Month: December 2010

Best of 2010: Digital India

Following a tradition from 2008 and 2009, in this last week of the year, I am giving links to what I think where some of my better posts. I have categorised them into five topics: Digital India, Panels and Presentations, Entrepreneurship, Politics and Personal.

Blog Past: Customer Relationship Monetisation

From a post a year ago:

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. But what it should really mean is Customer Relationship Monetisation.

Most companies spend a lot of effort working through the strategies for new customer acquisition. But little is done for leveraging the existing customers – beyond the first product the customer signs up for. What is needed is to upsell and cross-sell. In effect, the metric that needs to be tracked should be the number of products that a customer is using. In most companies, the number will probably be between 1 and 1.5. Getting it to 2 or higher and thus increasing sales numbers is probably going to be easier than getting new customers.

Another benefit is that the more products a single customer users, the greater will be the loyalty. Or, put another way, single product customers are more vulnerable to switching to competition.

Weekend Reading

This week’s links:

  • In Pursuit of the Perfect Brainstorm: from the New York Times. “We need help thinking.”
  • What’s driving Groupon? by John Battelle. “Groupon, I believe, has the potential to be a new proxy – one that subsumes the platforms of both the Internet and the telephone, and adds multiple dimensions beyond them.”Also see this interview with Groupon’s CEO in WSJ.
  • Rebooting Web Publishing Design: by Frédéric Filloux. “The future looks bright, it’s called…HTML5.”
  • Helping the CIO Lead: from strategy+business. “Charlie Feld, the former CIO of Frito-Lay and a pioneer in his field, explains how IT can play a key role in developing corporate strategy.”
  • The Art of Childraising: Open Forum has an interview with “John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist, has a lifelong fascination with how the mind reacts to and organizes information.”

Movie Reco: 12 Angry Men

The reco for this movie came up in our of our Book Club meetings. I watched the DVD of this 1957 black-and-white movie one evening, and it was fascinating. The entire movie is set in a single room, and yet it is so engrossing. The takeaway for me: it just takes one person to make a difference.

From IMDB: “A dissenting juror in a murder trial slowly manages to convince the others that the case is not as obviously clear as it seemed in court.”

Book Reco: Battle for Bittora

I have to admit I don’t read much of the Indian fiction. But when I came across Anuja Chauhan’s “Battle for Bittora”, I found it hard to resist because of its political theme. And I wasn’t disappointed. The “wicked humour” is delightful. Pick it up and read it on one of the lazy holidays afternoons or a flight.

Here is the description: “Twenty-five-year-old Jinni lives in Mumbai, works in a hip animation studio and is perfectly happy with her carefree and independent existence. Until her bossy grandmother shows up and announces that it is Jinni’s ‘duty’ to drop everything and come and contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections from their sleepy hometown, Bittora. Of course Jinni swears she won’t. But she soon ends up swathed in cotton saris and frumpy blouses, battling prickly heat, corruption and accusations of nymphomania as candidate Sarojini Pande, a daughter of the illustrious Pande dynasty of Pavit Pradesh. And if life isn’t fun enough already, her main opposition turns out to be Bittora ex-royal, Zain Altaf Khan – an irritatingly idealistic though undeniably lustworthy individual with whom Jinni shares a complicated history… Enlivened by Chauhan’s characteristic brand of wicked humour and sexy romanticism, this is a rollicking new tale of young India.”

Chilly Mumbai

For the first time in many years, winter really feels like it in Mumbai. With temperatures going down to 16-17 degrees Celsius, it is a pleasant change from the hot and humid nights that can gets to experience all year round in the city!

Even with the chill, I still haven’t found the need to bring out the sweater yet. I am still hopeful – winter isn’t over yet.