Aawaara

Why the “Big Billion Day” might be the worst mistake that Flipkart has committed since its inception

To start with, this isn’t a rant about how I didn’t get a discounted product of my choice. It’s more of a birds eye view of why this marketing campaign could prove to be one of Flipkart’s worst nightmare, and why the timing of the mistake couldn’t have been worse. The poster child of the Indian startup scene experienced first hand that whoever said “No Press is Bad Press” was absolutely wrong, especially if it’s on social media.

Long time back when I first logged on to the internet, I still remember the Rediff’s and Indiatimes shopping of those days who did e-commerce when there was no e-commerce (or the buzz). They had the first mover’s advantage which they never capitalized on, and they still do business the same way as they did in the 90s, and probably the same volume as of 90s. Any guesses why they are dying?

What Flipkart painstakingly did over the years other than selling items online (which any Tom, Dick and Harry can do in today’s times) - they created TRUST! They made the average Indian believe that they can purchase something online, and that thing will arrive at their doorstep the next day! They did it for years, day in and day out, few people at a time. They did it for a few, who told others, who then joined in with the same expectations, which were then met as well. They grew multifold, but they still did it, while other fly by night operators came in, threw around VC money and went away. There could have been some goof-ups that are a natural consequence of scale, but overall it was an atmosphere of trust around Flipkart which I believe is the biggest currency that Flipkart has earned until date. They nurtured the ecosystem and enabled an average skeptical Indian to buy online.

On this given Monday they lost a lot of it. For two days straight my Facebook feed was filled with rants around how items disappeared from people’s cart, how they received emails from Flipkart that they won’t receive the item they purchased, how the prices were escalated a few days back to make room for the offers, and what not! This was the worst Flipkart PR I have ever witnessed in the past 7 years, and everyone was talking about them, and I didn’t hear the positives. May be my sample space is skewed, but I heard bad things everywhere. Even the news that said that they achieved the $100 million sales target in 10 hours felt more like a cover up to say that we didn’t f#$k up.

In the past when I didn’t find discount coupons for Flipkart (via google search), I may not have a feeling of instant gratification, but deep down I knew that these are an honest set of folks who have listed a fair price, and I wouldn’t get anything better (and reliable) elsewhere. These are not like the Myntra’s of today (I understand it’s owned by Flipkart now, but it’s still a different entity) who have a 50% off on a daily basis with bogus coupons being sent to me over SMS. These are not like the Snapdeal’s who have the money to give a front page advertisement in TOI, but not the technical muscle to handle the load which arrived as a result, even with disabled filters, and likes. More often that not, I would click that ominous “BUY” button without much thought. But that thing changed this given Monday with all the offers, fooling around and hoopla. The currency of trust faced a significant devaluation.

Now where does Amazon fit in all of this? If I was Jeff Bezos, this would be a dream come true scenario for me. I’ve just joined in, with deep pockets ($2 billion in the short run) which I showed off while riding an Indian truck, and my biggest and only competitor just goofed up. I have an already scheduled sales event, which is much larger in size (10th to 16th October), with all the marketing money behind it. I have the technical muscle to do it well (Amazon even sells that infrastructure as a service -AWS), and have successfully done it in the past (in other countries). If I do it well this time, there is no going back! If I do it extraordinarily well, given the deep pockets I have and the deals I can afford, then that may be a different story altogether for a country already obsessed with foreign brands. Amazon, here is your chance! If you are successful at this, it will be more about the last man standing a few years from now, and I believe that will be a game that you would love to play. For the offer centric Indian consumer, there is no such thing as brand loyalty. At least it doesn’t come into play unless the prices are the same ;)

Though the good news is that Flipkart seems to have taken note and has issued a public apology for the same. Being humble and ready to learn is the best thing you can do in difficult times. Shit happens, but what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. Hopefully it’s the latter. Personally, over the next few years I would want to see Flipkart being a much more powerful player in the multi billion $$$ Indian ecommerce space as compared to Amazon, but the sad news is that the world doesn’t care, and the world ain’t fair. If Amazon capitalizes hard on the beginner’s luck, then it will be more like that I and Mom worked hard for 7 hours to prepare a lavish supper, and the neighbor’s kid came in and had it.

BillBaba: And a year flew by!

On a usual Monday afternoon the phone beeped, and I realized that BillBaba.com had completed one year since launch. The initial yearly reminder that I had set up to remind me of this had actually played it’s part and it dawned upon me that a year had passed since BillBaba.com said Hello to the world wide web!

I would lie if I said that the year passed in a flash. The year was longer than all those years when going to office was a routine, it was heavier, but it was faster. The Einstein’s theory of relativity does apply to Entrepreneurship as well - at faster speeds (comparable to speed of light), time does appear to slow down! Overall it has been a great learning experience, and definitely has carved out a better me.

This post if more about data, about what BillBaba.com has seen in terms of numbers. Personally, I have always felt that there is a lack of data points in the India eco-system. We don’t know about many successful exits, and even if we have heard of a few, we absolutely don’t know about the financial value of the transaction. There aren’t enough benchmarks to see if you have good, decent or poor traffic/userbase, especially in the Indian context. Below is my contribution to the eco-system.

All data as on 25th June, 2012 (1 year since launch):

Total users: 3,113

Total reminder SMS sent: 43,518

Total reminder email sent: 62,239Total Facebook reminders sent: 27,008

Unique Visitors: 13,252 + 952 (blog + forum)

Visits: 18,346 + 1079 (blog + forum)

Page Views: 92,663 + 2025 (blog + forum)

Thanks to everyone who has stood by me :)

Are startup event organizers just another bunch of startups selling false hopes?

I know that I am putting skeletons in my cupboard with this post and it will come back to haunt me some day. I am still okay with that because it isn’t a deterrent strong enough to prevent me from speaking my mind out…give me something better… ;)

The story goes something like this:

• Someone contacts me at [email protected] and the content has the term “globalization” in it with some other gibberish. Later he suggests to attend startup events (and one event in particular which is due in a week) to get networked and leverage it to take the product to the next level.
• I don’t get any pin pointed or constructive feedback/suggestions despite writing back a couple of times to know the thoughts exactly.
• A few days later I get a ping asking about my plans to attend the event. I try to know the person better and come to know that he hasn’t tried his hands at entrepreneurship yet and has no plans for the near future. “I am learning all” is what I get.
• Final sales pitch says “You can meet evangelists who might be interested in your product” : I didn’t know that it was that easy!
• Then out of curiosity I check whether the person concerned has registered at BillBaba.com. Negative! Now I certainly doubt his intentions.
• Of course, I didn’t attend the event… ;)  I am almost bankrupt and I can think of a zillion better ways to spend that money.

I had been thinking about this for a long long time now, and what pushed my thoughts in that direction is the amount that these people charge for tickets which ranges anywhere from 3000 bucks to 10000 buck in India. Exorbitant by my standards as a bootstrapped entrepreneur who earns a big zero and could use this money on something better like a few months of hosting or some adwords credits. Okay, I may be exaggerating here, but I still don’t get how and why are the tickets priced so high. Why not make it a free event? Does it result in every Tom, Dick and Harry turning up for the event. Does that really defeat the purpose, or on the contrary accomplishes the mission which the event organizers had initially envisioned - get everybody interested in startups. I am sure that they wouldn’t have to pay from their pockets as the sponsors will queue up to get so many more eyeballs.

The soft spot that these events try to hit on is VC money. We entrepreneurs are really emotional about money and will even spend money to get more money. I don’t buy what they are trying to sell here - networking and it’s by products like VC contacts, evangelists, mentors, etc. Does it happen that way? I seriously doubt that. Can I walk up to any VC in that event and pitch right there and then. Even if I do, does that really matter. Will it be any better than a linkedin introduction or an email? Will I be able to find mentors there? A person who is too busy to even answer emails, how will he carve out time for you then. And if someone wants to help, thou shall be helped, and he/she doesn’t care whether you attended the event or not! Okay, I do admit that I am bad at networking, but I will be bad at networking at the event too. Will it be any different there?

Still, I have immense love for startups of any kind as I can connect to them at a personal level. Therefore I have taken extra care to hide/modify the details of the event so that you don’t investigate and try to pin point the event. The story in fact is even more interesting and can be broken into parts, but that gives everything away. I have waited a bit and ensured that the event season is finished so that you cannot take advantage of the timing of the post to point it out. See if you are smart, I am smart too… ;)  Additionally I am not saying that these events are a waste of time (awesome people, talking awesome stuff - I do watch the available videos), and you may find suitable uses for yourself. It also adds great value when you are on stage and doing the talking. You may get more than what is promised in that case. All I am saying is that I personally find it unethical to tap on an entrepreneurs need for money to make money for yourself. Period!

PS: I may be missing something here and will be more than happy if someone can point that out to me.

Stop TRAIng idiots - You think you are here to solve problems, we will create more!

The motivation for this post is the termination charges of 5p/sms that come into effect from 25th Oct, 2011 via the latest TRAI notification, latest in the series of oppressive regulations (w.r.t to entrepreneurs). For anyone who thinks that 5p/sms isn’t much, the truth is that it almost doubles the cost, and is even more than an increase of 100% if you had high volumes.

Statutory Warning: I will not be subtle in my criticism. If you are satisfied with what you are getting, and don’t give a damn about what you may be missing, or have turned a blind eye towards killing of innovation, and the limitless possibilities that sms communication could have, this post is not for you. Please note that no one is endorsing spam here, but terminating all communication cannot be the solution to those pesky SMSes. For people who have heart aches due to name calling, you have been warned. You may choose to opt out (of all communication by subscribing to NCPR/DND list), and discontinue reading. Just ensuring that this is no unsolicited communication… ;)

The story so far:

• Airtel exits bulk sms space in september 2010
• TRAI comes up with a set of regulations in March, 2011
• Implementation postponed indefinitely due to obvious faults
• TRAI again comes up with a similar set of regulations (I still don’t know what they were doing for 6 months), which come into effect from 27th Sep, 2011
• People point out the problems and there is a lot of hue and cry. The big/small players (businesses, startups) are worried at the inherent foolishness of the regulations
• I write an email to TRAI, a minister and people in Nasscom and TIE pointing out the problems. Haven’t received a reply till date, not even an acknowledgement from anyone that the problem even exists
• Within 12 hours of the new regulations coming into effect TRAI issues an amendment that exempts the big players (facebook, twitter, linkedin, google, justdial, etc.)
• TRAI comes up with a 5p/sms termination charge that comes into effect from 25th Oct, 2011 and the money goes to the receiving network
• Ecommerce players (probably I don’t need to name the bigger players) are exempted from this termination charge
• Airtel stands to benefit the most due to the recent termination charges, as they have the largest network and they have already exited the bulk sms space (so they don’t need to pay anybody)

For those of you who still don’t get it, or are feigning ignorance, I’ll put it down it words. The inferences:

• When I first read that airtel was lobbying hard for these regulations, I wasn’t sure enough. As someone has said- the end justifies the means, and by looking at the end I am now able to connect the dots. A pure win situation for airtel and probably they will be making more money than what they would have if they were in the bulk sms space. They don’t pay anybody and everybody pays them, and they get paid more money (5p) than what the bulk sms service provider earns (2-3p) in the first place. Pure Profit!
• The regulations didn’t work, and TRAI seems to be admitting to that by introducing the termination charge, or is there something else to it. Time and again I am reminded of the fact that India is the land of opportunities is you know the right people, and have the right amount of money to spend on them. Whatever happened to that policy on fine for more than 5 violations, nobody seems to care. Do we have any data which tells us that it failed, and to justify the introduction of termination charges? Weren’t the regulations foolish in the first place? Don’t we need to correct them first before introducing new ones?
• The world isn’t fair. There are no guardian angels in the world of entrepreneurship. Everybody is for himself (maybe that’s the fun part and makes success more sweet and enjoyable). If you are a big player, good for you, and if you aren’t - $@# & off! Bad timing dude.

In your ‘Pursuit of Happyness’ - “You can only depend on yourself. The cavalry ain’t coming.”

So what’s next from our entrepreneur friendly government - email regulations, facebook terminations, twitter reverberations!
 

The unanswered email…[An open letter to TRAI]

Below is an email which I wrote just before the not so good (bordering foolish) TRAI regulations came into effect. The email still remains unanswered, in fact none of the people involved ever acknowledged the email or the problem itself. So I am posting it as an open letter to TRAI.

Mail Sent to:

1. TRAI 
2. A minister related to industries who is young and tech savvy enough to leave his email address on the ministry site
3. A few people in NASSCOM
4. A few people in TIE

Date: Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 10:13 PM

 
Subject: The ‘Telecom Commercial Communications Regulations’ are a blow to entrepreneurs and the ecosystem.

Dear Sir,

First things first - I too have been a victim of pesky calls and SMSes quite too often and totally agree that something needs to be done about that, but stopping all communication cannot be the solution. You need to distinguish between good communication and bad communication and treating everything the same will create problems for everyone, especially for young entrepreneurs. We already face a lot of problems everyday and this is a serious blow to the fragile ecosystem available to entrepreneurs in India.

Here are some of the problems that I think a lot of entrepreneurs in the web domain will be experiencing due to the new guidelines:

2) The transactional category is fixed and everything else is classified as promotional. We also send messages which are transactional in nature. There may be cases where the user has subscribed and paid for those messages.

4) The identifier will now we a number (unique id) instead of the short code (DM-SERVICE). That means the user does not know from whom the message is coming. Previously a user could delete spam messages without actually reading it, by just looking at the short code. Now one will have to go through all the messages to filter out useful messages from the useless ones.

The regulations completely take away an area to innovate from young entrepreneurs, which I don’t think is fair enough. The counter argument may be that if a user wants such services then he/she can unsubscribe from NCPR, but that is something like inviting spam and the user will not do so. The regulations seem to be squeezing our user base and restricting out thought process. For a normal subscriber it’s a case of - either you get everything or you get nothing, you don’t have the power to choose.

Hoping for a positive response.

TRAIng to get over it!

The TRAI regulations that come into effect from 27th September, 2011 are certainly a blow to me as well as BillBaba.com. Though the regulations may sound foolish, but the bitter truth is that we will have to live with them. I just received an email from my service provider stating the changes:

1) No SMS communication between 9PM-9AM. How do we take care of registrations that happen between this time? Do we send the confirmation code (and other communication) the next day? Has anyone at TRAI heard about ‘User Experience’?I don’t think so after looking at their official websites.

2) There is a pre defined set of transactional sms categories (bank, financial institution, irctc, airlines, educational institutes, DTH), everything else goes into the promotional category. Everything is legal for the transactional folks, and nothing for everyone else. What mission critical information do DTH operators send? Is there a DTH lobby at work here? I heard that the government believes in providing a level playing field to everyone.3) No opt in services. Either you are in a category, or you are not! And if you opt to receive messages of a category you invite all the spam. I thought that that the problem that we were trying to solve here was how to get rid of spam, instead of how to invite spam.

4) The identifier will now we a number (unique id) instead of the short code (DM-BILLBABA). So effectively everything goes marked as spam, and the user will have to read all the messages to separate out the good from the bad. There is no way you can tell the user upfront that the message if from you. Genuine isn’t genuine anymore! It seemed we were trying to save on time here.

Whatever the problem originally was, cutting off all communication cannot be the solution. Yes we all have been bothered by pesky calls and SMSes for too long, and the general sense prevailing may be that the regulations will act as a saviour; but this is a classic case of throwing out the baby with the bath water!

I already heard people complaining about the startup ecosystem in India and here comes another blow. I personally think that the regulations are outrageous and lack common sense. What is everyone else planning to do? I think that a lot of people rely on genuine SMS communication. Anyone going for a PIL or EIL (Entrepreneurs interest litigation) in fact. It’s the ecosystem at stake here!

How are group buying sites dealing with this? Anyone from snapdeal?

Suggested Solution: You ought to differentiate between the different kinds of communication, and cannot regard everything as promotional. Make room for opt in services where you can put the onus of providing auditable information in case of dispute on the service provider.