Product Reviews, Sales & Marketing

#RELOOKUP – Rationalizing Housing’s emotional appeal

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Ever since I’ve had a wife – my only one – from the advertising arena, I’ve developed a keen eye for commercials & hoardings. If you’ve been in Mumbai in the last month or so, there is no way you have missed the myriad of Housing.com banners extending for miles. Touching emotions is the magic bullet to successful campaigns in the Indian market. Housing did just that, and I feel it succeeded. But when I visited the portal, I felt it lacked the means to realize the dreams the hoardings had shown me, albeit a slick user interface.

Here is what I thought would’ve helped kick-start the #LOOKUP journey and rationalize the emotional appeal.

See nothing? View the presentation on SlideShare
Header image: Sharad Madiman / Gaurav Prakash

 

Product Marketing, Sales & Marketing

3 reasons for e-commerce to go mobile-only

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A couple of weeks back, Myntra announced it was closing its web-shop to focus on a mobile-only strategy. With Myntra’s app-based sales already at 60%, it is now aiming at 90%. Soon after, its parent and India’s largest e-commerce site, Flipkart, confirmed similar plans for the next year. Why are  eCommerce giants moving from a mobile-first to mobile-only strategy? Here are the top reasons for having users on the mobile platform – all of which directly impact the bottom line.

1. Customer acquisition & retention

With penetration in India expected to reach 45% by 2020, mobile-only is a flawless strategy to tap into the next generation of eShoppers. A single page m-site is enough to redirect (or force) users to move the existing user base to an app. Comparing products across individual apps is painful. Unless someone comes up with a comparison app, that can launch individual apps for detail, users are likely to stick to a single app. Achieving such a mindshare and stickiness is much harder to do on the web.

2. Insight for direct marketing

Once an app is installed, keeping track of consumer behaviour – usage, shopping times, interests, conversion, etc – is very easy. With registered users, additional demographic information is available which together with predictive analysis can be used to generate personalized suggestions. Push notifications allow strong, direct interaction with the user. In addition to suggestions, it can be used to communicate offers and remind inactive users of abandoned carts, without the fear of getting stuck in spam folders. With direct access to the user, spend on ads & affiliate marketing can be reduced, which otherwise shrinks margins by 8-20%.

3. Cost savings & increased sales

Once developed, apps are cheaper to maintain and can scale faster than the web front and avoid  scaling issues like with the Big Flipkart sale. It also helps deliver better user experiences, optimized to generate sales. With users connected 24×7 via mobile, apps allow users to shop on-the-go. It also makes bundling, up-selling, cross-selling, and generating repeat business much easier. Direct access to users saves 8-20% of margins otherwise lost on ads & affiliate marketing, driving the customer retention cost to a minimum.

Food

Recipe: Dahi Sev Puri

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I love my sev puri crunchy. The trick I learned from my regular bhaiya was to add a layer of sev right after the potatoes so keep the base crunchy, and avoid sogginess once the chutney’s are added. Hope you enjoy it. Takes no more than 15 minutes to prepare.

Ingredients:

  • Papdi puri
  • Mashed potatoes (I literally use instant mashed potato)
  • Nylon sev
  • Chopped onions, tomatoes, corriander
  • Chana dal
  • Tamarind chutney
  • Chili chutney (or Maggi Hot & Sweet sauce)
  • Yoghurt (whipped, sweetened)
  • Chat masala, salt
I love it crunchy!
I love it crunchy!

 Procedure:

  • Lay the puris on a flat plate and top up ingredients in the mentioned order
  • Garnish with nylon sev and corriander
In the News, Sales & Marketing

Driving consumer passion to “Make In India”

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MakeInIndia’s success at the Hannover Messe has been the talk of the town for a while. And truly so, it has made every Indian proud of the country’s vision. While the program is primarily meant to transform India into a manufacturing-driven economy, I do not see why it cannot be extended to everything we make in India – whether for export or domestic use.

All through my travels in Australia, I couldn’t ignore the promotion of products made in Australia, by Australian owned businesses – right down to bread and water.

Promotion of products made in Australia
Promotion of products made in Australia

Population is a double-edged sword. While population shrivels available resources, it itself is an important resource in industrialization. And India can use this abundant resource to its advantage, to make #MakeInIndia a reality. For this, I think it is key Continue reading Driving consumer passion to “Make In India” →

Food, Travel

Staying healthy onboard

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2 years of reckless travel had a big impact on my eating habits. I realized that I had to reduce my intake of carbs, protein & fat. Long flights serving 3 meals seemed like a low-hanging fruit. Without wasting time, I started experimenting with the various dietary meal options that most airlines offer – provided the request is placed 24 hours before the flight.

At first I switched to a fat free meal, which avoided gluten in the preparation and served fruits in lieu of an unhealthy dessert option. Together with this, I consciously reduced cola & soda intake and switched to juices or just plain water – lots of it. I refrained from all snacks, peanuts especially. But the meal still served a chunk Continue reading Staying healthy onboard →

Human Capital, Life & People

Living in a metaconscious state

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Each one of us keeps waxing and waning in the cyclic pattern called life. How we deal with extremes – the high and low points of life as we call them – is crucial to how well we get on to the next wave. The high points risk of making us rude, while the lows can be depressing. I’m not against emotions or letting them flow; but trouble is when emotions take over logic and lowers consciousness down to the individualist level.

I must’ve developed logical reasoning pretty early on. But I do remember becoming emotionally aware as I connected with more and more people over teenhood. More recently, I began training my mind to be self-aware – basically keeping a constant check on emotions to alarm the brain of a possible shift in the emotional equilibrium. Experts call this cognitive monitoring or being in the state of integral consciousness.

With this, my goal is to be fully conscious to count lemons as they come, and make my best attempt to make lemonade. I’m continually adding recipes of wisdom to improve the conversion rate. But at least, whenever a situation excites, perplexes, or angers me, I remind myself that the time has come! To Continue reading Living in a metaconscious state →

Being a Product Manager

What does my LinkedIn cover image convey?

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I am not a huge fan of LinkedIn’s cover image. Its an odd-sized banner that gets overridden by ads and the profile header itself. The flip-side of not having one is that it makes your profile look very lame. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

A couple of iterations later, I put up a metaphor of my professional side as the cover image. What do you make out of it? I’d love to hear in the comments section.

My LinkedIn Cover Image (Mar 2015) - Click to enlarge
My LinkedIn Cover Image (Mar 2015) – Click to enlarge
Travel

My FlightDiary: 100 flights via Mumbai

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Business travel is very boring. But along the way, you need to find ways to keep it exciting. Haynes introduced me to FlightDiary which has helped me keep track of travel and analyze it. Day before, I took my 100th flight via Mumbai from a total of 170. Here is how my flight-diary looks now:

And some stats to go with it:

Total Most flown
170 Flights 66 flights in 2014
42 Airports 100 flights via Mumbai
25 Airlines 44 flights on Singapore Airlines (SQ)
23 Countries 12 times to Singapore
32 Aircraft types 31 flights on Boeing 777

Measure #
Total flown 557,427 km
Average 3279 km, 04:35
Longest BOM↔EWR, 12538 km, 15:30 hrs
Shortest CPH↔SGD, 195 km, 00:45 hrs
Around the world 13.91 times
To the Moon 1.450x
To Mars 0.0100x (need to work on this)

Continue reading My FlightDiary: 100 flights via Mumbai →