DO-THE-NEW at mobikwik.com

Tata Docomo is now live at www.mobikwik.com. With its path breaking pay per second second plan, Docomo has captured the minds of millions of Indians, especially the youth, in a remarkably short period. Docomo users can recharge their prepaid mobile at mobikwik.com by simply adding it to their existing mobikwik account or open a new account.

The first 10 people to recharge for docomo will get Rs 100 mobikwik balance each. Free !

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Calling India from Gulf?

Middle - East ( aka Gulf ) is a popular destination for Indian workers from Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and other southern states. Proximity to India, good wages for skilled labor, relatively easy to obtain work permits, and an established expat Indian community are the primary reasons why lakhs of Indians flock to these shores every year. UAE, Oman, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are among the major countries which have expat Indian populations.

If you are one of the Indian expats in Gulf,  here's an interesting piece of info :

• Normal Calling Rate from Indian mobile( Airtel/Vodafone etc) to Gulf - Around INR 7 per minute.
• Normal Calling Rate from Gulf Mobile ( Etisalat etc ) to India - 2.4 Dirham (Approx INR 30) per minute.

The calling rates from Gulf to India are almost 4 times the other way round! In addition, most Indian mobile operators have special prepaid packs that reduce calling rate to Gulf to almost Rs 2-3 per minute.

Conclusion:

1) Get your family a prepaid mobile connection if they already don't have one. 

2) Topup online using mobikwik whenever you want to talk! Mobikwik accepts all international credit cards and Indian net banking and works instantly.

3) Give your folks a missed call so they can call you back. :D

Mobikwik has many satisfied customers from the Gulf who use it regularly. If you are from Gulf and want to share your experience using mobikwik, do come forward and comment!

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The mobile world changed today - Did you notice?

At the Mobile World Congress 2010 today, there were 3 big announcements in the mobile industry which will *potentially* have far-reaching implications for the next few years. And yes, none of them have to do anything about Apple. :D

1. Nokia and Intel merge their mobile Linux Operating Systems. Called MeeGo, this will power both Intel netbooks and Nokia smartphone platform (Maemo). Is this finally the converged mobile computer platform that pundits have predicted for over a decade?

2. Microsoft launches Windows Mobile 7 dubbed Windows Phone 7. Built on the Zune HD interface, Microsoft's boldest attempt in the mobile phone space with major revisions in personalization, productivity and looks!

3. Symbian Foundation launches Symbian 3 , a major revision to their workhorse mobile platform. Symbian has had a chequered history, with Nokia acquiring the company and then spinning it off as an open source platform in response to Google's An

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Are you a social media guru?

One of my friends who works ( freelances) with a social media strategy firm sent this hilarious cartoon clip. I have a few friends in this space who work with both big companies and startups. Being a startup ourselves, we do take social media seriously given that it does not cost anything.( except time to tweet and re-tweet and post and re-post). Social media is definitely a good tool to make yourself heard  and  let the world know there are real people behind the company. Folks like Tony Hsieh ( sold Zappos.com to Amazon for a billion USD) have used their blogs to good effect. So while Zappos primarily sold shoes and other apparels, Tony's blog had quite a fan following based on his mostly humorous posts.

The problem : Marketers in big companies hear the latest buzz ( through friends or media or "social circles") and suddenly every one of them wants to jump on the bandwagon.  Before you can say "Twit what?", there are hundreds of social media gurus, facebook consultants, twitter shops, community engagement platforms, all selling their wares to these marketers. Result : You are asked to become a fan of "Baby XXX diapers" even though a restraining order legally prevents you to be within 100 meters of a kid. Or follow           " Porn YYY game"  on twitter except that there are only nude men ( and no nude women ) in the game ( gay adsense scammer, ha ha).

The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between. If you are a startup , I recommend you to use social media to engage meaningfully, not just to garner facebook fans and twitter followers. ( Last I heard, you could buy followers on twitter for a cent each). As for big companies, well, if no billboards are available on Gurgaon expressway this month, pay some $$$ to a social media guru and start a cause like Stripey the Cub. ( sponsored by Aircel). It is cheap, fast and it works.

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MTNL makes debut at mobikwik

Giving in to popular demand, mobikwik has integrated MTNL pin based recharge on its platform. To start with, you can do simple topups like Rs 10/50/100/200/500. MTNL GSM prepaid service is also popularly known as Trump. This is what we support right now. 

When you click on Recharge Now button in mobikwik, the Trump pin is displayed. To recharge, just type *400#PIN# on your MTNL mobile or call 400 and follow IVR instructions.

Although MTNL mobile service has not grown as fast as some of the private carriers in recent years, it is quite popular among students both in Delhi and Mumbai with its special vouchers and SMS packs. These packs and vouchers will also go on sale very soon on mobikwik. Check out the 

MTNL topup for Mumbai .

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Whose data is it anyway?

Breaking News : The Delhi High Court today asked InfoMedia 18( part of the TV18 group) to stop its site askme.in from functioning until next hearing. I just checked their site and it gave a 503 - Not available message.

JustDial claims Infomedia 18 copied its extensive database which is its key competitive advantage. Now, the big question is who owns the data that a website indexes and displays to the viewers for free? Does the method of copying even matter? The answer to this question could have huge implications for well-known sites in India which rely on such freely available data. I , for one, do not believe that all local search and classifieds websites built up their database organically from scratch, talking to each business owner in the process.

Another way of asking the same question : If your website shows up in google search, does it mean google owns the exclusive right to displaying it ( and other search engines cannot?)

 

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Why Indian web companies build crappy products?

Actually, the title of the post is misleading. Indian companies are very good at building good web products, but only when someone else is defining and managing the product. There are very few who can define and then iteratively build excellent products. Therefore, hold no grudge against the investors who invest in replicated ideas and US-returned expats.

What are the reasons?

1) Most Indian web companies  "do not" consider their product as a key competitive advantage. In that sense, they are much more like media companies , always focused on more eyeballs leading to more advertisement moolah. Those that do have a non-ad revenue model, rely on their alliances or their sales teams.

2) Indian web companies focus much more on marketing than they ever do on the product. Most big web companies are just "online" extensions of their offline businesses. The culture of product innovation just isn't there because all of them get their job done at the same outsourcing shops. There is no overarching product vision just feature additions.

3) Indian software engineers have not been exposed to the latest and the best, even though Indians are no.2 or 3 in Techcrunch readership. This is mostly because the managers and the VP's have themselves never been software engineers. They hardly know their HTML5 from their XML.

4) Sadly, most software engineers are neither risk takers nor good coders nor do they enjoy their jobs. More importantly, very few have that attitude of curiosity which spurs innovation. Combined with 3) , it just becomes a chicken and egg problem.

What do you think?
 

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