Business Model, Ideas

Unfortunately, my prediction about Facebook comes true…

In January this year, in my blog post titled “Why is Facebook planning to go public now?”, I had predicted that all is not well with facebook and that is the reason for the timing of the IPO. I was way off mark in the speed that I thought things would pan out, only goes on to point out that the pace of change around us is astounding to say the least. Already, there are predictions being made that Facebook could die. I think it is a bit pre-mature to predict their death. They still have the people who could […]

Customer Engagement

Travel booking sites are destroying the airline industry..

The proliferation of travel booking sites like (travelocity, expedia, makemytrip, cleartrip, Yatra, etc) have reduced the airline industry to an industry competing purely on price and this is telling on the profitability of the industry. This so happens as price is the easiest way to compare multiple airlines. That coupled with the fact that most of the ticket bookings happen on these sites provides them with too much influence over the airline carriers and sets off the negative spiral of lower and lower prices for sectors. Result is that almost all the players in the industry are in the red. The airlines […]

Ideas

Relevance of large format events…

I have attended many large conferences, where there are 1000’s of attendees who participate. In my opinion, the reasons why someone would like to attend a conference could be: They seek information which can help them decide on a decision that they are currently deliberating. They want to network with others in the community. They want to network with key executives of the organizers so that they can finalize a deal or similar. Some combination of the above. Now, the questions to ask are the following: Which of the above is the main reason for the organizers to organize the […]

Customer Engagement

Let’s stop being a jerk

Today, I was flying from Bangalore to Mumbai in a 6Am flight operated by Indigo. There was a delay of 5 mins to start the boarding due to multiple reasons: There were not enough coaches to ferry the passengers to the aircrafts. The airline was boarding 3 flights simultaneously and looks like the capacity was only to board 2 flights. The security guard was late in arriving at the boarding gate. Though this was something that the airline needed to get right everytime to ensure customer satisfaction, I think a delay of 5 minutes was something we could make up. […]

Ideas

The myth of RoI for IT investments

What is the most important 2 words that you will hear when you listen to a salesman trying to sell an IT solution to a prospective customer? RoI – Return on Investment TCO – Total cost of ownership These are two holy cows that are omni-present in any investment. In my opinion, the time has now come to slaughter these holy cows, at least from an IT investment perspective. How many times have we seen that an organization is slow in adopting new technologies which have the potential to create substantial gains in the market place due to the consideration that their […]