Sushrut Bidwai

There are numerous applications which are developed to take advantage of mobile and SMS penetration in India. Vakow, SMSGupShup are just 2 such examples. All these entrepreneurs read blogs, industry data about how SMS is going to grow and mobile penetration is going to still grow. These blogs/industry experts give numbers like how many SMS delivered in a day, on particular day like festival, valentines day and all. They tell you how you can use SMS as content deliery channels to attract user base and create a killer startup with multi-million dollar revenues. All good, go for it. Before going for it think about what these blogs don’t tell you though.  Does any of the blogs tell you how many people who use mobiles for voice communication extensively are not using SMS? I dont think so. Do they tell why they are not using it? Naah, they just can’t figure it out. It takes lot of evangelism to understand your user base. 

One of the problems with web 2.0 startups that I recently talked to or I have seen mushroomed targeting mobile and SMS content delivery is, they focus on existing user base of these media. They are not putting lof thought about why lot of people are not using the media despite having access to it. If you are a budding entrepreneur then before creating your killer app consider these points that come up in this post. Its good to target a large existing user base and hey you got idea to get rich. But it will be better if you keep that scalability to your platform to reach non-existent user base and make sure your delivery channels reach them in short term OR long term future.

For example, SMSGupShup has lot of user base, market momentum and everything is good and they will make tons of money, or at least I hope they do as an entrepreneur myself. But problem is they are focusing too much on the Gupshup part of it. I recently developed similar app for a brokerage firm that wanted to use SMS as THE media of communication with its client base of 5000+ customers. Now I told them about SMSGupshup and they said they cant use something names so funny for professional purposes. Now I was trying to make them use it as I was not going to get paid for developing it as its my friends firm. Though he did send me Johny Walker Black Label 24 for my birthday! Why they did not want to use SMSGupShup, because its named Gupshup and gives impression that its for fun and ONLY for fun. So I think the brand does not have scalability, but that another post in draft about brand scalability.

Point I am trying to make is, think about existing user base of a media and think harder about non-existent user base and whoa you got yourself much better business model and hence more chance of making it big. Taking case of SMS channels for instance, can’t you reach to customers in villages/taluka places who have mobiles but don’t use SMSes? You can. I know you will say in comments section that these people can’t type SMS and literacy rates are low and every other problem. Instead think about can they read the SMSes? Yes they can, believe me I do lot of field work and I know lot of them (30% approx)  can. So who can send them useful SMS which these people, like farmers, can use for there advantage? Traders. For example, Nasik exports grape to global market. Lot of farmers who export them are not literate but are rich and have mobiles. Now you can bridge these farmers in Nasik to exporters in Mumbai using SMS channel. How? Let me explain. Go to traders in Mumbai and see how they work. For every day they will call n differnt farmers telling them todays market price and if they want to sell for that market value. Otherwise farmers go directly to markets and sell it for available market price with out holding for better valuation for tomorrow (or is it always yesterday?). So you can help farmers get good pricing for there goods and you can help traders in managing there supply chain using SMS channels. Makes sense? I thinkso. 

Though this audience is little harder to reach, but I think user base is so huge that once you penetrate in that market segment you are going to be rewarded n times for your hard work and evangelism.  Educate people and wider audience about your platform while you are doing good job at reaching to existing customer base.

Ideas, Startup, philosophy entrepreneurship, evangelism, innovation, internet, mobile, philosophy, SMS, SMSGupShup, social media, startup advice, startups, web 2.0

As promised here is another startup idea I would like to see.

Net is far reaching medium, no doubt. In India still it has not reached the masses though, but that’s another story which will be focus on some another blog entry. One of new things that are propelling growth of the Internet further are collaborative technologies like wiki, blog, media sharing etc etc etc. Lets focus on blogs, one of the key resource for information sharing even breaking news these days. Lot of people are now blogging and lot more are reading them, commenting on them. New feature that I would like on blog-readers or feed readers is voice. I travel a lot to Pune/Mumbai/Banglore and other places for networking. Instead of listening to cool music I would definitely like to listen to blogs as reading in an Indian Volvo variant is not so much recommended for eyes. So something like a radio channel with visual UI. So my smartphone downloads all the blogs I am subscribed to and then reads them for me in “good” Indian accent english. If there is new post on a blog I am subscribe to then it tells me there is new post. I should be able to have all the controls over the reading like in a typical radio. Browing through them, pause, play, stop etc. Its not really feature for blogs but it is feature for blog-readers/feed readers. Some support from blogs is essentially though. For example if a blog has some pictures and refering them in the blog post then there should be some voice link king of thing which says when you start reading this line then show this pic on the device. If there is a slide-show which is being discussed then it should have voice links accordingly. I think this feature can be really cool and handy for people who want to read blogs but just dont get time in there busy life (I am not one of them yet ). People who are constantly travelling and are looking to read blogs during travelling.

Ideas blogs, internet, radio, social media, Startup, startup ideas, travel

Web is changing. It will keep on changing more rapidlly henceforth. Newton’s laws of motion doesnt just limited to physics. But in which direction? Media management is becoming easier and easier. Features like photo-tagging, video-tagging are now common place. Video advertisements etc are also taking up. But I, person who spends 16 hours in front of the new idiot box and mostly doing things like sending emails, chatting, twitting, setting up meetings, skype calls, monitoring development process and some technical work, want to see few features listed below.

1. Standards. Calendar, blogs are now common place. Every tom, dick and harry who has site on web has these features. Can we standardise them? Google/Yahoo/Microsoft are you listening? Why cant I stream all my previous blogs to this blog? Same goes for micro-blogging. Web is suppose to be information-sharing platform, share it. Not just on your site but let other site integrate with you and economics of such integration can be figured out (thats what MBAs are for right?)

2. Open integrations. If you have standards integration will be piece of cake! For example what I need today is something like this, I send a email seting up a meeting to some one I have not met before in a cafe. Then Thunderbird (which I use and recommend) should have some plugin which gives me ability to publish it on my calendar and calendar of the person I am meeting and other invites if any. Along with that using my plaxo or local address book, person should be SMSed about the meeting. If I want I should be able to clip map from google Map and embed it in the e-mail. Everything should get pushed pushed to my other devices (laptop/smart phones/etc etc). 

3. Smart integrations and rule specifications. I often forget to send follow up emails after a meeting. I know its a bad bad bad habit, but . What I want is when  I send an email which is a meeting/conf call request or receive one and I accept that, then automatically my reminders should be set to send an follow up mail. And all this should happen through rules that I set using some cool visual tool and not python/perl.

4. Development tool integrations. A person check-ins a patch who reports to me, so I am suppose to review it and approve it before branches are merged. Cant I get automatic notification of check-in. Cant my to-do list be updated and reminders set.  Is there some one who can for once integration requirement analysis, use case point estimations, task management, bug management tools under on consitent GUI?

Note that all ideas are mine and if you work on any of those then you should send me this .

There are few more ideas which will follow soon.

Ideas, Startup email, google, microsoft, open integration, social media, standards, Startup, startup advice, startup idea, thunderbird, yahoo