The runaway success of Indian e-commerce show is driven by the single biggest attraction of hefty discounts available almost on all products! More than any other value proposition of e-commerce such as more choices, convenience, 24×7 availability, payment options and faster deliveries, the Indian customer was lured to e-commerce by the sheer scope for discounts she would not get elsewhere...
Whenever we think of Personalization the first thing that comes to mind is Amazon displaying products we are likely to be interested in. The next thing that come to mind is like advertising on the internet. A little more pondering, and Google’s search results and Facebook’s news feed would strike us as being personalized too. Notice how personalization is invariably assumed to apply to...
Hiring is Growth Hacking applied to organizations. What does that mean? It is expensive to pay a staffing consulting $10k – $20k per hire, so creative, guerrilla tactics have to be adopted. Using your network to reach out to your audience, relying on word of mouth, the referral program that extends beyond employees, Quora/Twitter/LinkedIn for lead generation, fancy videos and blog posts with...
Every product that you build has to be used by people. This is irrespective of “who may pay for the product“. This is an often brought up topic of “User vs Customer“. And if the product is used only by machines and not by real people, then it’s perhaps best to call it “technology”. As far as technology products are concerned, a significant factor of differentiation they claim and deliver on is by...
We all know quite well the value of Design to business, and Design Thinking to problem solving. But what remains a bit fuzzy for many start-ups, organizations & individuals is the gap between thinking and doing or making it happen. In this time of volatility and complexity, the role of design to drive meaningful innovation and change is growing and while there are multitude of factors that...
Pixel Jobs, designed by the talented folks at Sparklin, is a refreshing look at the boring world of job portals. The problem to solve was simply, “How to get a job post seen by the best creative talent?” An old fashion job-board served as a physical metaphor to yield a clean, simple and inviting job portal cheekily named – Pixel Jobs. It has nifty filters to make searching easy...
Background – I was fortunate to be invited for the #FoundersMeet 2; informal get-together of 7 startup founders last year. This time around Anirudh, Sid, Nischal, Deven and I suggested to move it beyond our circle and extend it to 20 startups to come together and share our small success stories, failures and challenges. We also wanted to create a strong connect for ‘Mumbai-Pune Start-up...
Editor’s note: Focus on user experience now shows up in numerous surveys as a major determinant of success in software product sales. We interviewed the co-founders of software development provider Clarice Technologies: Sandeep Chawda, who is also CEO, and Shashank Deshpande, who is also president. Between them they have more than two decades of experience in user-centric design (especially at...
In a startup, the design is usually an afterthought after the more important challenges of business and technology are solved. Which means by then the design is more like a band aid or a lipstick on the proverbial pig. Probably the main reason why products here still lack that world-class feel, even though they are better in terms of features and performance. A successful product usually has the...
