Zomato Feedback 2.0

Zomato, the India grown restaurant listing site that has now gone big-time international has asked for feedback again. Here's my shot at it.

The Good:
The new design that was launched to keep up with international standards is beautiful. Less clutter and yet as much useful. The things that are new and I like most are:

1.Tips for a restaurant - Take a look at this restaurant. The tips mentioned for the restaurant are so perfect and you don't even need to read all reviews to understand the best that the place has to offer.

2. Reviews Sorting: Allowing the users to sort based on reviews on the date, rating and credibility makes the reviews actually useful for users. It's no longer about going through multiple reviews trying to find the latest/trustable ones.

3. Social Recommendations - Restaurants that have been rated high by my friends have been shown as recommendation from my friends. I like the transposition of high rating to recommended. Going beyond the number and putting a stamp of approval. This is a very useful feature for influencing user's decisions.

4. Management response on reviews: This restaurant's reviews have reply from the management of the restaurant. Not only does it help to know both sides of the story but adds a constructive layer of feedback for the ecosystem they are thriving on.

5. The New Mobile App - The new app is has some very useful UI changes. Most importantly the maps interface. The earlier maps in footer was kind of cluttering the page. A different tab for the maps is a welcome change. The filter and sorting interface is also little more easier to use.

What I Love: Easter-eggs and communication. 
They are so good at communicating and putting hidden messages everywhere. Here are some examples.

1. Zomato's font face is named "ZomatoIsHiring".

2. Their twitter bio states - "less than 5% promo tweets" - does a lot good when other brands are flooding your timeline with self promos. 

3. Facebook updates: Their cartoonish updates facebook are really something to look forward. Engaging and worth sharing. It's just not another promo in the time line. 

4. Taking a stand: The Gurgaon pub fiasco made the Zomato team respond and the CEO looked into it directly. That says a lot about a company that is in the business of telling the good from the bad. 


The Bad:
1. Auto suggest on search - High time they get a list of locations, restaurants and cuisines in the auto suggest of the search. Typing the whole query is just too old world.

2. Best menu items at a place - As parts of the Tips, they should dig out data of best menu items to try from user reviews. Zomato must be having enough data to tell me a must try item on the menu.

3. Personalized recommendation - This is extension of the social recommendation may be. Zomato knows what kind of restaurants I have been looking at in the past few months including my budget, neighborhood, drink/no drinks preference, veg/non-veg preference. Yet, the recommendation on the app is just too random. Can't they give me a list of 5 restaurants I could choose from? And get atleast 3 of those 5 restaurants good enough for me check out the menu.

4. Time based rating - The restaurants rating are aggregate over a lifetime, what would really help to know is the rating over the last 30 days / 90 days / lifetime. Every time the staff of a restaurant changes, there is a change is food and service. The ratings should reflect that change.

Good to add
Part of "The bad" but these things are more of an added feature I would like to see over time that would make the application even more useful.

1. Cuisine Listing - Cuisine filter has too broad categories now. "North Indian" is just too many differnet kinds of food. It would be helpful if they could have narrow filters for Marwadi, Gujarati, Afghani cuisine. Even for south India, there are too varied tastes between Kerala / Tamil Nadu / Karantaka / Andhara. Update - I just noticed this is there but on the web app you have to type to find this. On the mobile app this is available to see in the filters.

2. Collections of the best - I would love to see a curated list of best restaurants for dating, best restaurants for hanging out with friends, best kids friendly restaurant. This will make the decision making so much easier. The current "hangout with friends" options on homepage is just a renaming for "cafes", that doesn't really help much.
This way Zomato will also have more badges to show for the restaurant. This is something similar to what TripAdvisor does for hotels. The restaurants will love to flaunt that.

3. Catering - The whole section is half-hearted effort. There is no decision one can make looking at the catering section. This section is new so it's too early to make a verdict, but Zomato is mature enough to not launch such half cooked features. What I would expect is a sample menu. Tell me what I can get for the given price. Give me different price points and the corresponding menu. Information about the dishes they use will also be helpful. Do I get disposable plates or Chandi ki Thali (silverware)?

4. Encourage people to rate a place. - When I login after a week, show me a widget with list of restaurants for which I checked out the menu earlier and ask me to rate them. When I do, ask me to write a review as well. This way there is a high chance of getting a hit of the right restaurant that I visited. How else would you make me go to the same restaurant's page again?

5. Facebook friends - I just noticed I have 129 FB friends on Zomato but never have I received a single alert about a review or rating from them. I believe instead of making the user explicitly follow FB friends on Zomato, make it default and let the user opt out. No its not spam, just a matter of default options.

6. Data - Minimum Amount for Home delivery - A lot of restaurants don't accept low value orders for delivery. Calling up multiple restaurants on a lonely famished evening only to find out that they won't deliver that little is too painful and embarrassing, providing this data is as useful as "Cost For 2".

7. Data - Private events - A lot of restaurants have special packages for birthday's / corporate parties. Having this data will be useful. This is somewhere between dining out and catering.

8. Data - Seasonal / festive guides - I want to order sweets for Diwali gifting. Where do I start? Navratra fasting - where do I go? A seasonal / festive guide that covers such situations would be very useful. Treat this on the lines of New Year Party listings that Zomato has been doing already. Needs editorial efforts but it will be able to payoff for itself. This might be covered with the point #2 mentioned above.

9. Increase CTR of ads - I am not really convinced with the way Zomato shows ads. Not showing sponsored listings in the search results may be good, but on the other hand it reduces returns for the advertiser. A matching result that is sponsored, isn't a bad thing to show, assuming the place has good ratings. Even in the current banner ad format, showing ratings, location and social endorsement will increase the effectiveness of the ads. Location will help the user, social endorsement will help the advertiser and ratings will help maintain the platform's credibility.


As someone trying to build a product company, what I like most is their their focus and execution. I LOVE their focus of doing one thing. And doing it so well that they could take it international. 

On Being A Passionate, Shameless Entrepreneur And Creating Your Luck

I was speaking to someone about the problems at FindYogi and the challenges that I am facing. During the conversation the person cut me short and declared, "may be you were just lucky with Freecharge". He was referring to the exponential growth we got at Freecharge, that I keep boasting about, but am not able to replicate with FindYogi.

I re-looked at this answer I wrote for a friend. I realised I was indeed lucky with Freecharge. How could a startup grow so much so fast otherwise?

Though what that answer doesn't tell you is the number of failed marketing attempts that we made, or how many times we wrote to people to write about us on their blogs or newspaper/magazine columns, or how many months we had to wait for approvals from telecom operators, or how many times we got rejected by payment gateways. All the external dependencies fell flat in the first attempt and yet we kept trying shamelessly. We pitched to every person who, we thought, could bring us more users. I tried everything that I had ever read about startup marketing and I was lucky that some of it worked.

That was the first real thing that I was working on, nobody really knew me and I had no reputation to keep. Yes, I was lucky because I was shamelessly trying. I did not have the mental boundary of expectations to carry.

As kids we are not raised that way. We are constantly reminded of "woh kya kahega", "woh kya sochega" for trying everything that we are not 100% sure of. But when you are passionate about something all that just does not matter.

Next time when you fear from failing at something give it some thought. Is it because you aren't really passionate about that thing? Is it because you believe that the reputation that you have today is bigger than the probability of success you want to have for tomorrow?

A lot of startup founders I see rarely talk about their own product on social media. Some of them don't feel great about what they are chasing and others have set a mental boundary of what greatness is. The greatness is the passion. It is like dancing in a baraat at an Indian wedding. People dance not because they are great at it but because they really feel great about that occasion.

A lot of people haven't put in their 100% into it. They still want to save onto something for the swim back. They don't know why they are running. They don't know where they want to go. They are not trying because they don't believe it is good enough to pursue. It's like they are running for the cheer but what they don't realise is that people actually cheer when you run passionately.

Two examples of this from people I know: 

Avlesh- Co-Founder of Webengage - Every tweet of his has a single goal, to sell his product. Do people call it spam? Yes, if he was not passionate about it, the tweets would be as bad as spam. But people are sold to his passion. I have seen how his number of followers have grown on twitter. His passion is contagious and no, it's not spam. People love cheering him because he loves running.

Annkur - Co-founder of Pricebaba - He executed a campaign to convince Google to name the recently launched version of Android as Kaju Katli. His failure was announced by Google last week, it's called KitKat. But he did not care. He started campaigning for the next version to be called Ladoo. He might succeed. Though I think he has already succeeded partially, because this time people are cheering him and campaigning for a cause he started. People don't bother about what you failed at earlier or what you attempted. If you really want to make something happen and your actions exhibit your passion, they will join you.

You have to be shameless to try things and ask for help like it is your last breath. For that, your passion to make it happen needs to be as big as the passion for your body to breathe. There is no second thought.

Here's something that happened to me few months back. I always believed I was good at SEO but the traffic on FindYogi did not reflect that. Last couple of months I have asked a lot of people for help with SEO. I have written to every person I think has even a little knowledge about it. I had to swallow my pride for that but that's OK. It wasn't easy but hey, I couldn't care less about what people would think about my knowledge when my product can't breathe to life. What I am making has to be bigger than the pride I carry now for what I have done till date.

A note to that person: I was not lucky, I created my luck. I tried hard shamelessly and created enough opportunities to be lucky. This time around though, it seems I might be carrying some extra baggage I need to let go off.

Bringing Something To Existence

Some random discussion with teammates and family has made me think over what I have achieved in the 4 years of working. I haven't earned money. My ESOPs aren't converting to cash any time soon. I have definitely built some relations, that are very helpful with my current startup.

Though what I really like to talk about is the fact that I was materialistic in bringing something to existence.

That one feeling is very strong and I believe that is something no one can takeaway. The money can be momentary. The relations can die if not nurtured well. But knowing that you have the ability to create something does a whole lot good to you than anything else. And now it's merely about repeating the same efforts, albeit in a different environment.

I believe everyone has the ability to create something, even if it is a 300 words of reading material, but a lot of people won't do it until they know exactly what they would get in return. A lot of times people leave out opportunity due to fear of getting lesser cash than they think the work effort deserves. Money is good but it just cannot replace the feeling that you get from creating.

I try thinking about work first and then the money. That has helped me. As much as possible, I haven't let money decide the work, before I start working. I have had bad aftertaste at times but then again, I got the opportunity to create.

1. I worked for $5/day at my first company because I wanted to understand how things work.
2. In my second company I did not have major part of my compensation decided till 8th month of work.
3. In one other company the papers and part of the total money came in very late - and with surprises.
4. I wouldn't have written so much about startups had I worried about money. The day I did, I stopped. I now realise how bad that was.

Had I worried about all this, I would be richer by couple of hundred thousand rupees. That is good money for most of us. The feeling, though, that I now carry, is priceless.

I have seen a lot of friends, colleagues and family members going back to doing what they were doing because the change wasn't materialistically rewarding. Almost all the time I find them struggling to enjoy the extra million they made.

All this while I have only had people encouraging me to secure the money first. Had I listened to them I wouldn't have been the same.

Anyways, gotta go back to work. Happy creating!

Zomato - The Good, Bad and More

Zomato, the app for foodies, asked for some feedback for their site and mobile app. Here's what I have to say.

I will try not focusing on the business decisions like expanding to multiple cities, offering discounts, table booking etc. User experience it is for now.

Good features:

Following are some good features that are part of the basic product and doesn't need to be talked about much.

• Updated phone numbers
• Menu's for almost all places
• usable geo-tagging
• good pics
• timings data - "now open" feature is a good filter option. 

What I really like:

1. Microtagging - Even before I get to Zomato.com the Google search result for Zomato tells me more about the restaurant than any other site. They have used microtagging well to show "price for 2" as well. This one data point is the most important decision factor (I am a marwadi! :P).

2. Representation of features via icons on the listing/search page. Easy to understand icons around veg/non veg., delivery, bar, credit card etc.

3. Truthful about data availability. No SEO greed. For restaurants where Menu is not available the menu tab is not shown at all. A lot of others sites would add that tab for the sake of fetching SEO traffic and then say "Menu not available". The same is also conveyed on the search result page by removing the menu icon.

4. Data granularity in "Price for 2" - When the site says "price for 2" - it clearly mentions "without alcohol" which adds value to information but what is even more commendable is that they mention whether VAT, Service charges are applicable. Given the fact that these extras add around 25% more to your bill, its good to know in advance. Though, they need to consider Service Tax as well here. 

Tip - Add that to any liquor-serving air-conditioned place. 

Remarkable stuff: 

Stuff that may not affect a lot of users but the product designer has put some thought behind it. 

1. Right click on logo gives you an option to download the logo. Good for Media/bloggers.

2. No Google Ads- It's not easy to give away that temptation for any business. Not having those mostly irrelevant Google ads adds to the user experience. Direct banner ads of restaurants makes more sense.

3.  The Delhi homepage has "Upcoming Events" section above "Featured User Review" which is vice-versa for Bangalore. I am guessing there is a good amount of A/B testing happening.

What I don't like (Needs Improvement):

1. User ratings - The current state doesn't add much value. Make multiple categories for the review - Food, Service, Ambience etc.. This helps me decide whether this place is good for a date (ambience) or for treating hungry college friends (food).

Also categorize the ratings with time as "All Time Rating" and "Last 100 days ratings". Considering last years rating with the same weightage as yesterday's rating for Service or Food may not be helpful as the complete staff may have changed by now.

2. Summarize the review - I don't have all the time in the world to read 500 words of gastronomic affairs. Manu, for example, writes long reviews. Can't you tell me the gist of it? I believe there are open source summarization libraries available, a bit of algo refinement might be required but this isn't very tough. Do this and talk about it in social media, it will also help you hire better when college kids see that you are making an "engineering" product and not just another web application.

Also, "what is this restaurant famous for?" or "A must try" in this restaurant should be part of the review as separate fields.

Ofcourse, increasing the number of fields for a review can be a tricky trade off as this will add a friction for reviewer. A nice set of "optional" fields might help. Or may be again do some data engineering and pickout keywords from the detailed textual review, the way Babajob does.

3. Click to call - For some restaurants the number is mentioned on the site with an ext. number. You are adding an extra step for me to reach the restaurant. At times when I only need the number to book, or I have seen the restaurant on Zomato earlier, I prefer going to JustDial for the number.

Why not give a Click-to-call feature? Too costly I guess. It also kind of competes with table booking services and I am not sure if as a business you want to go that way. Given the fact that you are already doing Phantom numbers or ext. number based system, click to call only doubles the variable cost in short term but might give you bargaining power with your vendor as benefit around economies of scale kicks in.

That said, fake calls and verifying numbers before connecting could create another problem to solve. In the current state you are able to capture the call duration and user's number so your benefits are covered but user is left under-served. May be using the Facebook connect and only connecting the mobile number mentioned on FB profile might help. This could work as an incentive to connect FB profile to Zomato and then a hell lot of Social rich features could kick in.

Oh, you need to consider the fact that a lot offices don't allow FB access and alot of your lunch time usage happens from office. Tricky stuff.

4. Option Filters in search page- The current state of filters is not much usable. The filters mis-behave at times by either not allowing to choose 2 mutually exclusive options or not refining options based on current selection.

For example, when I select "Veg restaurant in Bangalore with live music" it does not let me filter out for bar. All options are disabled. The listing says that there are restaurants with and without bar for this filter but wouldn't let me narrow down.

On the other hand when I select "Happy hour restaurant in Bangalore" it still asks me for Bar/No Bar. Shouldn't it consider "Bar Present" by default? Happy hour is a sub feature of Bar.

There are other such cases of options being disabled/enabled without much intelligence.

Also, the pop-up for cuisine, location and cost is irritating. May be a slide ruler for cost and auto suggest text box with proximity search for location might help. This needs some extensive study.

5. Restaurant address on the listing/search result page is incomplete. I am guessing this is to keep more white space in the middle region and reduce clutter. Also, may be to increase page views. In either case, making me click once more to see the address is bad usability.

 May be you should show the locality along with restaurant name on top and then the rest of the address below. Example - Mention  "Pizza Hut, Saket" instead of only "Pizza Hut" and show rest of the address without "Saket" below.
Tip- This is also better for SEO as you would have different anchor tags for same restaurant at different locations.

6. Keyword based search is bad -  Provide auto suggest in keyword search as well. Atleast the restaurant names and "cuisine in locality" kind of pages should be indexed in the auto suggest. This will also help you serve better results in queries like "Italian in Koramangala". This is a standard search term but the current search algo uses "in koramangala" as a search phrase and looks for occurrences in review, which is kind of dumb. Ideally, "in" should be ignored. If auto suggest is used smartly, you may not need to use NLP to serve such queries better.

7. Banner ads do not add any value - Should be standardized, like Facebook. This is to make sure they add some value as well. Basic info like cuisine, cost, location should be mentioned. If an advertiser falls under my search result, they should be given more visibility to make sure the ad is as relevant as possible. I currently see random images in ads, in some cases the restaurant name is also not readable. Info mentioned above could be shown on mouse-over atleast.

8. Navigation - "Events" link is missing in the top menu bar. User has to scroll down every time on homepage to get to events page. The menu bar on Events page shows link to Restaurants page but vice versa is not true. Not sure if there's a business sense behind that.

9. The slide show on the top of Events Homepage (I checked for Bangalore and NCR ) is kind of irritating/confusing. It is probably hard coded to show 2 sets of slides in a series. With only 1 or 2 items put up on the slide show, I currently see both slides of same item in a single view. Look at the following image to understand this.

10. Data credibility - This restaurant is trending at #5 based one spam review (as seen on 14th Oct 2012). You have to make sure any restaurant featured in the trending list of the week has more data/review/rating to justify that. Specially if it is mentioned on the homepage of the city. Trending list is a very authoritative feature, don't play around with it.

Few Features That Will Enhance The Site Further

1. Restaurant Trending list -  Break down the restaurant trending list according to restaurant type.
Example - On Punjabi by Nature 
What I see - "#3 in Bangalore this week"
What you could show me more - "#1 North Indian Restaurant in Bangalore", "#1 in South Bangalore"

This wold surface more restaurant on a popular list and give an incentive to more restaurant owners to talk about this leaderboard on social media or at the restaurant.

2. Breakdown the reviewers Leaderboard further by type of restaurant. Show "Best reviewers in veg food", "best for bars", "best for five star places" etc. Idea is to surface more users and let them talk about it in social media. In the current state, new users would never be able to make it to the top of that list. May be make that list time dependent as well.

3. Facebook connect - No use elaborating on this. There is lot to be done that you might already be thinking of. Tripadvisor could be a reference point on how to make best use of it. Currently everything is hidden behind a signup button. There is more to be done before that.

4. Reviews - Only show selected reviews on the info page of the restaurant. Lot of unique content is good but it will also reduce the keyword weightage from an SEO point of view.
For example - If you look at the reviews of the top users for this restaurant, the restaurant name is not mentioned in most of the reviews. The review is adding about 300-400 extra words to the page without mentioning your target keyword even once. May be you should put a header like "Naman's review for Punjabi By Nature posted on 23rd July". This makes sense for user and adds the keyword as well.

Also, in the current state the Review page has only duplicate content from Info page. Since you are giving a dedicated URL to review page it would help (for SEO) to not repeat the content from Info page.

5. Search Results on a Map - This is something similar to what Commonfloor is attempting now for property search and Ixigo has been doing for quite sometime for Hotel search. Let the user point his current location on a map and say "restaurants within 2 KMs from this point." Although this is a feature particularly for mobile but at times people, specially in office, use the Zomato website and try to figure out if the place is close to office. Looking at textual addresses one by one is not really productive. Costly feature + low usage, shouldn't be a priority but will set you apart from competition. Shouldn't be tough for you as you already have geo-tagged data. 

6. Mascot - You should consider having a mascot. Authoritative stuff like trending list, Foodie Leaderboard etc. coming from a mascot will give you higher brand recall by giving a "personality" to the brand. 

7. Listen to twitter - A good number of users tweet one line reviews of restaurants on twitter. A lot times they mention @zomato in their tweet. These could be directly indexed on that restaurant's page. Allow twitter connectivity to Zomato and you may not need to depend on @zomato being mentioned in the tweet. 

Mobile App:

I don't use mobile much. Used Zomato app only a couple of times. The following details are from the Andorid App. 

What I liked:

1. Search page - The distance from current location and color coded rating is nicely done with good visibility. Mentioning the locality along with restaurant name on the search page itself is useful.

2. Navigation - The buttons are well sized and every link that you want to click is well placed. Unlike other apps, I don't need to click the home button always and start all over again.

This is specially useful when you try using the search result > filters > cuisine type. This action is divided on 3 screens but a collapsed form of all 3 screens is visible when you are typing the cuisine. You are never lost. 

3. Click to call - The ext. number for the restaurant is dialled in single click with a comma already placed with the number. Solves the usability problem mentioned earlier for the website. 

I did not like:

1. Restaurants with events - This data is not covered on the app. The whole events thing is missing from the app.

2. Filters with 0 results - Incase when a filter results in 0 matching results, user should be prompted to change search criteria. Or automatically show the next best thing. Currently, the user finds nothing to click and might end up quitting the app. 

3. "Distance from current location" on info sceen - This data is not provided on the restaurant's info screen. This is specially important when I am shown a random restaurant from the "Instant Recommendation" link. 

Would enhance the app further. 

1. Location Aware - Notifications like "3 Zomato users are in this restaurant right now" gives a lot of credibility to your app. I am guessing this would be a battery sucker due to regular monitoring but may be this feature should be turned on only at certain time of the day when you expect more people to be out for Dinner/Lunch. These are like auto checkins that can judge the popularity of restaurant. Analytics around what is the avg. turn around time per table at a restaurant could be a good sellable data. 

That's about it. All in all a good usable product with a neat focus. 

How I learnt driving...

I have been driving daily without assistance for a month now. Driving has been a challenge for me, for the fact that I first tried driving about 10yrs ago in 10th standard and till date i have taken 4 full time driving classes, 3 of which were paid.

But how I learnt driving is pretty interesting.

1. I have my own car, it is an old second hand car, so did not have to worry about accidental loss much. The risk is calculated. All this while I would be worried more about accidents then actually driving.

2. I have a real need. Till now all procrastination wasn't hurting as I would be at home only for few days and would either have my brother drive me or get my dad's driver. Worst case, I would take a rickshaw which was even cheaper. In Bangalore though, I don't have that luxury and rickshaws are mostly costlier than self drive.

3. I knew where to drive. All this time whenever I drove I never knew the directions, I was trying to solve 2 problems at the same time - how to take a turn and where to take a turn. I wouldn't be prepared for the route and would end up passing the turn and then panic.

4. I wasn't driving too often until now. This thing needs practice on real roads. You can't be driving in a park, once a week and expect to learn. You have to turn up everyday for a date with the beast.

5. I was on my own and felt cheated. The last driving lesson I took was a deal that "The instructor would make me perfect in 7 days". What he really meant was, "He would be available only for seven days, whether I turn up for the lessons or not, whether I learn to drive or not." On the 7th day he came to me and said the course is over and his fee is due. I had taken only 3 classes in those 7 days.  I understood the terms only then, felt cheated and  then I decided to give it a try without instructor, just to make up for my sunk cost.

What I have realised is driving a car is so much like starting up. There are as many things in your control and the same number of external dependencies. I read somewhere that driving is not about controlling the steering wheel but about predicting what will happen next on the road. I think the same applies to business as well. One who can predict what will happen next in the market, can control it.

Though I might sound childish but sometimes it amazes me how millions of people use the same road without talking to each other and without hurting each other, yet they all reach their destinations. Discipline can do so much better to everyone.

Of GM Diet, Nasscom and Fresh Beginnings

Now that I mostly blog on Pluggd.in, i thought of converting this space into a personal blog. Though blogs are always suppose to be personal but I mean things particularly about myself. This will also hopefully help me keep up my writing habbit and archive whatever extra stuff is going on in my head. Hoping to make it a regular affair.

Last week was particularly interesting for me. I see myself growing on personal front. I practiced the GM Diet in the past 7 days. It started with a push from my one of my teammates at work and I thought of really giving it a try, more to test my perseverance than to prove anything else. I read some bit online and then felt encouraged when it said "lose 10-17 lbs in 7 days". For the past few months my growing weight was my most bothering issue so I thought of giving it a try.

It started on an easy note with having soup at my own birthday treat. Over the week, more than feeling hungry the tough part was ignoring all the free food at NASSCOM Product Conclave. I am a big fan of elaborate buffet spread and even a bigger fan of free lunches. Add Paneer, Pasta and Gulab Jamun to the menu and I would kill for it.

So the big question is, after all the hard effort of keeping away from temptations, was it worth? Though I did not measure but I feel like having lost about 5KGs and am wearing my belt 2 holes shorter, that is about 1.5 inches. I am definitely walking faster and effortlessly. Earlier even 1KM would cause leg pain but now it's better. The diet left a severe headache. It's been 1 day since the diet ended and I had my regular food today but still the headache persists. I just wrote to a friend who was asking about the weight loss:

"GM Diet. Not recommended though. Unlike popular belief the side effects are there. This is more like buying insta noodles if you are too hungry, helps but not healthy."

I called mom to share about the weight loss, expecting that she would be happy. To my dismay she already knew about this "popular 7 day diet that a lot of people had tried but put on weight at a greater speed later". Given that my mom herself is overweight and generally doesn't read alot I thought she would never know about such "diet stuff" but I should have known, she's my mom. She did surprise me though.

One other important event last week was NASSCOM Product Conclave. Important because it changed how I looked at things and at myself, a lot at that. And of course, for the tech. startup industry in India this is the biggest event. I wanted to attend the event for obvious reasons and given that ZipDial was being used there meant being there all 2 days, on duty.

An evening before the event I was called for the organizing committee meeting. I thought it would be only 3-4 people checking on ZipDial's preparedness and solving some last minute issues. I not a big fan of in-person meetings. In fact i hate it. Detailing and cross checking should always happen over emails and in group of two, never more. On reaching there I found out it was the whole organizing committee present there. One of members I was suppose to meet asked me wait outside this meeting room. Given that I was late by a good 25 mins, I also did not feel like entering the meeting room. The meeting was at Vivanta by Taj. There were well groomed waiters carrying heavy kettles and cups into the room. Few old people, 40-50yrs of age, typically looking like government babus walking in and out of the room. I could hear loud laughs from inside. Nothing of it looked like a serious meeting. A typical govt. org. meeting in a big hotel where no one is concerned about real work. All that I had ever heard about NASSCOM was all happening and every bit of that was negative. I was still outside the room, seating on a comfortable couch, trying to look busy into my blackberry and my back turned towards the room.

After few minutes I entered the room. I felt comfortable seeing a known face. A little later i realized this wasn't a status check or detailing meeting but more to raise team spirits. No one was working inside, they were having fun doing a rehearsal of roles. Mocking at each other. And most importantly, having fun. That is what team meetings are meant for. After I left the room, I felt really low of my momentary thoughts. A typical judging the book by its cover.

Over the next 2 days, I had to work almost 14-15hrs. This was testing my stamina. I was hungry and working for about 15hrs a day. None of which i hard tried lately and both together for the first time after the first server crash at Freecharge. This helped me gain more respect for myself.

I attended few session and they were useful. The sessions that I had least expectation from delivered the most and vice versa. Particularly two people from the ecosystem whom I respected ended up talking about "I, me and myself" only.

One of the sessions was suppose to be aired on the The Starting Up Show on ET Now. The same show that I had been on last year. The session included a live audience pitch by 3 shortlisted startups. One of the startups was Kabutar. A simple app to share pics to announce "What's happening right now". I was amazed to see that the Indian audience, VCs and so called angel investors disgusted the app after the session. Even going to the extent of saying, "it is a silly app that someone can make over a weekend". It can be made over weekend is true but silly by no means. It is as silly as twitter, a multi-billion dollar valuation company that the same VCs and investors would die to get a pie of. I think this is one reason we don't have world capturing products from India. Nobody understands emotion based apps. Even after phenomena like Twitter no one is able to see through it. The adaption of such apps have to be driven by ecosystem in early days but the stickiness is huge. One non-Indian judge gave it full 10 but everyone else is still looking for "real business". I wish they could understand the concept of "shakti as motivation" for product adoption that Dr. Devdutt Patnaik shared in the much applauded session just minutes earlier. I would really appreciate if someone could point a genuine feature issue in the app. Disgusting the concept is just being shortsightedly cynical.

Overall the event was end to end perfect. Everything that you expect from such an event was there. Inspiration, learning, networking, punctuality, detailed management, good food(it seemed so and that's what everybody else said), free booze, glamour, TV interviews, et. al.

Nothing about NASSCOM that i had ever heard was happening. The negative image that I had was tarnished. Also, whatever I had heard about the management abilities of one of the key members of NASSCOM was all true. He is simply superb. Simple and Super.

One of the teammates at pluggd.in always advocated that we were not in an eco-system but in an echo-chamber. He was right. Guess it is time i set myself free of it. I need to experience things myslef before concluding on it. I need to see things with fresh perspective.

The takeaway was that a lot of my apprehensions were holding me back. I need to give things a chance. I need to give myself a chance. Things change. Your self-apprehension and the echo-chamber never lets you experience the change.

After a changed outlook, I did one other thing that I was scared of. I lent money to a friend. My past experience hasn't been good. One friend had returned a loan after 10 months instead of the promised 4. Another one is still to return, it's been 11 more months from the promised 2 months. The amount is 5x this time but I somehow trust this new friend more than the old ones.

I also started a weekend project with a couple of friends. Too early to comment on what will happen with it. 

The new Indian TV. Quality content still rules

Its been long since saas-bahu family drama from the Ekta Kapoor clan lost its mark on Indian TV. The family dramas are still alive but new dramas are more realistic. They talk about real life, real situation in real language. Nothing made up. Colors rode on such soaps to number one and has mostly maintained that stand.

On the other hand the reality shows are doing really bad mostly owing to the air time being skewed to show more of judges' comments and anchors' explanation and less of real content. India's Got Talent was a no nonsense show that did not get enough news channel coverage but still kept audience glued.
Emotinal Atyachar is one other show that shows more of the participants and not the moderators. And is doing pretty good.

Audience likes original content and not repetitive and weak space fillers. Controversial stunts might get you eye balls and PR but not enough to retain them. In the long run its kills you. Remember Roadies, Saregama? All brilliant when started but moderators have taken over the participants, the real content creators. More talk, less action. 
Same thing on web. The blogs with most subscribers are ones that make a point and shut up. No pretext. No futuristic predictions.
Quality always rules for the ones who matter.

You work for someone else!?...

"You work for someone else!?". That is what my school time friend asked over a chat when i discovered him on Facebook last week. Next question was, "How much do you earn?". I answered and there came another question, "Per month or per annum?".

He found it amazing that a guy who belonged to a business family like mine would ever work for someone else and that too for that kind of money. For once he even put me into thinking but then i am confident of what i was doing.

But for some reason his statement, "You work for someone else!?" seems to be stuck with me for the past one week, hope it passes away soon.

Just wondering, if Entrepreneurship was a brand would this statement be the perfect tagline for it. Is it strong enough or insulting enough to provoke you to make a shift?

India is Sexually Frustrated (Reassured)

I have been blogging at Pluggd.in for quite some time now. While the general reader base is intellectually sound and appreciates good writeups but then most of such articles get lost after 2-3 days. Surprisingly, one of the the articles that i wrote just out of fun has got the most attention. The article was on SavitaBhabhi changing into Kirtu. 3 months into writing this piece, it is my most searched article, week after week. More so it is one of the top articles on pluggd.in on most days. This is getting me a lot of readers but not really the kind i want.

My latest piece was a review of KuLacak-a GPS tracker from Indonesia. Took me 6 hrs, as Indonesia is a completely unknown territory. Hopefully readers would bother to comment on it. It was thrown to me by Arvind all of a sudden but i enjoyed the 6 hrs invested. Actually, it was the Pizza that i was enjoying.

Happy blogging to me!

PS: Would you have read this post if it had a non-sexual title?

Tax on Taste

Went for the monthly grocery shopping yesterday. Things you have to do when living alone. Just 2 points to make.

1. The VAT on Kurkure is 12.5% but on Lays is 4%. Both serve the same need and are from the same company. Similar case with Everest Sabji Masala(4%) and Chole Masala (12%). Government wants me to pay taxes according to my taste buds.

2. Aashirwad Salt is available for Rs.11 a KG and Tata Salt lite(low sodium) is for Rs.18.

The health proposition of marketing is worth so much!

Justified??

Science of choosing better brand names (Luxury/Rich brands)

Make it long.
Difficult to pronounce.
Must have silent letters.
Being able to pronounce the brand name correctly should itself become a mark of status and knowledge. 

Science of choosing better brand names (web)

Summary- 2 syllable or two word brand names are easier for conversations.

I have been studying the names of some of the top websites for past few months and one thing i noticed is mostly all of them are either 2 syllable or a 2 words combined as one. Some examples - FaceBook(2 words), Google(2 syllable). MSN is 3 syllable and could never beat Yahoo(2 syllable). Asklaila(2), Justdial(2), Onyomo is 3 syllabe and is still to make a mark.

Infact, according to what brand names i can think of, anything that is pronounced in 2 parts, it could be 2 known words combined as 1 or 1 word of 2 syllables, is easier to promote and people tend to remember and have an ease in mentioning in oral communication. For written communication people will use acronym rather, even if it is a 2 syllable name because most readers are aware of the context and hence can guess out the full name even if the acronym is not intelligent or popular. People like to mention wikipedia as wiki, just for the ease of communication. Infosys(3 sylable) becomes Infy but Wipro(2 syllable) is not changed.

I suppose this is only true for web and not for offline brands.

Not that a good name will make you a big hit but it helps in conversation.

Neutral vs Positive New Customer

In my last post i ended with the line "You get a positive customer to begin with, not at neutral or below."
I thought deep whether it is good or bad to have a new customer who already has heard so much good things about you and carries a positive mindset for you or your service. When a customer is positive towards you, he is expecting better than usual and now its a pressure upon you to stand upto his expectations. It depends whether you think like Sachin Tendulkar and believe pressure to be a privilege. But it is not your business to deliver better than usual at the same usual price. But than isn't this one of the differentiators.

One point where i can really think it to be a benefit is that suppose if you or your team/subordinates screw the service for him, there are good chances that you still have a 50% success rate for him. He will believe that this was the only time where you screwed up, otherwise you deliver better than usual as that is what the customer's recommendee had experienced. In this case, the customers opinion about you would really depend on where or whom the recommendation came from. If he has a positive outlook for the recommendee than probably he would leave with a neutral mindset.

Mathematically speaking:

((+ve mindset about recommendee) * (+ve experience of recommendee) )+ (-ve experience of self) = almost neutral mindset about the service

You can similarly try other mathematical expressions to see what will this referred customer think. Human brain doesn't comply with mathematics but this is the closest you can get.

Good vs. Sounding Good

Fruits in breakfast and lunch. Dessert in dinner. Unlimited milk and curd, paneer and ice-cream on Sundays.
This is the menu of my college mess. Sounds tempting! Above average for an Indian college mess. But nobody mentioned the bad quality of these stuff and basically the quality of chapati and rice(the essentials). So basically you have a lot of add-on or extra features but you missed to serve the basics good.

90% of my college campus is WiFi enabled. The remaining 10% is where the students need it, the hostels.

All these features help my college attract many new students but they don't realise that they are actually creating or graduating many unsatisfied customers who are only going to create a bad WoM for the college. My college made a bad choice in this case as they saw the short term gains only. The students do not have a choice because one can only talk about quality once they have experienced it. By then it is too late to change college or switch your service provider. As a result by the time student passes out he is so frustrated he is only going to talk bad about the service and even the good things will be over shadowed.

You must choose between giving your customers features that sound good and features that are good.No harm if you can give both but what if you have to make a choice.

Features that sound good help when you are seeking a one time customer like a tea vendor on a railway station. I remember one tea vendor on New Delhi station who gave 4 slices of fruit cake free with tea, served tea in cup and saucer that looked different from other vendors who served in a disposable glass(i would prefer this for hygiene) all for the same price of Rs. 5 but his tea tasted awful. Almost no milk, bad quality tea leaves, less sugar... basically awful. He doesn't need to worry because probably i wouldn't recognize him next time i visit the place and in this case any kind of WoM is hardly going to make much difference.

Some examples:
Telecom company - Bad network but allows mobile payment, ticket booking etc
Local search - outdated, unauthenticated data but allows forwarding of address through SMS
Free web to SMS - too delayed service but supports email to SMS.

If you are any of the above you probably know the reason why your business isn't picking up. Giving good service may mean a narrow operating margin and may be a less number of customers who come to you asking about your features but it surely help you gain a lot of positive WoM. The customer wont come to you asking whether you really offer certain feature but he would come to you expecting that you will offer it better than anyone else at the same price. You get a positive customer to begin with, not at neutral or below.

Alchemist-lesson 1- Never promise what you dont have

The Alchemist, is the most influencing book i have read, yet. The lessons from this master piece has changed the way i think, the way i take my life and the way i deal with people.

One of the important lessons that i learnt was "Never promise something that you dont have".
Say, you are a web startup and offer activity points to your users and these points can be redeemed with your redemption partners for goodies. You have just thought about this promotion campaign and not thought about the redemption partners yet. You believe you will drive traffic to their site and in return they will redeem those points for your users.

It was all your expectation and you promised the deal to your users. As a result your users never believed you because you could never tell them the exact deal. In turn, the users did not turn up as expected and you couldn't drive enough traffic to your partners. So as expected, the partners, who were yet to be your partners, never became your partners.

Had you talked to your partners earlier and given a lesser attractive deal to your users, atleast you wouldn't have lost your integrity and credibility. Now nobody in the tribe wants to write about your new deals, your new website, your new features; just because you hurt the credibility of the tribe.

Same goes with hiring people. You might find it safe to say, "I am expecting a million $ in profits and as CTO you will get 10 % of it". Now as the owner, you expect to get a work worth $ 100 thousand from your CTO but you never realised that you did not promise him that amount. You know your company will do only as good as your CTO but now your CTO will do only as good as you company. So it would have been better if you had set standards for atleast one of them. This way there would be a sense of responsibility and obligation amongst the parties in the deal. You will get only as much as you can give. If you promise to give an expectation, you will get only an expectation of success.

You might argue that Obama also promised a dream and became successful. You are wrong. He is not successful yet. He has been given a chance to be successful. The tribe is with him now but just wait and watch his destiny if he cannot deliver what he promised. By not fulfilling promises you are actually destroying the credibility of your tribe. If the tribe kicks you out, no one will accept you.

Purposeful mistakes to attaract attention

I remember my first year of college when i was new to the world of presentations, seminars, reports , viva etc. I was always afraid of the query round. Mostly because i did not want to fall prey to some top brain who knows all about the topic. I started using this trick that i had learned by mistake.
I started making purposeful, noticeable silly mistakes just hoping to attract attention. Once the mistake caught eyeballs or vice versa, i felt relaxed. I could now eat up the query time explaining or justifying the mistake. Like if i wanted the jury to ask me more about slide 1 than slide 2, i used to make a simple mistake on slide 1.
It is more likely that people will point to your mistake in such a situation than your so called correct points. The mistake can be anything like spelling mistakes, data error etc.
But when i really made a mistake by mistake, i would just say that it was a purposeful mistake, just to find out whether anybody reads these long reports or not.

In professional world you can do purposeful mistakes and gain from it. Just be thankful to the person who pointed out the mistake and then build a relation from there. Its like making a relation from an error. To start a relation you should have some bond and this error just worked as that bond; you made it, he noticed it.

blog blogger blogging

Blogging generally attracts 3 generations of people.

1. Who know something through a lot of sources and actually want to share it with people. They have long term goals. You will never know when that person actually sold you something. Like seth godin, pluggd.in

2. They want to blog only for short term gains. They believe in releasing as many posts as possible no matter how dumb or useful. These bloggers go on to read other blogs so that they have something to blog about. Like watblog.com and techcrunch.com

3. These people blog because everyone else they know online is a blogger. They do start a blog but then are confused about what style to carry. They are not sure whether to write long posts like techcrunch and watblog that people will not bother to read after the first 2 sentences or short ones like Godin and pluggd.in. These people actually stop updating there blogs after the first few posts.

I hope you fall in one of the three categories.

Shoe the Neta

Back in Kathmandu, i had a friend who had this very disobedient dog. My friend expected him to fetch the mails and newspaper but the dog never did that. The dog never understood the word "newspaper" "mails" etc. So each time the master, my friend, wanted the dog to work, he had to throw his slippers towards the main gate of his house. The dog then went running after the slippers and fetch both the newspaper and the slippers.
With recent shoe attack on PC it makes me feel whether the Indian netas are like that dog. Just read this on indiatimes.com "Sonia to Tytler: Withdraw your candidature" and "If Congress party wants, I will quit: Tytler"

Moral: Don't wait for the user to report bugs else he might put it on your face. Prevention is better than cure.

shifting focus vs loosing focus

There is a thin line between the two. The line is of success and accomplishment.

1. When you have completed product A, and without making much efforts to gain from it, started making product B you are actually loosing focus. It is likely that you will do the same with product B also. What you end up with is a huge portfolio of obscure products. Then just to satisfy your ego you put up a set of links at the bottom of your homepage saying "Our Network Sites".

2. When you start product B after product A has reached a milestone development mark but still continue to work on product A as well, you are not loosing focus but actually shifting focus. Remember that when you shift focus you don't kill your earlier product, you just hit a pause button not a stop button.

3. If you cannot relate your new product to your old one then you are actually loosing focus. The new product is a new field with new customers and new dynamics you might want a newer one after some time.

Get paid for practicing democracy

Imagine getting paid for practicing your rights in a democracy. Onyomo.com, a local search engine, recently launched community credits which aims to do the same. Onyomo is rewarding its users for speaking out and voting.
As a rewards program for encouraging user activity onyomo is offering redeemable points for every positive contribution to the site.

- writing a review on their favorite joints
- voting on a review as a great review
- inviting their friends to the service
- adding new outlet

Onyomo is being quite generous in rewarding the users as the no. of points for each activity is quite high. The concept of rewarding users for there contribution is not new but Onyomo has gone a step ahead by giving quite high rewards. The Indian users do not seem to be taking to the idea as the growth is pretty slow. May be its too early to comment on this. We will have to wait to see how it turns out. till then do give it a spin and share your experience.