I had been to Nasscom Emergeout (theme: Mobile Internet) this week and it was a pleasure meeting all the wonderful people and entrepreneurs. The facilities were awesome except that the space in the dining area proved too short due to the large gathering. May be a good problem to have?
I have jotted down some important takeaways for the benefit of those who were not there and as a reminder to you if you were there.
Most of these come from the keynote session by Vinay Goel of Google.
- Mobile phone is your connection to your personal and professional world.
- There are 4.6 billion mobile phones, 3/4th in the developing world.
- Consumer innovation is going to lead the way as compared to the enterprises.
- Speed matters – the apps have to work fast.
- Google says Siterank considers site speed and uses it in ranking just like Pagerank.
- Google’s vision – the web is mobile. They follow the policy of Mobile first and some ofthe innovations for mobile may not ever make it to the desktop.
- Mobiles have reached volumes where these have become iconic.
- Web apps are cheaper and faste to build as compared to the native apps. (My note: I totally agree, that’s why we have started building mobile websites before building native apps).
- It is lot safer to have the data on the cloud rather than local storage.
- HTML 5 is big – lots of new stuff will be built with HTML 5.
- India has 30 million mobile Internet users as of now.
I will be posting more notes in another post. Keep watching this space.
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I was recently chatting with a few friends (Abhishek and Pallav, owners of various IT companies) and the topic of short-listing candidates applying for jobs in our companies came up. We were pretty unanimous that while we do take a cursory glance at the academic scores and colleges from where they have studied, we mostly search for off-beat work that they have done while in college.
The projects and research (thesis, surveys etc) that they participated in are very strong clues to the nature and capabilities. So if you have done the classic library management software, inventory control software, survey customer satisfaction levels and like, you do not have any special reason to be on the short-list.
However if you have developed a software or hardware product (even if it is not path-breaking), setup a blog where you comment on the industry developments, products being launched and like, we would conclude that you are aware of the current trends and have passion for developing some worthwhile products, given a chance.
These help you score valuable brownie points and put you at the head of the queue. Sorry but wearing Rupa Frontline vests won’t help (you would know what I mean if you have seen that ad).
So the take home is – build a CV over the entire duration of your studies, and not just write it when you have started looking for the job.
I recently participated in an interesting panel discussion on “Can Twitter Change The Way India works?” organised by IndiaTC. The panelists were Abhijit Dasgupta, Subrata Sen, Abhishek Rungta, Aniruddha Chatterjee and Arun Agrawal (yours sincerely) 
It was very efficiently compered by Simarprit Singh.
We had a hotly debated discussion with Abhijit and Subrata pretty much disillusioned by the young generation who would endlessly tweet (as in chat) but not take up a serious stand on the really important things that matter to the ‘India cause‘. Add to this the fact that there are less than 20000 Twitter users in India out of a total population of more than a billion. Looks like a really uphill battle.
On the other hand, Abhishek, Abhijit and I felt that we are definitely making small impact to the society by sharing our notes on Cricket, Politics and Movies (CPM – a term coined by Simar) and by acting as whistleblowers on corruption by tweeting when we find a deficiency in someone’s service or attitude.
Can we make a difference to the way India works? If you are talking about being able to change the way India works or the way India works, well no. But as one audience member put it – we are definitely making a small impact. And if we can change just one thing, we can consider repeating that performance over and over and soon, we will find people taking note and changing. This is the way big revolutions were started.
My message to you is – when you see something nice, appreciate. When you see something bad, complain – loudly. Share with your friends and Twitter followers. Some will take notice and you will be causing an impact – however small. And you will be pleased you did.
Customer service is a very important tool for business growth. If you are serving your customers well, you can hope to grow much more because they will continue to give their business to you as well as refer you to other people. However I have noticed in my interaction with our customers as well as other service providers that empathy towards the customer is also a very vital asset we must have.
You should try your best to offer excellent customer service to your clients. However you should lay enough focus on understanding that they may be tensed when they are needing your help. You first need to reassure them that you are listening to their grievances with utmost attention and will do everything possible (within the limits of practicality) to help solve their issues. Then apply 100% efforts to help them – and then some more.
A delighted customer is the biggest asset a business can have and you should spare no effort to acquire as many delighted customers as you can. A significant portion of the marketing budget can be set aside for it as this exercise can result in very high ROI.
Please share your initiatives with the fellow readers through the comments below.
Recently my wife was diagnosed with a pretty serious ailment requiring a long and expensive treatment. We got wind of this during one of the master health check ups. Another close relative, whom we literally forced to undergo a health check up discovered major thyroid deficiency. This reminded me of the age-old maxim – “A stitch in time saves nine.”
Are you undergoing any comprehensive health check-ups at least once a year? If not, please do so asap. I am sincerely hoping you will find everything is in order and will continue to go about your day to day work in the same earnest. However, if any trouble is brewing, you will get an early warning and be able to sort it out with the help of your physician before it develops into any big nuisance.
I am sure you understand the implications of ignoring this critical step. Not only you will suffer physically, you will have to spend more in solving the bigger problem later as well as lose time that you could invest in growing your business.
Talking of business, you need to undertake master health check ups for your business too. Identify the key points like number of clients, topline and bottomline, business per client, top 10 clients, top 10 products and like and monitor these regularly so that you can identify any problem signs before they become a serious threat.
You love yourself and your business, don’t you? Please don’t leave them to chance. Take a bold step – today!
