Personal blog of Prasad Ajinkya
As a technical architect and a start-up enthusiast, part of my work is consulting organizations on how to go about implementing and monetizing their ideas. The past decade’s experience of working in this field, as well as having successfully built the product and development teams of two start-ups (which secured VC fundings) ensures that a lot of people are willing to share their ideas so that I can advise them on the implementation.
Every technology that is embraced by the world goes through a process of adoption. Gartner instituted this as the hype cycle.
The hype cycle talks about how any technology goes through the process of being talked about, being heralded, being written off and finally being adopted in mainstream businesses.
The graph you see above you shows the x-axis as the different stages of technology adoption, starting from the trigger or the invention of that technology, to the expectations of that technology by the enthusiasts, to the stage where it is discarded by early adopters to being finally understood and put to good use by smart users.
Obviously on the y-axis you have the expectations of the world.
Gartner brings in a third dimension to this graph by indicating a time period on when the technology will be a mainstream one. In this graph for example, the Cloud Computing technology is supposed to go mainstream within the next 2 to 5 years. This was made in 2012, so to interpret it correctly we should say that Cloud Computing will be embraced by all around 2014. People who are following the news of Cloud Computing can relate to the Trough of Disillusionment!
The hype cycle represents the time when a certain technology gets adopted by businesses. So, it has different implications for different people.
Learn to work with this technology early on, preferably in the Slope of Enlightenment phase. It will open up doors to many career pathways. Learn technology while everyone else is learning and learn it fast!
Basing your product on a certain technology base will help your start-up catch the eyes of an investor. Your organization needs money and making the smart move to get the market talking about your technology adoption can get you that added PR. Keep an eye out for technologies lying in that Trough of Disillusionment phase, see how they can mesh with your product/services. Try a few prototypes, it’s well worth the efforts.
More often than not, you would be in charge of the operations team as well. In some few cases, you would also be the visionary of the organization (this should actually be your role). Try to find technologies which are about to hit the Plateau of Productivity and see which ones suit your requirements. It will bring efficiencies in your operations.
Keep in mind, that for most of these cases the idea would be to beat the competition in adopting a certain technology, so the focus would be on adopting the technology before it becomes mainstream.
Hype is after all extensive publicity. It is used to get the attention of people.
Bear in mind that if you do not want undue attention and if it is not broken, then you do not need to fix it.
However, some times you do get cues on possible disruptive technologies, be on top of those, since they have the potential to change your world. For e.g the way aeroplanes changed the shipping industry.
Sometimes all talk is still action!
I have always believed that a person can live off the internet. With virtual offices and office-less organizations being a reality now, one can operate perfectly without leaving their house. Having said that, ordering food online was not being done so well in India … yes there are many people who are trying to do this for quite some time now, however I believed no one had nailed the experience.
Until today!
I decided to give Foodpanda a try. The site features many restaurants in India with their menus. I went to find the nearby restaurants in Mumbai. You can choose to directly go to your favourite restaurant and start ordering, or you can provide your locality and area and find interesting joints from where you could order. All online.
I decided to discover places and found a place called Rocket Sandwiches … the prices were affordable and the menu looked great. After 10 minutes, I was done ordering and the order was confirmed!
The good part about the site is that the expectations and the wait time were given on the site for each of these restaurants. These wait times are fairly accurate and I was pleasantly surprised that the order arrived at my doorstep in the same amount of time.
Yes, there are a few of those!
All in all, I am going to keep using this site!
In the course of our lives, we create a large paper trail which we take with us as a means of identifying who we are, this trail involves
The list of paper documents we manage is endless … in fact as I am writing this, I know that there is one drawer-full of electricity bills in my house, all of my family members have a separate file for certificates and documents which is at least 2 inches thick. Despite of maintaining this growing trail of papers, when the time comes to fill taxes (which should have been a mundane task since I have been doing it for the past decade of my working life), I end up running around till the last-minute.
A paper storage and retrieval system which is messy at best and chaotic at the worst. I am not alone in this war against documents, businesses suffer the same problem as well. For start-ups, the first 5 years go in peace, in the sixth year though, there is a drastic need to get all of your papers in place. That includes TDS filings, bills for incidentals, purchase documents, sales receipts … the list goes on. So what is to be done?
Document Storage involves storage and management of important documents, records management for example or simple archival of the existing documents to be fetched at a later time. These solutions are also useful for governments, for example the UK government does use strong record management facilities to support their Freedom of Information requests from the citizens. However, FOI can only be useful where the document is actually stored, what about those documents which are destroyed? Some problems are beyond the scope of Document Storage :-)
What is important for us here is that sometimes maintaining and storing all these paper documents becomes an issue (in terms of space, in terms of finding the documents at the right time), and that’s why services which can effectively maintain these services are being founded and I find them just the solution for saving you (or your organization’s) paper trails.
I am a big fan of e-commerce and Indian e-commerce especially. Having worked in the web development field for more than a decade, and having seen multiple start-ups in the e-commerce and e-learning domains, I love the fact that this industry is still booming. What drives this is simple retail sales.
The sheer number of sites who have set up shop within the past two years is mind boggling. With large foreign multi-nationals also entering this market, the influx of money to the country has also strengthened the economy. Obviously with a limited number of consumers (although this is a significant number), and growing number of providers, the competition had to go up.
To battle competition, services and sites started providing deep discounts. Consumers started using these deep discounts to make spot purchases, which drew sales for different service providers.
So much was the power of these spot sales that multiple sites started aggregating these discount coupons and discount sites were born. Sites such as Cuponation.in have spawned and boosted the e-commerce market in the country.
Now why should a consumer like you and me visit a discount site like Cuponation?
The answer is simple, getting a sweet deal on a product which you otherwise would have bought at a full price!
This is like the NET50 coupon of Dominos which you keep handy whenever you want to buy a pizza … have your cake and eat it too!
So why should a service provider look at registering on such sites … hmmm … to be honest, at a business level, you have to start thinking about the cost of sales of an individual customer versus the cost of a discount. If for a 1000 INR product, my cost of sales is INR 160, then I am more than happy to provide a 10% discount on that product since that would drive up my sales.
Another way of looking at this matter is if the contribution (revenues – costs) is positive and I am looking only at the revenues (in which case most likely I am VC funded ;-) ), then I would want a sales promotion like this to drive up my sales.
So it’s a win-win deal. The end customer is getting a good deal on a product he wants to buy, the seller is getting higher sales, and the intermediary (Cuponation in our case) is getting the commissions.
I have been working for the past decade or so, and almost always in the Technology department, in fact, I have headed this department in at least 3 different companies yet. In all these organizations, I hand picked and built the entire team from scratch, was involved in mentoring and training them as well. Yes, I am a technology geek and I am loving it!
Being a geek means having strong opinions about those things … when it comes to technology, yes I like to have a perspective about it from different view points. Notice the difference between opinion and perspective … the earlier has to do something with ego and may not be an open framework of mind to work with, the later is a bit more open and helps you broaden your views. This is one such post … my view about technology has been broadened … when I came to read Srinivas V.’s blog about Technology: A Citizenship Perspective. It’s an interesting perspective to technology, here’s an excerpt –
Technology enables us at three levels.
At the first, surface level, technology is a tool, a convenience, a method of doing things faster, with less effort, more accurately, etc. Using technology as a tool, we can achieve tremendous savings in terms of human effort and removal of drudgery.
At the second, deeper level, technology transforms into an enabler of scale and multiplied capacity to serve. Using technology as a scale enabler we can provide access to millions, provide anywhere-anytime support, etc.
At the third, deepest level, technology becomes an engine for human and social transformation. Technology then transforms man’s possibilities, man’s power to contribute, man’s ability to significantly change the equation between him and traditional systems of delivery and control.
Ahh … it can be a mindful to go through the entire bit, the original post is even lengthier (and I would advise that you read through it atleast a couple of times before you decide to comment!).
So, we all know that an ipod is essentially an mp3 player. It helps us to listen to music that we want to listen to. This would be technology as a tool. If we get stuck here, then we would end up harping about processes, methodologies and functionality.
If we go to the next level, then this same functionality which was being done for 1-2 people now needs to be done for a 1000. It should scale. If we are at this problem … then you are handling scalability. We would end up talking about uptime, users, requests per unit time and so forth. This is a numbers game, how many more can I handle – that’s the question that you would end up asking your system.
The third level that’s being discussed changes the way we normally do things. Apple changed the way we listen to music, Google changed the way we use email, Facebook is pretty much dictating what we do online in our idle time. Technology that changes you.
To be honest, my initial response was to disagree with this, however think about it. When people work on a technology … the approach they are taking decides which level the technology will go to. If they build it to work, it will be a tool. If they build it to scale, it will be a scalable tool. If they build it to change lives, it will be a transformative tool. Most of the awesome products that we know, were created with the change in mind. Not functionality, not scalability … but change. And change they did.
If you have missed out on the Badi Badi Baatein ad which has been running on the television for quite some time now, do check it out. I am embedding the ad below as well (I love the melody and the jingle … not to mention that sometimes I do identify with the procrastination tendencies as well!!)
OLX is the india classifieds of the internet. Where people go to the site for searching good deals, selling their stuff or even offering professional services.
The market for local online market places is heating up. The once free model of Craig’s List has suddenly seemed more viable and profitable by a lot of Indian players. However, do not worry, the local marketplace model is not only Badi Badi Baatein … there is huge money in this business.
Well, lead harvesting for one. Providing correct information to the people seeking it for another. Essentially creating a marketplace where otherwise there was only ignorance.
Where else would I go for finding a second hand slightly used Samsung Galaxy SIII for INR 20000?
As I said before there are multiple players in this game … but I feel of the lot, OLX is different.
With a clean User Interface (UI), simpler forms and very easy user experience, I have found that OLX is the easiest to operate. Yes, I do use the site for promoting my companies offerings in the different targeted cities.
The good part about the OLX site is that when my ad goes beyond the listing due to inactivity, I get reminded via an email … clicking on the email automatically logs me in and lets me edit my listing. This way, I can fine tune my listing and hope to generate more business.
Success is not only defined on how well the website looks … if you have gone through any of the different and varied category/city listings on OLX, you will suddenly see a plethora of different listings … people wanting to purchase something or the other, people offering services … the perfect online souk.
In any market, there initially is a lot of people who are shouting and vending their wares … over a period of time as the market matures, the successful businesses buy out the lesser successful ones and the market quietens down. And from there a clear leader emerges. I won’t be too surprised if OLX is among those leaders of online local marketplaces in the future.
The fact that they have received their Series A funding simply goes to point out that people are willing to put their money where their mouth is and that this business is a profitable one.