Horlicks was always considered a health drink for kids.. Suddenly we saw Woman's Horlicks with promotions saying if you care for the women in your home pls buy Horlicks etc. etc..Not content with that Horlicks has started targeting men as well. Now they have Horlicks Lite for men with the ad showing a husband running at top speed to give his wife on a moving train a packet of snacks . So a top beverage manufacturer has understood that one way to increase sales is to expand the target audience at whom the product is aimed namely - kids , men , women etc. etc
Take the case of fairness creams.. The targeted audience clearly young and female. Now expanding to the male horizon with all top beauty brands having their versions of male fairness creams endorsed by popular actors like Shahrukh Khan, John Abraham, Shahid Kapoor etc..
Take the beauty industry as a whole. 10 years back it was targeted exclusively at female teens and twenties.. Now I think the maximum ads are about the anti aging creams and beauty treatments for the
30+ age group
Cadbury's chocolates - a domain of kids- shows a 67 year old Amitabh Bachan buying a box of chocolates for his best friend.. Cadbury's is now something to be enjoyed by the whole family...
One of the Coke ads shows a middle aged woman adding Coke to her shopping basket..
Or take the case of the coaching for the professional courses. In my time we started that in 11th. Now we have coaching classes for students starting from 5th (FIIT-JEE) .. Again a means to increase market share.
The list is endless. Somewhere I feel there are lessons for us also to keep looking for opportunities to expand horizons both as individuals and the organization as a whole...
Monday, March 22, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
And the Oscar Goes to ....
This year's best picture Oscar went to 'The Hurt Locker' directed by Kathryn Bigelow. While I am all for women power and the historic significance of the first woman director winning an Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director, that too on International Women's Day, somehow there seems to be a sense of unfairness. Let us look at the closest competitor 'Avatar'. It has been without doubt declared the best movie ever made by the public. This declaration comes from the fact that the movie has made more than $ 2 Billion, has been watched world over and is still going strong. Yes it has a dumb story, is cliched, not coherent in parts , but you cannot deny its tremendous impact and the vision behind the project. On the other hand Hurt Locker has berely grossed $16 million and is by no means the most popular film of the year..
I don't think there were many surprises in the rest of the awards. Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock were tipped to win anyway. Sandra Bullock has the dubious distinction of having a razzie and an Oscar side by side .. :)
Three cheers to James Cameroon.. I am running a little poll here.. So pls vote if you feel as strongly as I do.. :)
[polldaddy poll=2825444]
I don't think there were many surprises in the rest of the awards. Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock were tipped to win anyway. Sandra Bullock has the dubious distinction of having a razzie and an Oscar side by side .. :)
Three cheers to James Cameroon.. I am running a little poll here.. So pls vote if you feel as strongly as I do.. :)
[polldaddy poll=2825444]
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Jai Ho ! FaceBook ...
The one thing which doesn't cease to amaze me is the ever growing popularity of Facebook. My first interaction with FB started in 2007 when my boss asked me to investigate social media and this was just taking off. Although I created accounts I found this was not my cup of tea and soon lost interest..
Suddenly this I year I observed amazing levels of FB activity. Practically everyone I knew in and out of office is on FB and most of them are using FB applications i.e. Farmville, Fishville etc. Their competitors like MySpace and Orkut Friendster have been left far behind and recent statistics say that their nearest rival Twitter manages less users than the Facebook application Farmville :)
Also it is said in the same report that the fastest growing demographic is the 35+ age group!! So FB has gone way beyond being a youth or a student oriented social networking site. In India it is very quickly catching up with Orkut
Some people attribute this to the fact that their erstwhile competitor and former number one MySpace was besieged with a lot of spam and received bad press due to which people moved away from MySpace and the only one around to latch onto was Facebook, as it provided the complete package messages, pictures updates, videos, fan pages etc.etc.
Recently I read that FB has re-written the PHP runtime becoz it is too slow for them.. With 400 Million+ users and growing probably they need to keep re-inventing. And their growth numbers are also amazing. They were only around 100 Million in 2008 . They also became cashflow positive although they are still funded by VC's..
As techies the one thing which must be puzzling most of us is how they manage such large volume data which is constantly increasing as well. Some statistics say that they have more than 30,000 servers. This data is a bit dated and these numbers were given by Jeff Rothschild Vice President of Techlogy FB in October. Their entire application is supposed to be developed in Linux / Apache / PHP / MySQL. FB has also developed Cassandra a database system for storing very large volume data, which is open sourced now.
Of course the skeptics will say that soon a next new thing will come and the FB wave will die down.. But till then 'Jai Ho' FB.. :)
BTW I don't think you can't count Twitter or Linkedin in the same category as they serve a different purpose.
Pls. dont bombard me with comments about Google's data or servers, FB and Google are not in the same league yet :)
Suddenly this I year I observed amazing levels of FB activity. Practically everyone I knew in and out of office is on FB and most of them are using FB applications i.e. Farmville, Fishville etc. Their competitors like MySpace and Orkut Friendster have been left far behind and recent statistics say that their nearest rival Twitter manages less users than the Facebook application Farmville :)
Also it is said in the same report that the fastest growing demographic is the 35+ age group!! So FB has gone way beyond being a youth or a student oriented social networking site. In India it is very quickly catching up with Orkut
Some people attribute this to the fact that their erstwhile competitor and former number one MySpace was besieged with a lot of spam and received bad press due to which people moved away from MySpace and the only one around to latch onto was Facebook, as it provided the complete package messages, pictures updates, videos, fan pages etc.etc.
Recently I read that FB has re-written the PHP runtime becoz it is too slow for them.. With 400 Million+ users and growing probably they need to keep re-inventing. And their growth numbers are also amazing. They were only around 100 Million in 2008 . They also became cashflow positive although they are still funded by VC's..
As techies the one thing which must be puzzling most of us is how they manage such large volume data which is constantly increasing as well. Some statistics say that they have more than 30,000 servers. This data is a bit dated and these numbers were given by Jeff Rothschild Vice President of Techlogy FB in October. Their entire application is supposed to be developed in Linux / Apache / PHP / MySQL. FB has also developed Cassandra a database system for storing very large volume data, which is open sourced now.
Of course the skeptics will say that soon a next new thing will come and the FB wave will die down.. But till then 'Jai Ho' FB.. :)
BTW I don't think you can't count Twitter or Linkedin in the same category as they serve a different purpose.
Pls. dont bombard me with comments about Google's data or servers, FB and Google are not in the same league yet :)
Monday, February 22, 2010
Felu Mitter : Sleuth Extraordinary..
He is tall strong extremely intelligent has a remarkable memory, is a voracious reader , well versed on every topic under the sun, writes his notes in Greek , proficient in one on one combat , can use a gun etc. etc..
This superman is none other than Prodosh Mitter or Feluda a desi super sleuth created by Satyajit Ray. He appeared in a series of stories in Sandesh a Bengali children's magazine founded by Ray's grandfather. These stories became extremely popular and were translated into English by various authors.
I came across them as I was rifling through books in my local library. Since I have a special fondness for detective stories Sherlock Holmes , Poirot, Miss Marple, etc. etc.. I immediately borrowed the books and sort of loved them..
The stories are not about the content themselves, but also the characters. They are narrated by Feluda's teenaged cousin who sounds very real. There is a third character the lovable Jatayu a friend of these two who accompanies them on all their mysteries. The stories are mostly set in Bengal, and few others in Lucknow, Bombay, etc.They capture the spirit of Kolkata even in the translation.
Though they are not very contemporary (set in 70's and 80's) , I would still recommend it for any teens or pre-teens that you may have at home .. For adults it may sort of brings back memories of an uncluttered childhood far removed from the pressures of software delivery :)
This superman is none other than Prodosh Mitter or Feluda a desi super sleuth created by Satyajit Ray. He appeared in a series of stories in Sandesh a Bengali children's magazine founded by Ray's grandfather. These stories became extremely popular and were translated into English by various authors.
I came across them as I was rifling through books in my local library. Since I have a special fondness for detective stories Sherlock Holmes , Poirot, Miss Marple, etc. etc.. I immediately borrowed the books and sort of loved them..
The stories are not about the content themselves, but also the characters. They are narrated by Feluda's teenaged cousin who sounds very real. There is a third character the lovable Jatayu a friend of these two who accompanies them on all their mysteries. The stories are mostly set in Bengal, and few others in Lucknow, Bombay, etc.They capture the spirit of Kolkata even in the translation.
Though they are not very contemporary (set in 70's and 80's) , I would still recommend it for any teens or pre-teens that you may have at home .. For adults it may sort of brings back memories of an uncluttered childhood far removed from the pressures of software delivery :)
Friday, February 12, 2010
A Tale of Two Brothers ...
This is a humble tale is about two brothers one grumpy and the other friendly. Both poorly educated.. Definitely they have not attended any B-Schools or got any engineering degrees.. They run the vegetable shop near my house, which I frequent. :) But wait !!. There is an interesting story yet...
The shop is located on the main road and has several competitors. It was originally started off by their father in a small wooden shed. Slowly as the boys grew up, they took over the family business. Their aim was to make it the best veggie shop on the road. Their modus operandi was as follows.
Price : They always sell their vegetables at the lowest prices on this road. There is no bargaining allowed. :)
Streamline the supplies : All veg sellers in the road got their supplies for the main City Market. The younger brother was in charge of ensuring that the freshest vegetables in the City Market were bought by him. He used persuasion and muscle power for this and personally supervised supplies. Staff were hired to unload and stock the veggies.
Quality: They always ensures that only fresh vegetables were sold and if they became stale they were immediately discounted. They had daily supplies and when the current day's supplies arrived the customer could choose from the fresh lot directly from the sacks / rather than picking from the day old stuff.
Manage stale vegetables: Stale vegetables were sold at heavily discounted prices. Since spinach has a very small shelf life, they do not stock spinach at all as they found that the cost vs return was not worth the effort.
Introduce waste disposal : They had people to continuously clean the store and remove the waste / rotten things and present a clean and smart looking ambience
Get high value customers : They managed to cater to some local restaurants on the road by tying up with them and giving them volume discounts and credit.
Modernize the shop and control pilferage : In order to get the software crowd (read: US returned) they introduced a smart ambience , departmental store like shelves with aisles to walk through and pick and choose veggies and fruits.Pilferage was controlled by introducing close circuit TV and manual monitoring.Billing machines were introduced.
Cater to the software crowd : The elder brother ensured that the shop was open from 7:00 AM to 10:30 PM to especially cater to the software crowd. Fresh supplies came only after 7:00PM. The evening crowd consists entirely of office going women (some men also :)).
Ensure efficient queue management during peak hours : During peak hours (namely after 7:00 pm) they ran two counters each managed by one brother. During off peak hours i.e. the afternoon the father who was slower was at the counter
Be one step ahead of competition : The biggest threat to these brothers came in the form of Big Bazaar, with its promise of cheap prices, which recently opened on the same road. In order to manage this they made a survey of Big Bazaar prices 1-2 times in a day and ensures that their prices were always a shade lesser than Big Bazaar prices, even if it meant that they were incurring a loss. For example if apples in BB at Rs.75 then they sold the same apples at Rs.70 and so on..
Continuously innovate and enhance : They have started stocking multiple varieties of apples / straw berries other exotic fruits and vegetables.. They also stock juices and dairy products / dry fruits and are constantly enhancing their product range
Naturally these steps paid dividends. They are the number one store on the road famous for their unbeatable combination of quality and price..
Need I say more :)
The shop is located on the main road and has several competitors. It was originally started off by their father in a small wooden shed. Slowly as the boys grew up, they took over the family business. Their aim was to make it the best veggie shop on the road. Their modus operandi was as follows.
Price : They always sell their vegetables at the lowest prices on this road. There is no bargaining allowed. :)
Streamline the supplies : All veg sellers in the road got their supplies for the main City Market. The younger brother was in charge of ensuring that the freshest vegetables in the City Market were bought by him. He used persuasion and muscle power for this and personally supervised supplies. Staff were hired to unload and stock the veggies.
Quality: They always ensures that only fresh vegetables were sold and if they became stale they were immediately discounted. They had daily supplies and when the current day's supplies arrived the customer could choose from the fresh lot directly from the sacks / rather than picking from the day old stuff.
Manage stale vegetables: Stale vegetables were sold at heavily discounted prices. Since spinach has a very small shelf life, they do not stock spinach at all as they found that the cost vs return was not worth the effort.
Introduce waste disposal : They had people to continuously clean the store and remove the waste / rotten things and present a clean and smart looking ambience
Get high value customers : They managed to cater to some local restaurants on the road by tying up with them and giving them volume discounts and credit.
Modernize the shop and control pilferage : In order to get the software crowd (read: US returned) they introduced a smart ambience , departmental store like shelves with aisles to walk through and pick and choose veggies and fruits.Pilferage was controlled by introducing close circuit TV and manual monitoring.Billing machines were introduced.
Cater to the software crowd : The elder brother ensured that the shop was open from 7:00 AM to 10:30 PM to especially cater to the software crowd. Fresh supplies came only after 7:00PM. The evening crowd consists entirely of office going women (some men also :)).
Ensure efficient queue management during peak hours : During peak hours (namely after 7:00 pm) they ran two counters each managed by one brother. During off peak hours i.e. the afternoon the father who was slower was at the counter
Be one step ahead of competition : The biggest threat to these brothers came in the form of Big Bazaar, with its promise of cheap prices, which recently opened on the same road. In order to manage this they made a survey of Big Bazaar prices 1-2 times in a day and ensures that their prices were always a shade lesser than Big Bazaar prices, even if it meant that they were incurring a loss. For example if apples in BB at Rs.75 then they sold the same apples at Rs.70 and so on..
Continuously innovate and enhance : They have started stocking multiple varieties of apples / straw berries other exotic fruits and vegetables.. They also stock juices and dairy products / dry fruits and are constantly enhancing their product range
Naturally these steps paid dividends. They are the number one store on the road famous for their unbeatable combination of quality and price..
Need I say more :)
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