Evolution of Phone Marketing

While 1983 big breakthrough was a far cry from the iPhone X, it was a harbinger of things to come, a personal telecommunications device that could be carried outside the hardwired home. It took another 10 years to make cellphones that you could comfortably carry in your hand. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that SMS as well as access via mobile browsers took off. With these factors now in play, connecting with consumers via handheld devices began to really take hold as a viable mass marketing tool.

It took until the 1970s before call centers and what was quickly dubbed ‘telemarketing’ emerged. The industry exploded as technology made it cheaper to set up outbound call centers. By 2000, the 10 biggest telemarketing agencies were making a million or more calls per hour. It was also by the turn of the millennium that essentially all businesses had now equipped themselves with toll-free numbers and braced for the rise of inbound marketing.

Having the data is one thing, but doing anything useful with it is quite another. And it depends what your interpretation of the data is. A single click can be meaningless without context without scoring it and extrapolating what it means about that specific customer journey. One way to make sense of your data is with channel attribution, based on customer touches or clicks. There are a number of models for doing this – First Click, Last Click, Position based, Linear and Time Decay.

Each of these models has pros and cons, but none is fully effective with incomplete data. Even though we’ve moved into instant, digital everything, some very significant parts of buyer’s journeys still happen offline and offline actions rarely get credit in any attribution model. Offline data efficiency gaps can widen due to the very tangible differences between various marketing channels, some channels are simply more wide used by specific demographics during specific legs of their journey.

For example, Facebook is a great place to build awareness and create a community, but it’s not typically where consumers go to make purchases or to gain deep knowledge of your products or services. If you’re not measuring phone calls, you’re likely missing a big chunk of the data. This is true if you’re using a last click model that would be giving calls a huge share of credit, if only you were tracking them. Even though the integration of the web and smartphones into everyday life has done away with phones that flip, phone calls are still alive and well in the marketing process.

In fact, the evolution of phone technology has created a mobile first world, where mobile searches result in immediate calls and conversion from the same device. Measuring which search queries, ads and content make those calls happen, therefore, is key to building and refining a winning overall strategy. Predicting which new technology or device might emerge as the next big marketing tool is a tough endeavor. 

Rise of Purpose Driven Marketing

Cause related ads seem to be everywhere. There’s much industry debate about what works, what doesn’t and whether it’s even worth the risk. Brands are tackling a wide variety of issues, ranging from safe driving to equality and healthy living, but there are certainly a few issues that brands seem to gravitate toward more than others.

Over the past year, among all cause related videos created by the top 100 brands, women’s empowerment took the cake. In Fact, 24% of the top 100 brands purpose driven videos were about women’s empowerment. From Nike to P&G, brands are finding a way to create empowering ads for women that don’t just generate impressions, but leave them. Purpose driven ads garner more views; they also drive more results in the form of engagement rate.

Dove is a great example of a brand that employs purpose driven marketing. Their mission is to improve the self-esteem and confidence of women around the world through their #speakbeautiful movement – a campaign that highlights the concept that beauty is skin deep. They want to be seen to be making a commitment to women’s wellbeing and for consumers to see them as so much more than soap and moisturizer.

We all like to feel a part of something bigger and we like to feel we’re making a difference in the world. We’re in the midst of a major change in how and why consumers connect with brands, and those that are driving social change are bang on trend. Today, brand values are equally as important to consumers as the functional benefit they can offer, and meaningful brand action is vital for building relationships and gaining customer loyalty.

When purpose driven ads are done well, brands have the opportunity to not only stand for something they believe in, but also deeply connect with an audience. I believe this will become an increasingly important method to build brands at a time when people are increasingly choosing brands that align with their values.

Tips to build a Rewarding Career

One should be able to learn, share, contribute and discover one’s true potential. After interacting with lots of professionals, here are certain tips on how to build a meaningful and rewarding career.

Have a Hunger – There needs to be a constant enthusiasm and hunger to learn, unlearn and innovate. You should be fearless in the pursuit of excellence and making a difference. It is crucial to soak up as much knowledge as possible and apply it in your line of work.

Communication – An ability to work with diverse groups and respect divergent views is important. Effective communication and influencing skills, hanging ambiguity, managing diversity and leading multi-generation teams – these are the qualities that tomorrow’s employers will look for. Being able to communicate effectively is half the battle won.

Feedback – Be sure to regularly engage with your manager and proactively ask for feedback. Conversations with your manager can revolve around those capabilities you have how the world of work is changing and whether or not your career goals are realistic. You also need to ask how you can accelerate your learning.

Company Help – Everyone has different aspirations and it’s important to keep the organization in the loop via your people manager and your career coach. Be sure to speak to senior leaders on learning opportunities that are available and take help of mentors to action feedback based improvements. You can also ask for options to work on different assignments, products, geographies or work. These will help give you a professional edge.

Think Long term – While it is a good idea to experiment on choices to formulate a direction of your career, it’s also equally important to see those choices through and consider what they mean in the long term. It’s not just about the next job, it’s about the whole of your career, so it is crucial to have patience and take a holistic view of what each decision could mean.

Impact of Blockchain on Search Marketing

If you’ve heard of Bitcoin then you most likely have heard of Blockchain, the technology that enables Bitcoin and other crypto currencies to exist and function. The technology is forecast to disrupt many industries as it allows users to conduct transactions without a middleman in a secure and transparent format.

Some of the industries that can potentially be disrupted are car sales, voting, ridesharing, real estate, insurance, sports management and loyalty cards. If Bitcoin is adopted by large companies such as Amazon or Walmart, it will certainly have an impact on the future of payments between search marketing agencies, website owners, advertisers and others. Contract agreements will also be impacted, as the Blockchain could be leveraged for more transparency and accuracy.

Blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value. It’s like a Google Doc spreadsheet that is shared with the public which displays transactions and is tamperproof. Many are considering Blockchain to be as impactful as the Internet was in the 90s.

In the digital marketing world, many central authorities, such as Google and Facebook, connect advertisers with website owners. For Example, Google is a central authority in programmatic ads, where it helps advertisers run ads on websites via the Google Display Network. Google essentially is the middleman that helps advertisers and website owners trust each other. If they already trusted each other, they would not need Google as an intermediary taking a cut of the profits.

Enter Blockchain, which can verify that every user is genuine with 100 percent accuracy and that the website owner is only charging the advertiser for genuine clicks through to their site. Then the website owner and the advertiser don’t need a middleman to arbitrate their agreement, which would save them money. Blockchain presents a big threat to Google’s Display Network revenue.

Blockchain being the unhackable distributed ledger is going to also help reduce online fraud. It will provide transparency for persons involved in a transaction without giving away their personal details, essentially proving they are a real person. Ad fraud is a big problem. It cost advertisers over $7 Billion in 2016. A number of players including Microsoft, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and DMA are already working on Blockchain based digital identification system.

As companies start to adopt Blockchain, they will need to integrate it with their websites. This involves the web developers as well as the SEOs, if they are trying to gain organic search benefits as well as display the information from the Blockchain transactions. This will present both technical issues and opportunities in which SEOs will have to work alongside developers to resolve compatibility issues with different content management systems and website platforms. As new Blockchains are developed and it is more widely adopted, it will certainly disrupt the search marketing industry in many other ways. For now, search marketers should pay close attention to Blockchain as it grows.

Diwali Ad Campaigns 2017

Brands across categories have rolled out festive ad campaigns to celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights highlighting the importance of family, love, hope and light as their core theme. A look at some brands Diwali Campaigns that have struck a chord with viewers.

Nokia – In its first comeback festive campaign executed by advertising agency Dentsu One, the smartphone maker has highlighted its global brand philosophy of ‘Unite For’, urging customers to take a break from their phones and spend quality time with their loved ones this festive season. The company is also providing a gift box in which one can place their own phone and give it to someone close or, just set it aside for a day as a gesture of committing their time—and themselves—to them. The integrated campaign is being promoted across television, retail, activation, social and digital. The film, uploaded on YouTube on 29 September, has garnered 17 million views so far.

Nestle Alpino – Nestle owned premium chocolate brand Alpino brought a Bollywood twist to create a Diwali Ad which features actors Sonali Bendre and Jimmy Shergill. Made by advertising agency JWT Delhi, the spot positions the chocolates as the perfect gift for loved ones this Diwali.

Coca-Cola – No festival is complete without siblings, and beverage brand Coca-Cola’s campaign highlights some of special moments that a brother and sister share even if it means picking up fights over the most trivial things. Made by McCann Worldgroup India, the Campaign is being promoted across television, radio and digital. Coke has also partner with Paytm to offer festive discount codes to consume with each bottle of Coke.

Pepsi – The beverage brand has extended its ‘Festive Moments’ campaign under which it has created over 80 of the popular words printed in eight regional languages on the brand’s packaging. The new packaging with festive slogans like ‘Dhoom Dhadaka’ in regional languages aims to create a much stronger connects with the consumers. Made by JWT, the campaign also comprises a Digital film along with a series of interactive on ground activations.

Lenovo – A heartwarming campaign ‘Gift them a future’ created by Lenovo India narrates a story of a banker struggling to keep himself busy after retirement. His son, who is back home for Diwali, decides to give him a little nudge in form of a notebook which will help him start his own entrepreneurial venture. Uploaded on company’s YouTube channel, the video has garnered over 2.6 Million views so far.

Hike Messenger – Mobile chat platform Hike Messenger gave a fresh take on the often used theme of homecoming during festive advertising. Created by JWT Delhi, the “No Formality” campaign features a young man who goes back home only to find his parents choosing to go on a holiday on Diwali. He then decides to celebrate the festival partying with his friends. The campaign is being promoted across digital, social and traditional media including television and radio.

Ghadi detergent – Continuing with its ‘saare mael dho daalo’ proposition, Ghadi detergent’s Diwali Ad urges people to stop judging strangers according to the pre-conceived stereotypes that exist in our mind. Created by advertising agency ADK fortune, the Film shows how policemen are often associated with trouble and corruption. The ad shows a policeman visiting a family who are selling their electronic items online. Interested to buy some of these items for Diwali, he not only pays them money in advance, but also makes the full payment, much to the relief to the owner who doubted his intentions.

Robin Hood Army

They take from the rich for the poor – but unlike the legendary outlaw Robin Hood, they are not after money, and it’s all above board. A band of merry men and women called the Robin Hood Army (RHA) has been seeking to feed the poor by distributing surplus food from restaurants and weddings to the hungry in the subcontinent.

Its volunteers, mostly students and young working professionals, call themselves Robins. Dressed in green, they go out in the dark, pick up food and distribute it among the homeless and others. When India and Pakistan celebrated 70 years of Independence, the RHA from the two nations joined hands to fight against a common enemy – hunger – and fed over 1.32 million people across 48 cities.

The group was started in August 2014 with six Robins in Delhi who served about 150 people on their first night of food distribution. In three years, it now consist of 12,350 volunteers who have served over 34,36,531 people. The RHA has some 50 chapters in as many cities in the Indian subcontinent. It started in Pakistan in February 2015 with its first distribution in Karachi. It also has volunteers in Sri Lanka and other Asian countries.

Ghose thought of starting RHA when they heard about an organization in Portugal called ‘Refood’ – which picked up and distributed restaurant surplus. He talked about the initiative with its founder Hunter Halder, and then decided to launch a similar programme in India with partner Anand Sinha, who works for an e-commerce site. The third partner, Aarushi Batra, is in Business.

A particular city chapter gets in touch with restaurants and wedding caterers in an area. Robins keep in touch with those who are ready to donate food and collect it at the end of the day or the time of distribution. The food is packed into meals and then distributed among the homeless and others who need food in or around that particular area. There are some very helpful restaurants that don’t just package and give away excess food, but also donate freshly cooked food.

All expenses, such as transportation costs, are met by the volunteers. With the help of Social Media, a large number of people have joined the army in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, apart from India and Pakistan. There are six chapters in Pakistan – four in Karachi, one in Lahore and one in Islamabad.

Though food is still its main area of concern, RHA takes up other initiatives and projects from time to time. It is now looking at ways to distribute clothes and help poor students. RHA Chennai is crowd sourcing school bags from city schools for sending to a school in a remote village in Odisha, where a Robin is a teacher. In Surat, classrooms are being built under a bridge from waste material for underprivileged children with the help of other organizations. In Hyderabad, they are building new toilets and renovating old one in schools.

When northern Gujarat was hit by floods, two Robins travelled 1,100 kms after collecting 10,000 kgs of food grains and 2,000 kgs of clothes to help 39,000 people. The team bars anybody from collecting money in the name of the organization. RHA has also started a Robin Hood Academy in 19 cities, where they teach slum children to help then join schools. Anyone can help RHA or join RHA community.

International Day of the Girl

International Day of the Girl Child is an international observance day declared by the United Nations, it’s also called the Day of the Girl and the International Day of the Girl, October 11, 2012, was the first Day of the Girl. The initiative supports more opportunity for girls and increases awareness of gender inequality faced by girls worldwide based upon their gender.

Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, Sukanya Samriddhi Account, One Stop Center Scheme, Mahila E-Haat are few measures undertaken by the Indian Government towards the upliftment of women. Over the years India has shown incremental improvement in gender inequality indicators. October 9-14 is also celebrated as the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao Week.

The day is marked by all events over the world, from India to Kenya to Washington to Paris, put on by humanitarian organizations, nonprofits and governments alike. With 1.1 Billion girls in the world, the United Nations aims to help those girls that face disadvantage and discrimination on a daily basis and wants to highlight their struggle.

The Indian constitution provides a powerful mandate for human rights in its Preamble, Fundamental Rights and Duties and specific provisions for affirmative action. The government has instituted laws and policies protecting the rights of girls and women, including a ban on dowry, pre-birth sex determination and child marriage.

For the fifth year in a row, the youth-led movement is being recognized (the United Nations declared October 11 as “day of the girl” in 2011). This youth led movement fights for gender justice and youth rights, believing that girls are the experts on issues that affect girls. This year the theme of the International Day of the Girl is ‘EmPOWER girls: Before, during and after conflict’ in humanitarian emergencies gender based violence increases which means girls are more likely to be subjected to sexual and physical violence, child marriage, exploitation and trafficking.

Nobel Prize Winners 2017

Physics – The physics prize was divided, one half awarded to Rainer Weiss, the other half jointly to Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves. The received the prize for the discovery of gravitational waves released in the world by violent events in the universe such as the mergers of black holes. Weiss, professor emeritus of Physics at MIT, along with Thorne and Barish, California Institute of Technology Physicists, pioneered LIGO, or the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, the scientific project that made gravitational wave detection possible.

Chemistry – The chemistry prize was awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Richard Henderson and Jaochim Frank for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution. Cyro-electron microscopy is a technique that takes accurate and detailed pictures of living things at atomic scales. This is assisting scientists make high resolution, 3D images that can help in cancer drug research and better understanding of the Zika virus. Jacques Dubochet is a retired biophysicist of Lausanne in Switzerland, Joachim Frank, a professor at Columbia University in New York and Richard Henderson is a scientist at the British Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.

Physiology – The 2017 prize was awarded jointly to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm. The award celebrates the study of the tiny biological clocks in every living thing. The three American Scientists were able to peek inside our biological clock and elucidate its inner workings. Their discoveries explain how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronized with the Earth’s revolution.

Literature – The Literature prize was awarded to Kazuo Ishiguro who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world. The author of seven novels, a short story collection and screenplays, Ishiguro was born in bomb-hit Nagasaki in 1954 and moved to England at the age of 5.

Nobel Peace Prize – The Peace prize 2017 was awarded to International campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic, humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground breaking efforts to achieve a treaty based prohibition of such weapons. The group formed by Geneva based coalition of disarmament activists is behind the first treaty to prohibit nuclear arms. 

Economics – The US Economist Richard Thaler was awarded the $1.1 Million Nobel Economics Prize for his contributions in the field of behavioral Economics. The award giving body said that Thaler contributions have built a bridge between the economic and psychological analyses of individual decision making.

Remembering Bhagat Singh

Born 110 years ago in a small village in Lyallpur district (now Faislabad in Pakistan) of undivided pre-independence India’s Punjab Province, Bhagat Singh went on to etch his name in the history books for his invaluable contribution to the Indian Freedom struggle. On this 110^th birth anniversary, let’s revisit few facts of the iconic freedom fighter, who was executed on March 23, 1931, when he was just 23 years old.

Bhagat Singh left home for Kanpur when his parents tried to get him married, saying that if he married in Slave India, “my bride shall only be death” and joined Hindustan Socialist Republic Association. Bhagat Singh along with Sukhdev planned to avenge the death of Lala Lajpat Rai and plotted to kill the Superintendent of Police James Scott in Lahore. However in case of mistaken identity, John Saunders, the Assistant Superintendent of Police was shot.

Although a Sikh by birth, he shaved his beard and cut his hair to avoid being recognized and arrested for the killing. He managed to escape from Lahore to Calcutta. On April 8, 1929, Bhagat Singh, along with freedom fighter Batukeshwar Dutt, hurled two bombs inside the Central Legislative Assembly in New Delhi to protest against an unfavorable bill. Interestingly, their actual intentions behind this defiant act were to get arrested and to use the subsequent court appearances to further the cause of their organization Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) for India’s Independence.

Along with the bombs, Singh also threw in copies of a leaflet in the assembly that quoted a French anarchist as saying, “It takes a loud noise to make the deaf hear”, and signs off with the now epochal statement, ‘Inquilab Zindabad!’ or ‘Long Live the revolution’. He did not resist his arrest at this point. At the time of his trial, he didn’t offer any defence, rather used the occasion to propagate the idea of India’s Freedom.

In his famous article titled “Why I am an atheist?” written in jail in early October 1930, he wrote he found fulfillment through serving humanity and liberating it from sufferings and distress. Apart from Freedom from the British, his goal was to build an India where poverty, socio-economic disparity and exploitation did not exist.

Koovagam: Transgender Festival of India

Transgenders, otherwise called 'Hijaras' in India, have been always been a part of the society. But till today, they have failed to gain acceptance into mainstream society and live on the fringes of it. Reduced to begging and forced prostitution to somehow make a living, the transgender community has always been scorned and looked down upon. While that is the general perception around the country, there is a village in south India which cherishes and celebrates the transgender identity.

Every year, between April and May, thousands of transgenders from across the country celebrates the transgenders festival in Koovagam, a remote village in Tamil Nadu. This festival is celebrated in the Koothandavar Temple of Koovagam and has its roots in Hindu Epic Mahabharata.

According to legend, during the Mahabharata war, on the 18^th day there came a scenario where the Pandavas had to sacrifice someone from themselves to Goddess Kali to win the battle. Aravan (the son of Arjuna and Ulupi, the Naga Princess) offered himself to be sacrificed for his clan to win. But he asked Lord Krishna for one last wish to be fulfilled, to be married before his death. With just one day’s marriage and a lifetime of widowhood ahead, no woman was willing to marry Aravan. So Lord Krishna took his ‘Mohini’ Avatar and became Aravan’s bride. As promised, Aravan offered himself as sacrifice the next day.

In this festival, thousands of transgenders who came for the annual event consider themselves the brides of Aravan. They celebrate this festival with songs, dances, games and even a beauty pageant. The winner of the pageant is crowned ‘Miss Koovagam’. On the 17^th day, these transgenders dress up like brides and tie mangalsutra around their necks, acts like Mohini and on the last day i.e. 18^th day, acts as widows and mourn the death of Aravan by breaking their bangles and mangalsutra, symbolizing the end of their one-day marriage. 

History of Sardar Sarovar Dam

The Sardar Sarovar project was a vision of the first deputy prime minister of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. It is one of the largest dams in the world, having a length of 1.2 kms and a depth of 163 metres, the dam is expected to be shared among the three states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat. Four crore Gujaratis will get drinking water and 22,000 hectares of land will be irrigated.

The foundation stone of the project was laid out by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on April 5, 1961 after carrying out a study on the usage of the Narmada River water that flowed through the states of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat and into the Arabian Sea. A project report prepared for the dam led to much dispute over the means of distributing the Narmada water among the three states – Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. As the negotiations bore no fruit, a Narmada Water Dispute Tribunal (NWDT) was created in 1969 to decide the fate of the project.

After having studied a large number of reports and studies made by the three states, the NWDT gave its verdict in 1979. Accordingly, the 35 Billion cubic metres of water available for consumption from the dam, Madhya Pradesh would receive 65 percent, Gujarat 32 percent and Rajasthan & Maharashtra would be eligible for the remaining 3 percent. The Planning commission finally approved the project in 1988.

As the planning of the project was on its way, though, it soon caught the attention of social activists who found that the dam did not meet the required environmental and social conditions as meted out by the Ministry of Environment and Forests. Foremost among those who raised voice against the project was Medha Patkar who first visited the site of the dam in 1985. The consistent struggle to dismantle the project built a huge amount of pressure on the World Bank and a bank commissioned panel was set up to review the project. On concluding the fact that inadequate assessment had been made by the Indian government and the World Bank prior to sanctioning the project, the government on March 31, 1993 cancelled the loan authorized by the World Bank.

After several years of much deliberation, however, the Supreme Court allowed the construction of the dam to proceed, provided it met with certain conditions. The foremost condition placed by the Court was that all those displaced by the increase in height of 5 metres be satisfactorily rehabilitated and that the process be repeated for every five metres increase in height. The project has the potential to feed as many as 20 million people, provide domestic and industrial water for about 30 million, employ about 1 million, and provide valuable peak electric power in an area with high unmet power demand. Currently the height of the dam has been raised to 138.68 metres with a usable storage of 4.73 Million acre feet of water.

How Startups can use Programmatic Television Advertising

Marketing and Promotion is all about taking your product or service to the right target audience at the pre-decided time, and in an efficient way. How cool it would be if this bang-on strategy could work as well for startup companies like it does for the established ones. The big positive differentiator for the large and well-known brands is that they are already empowered with huge resources and can strike gold relatively faster and far more easily than their smaller counterparts.

On the other hand, it’s really a roughhouse for the startups as they scramble to arrive at the right strategy and media plan because they are restricted by limited resources in terms of effort, finance and time. Things are changing now, by new technology called Programmatic TV (PTV), which is the automation of TV advertisement buying/selling process, based on audience preferences. Now we have a data driven media buying process already accepted in the digital media – that brings buyers and sellers on to an automated marketplace, making the experience simpler and more efficient. PTV ads are placed intelligently based on audience data to help you reach your target audiences.

This technology based platform empowers the media planners and buyers by automating the optimization and execution process for traditional TV Advertising. The traditional TV buying process, like all long-established ones, is well institutionalized in the industry, but over time, has gotten into a lapse and so and now has its challenges. In addition, it offers only an approximate plan to reach the desired target audience, which means the ad may or may find the bull's eye before considerable money has already been spent. This is particularly painful for startups as they struggle to find their feet in a crowded and competitive market and have to smarten up.

Currently, media buying professionals are using their precious time and energy in manual work and processes such as request for proposals, order for ad insertions and waiting for confirmations. This is usually done through scores of emails, faxes and spreadsheets. With the entry of PTV, media buyers will have access to the convenience of a scientific approach that helps do away with the time-consuming, laborious and often less-efficient ways of the manual TV advertising buying model.

So, when they opt for programmatic buying, it helps create a customized dashboard for each product/service that their marketers want to promote and enables them to track the campaign’s performance for the desired target audience and other performance metrics that are relevant to the marketer. It’s all about getting the right inventory in a way that ensures optimization of the ROI from the advertisement.

Traditional TV advertising involves shifting through huge and complex number of choices of channels and programs. PTV comes with the technology to filter the massive data mining and analytics and aids strategic decision making. With an automated buying and scheduling, marketers/advertisers can effectively target their existing and potential customers while also saving a lot of time and effort. PTV creates a marketplace where media buyers and sellers interact in an open and transparent manner.

Getting the right inventory through PTV is not just a boon for startups or small companies, but also for established brands. Given the large quantum of ads that big players are releasing to promote their products/services, it’s important to assess which ads are effective in influencing the target customers rather than running those which do not help in moving the needle. Today, most small companies, including startups, start reaching out their target customers through the digital advertising medium across social media, websites and online ads.

Smart phones have made this easy, enabling easy reach to new customers and this explains the rise in interest for digital advertising, especially among small businesses. As Business grows, companies feel the need to shift to the television medium. This is where PTV attempts to make a difference. It brings the sophistication and convenience of digital advertising to the popularity and reach of the TV medium.

PTV promises to change the dynamics of TV advertising as it works on making the processes simpler and cost-effective. The platform gives advertisers a range of options in audience buying, thereby maximizing the value of TV ad spots. With such time-consuming, chaotic processes out of their way, marketers can focus more and better on reaching the target customers. If a startup can learn the ropes of effective advertising on television through programmatic TV, they will be better positioned to speed up their scale up process even after they make it big.

Book Review: India Unbound

India Unbound is mainly about the transformation of India from (1942) to (1999). The book details about the Indian politics and the economy of India. India Unbound is the riveting story of a nation’s rise from poverty to prosperity and the clash of ideas that occurred along the way. Gurucharan Das examines the highs and lows of independent India through the prism of history, his own experiences and those of numerous others he has met – from young people in sleepy UP villages to chiefs of software companies in Bangalore. Defining and exploring the new mindset of the nation, India Unbound is the perfect introduction to contemporary India.

This book is not just about India - it is really about the economy, political ideologies, business, globalism, entrepreneurship, governments, the future, and much more. I found myself wanting to highlight the entire book! That’s because these complicated topics are explained with such simplicity (using India as the main case-study) that it all made sense. The book includes author personal stories, history of Indian politics and world lessons from other countries, and many of the rollercoaster downs and ups associated with good storytelling. Despite the mistakes and bleak past, the book is ended with the most excitement, passion, and energy for the future.

The book is categorized in three major parts: Our Spring of Hope (1942-65), The Lost Generation (1966-91) and The Rebirth of Dream (1991-99) or we can say it is divided into Pre-Independence Era, Post-Independence Era and Post-Liberalized India.

In Pre-Independence, British Raj did harm India, the reason that Indian handicrafts lost to machine driven goods is also significant. Hand looms all over the world were impacted by emergence of technology and since India was largest textile maker in the world, it got impacted the most. Emergence of “Brown Sahib” in British Raj: Primarily Brahmins learnt English and took up the clerical and managerial job for Britishers. Indians prefer vertical over horizontal relations, on numerous instances from wars to running industries.

In Post-Independence, most western nations were going through a phase of emphasizing wealth distribution. Unfortunately, many of the Indian bureaucrats trained in these nations forgot that India needed wealth creation first. Among common man, trade was not seen as positive outcome game, but it was perceived as zero sum game. While socialism was popular during Nehru’s era, it has lost most of its charm in a couple of decades, but during Indira’s rule, controls were further tightened. Several state-owned enterprises emerged during this era which was not profitable and it was illegal to close them. By 1980, 75% of state-owned companies were in losses and 14 banks were nationalized and in a decade, most of them were bankrupt.

In Post-Liberalized India, being short of foreign exchange reserves, India asks for a loan from IMF and starts economic reforms in parallel. Author praises Narsimha Rao (PM), Manmohan Singh (FM) and P Chidambram (Commerce Minister) for their role in liberalizing Indian economy. Several examples like Zee TVs Subhash Chandra, NIIT’s Rajendra Pawar has been given to illustrate first generation millionaires created by liberalization.

There are three ways to compete – superior [lower] prices, superior product and superior service, as of now, Indian industries follow superior prices and they should move to superior service now, the growth of middle class is one of the most significant consequence of liberalization. A major area where reform has still not occurred is education and nation is in a dire need of it. India missed Industrial revolution, IT revolution is therefore, critical for India. While some people fear that Indians is westernizing, author believes India is “modernizing” and the “spiritual component of life” is here to stay in Indian life.

International Literacy Day

The first International Literacy Day was celebrated in 1967 and this tradition has been held annually for 50 years. The idea of celebrating International Literacy Day was first discussed during the World Conference of Ministers of Education in Tehran, Iran on September 8 to 19 with the objective to end illiteracy.

While the UNESCO has noted positive trends of growing literacy rates among children, the drop in the illiteracy rate has not matched the increase in population. Between 2001 and 2011, the population above the age of 7 grew by 18.65 crore but the decrease in the number of illiterates is just 3.11 crore.

2015 UNESCO report said that in terms of absolute numbers, India – with 28.7 crore illiterates – was the country with the largest number of adults without basic literacy skills in 2010-11 compared to 2000-01 when it had 30.4 crore illiterates.

According to UNESCO, “literacy is now understood as a means of identification understanding, interpretation, creation and communication in an increasingly digital, text meditated, information rich and fast changing world”. According to UN’s International Telecommunications Union suggest that, in 2016, 53% of the world’s population does not have access to Internet. Nearly two billion people did not use Mobile phones and almost a half billion lived outside areas with mobile connectivity.

Despite the significant literacy progress made in the past decades, the world was still home to 758 Million illiterate adults and 263 Million out of school children of primary and secondary school age in 2014.

What is Beacon Technology?

Beacons have been generating buzz since 2013, when Apple first introduced iBeacon Technology. And while it may have appeared for a time that this new way of connecting with customers might be slow to catch on, today it’s catching fire. According to a report, Beacons would be driving $44 Billion in retail sales by 2016. While there’s been a lot of hype around Beacons, they haven’t necessarily been very well understood.

Retail is probably the most often cited example of an industry employing Beacons, with heavy hitters like Lord and Taylor deploying them in their stores. Starwood Hotels is running a pilot program to replace hotel room keys with Beacons. Major league Baseball is using them to reach out to fans in stadiums to offer them seat upgrades. American Airlines is one of a growing number of airlines leveraging Beacon technology to improve connections with customers in airports.

Apple explains iBeacon Technology to consumers as the enabling technology for Apple devices to alert apps or websites when someone approaches or leaves a location. In other words, retail or other venues that have Beacons in place can detect where a customer is at any given moment. This is the key part as the retailer or other business can push timely messages to that customer promoting products or providing other useful information.

Say someone is walking past a retail store, if they’ve downloaded the retailer’s mobile app, the company can use Beacon messages to capture their attention as they go by, enticing them to enter. Once inside, Beacons can be used to make personalized offers, speed checkout processes and pretty much anything else the retailer can dream up.

Apple doesn’t actually make Beacons, it has developed iBeacon standard around which Beacons can be built. Google has its own Beacon standard, Eddystone. There are a number of players in the Beacon manufacturing space – not only Kontakt, but also BlueSense, Gelo, Estimote and others.

Beacons employs Bluetooth low energy (BLE) wireless technology to pinpoint the location of customers in stores and other places and to deliver messages to their mobile devices. Specifically, a Beacon emits a BLE signal that a retailer’s or other company’s app on a smartphone coming within range of that signal can pick up on. A big differentiator between Beacons and RFID is that Beacons are far more private because it gives users control of the apps that leverage the Beacon. Beacons are authenticated and with user permission, which can ultimately lead to tremendous experience as a result.

Beacon will overcome the major hurdle for companies that want to engage with customers in a more personalized way.