Most of the Indian banks want customers to use the ebanking/netbanking than coming to the bank directly for any transactions. So there is an immediate need to automate the entire entrance exam application process fee collection. This is not something new. Many exam proctoring companies example GMAC for GMAT is already doing that for many years.

The authority who conduct examination have to seriously think of allowing candidates to pay the fees online with the help of credit card, debit card or cash card. This change cannot be be done overnight and may require phased implementation. The obvious advantages are smoother application process, lower administrative costs and probably higher applicants.

This post is cross posted on Parinama.

Nokia will be starting this service with the new model Nokia 2323 and 2330 classic. Nokia aims to remove the information constraints and help people take informed decision.

Nokia is trying to leverage the penetration of mobile network by providing basic services in three categories Agriculture, Entertainment and Education. This service comes with a subscription fee.

January 7, 2009 will definitely be remembered as one the worst day for corporate India. Talks are going on how to bring Satyam back on track. Satyam has to react to the situation immediately to retain its client base as well as employees. There is no doubt that Satyam will lose some of the clients as well as some employees.

JobSpeak from Naukri has released statistics for the month of November. According to them the number of job listings with their site (Naukri) have declined since July 2008. This can be mainly attributed to slowdown in economy and holiday seasons (Diwali & Thanks Giving). Overall job listing on Naukri has reduced by 22.4%. Job listing can be considered as an indicator of demand in jobs in the industry. There may be a slight difference in the original demand of jobs in the industry as the companies may have resorted to other means of recruiting like referral or direct recruitment to cut down their operating costs.

The IT Jobs listing in November 2008 has declined by 22.3% since July 2008. There is a marginal increase (3%) of job listing from October 2008.  The numbers for December is also likely to come down due to the holiday season (Christmas). The demand of Financial professionals have come down almost 40% since July 2008.

The number of unique visitors to the job portals have remained stagnant if not reduced since July 2008. This is in agreement with the lower attrition rate generally associated with slow down like this.

Coming back to the main issue of 53,000 employees- There is already a rumour that at least 15,000 (28%) employees from Satyam are looking for change. The CEO and CFO have left the firm when they were required the most. So the first and foremost job of the interim Satyam management will be bring the confidence back to the employees. Satyam will find it really difficult to find new employees because of the tarnished image.

Now what happens if 30% to 40% employees of Satyam are looking for change? Atleast that is a huge number to be absorbed by a single firm. Other outsourcing firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro are likely to gain benefits in terms of hiring experienced hires from Satyam. I would not be surprised if the projects changed hands from Satyam to any other firm in India. And there may be some hiring happening in other firms in anticipation of projects changing hands.

When the supply of qualified professionals is high in the market, the employer gains as they can negotiate a lower CTC (cost to company). And the candidates have to settle down for a lower pay package. As long as Satyam can remain afloat, they have some time to turn around the company, before the employees leave the firm.

Most of us know that XAT 2009 was conducted on January 4 across various centers in India. As expected after the exam there is a spurt of activity on the net. Candidates wanted to know up to date information, solutions and analysis of the just concluded exam. Who gains the benefit of this additional traffic? Blogs, Splogs, Traditional Prep Sites and Online Only Test Prep Sites. Let me clarify- Traditional Test Prep Companies are like the ones who started their business as class room coaching centers (read brick and mortar) and then augmented their presence with the help of websites. Example for such institutes are Time, Career Launcher, IMS and Career Forum. The Online Only Test Prep Sites are those who started their business online. Examples for such sites are TCYOnline, TenADay, TestFunda and CATIndiaOnline. The picture below is from Google Search Trends for January 4, 2008.

With CAT examinations going online from this year, many other exams like XAT, JMET etc will follow the suit. Seeing opportunity many Test Prep Sites have mushroomed over a period of 6 to 9 months. Traditional Test Prep sites have also scaled up their operations to entice future CAT/XAT aspirants.

How are the Test Prep Companies capitalizing the additional traffic?

During the peak season the test prep companies advertise heavily. MingleBox, TestFunda, TCYOnline have run campaigns to get more eyeballs. Apart from that these companies devote a team of experts to publish insights, analysis, solutions and expected cutoff for the exam. Most of the sites require a login before a user can read the information. Hopefully these sites get some additional customers either in the form of online registration or enquiry for the next batch. Most of them just bounces off after digesting the information. Having a blog to dispense information or breaking news is more important that ever before to drive additional traffic to the sites.

We can equate this situation to offline advertising campaign where Traditional Test Prep Companies distribute pamphlets/brochures on the courses they offer. Some of them do join the courses. But I assume the conversion rate will be low. But that is a accepted fact. The picture of the right is a sample advertisement by Test Funda enticing user to try its online test prep material.

Is there any tangible benefit by driving additional traffic to the site during peak season?

• More traffic to the site will lead to more more conversion rate
• Information is linked by other bloggers or forwarded by emails which leads to additional traffic
• By virtue of registration, the sites get hold of the email addresses which can be used to send an occasional email
• Opportunity for the sites to brand themselves by offering the best information.

Who is gaining benefit?

CAT 2008 was conducted on Nov 16, 2008 (Peak 1) and SNAP 2008 was conducted on Dec 21, 2008 (Peak 2). As expected the traffic peaks around those dates.

Traditional Test Prep Sites: The page views of traditional test prep sites did peak around the time of exam. But the page views drastically fell after the exam as the visitors to do not find a reason to come back to these sites. But during the peak season, these sites should have gained additional customers.

Online OnlyTest Prep Sites: The page views of New Test Prep peaked on the exam dates. These sites were able to sustain some growth.

Comparison: The Online Only Test Prep sites is giving neck to neck competition to the Traditional Test Prep sites as far as Online Test Preparation is concerned.

Crossposted in Parinama

Its being a long time since I have written something for Oodami. My friends who know about this blog ask me whats up with Oodami. I always replied saying that I will be reviving it. I was really busy with my day job and I wasn’t able to continue writing at night. Apart from that I was working on a stealth blog which is going in a good way.

Now thanks to recession, I have more time than ever before for blogging and I want to restart Oodami! I would appreciate any tips to restart from my readers who still have my blog listed in their readers. Thanks!

I have blogged on quite a few topics last year. I have around 50 posts. Some of the posts which was I consider the better ones are-

• Monetizing Online News Streams from India (April 2008) Part 1 | Part 2
• In Search of a Better News Aggregator for India (May 2008) Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
• Monetizing Online News Streams from India (April 2008) Part 1 | Part 2
• Analysis of Payment Gateways based on IRCTC data Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

This was Oodami in 2008-

Over 10,000 people have already signed up for this initiative. Some firms have already pledged 50 employees per week for 2 hours a week. India Times is trying something unique which is trying to provide a platform for everyone to contribute to the development of the country. According to an estimate, there are around 287 illiterate Indians who needs some sort of motivation to go back to school. Right now Teach India initiative is limited to the four metros only. Here is an interesting article on how we are trying to kill the Right to Education Bill. I am sure this initiative can definitely make a difference to the way we work for a social cause.

If you think you can spend 2 hours every week teaching something which you know, please sign up for Teach India.

Last month Raja (VentureWoods) wrote a post on the same subject. According to him the rise of the usage of cash cards can be attributed to the IRCTC agents. These agents sell train tickets to the consumers who do not have access to a credit card or debit card. He also makes a comment that right now the cash cards is getting popular with the agents who do bulk booking. The consumer segment is yet to be tapped. It is not clear what benefit (commissions) will an agent get when they use a cash card for transaction as opposed or a VISA/MasterCard debit or credit cards.

What is a Cash Card?

It is multi-purpose card which enables consumers to do transactions online as well as through mobile. The consumers have to pay upfront in full to get a cash card. This is different from a debit card where it is tied to one’s bank account and money is directly debited from the account. And a credit card where user gets a grace period of 30 days or more to repay a bank which issues the credit. The most popular cash cards in India are ITZ and Done. It is is similar to the prepaid recharge cards for mobiles and the gift cards. You go to a vendor pay the money upfront, get a card, scratch it for a unique number and use start using it! Once you exhaust the cash value of a card, throw it and get a new one.

One can also draw a similarity of a cash card with a temporary credit card numbers which can be used for online transactions for a limited amount of time or cash value. This practice ensures that the user’s original credit card number will not fall into wrong hands while performing an online transaction.

Data from IRCTC for June 2008

Based on the data from IRCTC, there were 2.7 million transactions worth 2.4 billion Indian Rupees. 22.7% of successful transactions were processed by ICICI Payment Gateways, 15.2% from ITZ Cash Card and 12.44% from Done Cash Card. And the remaining transactions(50%) is shared by around 30 other payment gateways.

Can Cash Cards over take VISA or MasterCard in India?

• The failure rate for a Cash Card transaction is 17%, as opposed to 29% for Credit card and 37% for Debit Cards
• The average number of days for refund of cash for a failed transaction -  1.24 days for Cash Card, 1.97 days for Credit Cards and 2.3 days for Debit Cards.
• Not all have access to banks and credit card companies. Cash cards can be bought over the counter from thousands of the vendors.
• Consumers gets to use the full amount (no processing fee) of a cash card. Visa Gift cards from IDBI, ICICI and SBI has a processing fee.
• Minimum for a cash card is 100 rupees and opposed to 500 ruppes for VISA Gift cards.

More and more consumers are getting hooked to internet and mobile. More people from far off places will start using cash cards. The E-Commerce companies in India cannot ignore the importance of Cash Card Companies for online transactions.

Google in one of its ambitious project has introduced a robot which writes the blog content automatically. Google has named their new robot as WriteBot. This is in addition to the Google News site which aggregates the top headlines from major sources of news. WriteBot has a very knowledgeable friend who reads millions of blogs, newspapers, and other user generated content. Yes, WriteBot depends on GoogleBot. As everyone knows GoogleBot is busy indexing the world’s content.

How does WriteBot generate content?

As soon as WriteBot gets tip for a new post, it calls GoogleBot to see if there are any reference material which can be used to create a new post. WriteBot relies on GoogleBot’s analytical ability as it is reading and analyzing the world’s information for many years now. WriteBot compiles all the information and refers the goldmine of Google user’s online behaviour and generates unique content for each user. Yes WriteBot knows that I like short posts. Occasionally WriteBot pushes longer post into my reader to see if I like it. Different users get different post based on their online behavior and taste. If WriteBot understands that its reader is a geek, it will use more geeky language in the post. WriteBot always links to the original source of the story. Each user has their own page with Google.

WriteBot knows the importance of speaking vernacular language

WriteBot writes contents in many languages simultaneously. In India most news content providers understands the need of being vernacular. WriteBot develops content in English, Hindi among many other languages. And finally, it uses the tried and tested Adsense for advertising. Needless to say all the advertisement are much more context sensitive and much more relevant (behavioral targeting) than ever.

This is a fictional post. This is the first post in the new category WorkBench.

Last week I got a email from SnapFish saying that it I can send pictures to India for Rs.2.95. Well I do have an account with SnapFish.com. But I have not registered in their Indian version yet. And SnapFish needs just a email address to complete registration. In the email it is said that account details are universal. This means an account with SnapFish.com will work SnapFish.in. But how did they get to know that I am having family in India to send photo?

Well its all because of an outdated online profile that I have in BharatMatrimony (Consim). I received the email from Consim.in server. The only thing I know is that I have used the same email id to create accounts for both snapfish and BharatMatrimony. Did Consim share my email address with SnapFish?

The privacy policy clearly says that Consim (BharatMatrimony) will not share any personally indetifiable information with a third party without user’s consent. Well isn’t this a violation of privacy policy?

According to their site, 70% of the users of BharatMatrimony are from India. According to JuxtConsult BharatMatrimony is the most preferred matrimonial service. And about its users- 70% own laptop/computer, 53% have done online shopping, 40% owns a credit card and 74% have used Internet for more than 2 years.

I regularly listen to the podcasts from Business Week magazine. Every Thursday Business Week releases a podcast which discusses what went behind the scenes to create their weekly cover story. After listening to the podcast, almost every time I visit their site for related content. Several other magazines also provide the podcasts of their cover stories and other interesting discussion.

These podcasts are professionally recorded and circulated. Some of them even carries pre-roll advertisements. Podcasts can serve like a good advertisement to drive traffic to the site as well as increase the sales of the magazines. With the given popularity of mp3 devices it becomes inevitable for magazines companies and other content producers to create and distribute podcasts.

But Indian Business Magazine companies do not think so. The following are the most popular business magazines in India with the approximate circulation numbers - Business Today(416,000), Business India (291,000), Outlook Business (226,000) and Business World (224,000). Unfortunately none of these magazines provide podcasts on their websites. And even Google could not find a website for Business India magazine.

Well the good news is that foreign magazine publishers like Fortune, Businessweek and The Economist planning to release Indian version of their magazines. I hope this competition will force existing magazine companies to think of innovative marketing strategies to maintain and gain new customers. And definitely a better web presence cannot be ignored.

According to a study by EMarketer, by the end of 2008 there will be around 10 million active podcast listeners in US with advertising dollars going up to 240 million dollars. I could not locate any numbers for Indian podcast industry.

I have heard a couple of podcasts from India. Most of them are not professional recorded and I can barely hear the discussion. Most of us will subscribe to podcasts only when it can give a message or a lively discussion. I would not mind spending 30 minutes or so for listening to a good podcast while I am commuting to work or doing house hold chores.

I would love a listen to a podcast from a Indian Magazine (or Newspaper) which gives me a daily or weekly dose of information and insights. I think podcasts in vernacular languages like Hindi will sell like hot cake. Do you think Indian podcast market is not matured yet?