January 31st, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink
As announced earlier, www.paritoshsharma.com is a dedicated content partner with Social Bakers. We are publishing India specific statistics which can give you insights into what are various social networks doing in India. Here’s an update on facebook and YouTube this time!!
Keep plugged into this space for more interesting numbers!!
January 8th, 2012 § 4 comments § permalink
The title of this post would have suggested by now, that this is not about social media or marketing. Yes, its not. This one is under the life experiences and learning’s which I share.
A confession – for the first time in public!
This is probably for the first time in public, that I am sharing this. There is this strange presence of a floating figure inside me, which makes me be in a situation, be present to everything which is happening around me and still see myself standing at a distance and seeing the entire action unfolding in front of me, as if I am an audience and never a part of the situation.
A confusion!
Over the last many years I have lived, just like everyone else, I have taken decisions, calls, many of which worked out for the great, some for the good and the others, well, I learnt great deals from them (people call them failures). But still the confusion remains, is this the right thing I am doing?
Though overtime I have also realized there is nothing called ‘right OR ‘wrong’. Its all actually a perceptive notion made by the human mind. Interestingly, the human mind makes itself suffer by making things wrong OR right. It just somehow makes its own meanings to things and then creates a ghost called ego, which makes the human take drastic steps to keep the meaning up-right.
Who am I?
I am thankful to the clear vast sky above, yes, I am sane still. I have learnt from the vast, endless sky along with the Bhagvad Gita (a Hindu scripture), the answer to the question, who am I?
The reality is, I am nothing but an ‘awareness’ which is a complex combination of biological processes. There are many things that form ‘me’. I am actually existing, only till the time, I am conscious about it.
To make things simpler: when we fall un-conscious, there is nothing that we feel/ experience. The human hence is the exact opposite of this state. The conscious. The human actually is the ‘conscious’.
The reality of life – But I get hurt!
Yes, as a human I get hurt. I do have emotions, I do feel pain, I do smile, I eat, I fight, I love.
An Activity for everyone reading this post, for the next minute: replace the ‘I’ in the above line, with your conscious. You feel the pain when you make yourself conscious about it. You love, when you are conscious about it.
The moment you realize that its NOT ‘you’ but your ‘Conscious’ which you are dealing with ultimately, you get the powerful insight, which makes you realize, no-one can actually hurt you. No-one can actually harm you. You can powerfully change the play of ‘existence’ of that ‘conscious’ by making your ‘conscious’ stronger than the one, which might hurt you in any manner. Here the expression ‘stronger’ means, you can make the other person (conscious) cease to exist for yourself (conscious), by just being present to the thought always, that all that you are dealing with is another ‘Conscious’.
So what is the human then - if its the conscious?
The body is another form given to conscious. Its like the car body which conceals the engine. There are deep descriptions of the soul OR the aatman in Hinduism. A powerful extension to the aatman is ‘Aadhyatma’. Aadhyatma is the understanding of the inner self, the soul.
Once you learn to keep the ‘Aadhyatma’ growing, while keeping yourself ‘aware’ always of the fact that you are nothing but a conscious, you will learn one of the most powerful expressions of human life: ‘detachment’. You will be able to clearly establish a distinction between the ‘aatman’ and the ‘body’.
This distinction is the understanding of: Nothing
Nothingness is the ultimate state to be in. You can be with millions of dollars in your bank and still be in the state of nothingness. Once you are clearly able to create this distinction, you start experiencing some interesting things, which I am experiencing now-adays:
But where is Nothing?
That’s the entire point. Life ends with nothing. There is only the conscious which remains.
Lessons learnt?
There is so much more to life than doing the usual things we do. For a start, I would like to mention two expressions, hatred and forgiveness. Both the emotions have been talked about greatly in the Bhagvad Gita and the Mahabharata. I am trying in my personal life, to move my ‘living’ conscious towards forgiveness. At times the confusions cloud the mind, but when you close your eyes and tell yourself, that you are only ‘your conscious’, well, then you go the extra mile to make your conscious rise higher than anything else around.
Can you implement this in business?
Well yes! Treat your business as a life, which remains for you till your very existence and ceases to exist for you the moment you do. Now if you treat your business as your ‘conscious’ then you will constantly move towards improving it. For your employees, your customers, stakeholders and the ecosystem around.
January 1st, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink
This post is truly inspired, ohh and well, before I begin, its 1st January 2012 and I wish everyone a healthy, happy, loving and successful new year!
Its been about a month odd for me using a Windows Phone. Its a Samsung Focus, a phone not yet available in India. Now before I talk about the specs, unboxing it is as simple as any other phone in the market. The built is good, easily fits in your hands, good camera.
So much so for the phone, but what’s inside is, what makes it sexy!
The phone is a Windows Phone, I upgraded it to Mango. But let me rewind the picture a little before we go ahead. Before this phone, I was using a Symbian Nokia e63 QWERTY phone. Obviously since I have been using it for many years now, I was used to it. So much so that I could write an SMS without looking at the phone even while driving on Delhi streets.
Experiment Begins – going back to Symbian!
After about 22 days of WP, I again tried going back to the Symbian I have been using. Surprisingly, it took me time to go back to the QWERTY keys. One of the reactive thoughts I had in my brain was how the sense of touch and the great UI of the windows phone had got me hooked. The ease of sliding through pictures, the intelligent word suggestions by the phone while writing SMS’s/ Notes had hooked me to quicken things up and I loved it.
The story before the WP experience
All my pals who had a touch screen phone, majorly the iPhone before, I had a single question for them, as to, how could they type SMS’s so fast on the touch screen? It took me about 5 days to get used to the same and today I find intuitive typing and suggestions on the WP far better than my old Symbian.
Intelligence and Dependency
Obviously in this age of social networking and with a lifestyle which demands constant brain uptime, there is always a need of syncing things up. The WP, synced my social networks with such an amazing ease that to know the various events, I don’t even have to log into facebook anymore. I have my calendar ready at least with Birthdays’ etc. already.
Ohh that Address for the meeting
Going for meetings to places which are completely new, a simple meeting request on the WP gets synced to the calendar with all the information which is available in one touch. With the Symbian, the story was a little cumbersome and different.
There is a whole love story happening here, the design which fits in the hands, the sense of touch which is invigorated at every touch of the screen and the story which it creates, makes the WP an experience in itself.
Let your machines be closer to the human emotion and you have a killer product!
One experiential lesson I have learnt from the entire experience is that engineers who are focused on making the next killer product should look at learning from two things:
Coz, if your product co-creates that ohh so inspiring and awe creating love story with your user, well, you have a blockbuster with you!!
December 28th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
No, I have not lost my brains yet. And certainly I am not reeling under the new year fervor. The context is, post doing my Social Media consulting company, Until ROI Consulting Pvt. Ltd. I joined The Indus Entrepreneurs, TiE Delhi – NCR chapter. Its been a fantastic journey and its growing and getting exciting by the day. There is so much to do and so much to learn.
Though I Have a Problem and So Do Almost 1500 odd People!
TiE Delhi – NCR is one of the best chapters globally and we are growing and am I excited to say this, hell yeah! But let me share my experience from my interactions with TiE Delhi – NCR members and entrepreneurs who are still not aware of what all they can achieve, by being part of the world’s largest entrepreneurial network.
Most of our members have amazing feedback to share with us and I feel amazing at times to hear from a young entrepreneur when he comes and says, TiE helped me grow my business from this level to where I am today.
There is another set, though who have yet not realized the power of the network. Yes, I have always been telling fellow entrepreneurs, that TiE is the world’s largest network of entrepreneurs and well, if you are still not leveraging the power of networking, then you have still much to work upon.
My Personal Experience!
Before joining TiE, I was also a member with the Delhi chapter and let me be honest, I was much helped in my business by the team. I used to volunteer in many events without seeing a profit motive and in almost every event, the network automatically helped me create many new business opportunities.
But what helped me here, was my own pro-active approach to leverage the network by being a member. This is exactly what I tell people who ask me what’s the benefit of being a TiE member?
Gentlemen, I am sharing the Secret, Listen Carefully!
Its simple, once you are a TiE member (which takes less than INR 10 a day of an investment, as INR 3309/- (annual membership fee) broken down is less than INR 10 a day). You could simply use your debit/ credit card to make payments online on the official TiE Delhi site and wallah you are in.
What Next?
Hold your horses guys, well, next comes the step of engaging with the team and letting the TiE team know more about you and look at exploring various possibilities. How to do this?
Call a TiE Delhi team member for a coffee and well, set your objectives and plan your various engagement pointers with TiE.
Attend Events – these are golden networking and knowledge opportunities!
Ohh Yes! You might be a great networker and you might know everything there is to know in the world. But believe you me, I have been on both sides of the table. Attending TiE events and doing them now. And these are amazing opportunities, which are to be latched upon and not to miss.
Ohh my ROI!
Its better to say Ohh my ROI than Ohh my Gawd later. Yes, I realized it early in my entrepreneurial stint. Investing a couple of thousands in attending TiE events and other Industry association events year round is well worth every penny. Obviously how worthy do I make of it is my own skills.
My simple suggestion to all entrepreneurial brains is straight. The network is open for you. The value is there which has been created over 2 decades. Now its upon you to leverage the same and create bigger opportunities.
If You Still Have Questions?
Well, if you still have questions, call me/ write to me: paritosh@tienewdelhi.org
Why am I doing this, Is this part of my Job?
As a clarification, at TiE its not about doing a ‘job’. What I enjoy most is the freedom to create value added initiatives and super quick decision making. No, this post is NOT a part of my job in any manner and has not been influenced by anyone.
Its about how badly I want every entrepreneur to come and be part of the world’s largest network of entrepreneurs which is available so simply. Obviously you have to be proactive to keep in touch and build opportunities.
November 26th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
This is one post which I have been forced to write. Not by someone, but my own personal experience(S). I have this habit of spending my ‘driving time’ (when I am driving back from work) quietly, to think about what I did the whole day and how have things evolved in life. I try and re-inforce the learning’s from mistakes committed and look at new directions.
Though I don’t really have decades of experience, but in whatever I do, I have seen a particular trait in the Indian worker. We fail at implementing processes. There is a lot of technology as well out there, but somehow we fail at adapting it as well. Interestingly I have always worked in smaller set-ups in my life, which has always helped me to be critically involved in either setting up something and scaling it up OR evolving an existing set-up by challenging the usual ways of doing things.
Processes and Execution
When you work in smaller set-ups what you are able to critically learn are processes. I have mostly seen the Indian worker being a little off the mark when it comes to setting result oriented processes. Especially when it comes to setting a process from the scratch and building a system of result oriented numbers around the same, which enables the process handler to understand the success of the process and better the same if required.
The approach I follow
Almost everytime, I have faced the challenge of doing something new, I have always stepped back and looked at the situation/ task in hand from the ‘customer’s point of view, as to what does the customer really want and then assess, if the delivered value is the same.
Once set, I generally break down the objective into smaller steps and do a match the steps with the customer needs/ requirements. At each step, I create a forcible intervention with statistics around. This essentially is to ensure that if the process has a leakage/ break-down somewhere, the numbers will suggest the same and it can be improved.
The Planner and the Doer
But its not simply about setting the process. Its also about how simple can you make it for other team members (who will be working with you to action the whole thing). I am certainly not trying to make things robotic here, which restricts innovation and free thinking by the people involved. What I am suggesting is, to set easily executable strong processes, backed by numbers at every critical stage. At times these numbers have to in the form of forcible interventions, which give you critical data to suggest what works and what does not.
Why this post now?
Well, in my current role, I am working on something which obviously excites me. The way I am approaching it is simple, to understand the customer first, to understand their requirements and expectations. Then I am excavating deep knowledge from the right people within my organisation. This is essentially a forcible intervention which has been created with some initial statistics around. The next step is to create smaller executable steps for the members of the team who should not find it difficult to work it all out. While all this is happening, there obviously is a bigger vision around the entire activity.
A part of this post has also been inspired by the need of the young entrepreneur. There are several young folks who approach our organisation to look for mentoring. What I critically see missing in them is a process oriented approach which can provide critical data overtime enabling stronger and more focused, decision making.
If you are a start-up and need strategic help in processes and execution, drop me a mail:
paritosh@tienewdelhi.org
The TiE Delhi – NCR team and powerful team of mentors (top industry pros) will surely be guiding help!!
November 25th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
I am excited to announce a partnership with SocialBakers, one of world’s biggest social media statistics portal. Sometime back, while SocialBakers was looking to partner with leading bloggers and publishers in various parts of the world, www.paritoshsharma.com was quick to partner with them, under the category New Media and Marketing. The blog is officially listed under the blogger partner section of SocialBakers.
As part of the partnership, www.paritoshsharma.com will be presenting interesting social media statistics from India as a geography. The first in the series is the graphic below which gives some pretty interesting figures on facebook users in India and the brands which are making waves.
Its interesting to note that Reliance Mutual Fund has been the highest on Response Rate. Being a fund house in such volatile market conditions, talking to their customers on fb is sure an interesting deal.
www.paritoshsharma.com and SocialBakers will keep coming up with more exciting statistics which will sure give you exciting insights into what’s happening in the social media domain in India. Keep plugged!!
November 16th, 2011 § 1 comment § permalink
All right. So the word is out and I have to start this post with a clear thought that if you are proud of being an “Active on Social Media” business, then you are being plain simple dumb!
Don’t make any assumptions about what’s next in this post after reading those words above. I have been hearing so much of the word “social” lately, that I feel the buzzword is nearing its exhaustion in the usage of the context. Businesses are just lining up to be social. I have seen so many companies who are “wanting to be social” int he recent times, that I strongly feel, they don’t even have their basic customer understanding and service right.
What I want to clearly deliver to businesses is, that being social is not about something drastically different! Its just another extension of being there. The ultimate goal of the business is to serve the customer is the best possible manner and being social won’t replace this.
Set it In Your Culture!
Being social is not simply a marketing function. Its the mindset, I strongly believe. Its one thing having a great facebook fan page, a great looking YouTube channel with many hundreds of views, but its a whole different game to have “engaged audience”, for the same. In my view its a simple black is black and white is white proposition. If you understand your customer bloody well and are serving them in the manner they expect from you, well, then, being social will automatically fetch you engaged and active fans. You will not have to pump in those many hundreds of marketing dollars and then start a cycle of engaging your fans to make them from mere listeners to active contributors.
Are You Sure You Understand and Know Your Customer Bloody Well?
Most of the companies that I work with, while creating their social media strategies, my first thought simply is to understand the audience. And NO, I DON’T look at the audience from the mindset of a salesman. I clearly and simply look at understanding, who is the influencer, who is the decision maker, who is the ultimate consumer and what all do they expect from the business!
To me its simple, if you have not been able to create a satisfied and engaged customer, someone who listens to when you communicate, well, you will always keep fighting for engaged fans on social media as well.
So many businesses today are leveraging the digital medium to present a proposition, what they are missing is a very critical and powerful point. Everyone online today has the power and freedom to express by creating content and hence if you promise something and don’t stand upto the experience, well, you will one day be written about and that day aint too far!
Connect With the Core Human Motivation to Do Things!
My personal view is that social is no different from the usual way of connecting with your customer. For a while just think of a world which was a few decades back. When businesses used to communicate and reach out to customers in a ‘now rudimentary’ format of physical letters etc. the call to action was simply based on exploring the customer motivation and delivering the same as an incentive.
Going social though has made companies lose out on the understanding the customer’s basic motivation bit. Most businesses outsource the social part to agencies who again are working with limited manpower, with more constrained knowledge of the still nascent digital media. And these agencies well, many customers can share their personal experiences!
For God’s Sake Campaigns Won’t Fetch You Actively Engaged Fans!
I must speak it out loud, marketing folks please understand, if your objective is to create a buzz, great campaigns work. Yes they do. If its about creating actively engaged fans, well, a short-lived, time constrained campaign might not be the right approach. You might be successful in acquiring a fan through a campaign, but will that fan be actively engaging in future. I have serious doubts and have examples to share from my own experience.
Understand Your Customer, Do the Basic Right and You Will Win!
All you need to do to win the social world as well is to do the basic right. Ensure that you are reaching out to your customers and creating active touch-points with him/ her, which enable you to collect critical data about the customer. His/ Her preferences, Likes/ Dislikes/ Motivations etc. Once you have this existing, you will be able to develop a far stronger strategy to reach out to the set of people online who would have the highest probability of converting for you as an actively engaged fan.
Remember, A Real Smile is Anyday Better Than a Smiley!!
As I always say, a real smiley is always far more effective than a digital one. Create powerfully engaging and NOT SELLING touch-points with your customers in the ‘real’ offline world. Once your customer comes in your communication and listening range, then create the motivational pulls online!
November 6th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
AdAsia was sure an interesting event, one which I missed. Interestingly I got to know that exchange4media got it all covered on Video. I found this valedictory keynote by Indira Nooyi, Chief, PepsiCo, worth a share. Hear Indira talk about Leadership and Governance and how it went missing and what’s the road ahead!
November 5th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
This one’s going to be interesting. Just a couple of days back, the Noida DND Flyway, which is one of the fastest ways to commute between Delhi and Noida, announced a toll hike of INR 2 for four wheelers, which in figures is INR 22 from INR 20 previously and INR 1 for two wheelers.
Now this is not the first ever toll hike in recent years, but what is interesting about this hike is the purpose with which it has been done. For people who are new to the entire thing, let me give a little introduction on the numbers:
According to a news report by the Times of India, in February 2011, almost 1 lakh vehicles use the DND Flyway daily. I am myself a daily user of the DND Flyway and I see a fairly large number of four wheelers using the DND Flyway on a daily basis.
I asked this question (why did DND Flyway increase the toll) to many people before this blog and almost everyone responded with an obvious answer, to increase their revenue. Now that’s obvious.
User Behavior and Revenue – penny saved is a penny earned
Lets look at the picture from a user behavior perspective! If you are using the toll plaza, you obviously are wanting to save on time and that’s why you are ready to invest money into crossing the toll, otherwise you are always free to use the kalindi kunj, Yamuna flyover, which is generally jammed during rush hours. Having INR 2 in your pocket each time you pass the toll plaza will sooner than later, become a frustrating activity. You cannot always keep looking for change and hence spend more time doing what you were initially doing to save time for.
Chances are, you will one day reach out and get yourself a silver/ gold card made, which will make your commute far simpler and easier. The cards will do couple of things:
All of this, by simply playing with the user behavior. This is an interesting case which pretty much reflects, how powerful can real customer understanding can be. If you understand your customer amazingly well, you will always be able to visit and re-visit and engage your customer just the right way.
User behavior understanding and knowledge of the customer has led to making of brands like Apple and the amazing products that people take pride in owning today. Get the lesson straight, its about your customer and how well you know him/ her, so get this piece right and you will be on your way to a great business!
October 29th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
India is an emerging economy, yes sure it is. You doubt? And now India goes International with the first ever F1 hosted at the Buddh International Circuit. I was there yesterday which was the first practice session and well, this is one experience which can’t be described in words and hence here’s the video!
