Flipkart and Focus 4 - Beware the Whispering Death

The fourth part of my series on Flipkart and its apparent loss of Focus and its battle with Amazon appeared in DNA on April 20th, 2015.

Part 4 – Beware the Whispering Death
Monopolies may have the luxury of getting distracted. If you were a Microsoft in the 1990s, you could force computer manufacturers to pay you a MS-DOS royalty for every computer they sold, irrespective of whether the computer had a Microsoft operating system installed on it or not[1]. You dared not go against Microsoft, because if you did, it could snuff you out – “cut off the oxygen supply[2]”, to put it more evocatively. But if you are a monopoly, you do have to keep one eye on the regulator[3], which distracts you. If you are not a monopoly, you have to keep one eye on the competition (despite what Amazon may keep saying to the contrary, that they “just ignore the competition”[4]).

Flipkart and Focus 3 - There’s Something (Profitable) About Your Privacy

The third in my series on Flipkart and focus appeared in DNA on April 18th, 2015.

Part III – There’s Something (Profitable) About Your Privacy
Why do so many companies hanker after apps? Smartphone apps, tablet apps, iOS apps, Android apps, app-this, app-that….
Leave aside for a moment the techno-pubescent excitement that accompanies the launch of every new technology (if you are not old enough to remember words like “client-server[1]”, then “soa[2]” will surely sound familiar enough). Every Marketing 101 course drills into its students that acquiring a new customer is way costlier than retain an existing. Loyal customers (leaving aside the pejorative connotation the word “loyal” carries, implying that customers who shop elsewhere for a better deal are of dubious moral character) are what you should aspire to – that keep buying from you for a longer period of time[3] – and which allows you to refocus your marketing and advertising dollars towards the acquisition of newer customers, faster. If you spend less on unnecessary discounts and expensive retention schemes then margins from existing customers are automatically higher.

Flipkart and Focus - 2 - Mobile Advertising Numbers Can Be Misleading

The second part of my series of articles on why I believed Flipkart was at losing focus, at the wrong time, when faced with its most serious competition to date. This one focused on why a fascination with mobile advertising numbers could be very misleading.
It was published in DNA on April 14, 2015.


The Numbers Game Can be Very Misleading
According to the Internet Trends report of 2014, mobile internet advertising spend grew 47% year-on-year in 2013 to reach $12.7 billion, or 11% of the total global internet advertising spend. This mobile ad spend number was about 32 per cent of total mobile app revenues of $38 billion. Clearly mobile ad spend has been growing several times faster than non-mobile ad spend.
Facebook, the world’s largest social network, has been stunningly successful in growing its mobile revenues. So much so that “In the final three months of 2014, Facebook served 65% fewer ads than a year earlier, but the average cost of those ads to advertisers was 335% higher.[i]” As much as $2.5 billion in Facebook’s annual revenues came from these mobile ads – shown on smartphones or tablets. So successful has Facebook been in making money from selling these mobile ads that it “launched its in-app mobile ad network” in 2014[ii] to sell ads within other apps,

Tales from the Mahabharata - 10 - On Pollution

My post on what the Mahabharata says on pollution appeared in Swarajya Magazine on March 10, 2015.

Here is the original article:

Jayadratha comes across as a rather despicable character in the Mahabharata. He tried to kidnap Droupadi - his sister-in-law - while the Pandavas were in exile, and escaped with his life only because of Yudhishthira's intervention. During the war, on the thirteenth day, he held back the Pandava army from entering the formation - the chakra vyuha - that Drona had formed, and thus preventing help from reaching the beleaguered Abhimanyu. The Kaurava warriors ganged up against the lone teenager and killed him in a battle most unequal and most unfair.

Tales from the Mahabharata - 8 - The Most Well Laid of Plans

My eighth story from "Tales from the Mahabharata" - "The Best Laid Plans...", was published in the February 2015 print edition of Swarajya Mag.

Here is the link to the article, and the full article:
The Most Well Laid of Plans...

Failing to plan is planning to fail - so goes a much trite cliche. Karna however can certainly not be accused of failing to plan. He had a plan and a backup plan to take on Arjuna, his lifelong adversary.

That Karna and Arjuna were rivals is well known. That Karna got the chance to defeat four of the Pandavas in battle is also known. Only a promise made to Kunti, his mother, stopped him from finishing off these other Pandavas. "Other" as in all but Arjuna. Karna was clear that in an encounter between the two, only one would come out alive. The hostility between the two brothers was mutual and implacable. That fateful encounter took place on the seventeenth day on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Karna had prepared and prepared well for that encounter.