2 Min SKSM

COVID has pushed many businesses to adopt digital marketing. Many of them probably did so not because of its merit but peer pressure or lack of option. And the initial cost to start digital marketing is so less that it does not require good discussion/ debate/ thinking. And this is where problem lies. Conventional marketeer and management, possibly,never understood and accepted it wholeheartedly. And questions like "what is ROI", "Is it really effective", "can this replace offline activities" always linger around in the back of everyone's mind. The irony is that Digital Marketing gives so much data - views, impressions, geography, engagements, demographics etc that were unthinkable for offline campaigns still it is always seen from jaundiced eyes.  These questions are pertinent but difficult to answer if it's haphazardly implemented and in most of the cases it is.  Like any other marketing campaigns, customer has to go through the decision making s...

Once upon a time, there were Cheetah, Deer and Lion in a jungle. Deer was a fast runner (60 kmph), Lion was faster (70 kmph) but Cheetah was the fastest (100 kmph). Whenever Cheetah wanted to hunt Deer, there was competition from Lion. Cheeta started healthy diets to run faster. But competition was still on. Then Cheetah got a n idea and started feeding Deer instead and gave all support to make them healthy. As Deer became fitter, it started running faster and reached 80 kmph speed. Thereon Cheetah lived happily forever.   Why did Cheetah do something so counter intuitive? Assess the new competition landscape and you will have the answer.  This story is inspired by a tale told by my Prof Saral M at IIM, Ahmadabad. If a company can change the consumer behavior, it can create a new blue field. In the era of quality driven market, Zara changed consumer behavior and leaned them towards a fashion statement - Anything 3 months old is out of fashion. This created a new market fo...

When the entire India was figuring out how to fight COVID, Prime Minister mobilized mass movement appealing for light off for 9 mins at 9:00 PM on 5th April 2020. Half of junta started debating that this would collapse grid and the PM has endangered lives for sake of publicity. You could hear cacophony from "Lutyen" news channels. Another half was like this was a master stroke by PM in levitating hope and enthusiasm among people during this grim period. Post this eventful night, you could hear euphoria and "told you so" debates from "Bhakt" news channels. But none covered the topic with data and irony was that this was a complete scientific question.  After 2012 the worst blackout, Indian power utilities took many corrective measures to keep grid security intact: more flexible power plants, reserve capacities, pump storage capacities etc.   On 5th April, the max instantaneous frequency was 50.259 Hz and min was 49.708 Hz. These were well within the safe ra...

There are many SMEs who may want to track their field force but such application development is not so pocket friendly. One such company reached out to me and I took it as a hobby project. To my surprise, it came out so nicely that kept me thinking how powerful Goggle services are.  Customer required  Configurability in drafting information the company will like to capture during field activities Geo tagging field activities  Dashboard and analytics Solution: Google form was at the center in creating the solution. Google form integrated with Google Script was able to Geocode and reverse geocode. This link was then opened from native Android App using webview. Pre-filled form gave convenience to ground users of not filling redundant info every time e.g. employee details. Google form was then integrated with Sheet and then Map to create complete GIS based dashboard. Google Sheet charts, maps were then integrated with Google site to create a dashboard for manager.  Goog...

For sometime, the thought troubled me. Electric Vehicles get the juice from power grid so are they really eco-friendly or its just a marketing stunt. Lets analyze: We need 20KWh at the production site to charge EVs for 100 km run. A coal based thermal plant (in India) emits 980 grams of CO2 per 1 kWh as per CEA  considering Gross Calorific Value and Station Heat Rate. So 100 KM by EV emits 19.4 KG of CO2. And the same 100 m run by a Petrol hatchback will emit 13.2 KG ! Oh my my!!! However, Indian grid does not provide power only from coal based thermal plant. It's still 80:20. Simple algebra will tell us we need 68% power from thermal and remaining from renewable to match the emission level of Petrol Hatchback.  But renewable need balancing plants to mitigate variability in grid. Normally gas based plants are used for this purpose. Thankfully gas only emits 50% of CO2 than that of coal based plants. So we need renewable plants towards 60% to make EVs "ECO-FRIENDLY". Long ...

 Perhaps "Marketing" was known to human from the day 0. But the word never existed in Webster dictionary before 1910 coinciding with that time Industry Revolution 2.0. During this period production increased many fold with introduction of assembly line and so constraint shifted from supply to demand. So need of Marketing as a separate subject was heightened.  Marketing concept evolved since then  Production concept (focus on reducing cost) Product concept (focus on product quality) Selling concept (push through commercials) Marketing concept (focus on customer's need & want) Social concept (focus on social benefits) The image speaks volumes about then sentiment. Now the same Ford site allows customer to build its own car! In Industry Revolution 4.0 - Internet and IoT age, marketing has evolved to "Democratic concept" where customer regulates, executes and judges. Where everything is decided by likes, dislikes, ratings - sentiments. Today India is not the lar...

The famous Sapir - Whorf hypothesis says that language influence the way people think i.e. linguistic relativism .  Whorf proposed: 'We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, ...and is codified in the patterns of our language'. Sapir said: 'Human beings...are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. Normal discussion on pros and cons of programming languages contains (un)availability of features. But both languages are based on same computational powers and should be able to perform all tasks that the hardware is capable of. However, how these languages defer possibly are concepts about ease of use and expressiveness. And this may restrict solving ability of developers as explained by linguistic relativism . Low level language developers are not restricted by any language concepts but the actual capability of hardware. In the end, they are the closest to assembler, o...

“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong” – Carl Jung The nature of human - not being satisfied with what it has currently– has always made an impression on human’s action and behavior. A longitudinal observation would show that, many a times, a human shows behavior along directions quite opposite to each other. It oscillates between two extreme positions. I call it pendulum effect. And the pendulum effect is not limited to human behavior. History witnesses the same effect in different industries as well. IBM disintegrated to focus on core competency. Later Microsoft which handled OS acquired Nokia to give a holistic experience. Similar swings you can find in Pharma. Company focuses on specialty to improve brand perception and margin. But then later to mitigate high investment risk, the same company goes back to generic molecules. It holds true for e-com vs brick-&-mortar model from the distribution model. You must have come acros...

Taking clue from “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” - Mark Twain, I am trying to put my thoughts in fewer words. But actually, inspiration has come from 2 min Maggi (blockbuster instant noodle brand in India), 4 min book and Blinkist kind of sites, 30 min Domino's delivery and One day Amazon delivery. Everyone wants fast and quick experiences except in few occasions probably. So starting 2 min blog since this may not evoke experiences falling in later category. 10 (decimal) minute content squeezed into 10 (binary) minute blog. Hope this 2 minute read will give too minute details of my perspective.