Sampad's Blog

What Do Local Businesses Really Need & Want?

Sampad Swain — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 08:47:58 +0000

This post has been part of my draft for almost 8 months now. For obvious reasons, I’ve not posted it. But now since I’m out of DealsAndYou.com, thought of posting my point of view without any guilt trip.

So to start off, daily deals industry actually started around end of 2009 where me along with a friend gave an early sort at it with all guns blazing. However, the industry quickly shaped up like typical FMCG industries where money is the biggest ammunition to stay afloat while revenue is out of volume sales.

Now that’s not what a typical fledging start thinks early on or rather wants also. But that’s the nature of quick growing business models. So we got acquired & our fledgling startup got rebranded as DealsAndYou. That’s that.

The sales pitch to the local businesses was simple – helping them in offsetting the un-utilized inventory over a period of time by giving deep discounts to walk-in customers. That worked – definitely it did. That’s why we see many daily deal companies raising multi-dollar funding to the tune of around $50 Mn in India aggregately in the last 2 years alone for geographic expansion, increasing sales footprint, ops cost etc with definite revenue base (I’m not getting into the debate of GMV vs revenue vs margins vs net profit etc).

But the question is what problem did daily deal companies solve – after spending almost 2 years in the industry, I would say that they swayed away from the problem statement wherein they were supposed to help local businesses in offsetting under-utilized inventory problem.

But this problem came up another set of problems – since daily deal companies were more like a destination portal for consumers who can pick & choose which deal to buy; so customers often bought those deals which has less riders, more easy on their wallet (i.e. more discounts), can be redeemed almost anytime based on their convenience etc. Now if we dwell into solving customers purchase decision, then local businesses issue takes a back seat – which is why there has been rants globally that daily deal companies doesn’t have long term sustenance or local businesses would slowly move away from such value props since its a deal breaker over a longer period of time.

Now, lets understand what exactly local businesses really want which IMO daily deal companies can’t really solve with the present set of business metrics which is more biased towards consumer convenience (don’t get me wrong here – serving consumers & providing convenience isn’t wrong. Its just the way business models work in daily deals businesses).

So for local businesses, daily deal models are slowly shifting from “need to have (N2H)” to “good to have (G2H)“.

So to put it in black & white, local businesses actually want this:

Attract customers at lesser discounts (of course way less than what daily deal companies give i.e. >50%+)
Customers walk-ins almost 24X7 and not necessarily during those hours when customers want to come which is the late evenings & weekends because businesses are almost running full during those times.
Lesser logistical nightmare like contracts, signups, deal structuring etc i.e. something more flexible which takes care of unorganized nature of the local businesses.
Creating a pool of loyal customers & not being type-casted as discounted place.
Something which helps the local business shift demand to those times when they are actually dull or running slow. That ways, businesses can actually offset their un-utilized inventory problem.

Now such flexible, easy & intelligent way of helping local businesses is kind of difficult for daily deal businesses to solve because of the business model paradigm (mentioned above) – but it is definitely is a huge opportunity at a global scale since the problem of unused inventory or lean hours problem is faced by almost all business.

Hope this post helps many in understanding few more things than already said.

Now I rest my case.

Update: Medianama crossposted this article here.

Online Services I Personally use Daily for Productivity

Sampad Swain — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 22:48:37 +0000

I’ve been thinking off-late to jot down this post. This blog post is all about the online services which I use daily for my productivity gains. Many are old & repeats while few are new & quite cool. It makes me feel really happy that I live in an era where all these services come free of cost for personal use.

Quick Note (a chrome extension) – the quickest way to take notes in Chrome. Its one of the best desktop note-app.

Why: I can quickly note down my thoughts, comments or anything just with a click of a button.

Love: It’s the online version of notepad while browsing for me without much hassles. It works across all major browsers. Find it more useful that Evernote as it takes lesser action.

Hate: Somehow doesn’t work in the Chrome Webstore itself. Strange!

Windows live writer – desktop blogging tool (p.s. I’m typing in WLR right now)

Why: it makes it easy for me to publish my content without much hassle.

Love: Best use case if to use it offline mode in draft & publish it whenever you get time. Also editing is much easier.

Hate: works best in windows environment. Cringes a bit if you’re working on a mac.

Dropbox – lets you save your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily.

Why: makes my life more simple when it comes to storage of any kind of data over many devices.

Love: its sheer simplicity. storing your data on the cloud has never been much easier. love its sharing options.

Hate: storage capacity is just max 10 GB free i.e. 2GB + 8GB (via referrals).

Ifttt – creates tasks which fits the simple structure “if this then then (i-f-t-t-t)” i.e. when something happens (this) then do something else (that).

Why – automates my most mundane tasks without me moving an inch.

Love – helps these simple tasks which fits your daily curriculum. also helps to create critical daily tasks on your priority by simple notifications.

Hate – limited channels.

Skype – free video calls.

Why – don’t have to meet people always. works best when meeting people remotely is part of your daily task list.

Love – way more personal

Hate – connectivity can be a dampener.

Google apps for business – web mail.

Why – solves my gmail issues of sending limits of more than 500 daily.

Love – 2-way authentication

Hate – free upto 10 users.

iTunes Desktop – automatically lets you organize, download and play digital content on your computer

Why – hate going to content url everytime there’s something new to watch or hear.

Love – automatically downloads content for the channels I’ve subscribed without me doing anything

Hate – closed environment. doesn’t work for content outside the walled garden.

Bitbucket – free source code hosting & issue tracking.

Why – easy private collaboration without any hassle.

Love – Unlimited public & private repositories and free for upto 5 users.

Hate – multiple email alerts if I edit any already uploaded issues. sometime push requests fail over slow n/w

BoomerangForGmail – Schedule an email to be sent later. Easy email reminders.

Why – helps me on email follow-ups with reminders. also lets me schedule ‘to be sent email’ for later

Love – the feature which helps me to sent an email if ‘someone replies in X days’ & if ‘I don’t hear back in Y days’.

Hate – still finding…

Grove - private IRC server for your company with archives and search.

Why – always wanted a private group chat within the company/peers or like-minded folks

Love – it works!

Hate – still finding…

I use few more bots & alpha apps but not sharing it now since they are not yet stable. So hope you find this list productive for you all well. Do share if you’re using some neat tool which might help us all.

Poll: MiMC logo

Sampad Swain — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 17:26:12 +0000

Thanks to @helloanand (Anand Jain), we now have our ‘Made in Maximum City (MiMC)’ logo sample ready. Now wanted to get your feedback on the same.

Here’s attached a small poll (via PollDaddy) where you can give your inputs.

The poll will be LIVE till 11th Nov night. After that, will give out the results.

Again, thanks to Anand for taking time out for this

Take Our Poll

Note: If you can’t see the poll in your email, then visit this link.

Img: Technology transforms

Sampad Swain — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 18:59:38 +0000

via

Just reminded me something I read sometime back at Chris Dixon’s blog about predicting future of internet. Fits well right!!

OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

Sampad Swain — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 22:40:12 +0000

…and that was Steve Jobs’ final words as he stared past his family. Heartbreaking & beautiful.

from Mona Simpson’s eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs.

Future of TV

Sampad Swain — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 20:53:00 +0000

Today is a defining day for all Indian F1 lovers as India is debuting in F1. Although I’m not a fan of F1 (yet) but definitely the build up process in the media did caught my attention lately as I was waiting to catch some action for the pole position (or whatever its called). Now due to some outside work, I couldn’t catch the action LIVE on television. Too bad.

I even missed the LIVE T20 cricket action between India & England too.

Now, while I was feeling bad that I couldn’t watch any of the two LIVE events, I kept wondering wouldn’t it be great if I could have watched the action in entirety later on-demand. Now I’m not talking about the typical pause, record & rewind Live TV. For that I’ve to be physically present in front of my TV set. I wanted something where I can do the same pause, record & rewind TV shows, events etc on-demand on mobile devices/iPad or Tab. Wouldn’t that be cool for viewing my favorite stuff whenever & wherever I want to.

Now while I was thinking about such option for myself – I suddenly remembered reading something couple of days back by John Gruber. It was about Bloomberg TV+ for iPad.

Now that’s the future of television IMO.

As Gruber calls it, apps are the new channels. I agree to most extent to that idea.

Distribution is the key for this kinda game. More so, for a bigger play, larger distribution deals are to be inked. Now thinking on similar lines for startups, an immense opportunity opens up for sure. But due to lack of clarity on my part, I’m not able to judge if a fledgling startup can create such apps (say for CNN-IBN or HBO or Sony or Star World) which we can watch as we feel wherever & whenever we feel. Stop it, rewind it, record it, skip to our favorite part – basically do whatever we do like in a normal youtube video.

That would be really cool. Also add GetGlue or the Indian counterpart, WebMurga kind of ideas mapped to those apps. It definitely becomes more interactive & social experience than its today.

So the use case is definitely interesting.

But from legal point of view, I think production houses won’t give the rights for some other company to create such things. I guess there’s some legal issues involved – or may be I’m wrong. Hopefully someone can help me understand the terrain better

Now here’s a screenshot from the Bloomberg+ app for iPad:

Happy Diwali to you :)

Sampad Swain — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 04:26:42 +0000

Happy Diwali to you all. Here’s wishing that this year you get to fulfill all your wishes

AVC.com & HN Reader

Sampad Swain — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 11:55:01 +0000

Today have two specific destinations to share where you’ll find amazing startup content with interesting anecdotes & deep insights. Nothing more or less.

First, go over to AVC.com if you haven’t yet visited Fred Wilson’s blog. I’ve been following Fred’s blog for more than 24 months now. I think I’ve hardly come across such rich content destination for startups. More interestingly Fred post’s almost everyday – although he’s a busy person but kudos for able to follow the blog posting regime (p.s. – if you’re new to startups or want to know in-depth understanding of various nuances of starting up, the his “MBA Mondays” series is definitely something you should not miss).

Second, a chrome extension which I bumped into couple of months back. It’s a hacker news reader chrome extension. What I like the most about this little extension is its brilliant UI; not mentioning high S/N ratio from tons of hacker news URLs pouring every minute which sometimes can be overwhelming. I typically use this extension everyday to go through what’s happening in the tech fraternity. If you don’t use Chrome, you can move over to this URL.

Until next time…

Made in Maximum City (MiMC)

Sampad Swain — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:28:16 +0000

I have an interesting thing to share. About an year back I’ve been mulling over an idea. It was broadly on the lines of how can I give back to the startup fraternity. It would be wrong if I don’t share with you that I’ve thought about couple of things to do like

Creating a repository for all startups (more like Crunchbase for India)
A private/public page for all startup’ers (something like About.me for only startup folks). May be this will see the light one day. Fingers crossed!
Creating an online version of individual tweet-up to make person meets person (something on the lines of office hours)

Now most of the above ideas haven’t seen the daylight due to shortage of time on my behalf. So to work around this constraint, I started an idea called inStartup which is still quasi-live. Although I did work on it for couple of months, then got busy in other mundane activities.

Now come yesterday, I’d some time to spare & thought of crafting something within couple of hours. Hence, the idea hatched into something called “Made in Maximum City (MiMC)”.

So why might ask why? No sweat. Here’s the answer. I’m entirely indebted to the Maximum City (aka Mumbai aka Bombay). I came to this city in the year 2008 with little dreams in my eyes. While battling between corporate assjackerry & living up the dreams, I was always helped, supported & in many ways shown the right path by folks around. I would call that helping hand to be the “Big Mumbai Spirit”. So its my way of giving back to the city to whom I owe a hell lot. Hence the idea “Made in Maximum City (MiMC)”.

So if you’re interesting to know more about what’s it all about, pull yourself over to the header which says Made in MC.

Also here’s the FAQs too (if you’re the kind who might be interested to read):

Q1. What’s the criteria to be part of this list?

50% of coding should have been done in Mumbai (at least 50% of both frontend & backend)

Should be a technology startup (not service startups like brick-n-mortar agencies etc)

Should have a decent userbase or a good monthly visitation flow (right now we are not setting benchmark for this)

Proudly display “Made in MC” in your website with a linkback to this page OR display MC with preceding verb/adverb like “Proudly Made in Mumbai” or “Lovingly Made in MC” etc. Got questions – tweet us!

Q2. How can we add our startup in the list?

Here you go. Fill this form & submit.

Q3. So what’s the moot point of “Made in Maximum City (MiMC)”?

We thought that its time that we should be little proud of the place where we build our baby to conquer the world. So little <3 for Mumbai doesn’t hurt anyone. Also lets proudly show ourselves off in the hope that everyone everywhere (including s/w engineers who don’t live in the world’s greatest city) know that internet is being made in the maximum city.

Q4. Is there an official “Made in MC (MiMC)” logo available that we can display?

Good that you asked. Not yet. But surely, that’s coming. So if you’re a designer, visualizer, photoshop jockey & anything to do with logo designing, you’re my favorite person right now. So do get in touch!

Q5. How does it help my company?

If you’re a startup entrepreneur, its good to be known amongst good’ol talent who are looking for you.

If you’re a startup job seeker, I think you already know where to go to find that awesome company to join where technology is at the helm.

If you’re a startup evangelist, the list works like an exhaustive list of technology companies in Mumbai for your reference.

Rest all, please go figure! btw we do our share to promote #MiMC as much as possible publicly

Q6. Where can we all see the list of startups?

The exhaustive list of startups will be listed on this page with backlinks to their page.

Q7. Who all are involved in this scrappy initiative?

Right now, its me, myself & my old laptop. But little help is always welcome.

Q8. Idea seems interesting! How can I contribute?

Mail. Tweet. Whatever way you want to contribute, we can surely work it out P.S. Use #MiMC to get immediate attention over twitter.

Q9. How do you verify that the above mentioned criteria’s are met?

Good question. Right now, we follow the honesty principle. Later, we would be doing verification. But if violations are caught, we won’t hesitate to make it public.

Q10. Yo, where can we send suggestions & criticisms?

Try @MadeinMC or sampad [at] sampadswain.com Try to be nice. Thanks

A Fresh Start

Sampad Swain — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 04:54:09 +0000

Up until now, I’d almost forgotten this blog. So haven’t updated much here. Over the past year or so, many things happened for good – some by chance & some I’d strived for. All in all, the experience & the journey has been awesome & can’t wait for more to come.

Along the way, I have had many experiences & have formed many new point of views (which I’ve shared more often than not via twitter). Now I want to share all that over here more often than I used to.

So considering this to be a fresh new start for me & this blog of course.

Hoping to see you all pouring in comments, feedback & as usual contrarian point of views which helps all of us of course.

Note: I changed the entire design & layout with a sleek & cleaner design & more stress on the font & color scheme. Hope all of you like it. Cheers