Meet these three young turks from Bangalore who will add a creative splash to your communications

When I first interviewed Mr. Vikas Jaiswal, I could hardly contain my excitement. This man, to start with, is a communication Guru! It was only apparent what he chose to do and why.

This is the story of three year old Pichkaari., the design studio that applies design thinking for brands on communication platforms draped in hues that add meaning.

“We were colleagues. Sebastian and I,” Vikas said, referring to his the then peer and now co-founder, Sebastian Jacob.

“We worked as user experience designers and we collaborated on a lot of projects together. And that is how we actually met the third co-founder, Priyanka Jain. She offered us her deep insight in Design as we bonded and worked much more. She completed our team. With time, we realized the utter imbalance in effective communication between target audience and clients. And that’s exactly when we found our calling and decided to start Pichkaari.”

Pichkaari is all about media, advertising and communications. They focus on Design Thinking to apply intelligence in all processes they create. It is a communication boutique, where people and businesses get to express their ideas to the target audience through interesting and innovative formats.

“As part of my professional experience, I have faced many situations, to my utter dismay, where there exists a colossal management crisis for churning out effective communication. From vendor hassles to the absence of an internal corporate communications team, the reasons run long,” says Vikas explaining the need for a clearer method of communication.

“Our business objective is to help people communicate better. Through intriguing designs, a compelling copy and creative ideas that are centred on a communication strategy, we bridge the gap between dreams and reality.”

On asking why they named the website Pichkaari.com, he said,

“We love how India’s heritage is interlaced with. Pichkaari was the right fit for the name because it is quirky and signifies splashes of thoughts, ideas, and also talks about giving life to the mundane black-and-white world of corporate.”

Pichkaari is not just about getting the message across. It takes great pride in delighting its clients.

“We provide our clients with an experience that is useful, usable and differentiated. It has been an exceptional boon for us to be in the company of gifted designers, copywriters, developers and animators, who bond with us with groundbreaking brainstorming. Apart from the core team, we work with interns, consultants and freelancers who add a lot of value to what we do. Our working principle places the customer first and then we work backwards on how to deliver more than what has been promised. We rejoice our deep attachment for our clients, a connection which lets us tell the world what the heart already knows. We love to dig below the surface and are proud to boast of a work culture where excitement meets a sense of purpose.”

What really differentiates Pichkaari.com from other communication houses is the flexibility with which it works. They expand, recede and stretch in multiple ways to fit into the client’s frame. Being adaptive to change is what the Communication Design Studio believes in.

“I remember the first assignment that we worked on. It was on creating ads for an employee engagement initiative. We conducted a detailed survey on all possible procedures involved and did not miss one detail of our first client’s operations. Such in-depth analysis proved to be invaluable information for the campaign as our creatives mobilized a substantial change in employee participation.”

In the path of following one’s dream one has to overcome fear, struggle on it but the zeal should be to make things happen because you are what you do. With Pichkaari too, things have not been a bit different.

“We believe in not settling for what is just comfortable but is flawless, as we had imagined. As word spread we found ourselves working for way more additional clients. It was surely a time when expectation had to be met reality. The biggest challenge was though, denial for compromising on quality. What really makes me happy today is that we did, and we did it real good. We haven’t let our struggles as a start-up get in the way of our performance. We have been through crests and troughs and have attained the maturity to expand our services to suit into any communication requirement that a brand has.”

With the passion to design and the zeal to excel at what they do, Pichkaari has recently seen a lot of developments with expansions into fields of Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Promotional Videos, and it only speaks volumes about the success of this Communication Design Studio.

A story by Khevana Shah.

Abhishek Jain – Amdavadi film-maker who is giving Gujarati Cinema an urban twist

Remember Kevi Rite Jaish? The peppy, unconventional urban – Gujarati movie that became a topic of discussion and a must-see for practically everyone who understood Gujarati? We meet the soul behind the movie – Abhishek Jain. Here’s the story of the storyteller who made urban Gujarati movies, a thing. 

Abhishek was born and brought up in Ahmedabad, with his roots in Jodhpur.

“My mother encouraged me to pursue performing arts. At 9, I began doing Gujarati plays. I was then expected to join the family business so I decided to pursue the retail management course from Mumbai”

However, for Abhishek, there was always a void. Film-making just filled it. The need to bring forth issues that matter in a compelling way and making an impact drove him to enrol in India’s one of the leading film making institutes. 

“I enrolled at Whistling Woods and that was it. It opened the doors for me in the bling-y industry of cinema. When I began, I didn’t even know who Yash Raj, Yash Chopra or Subhash Ghai were. I was made fun of for my ignorance to the industry I was so passionate about.”

For Abhishek, films were always about actors and never the directors or the producers.

“They were never on stage! For 7-8 months, I refused to interact with people at college since I felt inferior and illiterate in the glamorous world of cinema. I spent a lot of time in library, watching lot of films and reading as much as I could on the same”

After completing his film-making studies, Abhishek assisted big shots like Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Subhash Ghai in Saawariya and Yuvraj. In a pursuit to fill the void, Abhishek decided to take a leap of some years and shifted back to Ahmedabad.

“CineMan, my film-making venture, came into the picture in February 2010. We began with the idea of venturing into the advertising field in order to gather enough funds to make a feature film. So we began with approaching NGOs and requested them to let us make a video. We wanted to prove ourselves in the market and also understand how well we as a team are. We made three advertisements at peanut price and it went well.”

And then onwards, there was no looking back. The team proceeded further with the aim to provide an exposure to the brands established in the town for which every time they needed to rush to Mumbai.

“We were determined to deliver things of good quality at an affordable price” 

Abhishek constantly focused on building a robust team that would stick through all odds.

“We are all young, passionate and have a go-getter attitude. Being young comes with a limitation of lack of commitment. However, it is a long way for us and we are learning how to handle things with maturity”

CineMan has already brought out two feature films, the last hit film – ‘Bey Yaar’ which successfully ran in the theatres for 53 weeks and ‘Kevi Rite Jaish’ which took Gujarati cinema scenes by a storm. It was also screened in several countries overseas. Interestingly with ‘Bey Yaar’ Abhishek Jain brought the concept of in-film branding in Gujarati cinema.

“Initially, the brands were bit apprehensive about the idea. It was not that they were not convinced about the fact that whether we will do justice to their brand or not but they were apprehensive of the fact that whether the amount they are paying will be worth it or not.”

Seven years down the lane, CineMan contributed two major hits to the Gujarat film industry. Abhishek Jain talks about CineMan’s future plans.

“We had a five year plan when we began and we achieved it. Ad films and television commercials are the core areas that we will keep concentrating on. I want to break a perception that everything cool thing related to entertainment industry can only be done in Mumbai”

Talking about his challenges, Abhishek says,

“I think the most difficult part is to have a fair balance of creativity and a business-mind to survive in entertainment business.”

The 28 year old director is already a role model for a number of young film makers; he highlights the fact that if there’s a will, there’s a way.  

“I think the only way one can succeed in this super-competitive industry is by making films and evolving out of it”, he concludes. 

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

This story could be about a woman with physical disability. But it is not.

As I struggle with the scorching sunlight and dust in Berhampur village of Orissa, I see her beaming like a sunshine as she talks to youngsters who are here for a 15 days long Jagriti Yatra, to understand how enterprises – small and big, work.

Meet Chumki Datta, an entrepreneur from Bhubhaneshwar. She lost her legs in an accident but that is not what this story is going to be about. Because that is not what defines Chumki Datta. A brief conversation with her, you immediately realise how she doesn’t entertain pointless sympathy we are naturally conditioned to show to someone with physical disability. And that is what her story is about.

I come from Kolkata. My father was a lawyer and my mother was a home-maker. I was brought up in a very liberal environment, where I began making my own decisions at a very young age.

For Chumki, her father was an inspiration. And the only second person after her dad was her husband, Professor Tathagata.

We were madly in love. I lost him 4 years back. After my accident, I had practically given up but it was him who stood by my side, something very unusual of men. It troubled me thinking how I could never live a normal life anymore, but it was him who actually showed me how everything could just be as it was. And I have to say, he succeeded in doing so.

Before the accident, Chumki was an active sportsperson, an aspiring model and an entrepreneur. She also received offers from a few movies.

After I moved to Bhubhaneshwar after my marriage, I decided to continue with my advertising agency, Mastermind. It was a time when women entrepreneurs were very rare. Our agency has since then ranked as one of the top 10 agencies of Orissa. I was a threat in the male dominated industry of a male dominated state. Interestingly, my biggest support & inspiration was also a male – my husband.

Chumki portrays character that has fire in the belly that most articles on entrepreneurship talk about.

I love gardening! If you came with some spare time, I would have taken you to my house. I live in the middle of the forest on my own.

On your own? I ask, because of my obvious little knowledge about how physically disabled carry out their routine activities. And wait, in the middle of a forest?

She chuckles.

It is fairly simple. I have a driver who drives me to Bhubhaneshwar  where my office is and a help at home. Gardening is an important part of my daily routine post which I am immersed in my work. I shop, exercise and practically do everything any other working professional would do! And about the forest, I chose to live there because trust me there is nothing better than can contain me in peace!

Chumki also manages a guest house, hosting corporate and individual clients. She is also a Board member for SMRC (Shanta Memorial Rehabilitation Centre) which works on empowering with physical disabilities, women violence and rehabilitation of patients with spine injury.

It is very devastating for someone who’s lived fit and active all their life to suddenly become dependent on someone, especially for a woman. Before I preached others that they can still live a normal life and be successful, I decided to be an example.

Chumki is actively involved with initiatives that are working to make India more inclusive of people with physical disabilities.

I can now understand the problems people face much more clearly when I face them myself. To begin with, Indian government needs to seriously work on creating infrastructure that is disabled-friendly.

A story by Shruti Chaturvedi

Do you listen?

 How winning a contest turned a hobby project into a full-fledged startup – The 4Dea Story

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, we visited 4Dea’s offices in IIT Gandhinagar to meet Preet Shah and Dhyey Shah – co-founders of 4Dea. They, along with classmates Eepsit Tiwari and Ankit Pandole founded 4Dea in November 2014, while they were still in the final year of engineering in IIT Gandhinagar.

“We had actually taken this up in our second year itself, says Dhyey; who had started working on the first prototype in Dec 2012 after seeing a tourist app and how California was showcased so beautifully. “I wanted to do something for my home-city Ahmedabad”, says Dhyey, “so I wrote the code from scratch for Android, added maps and incorporated google street view in that app”

There is a magnificent chowk near Doshiwada ni Pol where you can see 3 different eras of architectural design standing in a single place.

“When I tried to explain this to my friends via still photos I had clicked, it did not give the same feel of the place that I had experienced. I had read about 360-degree panoramic photography, and was amazed by the possibility that people can actually experience the feeling of being in that very place! We wanted to do something that the people should be able to communicate in a very effective manner. That’s how 4D Gujarat was born” (That’s what they called their “initiative” in those days)

“You need a fish-eye lens to shoot a panorama”, explains Dhyey. “But we did not have the money to buy a good entry-level lens, so I figured out a way to make the pano using video-shooting techniques, and used Google Maps’ API to make the Pano Viewer. Using these, we made several panos of the famous Ahmedabad Heritage Walk, and people loved it! They were amazed at the fact that they could be in control of what they want to see in that scene. So we decided to pursue it further”

The team sure had their set of ups and downs.

“We had no idea that in the next 12 months, we would make a product, lose hope in the idea, would explore other ideas with other people, come back to it eventually, and get our first big contract. The team underwent some fundamental changes in the entire process.”

In September 2013, they presented their Idea to a panel from the Connecticut-based charitable organization called the Indira Foundation. The panelists agreed to give them a seed amount of INR 2 lakhs.

“We FINALLY got the money to buy our cameras and equipment!”

Using these newly bought lenses, they started shooting a project to woo the Gujarat Tourism office. The plan was, they would make a comprehensive application, which would include everything in the Heritage walk, from transport to food stalls to virtual tours. However, they realized midway that they had to do an unreasonable amount of data collection and tie-ups with local enterprises for the project to work.

“It was not an appropriate point for us, as students, to start our venture, so we had to drop the idea”.

Dropping the core idea can be difficult for the spirit of a team.

“The motivation was low, we started questioning whether it could work out. The team disintegrated, and we all started thinking of new ideas separately. It was a low point for us”, recalls Preet.

Because of the prize money from Indira Foundation, they also had to meet deadlines and present their progress to them every few months. That was what encouraged the team to be proactive and improve on their product. “We had a rough version of the software ready (Dhyey had been developing a new viewer for 4D Gujarat, much more advanced than the initial one using Google Maps’ API) We had thought that once we complete the requirements, we would pass it on to the students of IIT Gandhinagar to take it forward as they seem to fit”

At this point of time, all founders were involved in their own different entrepreneurial ventures. Eepsit and Ankit were developing  a network for travelers, while Preet and Dhyey had ventured into the home-automation space. Meanwhile, to gain some exposure, they continued presenting whatever they created for 4D Gujarat in exhibitions and technical summits. During the Industrial Open House in IIT Gandhinagar in September 2014, they came across a quotation of INR 7000 per spot (one spot is one panoramic image. A tour generally consists of 12-15 panos on average). “We had no clue we were creating something of so much value!”

Hence, it was discussed that Dhyey would fine-tune the software for Eepsit and Ankit, who would take it up and create the company, while Preet and Dhyey can continue chasing their dream in home-automation. Still, as Dhyey had made the software and was deeply involved with the 4D Gujarat vision, he just couldn’t let go.

“I used to make incremental changes to the software every now and then and go to Eepu, just to know how the company was doing”.

So, one fine evening in November 2015, the four founders (Eepsit, Ankit, Dhyey and Preet) met in the dorm rooms of IIT Gandhinagar, opted out of campus placements and created the company 4Dea. They were in their final year of engineering studies.

“It was a momentous occasion. Although we had been working on different ideas, those ups and downs in the past few months actually brought the team closer. We were unsure about ourselves, but had complete confidence and faith in each other and the idea. So, even though we didn’t know whether we would be able to swim, we jumped anyways”

It has been a memorable ride since then.

“We managed to do 3 projects even before we graduated! We even presented the IIT Gandhinagar tour in Vibrant Gujarat. It gave us unprecedented recognition and appraisal.”

After graduation, their progress has been commendable.

“We are constantly improving our software, and have also diversified our sources of revenue. We optimized our business plan, and are working on an innovative upgrade to the virtual reality tours”, describes Preet.

4Dea is currently assisting several real estate companies in Mumbai to showcase their buildings & homes online in a more effective way, simultaneously working towards increasing the online presence of prime hotels across the country through their tours.

“Somehow, we always go back to that seed fund by Indira Foundation. Had it not been for their 2 lacs and corresponding deadlines, the four of us would be having two different startups serving 2 really varied sectors” Dhyey jokes.

So what was their most important learning?

“We have changed so many things in our project, that now we are used to change. Earlier we used to be devastated at the idea of shunning something we had put our days and nights into, doing things all over again. Now we don’t panic, we embrace it!”

Struggling with sensitive skin to running a successful startup, here is a story of 27 year old’s Burst Of Happyness

On an average, a woman in America puts nearly 168 chemicals on her body from atleast 12 different products, according to a study by Environment Study Group. The count for men is lesser, tolling to 85.

Shreya is an army kid, originally from Bhiwadi in Rajasthan.

“My father was in the army so I’ve kept travelling all my childhood. My husband is an army-man too”, says Shreya who kind of settled in Maharashtra, where she did her Bachelors in Economics from Fergusson College, Post-Graduation in Marketing and Advertising from Xavier’s Institute of Communication. She further pursued her MBA in Marketing from Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies, Pune, which was when she got married to her sweetheart.

An advertising brain, 27 year old Shreya’s personal battle with her sensitive skin and allergies never seemed to end.

“It was in 2010. I was all hyper about my sensitive skin and repetitive allergic breakouts. All I could find was a lot of pretentious FMCG conglomerates and a few bits of sadly disorganized cottage industry products here and there. That’s when I decided to refuse a high-paying corporate job and instead, rolled up my sleeves and began learning all that there was to soap-making”

From this began Burst of Happyness (BOH), with its line of handmade goodies—vegan, free of preservatives, and looking good enough to eat!

Shreya began playing around with natural skin-care products, manufacturing pseudo products at home and sharing about them on her social media, only to get flooded by queries. This served her market research – there definitely was a market.

From what began as a home experiment had to take a bigger structure. A production unit was placed out Bhiwadi.

“Now started the period of chaos and confusion. Neither did I know about prioritizing nor a way of how to just go about it. I began interacting with other entrepreneurs in India and abroad to understand the basics of setting up a business – studying various business model, types of company, etc. I put in hours of research into product development and testing. At the same time, I was brainstorming with friends from the advertising course, about a brand name and logo design, segmentation, targeting and positioning. Slowly things fell in place and we launched our website in 2012”

Shreya’s products kept on evolving depending upon customer demand. Periodical polls and interactions with her consumers helped her get a fair idea about market demand.

Launching a new product takes several months of research and development. Beginning from figuring customer’s need, venturing into several options to researching ingredients that satisfy the need, Shreya’s amateur entrepreneurial journey has been exciting.

“It includes the study of properties and benefits of oils, botanical and essential oils. All the ingredients are chosen so that they complement each other and increase the efficacy of the product. We create multiple formulations for all products, which are tested during different seasons. As we don’t use any chemical emulsifiers, the products tend to behave differently with seasons. These formulations are shared with willing volunteers, family and friends for their feedback and we refine our product based on that”, says Shreya adding that none of the products are tested on animals.”

Being an entrepreneur has proved to be a boon in disguise for Shreya.

I work for longer hours than I would have if I was working in some company. However, being an entrepreneur gives me liberty to work on my own terms, from wherever I want – which is great as I can accompany my husband posted in remote locations, fulfilling my role of an army wife. The best part is, I am always satisfying the gypsy in me in the entire process.”

Burst of Happyness has been entirely bootstrapped till now and has posed its own set of challenges to young Shreya.

“Friends and family drop in and help out at different stages when the work load gets heavy to help out in cutting soap, packaging and labeling and fulfilling orders”, she says.

One important thing she learnt from her entrepreneurial journey? Outsourcing, she says.

“I used to manage the tech side of the business myself too. But one just can’t keep on doing everything on their own. It is important one finds the right people for the right job.”

Shreya also had a tough time with legalities when she went commercial, something she recommends to every upcoming entrepreneur to be careful about.

“Don’t copy anyone. And most importantly, dive into it head on and give it everything you’ve got…like your life depends on it!”

Currently a mentee in Cheri Blair Women Mentoring Program, Shreya is on a quest to make her business socially impact-ful by employing unschooled women from lower income groups.

Shreya plans to launch her range of baby products soon. She also plans to ready herself up for first round of funding in about an year.

Buzzepedia – Tailoring quality content for colleges in India

While pursuing his education at Spring Dales School in Dhaula Kuan, Rohan realized his interest for football. I was 14 then. He aspired to become a football player every day from then, until one day.

I suffered a major fracture in my forearm. The injury was definitely a set back to my passion for football. But the injury and its acceptance made me search my alternate career options

To kill the time while he was advised for rest, Rohan began fiddling with his dad’s iPhone. In case, that still left him sometime, young Rohan tried figuring out alternate career option.

Soon, he was making videos about tips and tricks related to iOS and began his YouTube channel. In no time, his videos started receiving views in few lakhs and his subscribers list boomed. Unfortunately, YouTube hadn’t yet began providing partner service to users in India, hence Rohan began finding different ways to earn.

I ended up discovering Objective-C and iOS development, which was trending everywhere. I watched several videos on YouTube and taught myself how to develop iPhone applications. After a year of learning, I launched 2-3 apps and uploaded them publicly for people to download for free. I had integrated AdMob (mobile advertisement platform) that allowed me to earn Rs 3000-4000 monthly. It was an achievement to earn this amount of money at such a young age, however, like they rightly say, everything has its consequence

Traditional Indian family. Nearing boards. Mobile phone. Internet. The four never go together, or do they? Rohan’s family soon sensed his idée fixe with iOS development and YouTube as his grades suffered. Naturally, Rohan’s internet connection was taken off and he was forced to delete all his YouTube videos.

It was devastating. I saw my years of efforts go down the drain by one click

Rohan couldn’t yet stop himself from earning. He organized the continuation party of his school in his final year which fetched him Rs. 1 Lakh. Quiet good for a 12th grader! 

It seemed like all Rohan was ever waiting was to get done with his 12th grade. He didn’t just get done, he excelled board with 81.5%.

I grabbed back the internet and taught myself web development. This time, I began with Buzzepedia. 

The concept of ‘viral content’ became popular in the 1990’s. Viral mills like Business Insider, Buzzfeed, and Upworthy used this business model and showed impressive traffic numbers. The idea of affecting millions overnight seemed to be appealing. ‘Virality’ was a new phenomenon and that caught Rohan’s eye, which eventually led to the birth of ‘Buzzepedia’ in June 2014.

I contacted my friend Adit, now co-founder, who was already into making content on that went viral on YouTube. With started Buzzepedia in June 2014 with no niche or business objectives.

Buzzepedia, which is now one of the leading entertainment website for college students in India, was initially launched by Rohan Dhawan and Adit Maniktala as a fun venture with a $1 investment and a few posts, literally.

It was a free WordPress Blog with some 5-6 posts. Within a month, we had traffic of 3,000-4,000. However it wasn’t enough. The task at hand was to understand the audience and their characteristics in order to conjure an emotional response.

Rohan Dhawan and Adit Maniktala (left to right)

Eventually, Rohan and Adit came up with the idea of ‘College Entertainment that doesn’t suck’ and started creating articles that influenced and humored Indian college students.

I am of the belief that one shouldn’t waste a lot of time on simply thinking if their idea makes sense and if how they can make it better. One simply cannot judge if the idea will work or not until you put it right there in the market and test it.

The duo continued posting more articles without much traction.

Sometime around November, 2014 I saw a post on my news feed by an American blog, listing all the college parties ranked according to how famous and promising they were. I searched for a similar post for Indian colleges. There wasn’t any. So I worked up a listicle ‘Top 10 College Parties in India’. It did take a lot of researching. I followed my usual routine of attending college after posting article. I returned home to see 4 notifications from Buzzepedia’s page along with 12 messages from Adit on Facebook. Our post had reached 10,000 people in 5 hours and the number of shares kept on increasing. Adsense earnings rose to Rs 4500 within few hours. This pumped us up and we figured how college-focused articles caught a lot of young eyeballs. Within no time we had reach in almost 50 different colleges of India.

A recent research found that Younger millennial (ages 18-24) reported less positive and surprise based emotions than any other age group, which make them a more challenging demographic to engage. Therefore, it becomes necessary to use survey tools, public API’s or internal databases to source information that would tantalize the audience.

Taking this into consideration, Buzzepedia began disseminating information that students of different institutions could relate to. Technology, sports, lifestyle, fashion, popular culture, current events and entertainment to name a few. Adit and Rohan cannot stress enough on importance of relevant content and timing.

If the content/product is not something that people would want to read/buy then there is not point of starting at the first place. Timing and positioning is just as important.

How difficult is it for an undergraduate student to manage personal and professional life?

It is really hard to say no to your friends for an evening conversation just because there is an issue with the website and you need to communicate with a website developer in Russia throughout the night. As long as I am doing what I like, I don’t mind.

Rohan and Adit plan to raise funds in near future and are working on ‘Buzzepedia Store’.

Outsourcing in brick-and-mortar businesses – The death of value chain based dominance

It was in the mid 1990s that internet grew out of the halls of academic institutions and entered the commercial world. It had the promise of opening up a new way of communication and of creating a boundary-less world where a trader in New York could get data analyzed by an analyst in India, get it cross-verified by an investment strategist in Hong-kong and make the trade in Tokyo equity markets all in a matter of minutes. It changed the way businesses (and eventually the junta) would function in the coming years. One way it did so was by enabling a nifty little tool called ‘outsourcing’ in an unimaginable way.

While we talk about outsourcing, it is only logical that we pay our respects to the phenomenal management guru (and my personal idol), Micheal Porter. As a management thinker, he is best known for distilling the operations of an average company into a very useful tool known as ‘value chain’. The concept was so good that it is still valuable and applicable to most of the non-IT businesses in the world. Well, it is applicable to many IT businesses as well.

Initially, the concept of outsourcing was generally applied to the support functions. Non-critical and supporting activities were outsourced to specialist companies with two objectives:

1. Incorporating advanced domain knowledge that the company would have taken more time to learn and perfect
2. Reduce on-roll teams in such functions and keep an option of changing service vendors if required

A typical example of such an outsourcing is an FMCG company outsourcing its IT operations to a specialist company like Accenture or TCS. The thing to note here is that outsourced activities have little overlap with core business operations and the competitive advantage gained through refining those processes through the years. This competitive advantage remains company-specific and is ‘intellectual property’ in the conventional sense.

In the recent years, we are seeing an interesting trend in the outsourcing space. Companies are more and more open to outsourcing extremely critical areas of their value chain that have traditionally been internal and have driven competitive advantage. Let’s see a few examples:

1. An e-commerce company outsourcing its on-ground delivery operations – an area that is extremely critical to both: cost advantage and customer experience
2. A pharma company like Novartis outsourcing its rural distribution ( a key lever to competitive advantage in the saturated pharma space) to a cola-and-chips major like Pepsi.
3. FMCG companies like Britannia outsourcing their line sales operations to companies like Manpower

Doing so allows a company to scale at an extremely rapid pace. It takes 4–6 months for Flipkart to build a fulfillment center while a tie-up with Delhivery gives it access to an established infrastructure and a capacity to deliver to a few hundred towns at one go, In some cases, agility is surely key to establishing yourself as the dominating player in the industry. But it also exposes you to competitive attacks.

When we talk about outsourcing, the same service is available in a commoditized manner to every buyer in the market place. A new business can easily ‘purchase’ the same service and establish itself as a worthy competitor in little time. This is particularly true in the e-commerce business in India – a place where lowest prices always trump customer satisfaction. A competitor with enough VC money to burn and enough value chain partners can create an unforeseen imbalance in the market.

Dependence on an external player also exposes you to chances of service disruption due to one of the partners failing or winding up. Setting up alternatives for such unforeseen circumstances is expensive and the business implications are wide – from temporary customer discomfort to total business disruption.

So, as a business owner, what can be done to ensure that competitive advantage is not shared or exposed? How can we (for a short time) thwart newer players from developing the same skills overnight? A few things come to mind:

1. Exclusivity – Ensuring domain specific exclusivity with partners is an easy for of defense. An example could be HealthKart having an exclusive deal with DHL for health supplies. This surely increases the upfront cost, but the long term benefits are key to survival.
2. Buy – In the current scenario, the flow of VC money puts many startups in a comfortable cash situation. Buying out the partner and establishing it as an autonomous unit with separate management and governed by an unobtrusive board gives the benefits of quick scale up and helps transfer of best practices across similar units. The end result is improved agility, accountability and long-term cost saving.
3. Develop in-house – Learning from value chain partners and developing the skills inhouse is the optimal solution for a business aiming for long term survival and growth. The upfront investment in developing the competencies is large but it also affords extreme levels of customization to suit the needs of your consumers. Transitioning to a wholly owned chain over a period of time ensures minimal disruption in services and a happier customer.

I would love to know your views on how the concept of outsourcing has changed industry dynamics and how your company is insulating its business from this phenomenon. I look forward to insightful comments and discussions.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Chaaipani.com)

Author’s blog

The Web is dying, faster than neutrality!

40% of Facebook users are from its mobile app, and so does 52% users for Twitter.

Apps are killing the websites.

And the way it’s dying has deadlier implications than anything else in technology today. Pull out your mobile phone. All those little buttons on your screen are apps, not websites, and the way they work is fundamentally much different from the way the websites do.

In past couple of years, the time we spend on apps has surpassed the time we used to spend in surfing. We’re loving the apps, and they’ve taken over. Almost 86% of our time is spent in apps, compared to just 14% spent on the websites. Earlier we used to click a picture, transfer it to desktop, attach it in an e-mail and send. Nowadays, Whatsapp does that much quickly. Ofcourse, apps are a win-win for users – they are faster and easier.

However, along with that convenience, there is something sinister that is happening as well. Something deadly: the end of openness that allowed Internet to grow and us to connect more openly. We all download apps from app stores, which are bundled to particular operating systems and devices, are walled gardens where Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon get to set the rules. The problem runs much deeper than just these commercial gatekeepers – The Web was invented with a goal to share information. Anyone could put up a website or launch a new service or write a new blog and post a new pic, create a new album and upload a newly made song, and anyone and everyone could access it. This openness had led to Google being born in a garage and Facebook being born in a dorm room. After all, the web was intended to expose information far and wide. Internet created a common place where people could exchange information and goods. It forced companies to build technology that was explicitly designed to be compatible with competitors’ technology. Like Microsoft’s Web browser had to faithfully open Apple’s website. If it didn’t, consumers would use another browser. With apps, the internet will lose its primary identity – freedom.

I no where mean to say that the Web will disappear. But soon, we will graduate to a system that makes innovation and experimentation much harder for those who build things that rely on the Internet. And today, that is pretty much everyone.

I’d love to know what you think about this.

Boots-trapped