Facebook and India

Our team recently made a visual presentation which talks about ‘Facebook’ and its penetration in India. We have tried to cover some interesting insights via the presentation.

We hope you would like it 🙂 If you have any questions about the presentation or running a business and wanting to explore the potential of ‘Facebook’ feel free to get in touch with us. We would be glad to help.

Technology Partners: itemperance consulting

Image Credits: Eric Parker

Social Media Conversation series (Talk with Peter Bihr)

Background: This is the third blogpost in a series of conversations with Social Media change agents, thought-leaders, experts and mavens to answer some of the most important questions surrounding the subjects of Social media and Web2.0 ! The emphasis of this discussion series is to address ‘socialmedia’ at a ground level and talk about the real world issues that are being faced by us on both sides of the road: i.e. as actual users and as consultants/agencies in this space.

Social Media Conversation series (Talk with Dennis McDonald)

Background: This blog-post marks the start of a special series of conversations with Social media thought-leaders, experts and mavens to answer some of the most important questions surrounding the subjects of Social media and Web2.0 ! The emphasis of this discussion series is to address ‘socialmedia’ at a ground level and talk about the real world issues that are being faced by us on both sides of the road: i.e. as users and as consultants/agencies.

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I am fortunate enough to start this series through couple of email exchanges with Dennis D. McDonald, Ph.D. I discussed with him, wide variety of topics like definition aspects of Web3.0, geographical variations in user communities and social media project  strategy.

Dennis writes and consults on social media strategies and using information technology to manage, collaborate, innovate, and communicate. Based in Alexandria, Virginia, his experience includes strategic planning, project management, market research, software product development, and system integration & consolidation. For further information about him please visit http://www.ddmcd.com

When will Indian businesses use twitter?

Yesterday, I was reading a thought-provoking piece by C.G. Lynch on ‘How and Why to Launch a Business Presence on Twitter’. The article highlights the companies that have enjoyed successful use of twitter. It instigates several questions in your mind. Which businesses are using twitter? What are they doing on twitter? Has twitter been successful for them? Have they added to twitter’s success?

If you dig a little deeper, I’m sure you will come across many industry verticals where businesses have been using twitter for a variety of purposes. The glitch is the news is coming in from the ‘outside world’ at the moment.

Out here in India, we are still compiling/questioning the names of businesses & business representatives who are using twitter. Not that we do not have successful case studies of organizations using twitter, but the bottom-line is that such instances are very few.

Revisiting the Web 2.0 Dictionary – Part I

‘Web 2.0’ and related concepts have been the most heard, most searched and most talked about terms on the web & otherwise. Since the time I first heard about ‘Web 2.0’, I have seen and read so many complex definitions that some-times I really wonder how difficult it must be to average ‘Joe’ to understand all the Geeky stuff.

(Search frequency for Web 2.0 across a span of last 5 years)

Booming Customized Gifting Portals

10 thrilling days of 2008 have passed and finally I am writing my first post of the year. Although, I hadn’t planned for this particular post but a series of developments have provoked me to write about a topic which I’ve addressed in the past before. Online Custom T-shirts services are quite popular in the West and the rest of the world with Zazzle.com, Cafepress.com, Shirtcity.com and Threadless.com among the popular ones.

Coming back to India, although the growth was little slow initially, recent trends indicate this business has started picking up well. Several companies now offer consumers a well thought-out solution for online gifting. Other than that they’re leveraging the community aspect by allowing the designers to showcase their designs and generate revenue out of it. I had talked about online-gifting portal Myntra last year which are conventionally different from photo-sharing & gifting portals like Picsquare, Itasveer and Fobaz. Since then, there are several other websites that have come up.

Some of them are:

Pringoo.com – Pune based Pringoo.com is a recent entry in the market of customized products. Site users can Create & Share unique designs, Buy unique collection of designs and Sell their collections at a % commission.

The range of products on offer include T-shirt, Mug, Teddybear, Coaster, Bag & Mousepad. Currently in beta, the site is intuitive and it is quite evident that special emphasis has been given towards the usability.

I signed up for the service with my gmail account and like it usually happens the account activation email landed in my spam folder. (any guesses why ? 🙂 )

• Pringoo is not just about buyers. Its a platform for designers to showcase their talent and earn from them. For the designers, the process is quite simple. They upload their creations for different merchandises, open an online store website which consolidates all their creations at a single marketplace and start selling.
• As far as the percentage commission is concerned the upper limit is that of 15%. It isn’t mentioned on the home-page though !

The detailed dashboard allows users to track their purchases & sales. With options like ‘My Sales Report’ you can analyze which of your creations are doing well.

There’s another very-useful for buyers. Most of the designs are available for more than one product and below each design you can find out the product for which it is available – Now that’s a very handy feature which I didn’t see in Myntra. At times it happens that you like a design and you would like to have it on your cup – this feature is certainly helpful on those occasions.

The taxes and the product shipping costs are included in the base price itself so there are no hidden charges 🙂

Check out more coverage on Pringoo.com here !!!

Footees.in – Is one of the funkiest sites around and as the name suggests its all about tees…. The mood of the portal is targeted towards the youth. Footees is a product from the house of Hyderabad based eYantra – a popular name in the gifting & merchandising industry.

• Footees is dedicated towards T-shirt selling yeah that’s about it
• Only one type of T-shirt is available i.e. half-sleeve
• Footees has partnered with several institutes which has helped all those college students who want to have flaunt their batch shirts

GNOME T’s – Mumbai based Gnome might not be the best in usability, navigation and user-friendliness but its driven by ‘Users’. Users submit their designs which are rated by the community and everyday there’s a winning design. Like Footees.in Gnome is also in to just T-shirts. The designs at Gnome are also available at retail stores across Mumbai for all those aren’t tech-savvy. Site designers need to improve upon the look-and-feel and even think about partnering with retail stores outside Mumbai.

webVastra.in – Sluggish design, text which is not readable, bad color combination 😦 nope there’s more to webVastra than just that ! Bunch of IIT guys have got together to provide customized t-shirts from the export house from Tirupur, TN. Primarily users can create their own designs or buy pre-designed T-shirts.

Myntra.com – I’ve covered Myntra.com previously and since that time Myntra.com has grown in stature. The quality of T-shirts, features for designers, various contests you got them all at Myntra. It does rock for sure !

Portal	Flat Price (Half-Sleeve Large t-shirt)	Special-offers / Contests	Designer Marketplace
Pringoo	403	Yes	Yes
Footee	249	Yes	Yes
Gnome	325	Yes	Yes
webVastra	300	No	No
Myntra	450	Yes	Yes

The above table lists the average price of half-sleeve large t-shirt at various custom gifting portals. Its quite clear that Pringoo and Myntra’s prices are slightly higher. Its because of the quality t-shirt brands (Wrangler, Banana Republic) they use.

With the emergence of these startups in the Indian online retail market its great signs ahead for the Indian consumers. The buying trends are shifting towards online purchases and with competition on the rise the prices are bound to drop 🙂

Update on t-shirt brands –

A little clarification on the t-shirt brands being used

Pringoo.com – Banana Republic, Guess and GAP

Myntra.com – Wrangler