” suffixed everywhere after “Indian Art” instilled quite some hope within me. Wish, like many other industries internet revolutionizes Indian Art industry as well with more and more open minded artists who are willing to try out newer technologies and platforms.

Women Gamers to double by 2010

So, gone are the days when games esp. online games were monopolized by kids and men. According to a recent survey report of video game industry’s trade group, 40% of gamers in US are women. Another interesting trend is the average age of gamers which has gone upto 35 years (Source: Womengamers.com, 18^th July’08). 40% women gamers, whoa that’s an impressive figure esp. when the general perception is that women prefer television or books more for entertainment as compared to anything else.

Gaming scene even back home for women is quite positive. Many Indian gaming companies are launching games targeted esp. towards women. Infact women’s attitude towards entertainment is changing quite interestingly. Unlike earlier days, not only women are seeking entertainment avenues to beat the stress of work and home but they are also open to trying out new platforms. No more women are glued on to only television soaps or the saas bahu saga, today’s women are trying it all, right from online music to movies to games. Now online games and Indian women connection seem very intriguing esp. when till few years back most of the Indian women used to forbid their kids from playing video games considering it be absolute waste of time and distraction from studies J.

Lots of Indian companies are launching women specific games especially to woo them considering women are the most important decision makers for most of the purchase decisions in a family. Here are some of the observations to substantiate this further:

• FX Labs recently launched its game named “Agni” in which the story revolves around a mother and a child. Infact they are heavily promoting this game and Malaika Arora Khan is the brand ambassador for Agni.

• Games2win has released close to 60 games targeted at women and has spent clore to Rs 4 crore on their development.

• Onlinerealgames.com and neodelight.com have got more than 50 women centric games and more interesting is the statistics of women subscribers on onlinerealgames.com. Approx 30% if its overall subscribers are women.

• Zapak has got a special section in its site for women known as zapakgirls.com and it has got different interesting games for women of different age groups.

• Lastly and most importantly, I as a woman consumer find online gaming to be a huge stress buster and I am seriously glued on to some of the games on Zapak and Games2win J

Online gaming industry in India is growing encouragingly and is projected to touch $100 million in India by 2010, which is already a $2.25-billion market globally. Women gamers are expected to double in this segment by 2010. Double in next 2 years and that too in such a non-conventional entertainment segment, way to go women!

Internet Spend in India

Was going through the “Indian media forecasts” report released by GroupM recently, the report has covered trends of different media quite comprehensively. Well, I will write my view-point and analysis of that report separately as I still need to go through some of the figures in details. Call it my special personal interest in this space or the nature of my job, but one thing which immediately caught my attention in that report was trend of internet media. Spend on internet media was Rs. 390 crore in 2007 as against Rs. 204 crore in 2006. And this spend is expected to become Rs. 624 crore in 2008. Here is the table which I have made out of GroupM April’08 report for internet spends.

Well, the good thing is that internet spend has increased by 91% since last year, a very commendable growth so to say and is further expected to grow by 60% in 2008, but the sad part is that the % share of media is just 2%!!! Now this is an abysmally low share of the total media spend considering the internet penetration amongst the urban India now-a-days. Had read it in last year report that on an average, Indians in metros and category A towns spend 9 hours a week on internet. And if I think of myself and me like lakhs of consumers who are working professionals and their life revolve around internet, I think this average time will surely go high. On an average most of us must be spending 5+ hours daily on internet and this is far more than time spent on TV or newspaper. Television for sure is restricted to few minutes on weekdays and few hours on weekends. Despite such high internet reach in most of the metros, A and B category towns, why is this % share of overall media so low?

Though more number of brands are advertising on internet now but still internet as a medium is taken in most of the cases just to complete the 360 degree circle. Also whichever company I have worked for, one key factor which I have personally experienced in planning an internet campaign is the fact that most of the media planners present internet as a lead generation medium wherein a small ad click will take you to a landing page asking you to submit your details! No freshness or uniqueness at all! One can hardly observe any innovative and engaging campaign on internet these days which is for brand building and not only for lead generation. Well, working for a company where leads play a critical role for sales team, I agree that lead generation is a very critical objective for any campaign but just spending few grands or max lakhs on internet only for lead generation and not for brand building is not at all justified for this medium.

When most of the big budget campaigns have advertising money spent in crores on traditional medium like television or newspaper why can’t there be money spent on internet as well? When money can be spent on hoardings or television where there is so less accountability, why on internet everything needs to be justified by CPL or CPA? I think a good internet strategy should have both angle – brand building followed by lead generation and marketers as well as decision makers should realize the importance of internet now. Internet as a medium is not only having high reach these days but it is also one of the most quantifiable medium. As compared to any other medium, internet can measure the performance of any campaign more accurately and precisely. Well, its time now that this medium should definitely be given its due!

Yahoomail or Gmail?

I’ve been using the new Yahoo mail for quite sometime now and initially I used to think that it’s because of some initial glitches that the performance is so slow and bad. But it’s been months since I’m using the same and I don’t see any improvement in their performance. Somehow the moment you open that in-mail chat window my laptop goes for a toss. It becomes so damn slow. Though I think it has got nothing to do with my laptop as the same machine is being used for so many things including the in-mail chat service of gmail and there it works absolutely wonderful.

 

My first email id happens to be a yahoo id and when I had opened up my first email id more than a decade back, I used to be thrilled with Yahoo messenger and other services of Yahoo as compared to Rediff / Indiatimes mail and chat services. I used to love those cute li’ll smileys so much and everything about Yahoo used to be so cool…I would say, I was quite a hard-core Yahoo loyal user but slowly their product started getting deteriorating. Then came gmail and for most of the practical purposes, gmail proved to be a better option than Yahoo. Many people like me very soon migrated to Gmail for most of their regular email interactions.

 

Well, I know market share wise, Yahoo still dominates the email market but I think service of Yahoo is getting more and more hopeless day by day. They have got one of the worst spam guards…on any normal day my spam counts are anytime thrice or four times than my normal email count in my yahoo inbox! I don’t know what spam guard gmail has adopted but it works wonderfully atleast for me. Also host of other benefits like security, size of the mail box, archiving options, convenience of smooth in-mail chat facility etc are just few of out of the whole gamut of benefits which gmail offers to a consumer. So for me as a consumer despite Yahoo mail launching new features everyday, its Gmail which rocks and serves my purpose anyday better than Yahoo.

Vernacular web content in India

Another vernacular content in India. Yahoo has launched its maps in local Indian languages and walking directions, for the first time in India. Yahoo! India Maps is now available in nine local languages. Apart from English, users can also experience it in Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Punjabi.

Of late, vernacular content in India has become a rising trend. After the biggies like Google, Yahoo, AOL etc. adding content in local languages, even channels like Animal Planet and search engines like Guruji are adding local language content now. As per Juxt report, although various players are trying to pull traffic by coming up with local language sites – including Yahoo!, Google News, Blogger and Webduniya – it is Google that has captured the throne when it comes to vernacular content. Out of the three million local language content users, 12 per cent prefer Google for searching local language content and 8 per cent local language users log on to Yahoo! for local language content. South Indians constitute 52 per cent of the entire vernacular user base. Some 19 per cent of the three million vernacular content users prefer Tamil and 19 per cent prefer Hindi. Malayalam is preferred by 15 per cent of the users.

But when it comes to vernacular content, I do have my doubts over there. What I’ve observed is that by vernacular content, most of the sites in India mean translating English content in local languages. Does translation itself classify the content credible enough for local language TG? I mean do you think that the target audience for Hindi or Tamil content will be similar to their English translated content? Have we ever pondered on the fact that despite lots of local language portals coming up in India, why haven’t we still got the desired traffic for those portals? Of course internet penetration and computer literacy are two important reasons but one very strong reason I guess is the missing local or regional flavor from these content. While translation of national / international content is good but if the publishers won’t give that regional tadka to the content, they will never be able to get those traffic and hit counts on vernacular portals!