UnMetro – The Markets driving India

It was my absolute please to attend Dainik Bhaskar UnMetro Conference on 13^th Dec. A platform where I got to hear some inspiring UnMetro Case Studies from Marketers, incredible panel discussing the future of India being the UnMetros. 

Some take away & quotes from the event:

People nowadays are migrating from smaller towns to cities like Pune, Lucknow and Ahmedabad to earn their livelihood, whereas the rate of people migrating to the so-called metros has fallen sharply.

The non-metro customer today, demands the same luxury packages such as spas, five stars & international vacations that any of his affluent metro counterparts demand.

Trust is the key to success in the unMetros markets and people are open to talk and learn about new things.

The trend of e-commerce players partnering with retail brands is yet to evolve in unMetros

Consumer in future will reject a user inappropriate product. Affordability is no longer an issue for unMetros

5 reasons for the change in nonMetros – increasing awareness for education, health & wellness, growing need for personal grooming, improving hygiene & increasingly eating out & experimenting with food.

60% of my brands revenue comes from non-metro India

Women & Children in UnMetros India have become powerful as far as purchase decisions go.

The advantage in a small town is that the news spreads very fast, brands need to spend money in cultivating loyalty

Products must be hackable & customizable. Customers are getting smarter. They will not buy products just because their favorite celebrity is endorsing it.

Puma – “We have closed 7 stores due to unprofitably, all from Metros”

DHFL – “We target lower middle income group. We have differentiated Business Model to cater to different segments in Market”

CCD- “We are not in the coffee business; we are in the Time pass business. CCD is a place where people want to spend time with their loved ones, beverages accidentally surround them”

Toyota – “By the year 2015, non-metros will account for more than 60% of our sales!”

Puma – “e-Commerce allows us to reach 800 towns that we would have never had reached. It serves a long tail of towns”

Titan – “In the coming 5 years, e-Commerce will be big, Localization will be critical & technology will help us identifying customers with their name & purchase history”.

We at Huawei have always believed that making a common man a brand ambassador & word of mouth is the best marketing strategy. Thus Huawei Club where we are building an eco-system, engaging with Students, Developers, Designers to enrich our customers experiences.  

A brand essence doesn't and will not change, from market the way the message is communicated at times need to be tweaked accordingly to be effective. After the end of the conference, for it’s really difficult to distinguish metros & unMetros into separate categories.

In fact India outside the metros seems to be the emerging India.

4G: Strengths & Challenges in India

These days there are a lot of talks & announcements from all the major operators about 4G.It’s too exciting as Fourth generation, or 4G technology offers mobile internet access at three times the speed of 3G.

4G offers:-

• Higher bandwidth with a very quick access to the internet
• Easily watch TV, streaming videos, albums, and also get access to social media, information, entertainment and online stores
• Valuable Service: Multimedia games, HD videos, e-commerce, mHealth, mCommerce, mobile vault
• Video conference
• M2M (Machine to Machine)

4G Top challenges:-

• Voice and SMS not supported on 4G
• Uses USIM (Universal Subscriber Identification Module) which is different from current SIM since it is a 128 KB SIM thus needs a change in mobile number
• Launched in only few citied of India eg: Blore, Pune, Koltata etc
• Limited area coverage; 4G roaming    
• Lack of connected devices; few 4G supporting handsets & datacards

I are very optimistic about the networking market in India in the coming years. We at Huawei are already seeing increased demand for networking products owing to the new trends in the Indian market. 

It will be very exciting to see the incredible changes that 4G can bring into India....I can’t wait to see!

GENIVI Developer Conference India 2011

2 day conference hosted at Hotel Taj and it witnessed some amazing participation from Tier 1 & Tier 2 companies. Was a great opportunity to listen to GENIVI board members talk, network with automotive players & hear about the roadmap & challenges from automakers.

My notes from the sessions:
GENIVI forum was established intending to drive innovation in Automotive infotainment system & to bring together Silicon guys to work with software providers to improve the deliverables.
Automotive was one industry which never worked in collaboration and GENIVI (G) wanted to break this trend. G is where they decide where to collaborate & where to compete. It addresses the common component that goes into making an automotive infotainment IVI system.

70% of the code which gets into GENIVI is generally Open Source. So its very important for the contributor to know the source of the source.

Automakers cost structure goes like: 10% in hardware, 40% BSP (Base porting), 40% Software Integration & validation, 10% building UI & UX
G takes care of what needs to go into an automotive platform. It’s completely based on Linux & currently supports Meego & Ubuntu. Its main intention is to develop components which are reusable. It has around 121 members & 24 new members in the pipeline.

Biggest issue currently is that we don’t have any GENIVI products, solution or prototype, however BMW promises to get its first GENIVI based IVI system out in 2013.GENIVI deliverables are:
- Specifications
- Reference base line
- Patches for projects
- GENIVI projects

G has technical experts in domains: Automotive, Consumer Electronics, Location Based Services, Media, Networking, and System Infrastructure. Currently it supports only Meego, Ubuntu and with no support from Google, Android has not been a part of the reference platform at GENIVI.

GENIVI Tools: Blog, Wiki, Jira (Action Item tracking), OBS (Open building system & code scanning tools) also have an option to use free tools – Fossology & back duck
GENIVI base code is currently not open but sooner or later will be Open Sourced under some license.

G Compliance process: Automaker submits the POC -> verification -> true functional verification -> Certificate authentication. So far G has no compliance logo designed.
Things that were lacking in G are Quality, security, testing, validation compliance standards

Show stoppers we see, in India contributing towards G: Lack of Expert groups in India, diversification interest in the consumer towards infotainment, lack of POC to prove G can make automaker’s life easy, help in driving innovation & delivering products on time.

Set of questions which GENIVI need to answer to make it a successful community:
- What’s the benefit for the end user
- How can the platform be developed to look Hack proof
- Motivate companies in being a part of the forum and how can existing members bring in more contribution

For me GENIVI looks very promising & if all it done as planned Automotive Industry will soon see Innovation wave.

New resolution: Backpacking & going offline for few days

Going Offline:

Taking a break from online life and spending time in offline world is like finding yourself again & living in real. It has become sort of a new resolution of mine. It is fun to do such a thing and at the same time you get so many ideas when you are away from your laptop. We humans are not designed to think in front of a screen. I always believed that I think and as a matter of fact I do day dream a lot. I do chase some of my thoughts and have seen some of my day dreams getting real.

It was time to take a break and start a journey toward fulfilling my wishes for 2011. Perfect time & decided to visit Golden Temple at Amritsar. Excited! As it was my first visit to North India.
In these three days that I was away from the online world, I met myself again, I learnt & realized a lot, met new people, spent a lot of time with loved ones.

Delhi Airport:

Luckily we didn’t had direct flight to Amritsar we had to stop at Delhi Airport and we had 7 hours gap for out next flight. That was the time I got the ideas of having the following stuff at the airport:

- Mini Movie Theater: Where anyone can pick up this or her own CD and watch their favorite movie. I would have watched “Hum Tum”

- Library: I am not a book freak but yes I love watching people’s expressions while they are reading books. Trust me it’s really funny

- Swimming pool: That’s one thing that will make airport real heaven for me. I can keep my feet in water for hours and spend time listening to lovely music

- Park for kids: Better these airport guys design a park before I deliver my 5 kids, or else you can imagine airport to be a mad house.

- Kitchen: I hate eating food from outside. My friends who tease me, know this - Every time I look at the food, I thing I could have cooked far better than them.

- Pub: I can dance non-stop specially when the DJ plays the right songs

However in the absence of all these, God was great to me, he had sent over 2 lovely angels. I didn’t ever realized how the time passed-by while playing with them. The 6 and 8 years girls thought me some lessons of life:
- Just keep laughing out loud & smiling, don’t worry what the world would think. Your smile may just unknowing bring happiness in others life

- Never stops learning, life is gifted ones live it to the fullest

- Speak your heart out and let out our emotions. Stop cheating yourself
- Accept your weakness no one is perfect

It’s great to live like a kid throughout; at least you can look into your eyes when you face the mirror.

Golden Temple:Finally reached destination. Don’t understand these questions & I never found them worth answering:
“Why’s a south Indian visiting golden Temple?”

“Are you from Punjab?”
“Which part of Karnataka are you from?”
“How come your name sounds like a Coorge when you are from Mysore?”

Can we grow up please & stop judging, categorizing people based on their cast, religion & language.

Since school days I was asked to dream about Golden Temple. That dream got scattered but the marks remained. It was time to clean up the marks, move on & find a new path. As I stepped in & had a first look at the golden temple, I just couldn’t move my eyes off it. I loved spending hours sitting besides the holy lake and watching the temple. I had a wish, few thanks giving and lots of forgiveness to ask. I joined my hands to the almightily said a prayer for the well beings of few lives which at a time I never valued.

Amritsar Shopping:
Believe me it’s fun to shop at Amritsar. The Amritsar shopkeepers are real good sales guys, they should deliver talks at Management Institutes. I had no plans of buying a Lengha, logically because I am not getting married, even if I was, we at south India never wear lengha at such events. But this logical gal did buy a designer lengha, no clue WHY ? Simple answer could be, when I draped it just looked like it was designed & made only for me.

Lovely Punjabi suits, tempted to buy, exceeded my budget & finally to impress mom & dad I bought a saree too. Now you’ll can imagine after this exclusive shopping what pressure I would have from my grandma & family members.
*Warning: Go for a shopping to Amritsar only when you are about to get married or after marriage.

Waga Border:

Historical & patriotic place. Don’t know what craze I had about visiting this place. Gosh the people out there were MAD. It was badly crowded & everyone was ready to climb on each other. What race was that, some cheap crowd too & I would have bashed a guy if luck wouldn’t have hit us. Army guy told us to join a ladies queue which never existed. We somehow got in and this make me believe strongly about LUCK. Lovely drill, dance on patriotic songs and army parade was amazing to see. People shouting “Vande mataram” & feeling proud of being Indian.

My question is why this spirit is only for a while, when we step out, why do we start differencing people based on religion, women treated like object, girls given less priority over boys, parents wanting their children to be engineer, doctors & not get into army.

Its time Indians wake up & stop putting up masks.

Punjabi Food & People:This happens to me most of the time – 2 emotions run at one time. While I was travelling by auto cycle I was happy enjoying the ride, but when I used to see man almost of my dad’s age burning his blood and cycling all the ways tears flew down.
Nothing like rich Punjabi food – paneer pakoda, lassi, parotha all cooked & fried in pure ghee. Got to meet a lot of people talked with them about the life and challenges that they face. People are extremely friendly, they open up quickly, and they accept you quickly. Something that we in cities should learn. Life is hard there, they can hardly do anything after its dark (but they do so much during the day). Good Schools are rare. After schooling the choices of courses are very limited. People live a very community oriented life there.

What will remain always is the warm hospitality I received.

Coming Back Online:
Coming back online after a break is not easy. There are so many things to catch up. It took me two days to read and reply to all the mails, three days to read blogs of my friends, one day to catch up on twitter and one for all other social networks.

Feeling refreshed after a break!
Realized life is not the same for all and life is not in facebook, google+, twitter, emails, and flicker. It’s much more & I have lots to explore. I have just started my journey, wish me luck.

Back with London’s million pounds worth learning

* Life is too short; so why spent it judging people, just accept them the way they are.

* The other way to worship God is by touching human’s heart with your kind words & do good if you can.

* Value time; not only of your but of others too.

* World is full of lovely people’s; meet how many you can. They all come with rich culture & learning’s of life, its worth sharing thoughts. Gets you a different perception towards life.

* Learn to forgive people; heart is a small place so why fill it with hate.

* Stay beautiful; take time to note down the compliments you receive. Whenever you feel low, revisit your diary, it pumps your heart with strength to go ahead and win the world

* Greet people a wonderful day and just smile around, what u give always come around you.

* Nothing is perfect; so why strive to be one or look for it.

* You never represent only yourself; you represent your family, company & country you belong to. So think twice before you say or do something. You have an opportunity to tell the world what Indians are.

* Respect an individual; not for what job he does or how much he earns. But respect him as he is a human and for his beautiful soul where God resides.

* It’s worthy to do small sacrifices for the people who live for you. Sacrifice is another word for love.

* You are proud of the rich Tradition and culture with which you are brought up with, but let them not block you from living life fully.

* Don’t be scared of looking beautiful, rocking the dance floor, asking questions, sounding intelligent and challenging the best, you never know you might be missing a million pounds worth opportunity which might just change your life forever.

Mobile Developer Conference 2010 - will the real mobile developer please stand up?

Saturday, 27 March 2010 is the day of Mobile Developers.

The first among a series of conferences which talks about what goes into the making of a successful mobile application. The best speakers from the mobile industry will talk about mobile technology and will discuss the future of mobile eco-system.
The talks and panel discussion during the conference have been tailored to provide:

A view on the market for mobile apps focusing on current dynamics, future trends and ever-changing customer needs
- this will assist mobile developers and entrepreneurs to find the sweet-spot for pitching their mobile apps to their target market

An insight to multiple approaches for monetizing mobile apps
- this will enable mobile developers in building apps with higher marketability and choosing appropriate channel for monetizing it

A comprehensive coverage on technologies powering latest mobile app development and testing.
- mobile developers will have a chance to not only enhance their existing technical knowledge but also acquire additional knowledge across other domains of mobile app development lifecycle.

An overview on new mobile technologies and platform like Symbian, Android, Iphone, Blackberry. Rub shoulders with other peer developers, hear experiences and insights on what business model works and which does not, In a nutshell experience the new face and realize the significance of mobile development.

Event is supported by Forum Nokia, OnMobile, MindTree & Teleca.
Conference is at Hotel Royal Orchid, Bangalore.

For speakers & topic visit Mobile Developer Conference or reach out to Rohit for any queries at 080-41100487 +91-9379446943 (M)

Register early to avail an early bird discount of 25%, the offer expires on 21 March 2010.