online marketing

TaxMantra.com: Say Bye To All Tax Worries as Taxation now Goes Online

by Paul Joseph February 6, 2012 Featured

They say, to have a smart wife is a luxury, but to have a smart accountant is a necessity. Bearing testimony to this proverb, Alok Patnia founded Taxmantra.com, an online platform that aims to understand and address the pain points of individuals, businesses, companies and new start-ups by providing timely and quality tax solutions in the most hassle free manner. In conversation with Abhilasha Dafria for YourStory.in, Alok, a qualified Chartered Accountant and a commerce bachelor from St. Xavier’s College, tells us more about how Taxmantra.com lives by the motto of “Experience Excellence” and “Stay Hassle Free”! Please introduce Taxmantra.com to our readers. Taxmantra.com provides a one stop solution platform to individuals, Startups and businesses to resolve their pain points with its unique and hassle-free services such as tax return filing, Company/ LLP creation, accounting, company law compliances and such other day to day business maintenance services. So how did you come up with this idea of starting a venture in the taxation space? I noted something very interesting during my stint with the big 4 accounting firms in Bangalore, that even though clients were locally based, we hardly met them face-to-face.  Client delivery used to happen via exchange of mails, with post discussions either through video conferencing or con-calls. Startups, new businesses, SMEs or for that matter even individuals have to still take time out from their work to visit a local consultant, as it is a common knowledge that not all can afford to hire big accounting firms. Thus, it thrilled me to start a service wherein, we can address the pain points of individuals, startups, by using internet as an enabler to reach clients irrespective of their locations with excellent service at the most affordable price Could you tell us in detail about the services you offer? Taxmantra.com provides complete taxation, accounting & financial solutions to individuals and businesses. The sole objective of Taxmantra.com is to bring full gamut of accounting, taxation and financial service on a single platform under three broad service heads; (i)     Individual Taxation Services, which includes services like Online return filing services, Tax planning and save taxes service, Tax refunds services, ITR Rectification Assistance in allotment/ Correction/ Surrender of PAN number/ Issuance of Digital signature certificates and all other services related to individual taxation, covering both Salaried and Non-Salaried Individuals. (ii)   Business Incorporation or Startup Services includes services such as creation of private limited company, creation of Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs), Start-Up Counseling and all other services related to business incorporation like local registrations. (iii) Business maintenance Services includes services  such as accounting, auditing assistance, Taxation, Company Law (ROC), Service tax and all other services related to business maintenance covering both Corporate and Non Corporate Entity. How many clients have you had so far? Without stating the actual number for obvious reasons, we can say that we are able to engage thousands of salaried & non – salaried individuals in filing their tax returns and also helping them in solving their tax issues. We are also assisting a good number of new businesses, startups, SMEs and some major businesses in handling issues relating to taxation, accounting, auditing, company law, service and such other issues. What is your clientele like? Could you share some demographics and tell us about your tie-ups if any? We have clientele based from metro cities, from B tier cities in India and also NRI clients from outside India. Our clientele includes Individuals (salaried and non-salaried), Startups, Businesses, Corporate and other businesses. We have associate tie-ups in Bangalore and Hyderabad and wish to extend our presence to other cities as well. What is the market-size you are trying to capture? With internet technology taking the centre stage, the government has made company law compliances  including incorporation of company, LLP, service tax returns, sales tax, vat, TDS Compliances, to name some, fully automated now and is taking added effort to make these more seamless and hassle free.   Also, to give you some data for Financial Year 2010-11, more than 15 million tax payers have preferred to file their returns through online medium. There is increased eagerness amongst Entrepreneurs, Start-Ups and other corporate and Non-Corporate businesses to prefer online medium for availing services due to paucity of time and hassle of visiting local consultants.  Thus, we think that there is a huge market for us to cater to, though initially there may be some bottlenecks. How many people visit your site every day? Tell us about the traction on your site. We have a targeted visitor of around 6K to 8K on a daily average from all virtually all parts of India and also non-resident Indians from abroad. Are there other players in the market doing similar things? What is your USP? Without naming any one in particular, we know that there are number of online service providers in this segment, with few of them providing only online tax filing for salaried individuals and then there are few engaged in rendering business incorporation services or accounting services and such others. But, what is so unique about Taxmantra.com is that, it brings all, salaried individuals, non-salaried individuals, Startups, businesses, SMEs on a single platform, wherein they can avail different services without getting into hassle of visiting different consultants for different set of services. How does the revenue model work? Our revenue model is very like any other service industry; that is, to provide excellent service fully customized to the needs of our client’s at most affordable price. For us client satisfaction is top most priority, and we believe that client retention is as important as new client acquisition. Since when are you operational? Where are you based? We are operational from first quarter of 2011. We have a fully functional integrated client delivery office in Kolkata and associate tie-ups in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Dhanbad.

Tagged as: enterprise, innovation, learning, non-tech entrepreneurs, online marketing, password, social-media, technology

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Why Startups should resort to Social Recruiting

by Paul Joseph February 6, 2012 Featured

Every successful entrepreneur will tell you that hiring the right people during the initial stages of a startup’s lifecycle can be the difference between success and failure. “Ideas and business models will inevitably change and evolve in a company’s early lifecycle. But the right people will always create (and recreate) the right business idea,” says Valerie R. Wagoner , Founder & CEO, ZipDial. Most startups are on a tight budget, so a HR consultancy firm is out of the question! Posting an opening on a job search site is the most common practice, but the process of selecting the right person uses up a lot of time and resources. So how can a startup ensure that they have the right person without burning a hole in their pocket? Social recruiting is the answer! A Ma Foi Randstad Workmonitor survey revealed some interesting facts about the Indian workforce’s social networking habits: 84% Indian employees use social networks to learn about an organizations culture. 78% use social networks to keep a track of developments in a company before an interview. 75% are deterred from joining a company based on negative reviews on social networks. The number of people on social networks is currently large enough to constitute a credible pool of possible recruitments. Right now only 2% of all hiring are done through social networking sites. It is expected to grow to 20% of all hiring in the near future. A social network like LinkedIn or Facebook allows a startup to understand if the person can adapt to the work culture and ethos of the company. Also, it is possible to check out the various assignments that the person has worked on. This basically turns into a digital resume and the start of the pre-screening or filtering process. For the person being hired, he/she can keep track of current projects the startup is working on and understand if they fit in. Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey 2011 revealed: LinkedIn is the most preferred social recruitment medium with 87% companies depending on it. Facebook second at 55% and Twitter third at 47%. If we look at the Indian social recruitment space, Monster.com’s social recruitment app BeKnown, which has been designed for Facebook, is targeting to capture this space. Another initiative by Monster.com, called Monster College, works as an integrated placement platform. So colleges, students and companies can connect with each other. This can be the perfect tool for a startup to hire interns or even full-time employees. Tips for startups to become preferred employers Make use of your Facebook page or Twitter account to connect with your audience. Post interesting developments happening at your startup, on these platforms. Be part of LinkedIn groups and engage with possible candidates. It lets a possible employee/team member to be familiar with what the startup stands for. It could also get someone interested to apply. It is quite clear that ‘the team’ is any startup’s biggest asset. The fact that we spend a significant part of our time online on social networks (for both work and leisure) is also established. Social hiring takes both these realities into consideration and functions as the perfect recruitment process. As Valerie says, “Given the impact that every team member has on the organization, it is important to discuss ways to ensure that the people really are a strong asset rather than a risky investment.” We could not agree more.

Tagged as: education, enterprise, guest-columns, india, online marketing, startups, technology

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Unitus Seed Fund Launches with Three Social Enterprise Investments in India

by Paul Joseph February 6, 2012 Featured

New Unitus Labs Initiative Seeks to Accelerate Development of Innovative Startups Which Have the Potential to Significantly Benefit Families Living on Less Than $2 Per Day Seattle , WA and Bangalore, India, February 6, 2012  - Unitus Labs, an international non-profit focused on reducing global poverty through economic self-empowerment, is launching today the Unitus Seed Fund, a new seed stage venture fund that invests in Indian startup businesses with potential for large-scale poverty impact.  Unitus Seed Fund is also announcing its first three investments in Indian startups Bodhicrew Services, Hippocampus Learning Centres, and Milaap Social Ventures. “After a decade of helping accelerate and scale the Indian microfinance industry, we are excited to launch the new Unitus Seed Fund initiative in order to support development of more new pro-poor businesses,” said Dave Richards, CEO of Unitus Labs and Managing Director of Unitus Seed Fund.  “We are seeing a new group of highly capable and socially motivated entrepreneurs who believe that they can realize more wide-scale and sustainable poverty impact by operating as a business rather than as a non-profit.  The Unitus family of entities has always been willing to invest on the cutting edge of economic empowerment concepts and projects.” Unitus Seed Fund targets investments in companies meeting the following criteria: Businesses serving Indian markets Potential for scaled impact on 800 million people inIndialiving on less than $2 per day Strong, experienced management team Business developed beyond the concept stage Clearly differentiated value proposition Strategies to build effective distribution and marketing programs “Unitus Seed Fund addresses an important gap in the social impact venture ecosystem by funding and supporting businesses which are beyond bootstrap but not yet far enough along to receive growth capital,” said Vineet Rai, Founder and Chief Executive at Aavishkaar Venture Management Service and a pioneer investor for inclusive economic development inIndia. “If they can find and nurture more businesses to the point of readiness to scale rapidly, it will allow other social venture funds to focus on realizing the impact potential of these businesses.” “Unitus Seed Fund is providing a critical role as a supplier of very high risk, flexible capital to entrepreneurs who are trying to improve the lives of poor families in many important sectors including education, healthcare and livelihoods,” said Samit Ghosh, Managing Director at Ujjivan Financial Services and investee of Unitus Lab’s Unitus Equity Fund. “We received very valuable funding and management support from Unitus during our vulnerable early stages of our history.  Today, we are recognized as one of the best microfinance institutions in India providing financial and microfinance plus services to over million customers and their families across twenty states in India, thanks to our friends like Unitus.” Announcing First Three Seed Investments Unitus Seed Fund has made its first three seed investments — all in India — in three sectors: skill development and job placement services, affordable rural education services, and new areas of microcredit financial services. Bodhicrew Services:   Skill development for those working in the unorganized sector “We are very pleased to have Unitus Seed Fund as an investor in Bodhicrew because this is not only testament to our commitment to promote skill development of those working in unorganized sector in India but also to our business model and vision”, said Vivek Kaushik, CEO of Bodhicrew Services Pvt. Ltd. “With this investment from Unitus Seed Fund, we will be able to provide a truly integrated employment and skills services to the most disadvantaged in the labor market in a sustainable way.” Bodhicrew Services provides skill development for those working in the unorganized sector. Bodhicrew provides a complete domestic work solution to the rapidly growing middle class of India. Bodhicrew offers a one-stop solution to employers for an ethically sourced and well-trained workforce. To the workers, Bodhicrew offers technical training and guarantees safe placement and fair wages. It also supports legislative, administrative and policy changes which contribute to the employability, dignity, and welfare of the workers and their families. Bodhicrew is based in New Delhi, India. For more details on Unitus Seed Fund’s investment in Bodhicrew Services,  click here Hippocampus Learning Centres:   Improving learning outcomes for children in rural India “We are excited to have Unitus Seed Fund as a seed investor in Hippocampus Learning Centres because it vindicates our project, the first of its kind to provide affordable education services to remote rural populations”, said Umesh Malhotra, CEO of Hippocampus Learning Centres. “With this investment, we will be able to expand our reach into 100 villages, reaching out to more than 5,000 children and employing nearly 300 women by June 2012.” Hippocampus Learning Centres (HLC) believes that one of the sure shot ways out of poverty is education. HLC’s work focuses exclusively on the 700 million rural Indians with the aim of improving the learning of children. HLC establishes learning centres in villages offering preschool and after school programs to age groups from 3 years to 10 years with the aim of improving a child’s capacity to learn and do better in school. The fees at these centres are between Rs.60-Rs.100 (USD$1-$2) per month, which is affordable for poor families. The curriculum is centrally developed to cater to mixed age groups and is largely teacher facilitated. HLC hires woman from the local community as teachers, trains them to run the centres and provides them ongoing support. HLC intends to make these ongoing sustainable community enterprises and also achieve financial sustainability as an organization. HLC is based in Bangalore, India. For more details on Unitus Seed Fund’s investment in HLC,  click here Milaap Social Ventures :   Online platform to make microloans to India’s working poor “We’re excited to have Unitus Seed Fund as an investor in  Milaap  as they bring with them years of knowledge and experience in the microfinance and fundraising space,” said Sourabh Sharma, CEO of Milaap Social Ventures. “We look forward to their support and guidance as we try to help thousands of people get out the vicious cycle of poverty.” Milaap is an online microlending platform which enables anyone around the world to  lend money to the working poor  in India through the website  www.milaap.org . Milaap was founded in 2010 by a team of young and passionate entrepreneurs from premier institutions in India and Singapore. Milaap envisions a world where the poor are valued as dignified consumers, suppliers, and producers as opposed to mere borrowers. The loans aim to provide the poor with access to basic amenities including clean drinking water, toilets, education, renewable energy as well as income-generation opportunities. So far, Milaap has raised USD $200,000 for borrowers in various parts of India with 100% repayment rate. Milaap is based in Bangalore, India. For more details on Unitus Seed Fund’s investment in Milaap Social Ventures,  click here About Unitus Seed Fund Unitus Seed Fund is a seed stage venture investor in businesses which impact poverty.  Unitus Seed Fund identifies startups with strong entrepreneurial teams who have a mission to build large sustainable businesses which improve the lives of those living at the base of the economic pyramid (income of less than $2 per day.)  Unitus Seed Fund makes small equity investments and provides support to these social entrepreneurs to expand beyond their initial pilot to refine their business model and operations understanding to prepare for significant future growth and impact. Once solid progress has been accomplished, Unitus Seed Fund assists social entrepreneurs in raising growth capital to expand further.  Unitus Seed Fund is a project of Unitus Labs and is currently focused on the India market.  Unitus Seed Fund has offices in Seattle and Bangalore.  See unitusseedfund.com  for more details.

Tagged as: accounting, adventure, facebook, india, innovation, internet, lose-something, marketing, online marketing, startup

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Exploiting Innovation for market dominance: A case for Technology Startups

by Paul Joseph February 6, 2012 Featured

Government of India has declared this decade (2011 -20) as the “Decade of Innovations”. Manmohan Singh has promised to increase R&D spending from 0.9% to 2% of GDP by 2017. MSMEs are economic growth engines for developed and more for the developing country like India. With this notion, InnovAccer – an Indian Innovation Management firm collaborates with Yourstory.in to create awareness of Innovation and Intellectual Property amongst startups. Starting from today, InnovAccer will release one article every week for 20 weeks to help startups gear up to innovate in the right direction and protect intellectual property at its best. Anyone can run a business, but running a sustainable business depends on whether you provide cost advantage to the customer or present to them new innovative products or services. With fluctuating economy worldwide, cost advantage is no more a reliable strategy. Even China who is a master of providing cost advantage has initiated innovation strategies after rise in their labor cost. Multi-National Corporations have huge assembly lines and supply chains in process to release out a product within months, while startups have to rely on their innovative technology which is unique in the marketplace. Thus, Innovation and protecting that innovation is a key to sustainable growth of a technology start-up. Let’s shift our gears to economic advantages of obtaining a patent besides its value for exclusive right protection. Consider a scenario below, wherein figures represent cost of production. Company II is playing on cost advantage and ruling the market share. Now assume that company I obtained a patent. Whole market scenario changes from thereon. Company II and III have to give license fees to Company I and thus Company I has cost advantage over Company II and III. A company like company III which has neither cost or innovation advantage loses the race. While innovation company I always wins the race. Future posts will cover stimulating and resourceful articles on how to exploit patents to create & benefit your business and make it into a sustainable model. About InnovAccer InnovAccer (Innovation Accelerated) is an innovation management and acceleration company focused and dedicated to provide high quality innovation management services to accelerate every step of an innovation life-cycle. InnovAccer was founded with a vision of people in the fields of Intellectual Property, Business Innovation, and Technology to change and accelerate the creation of innovation ecosystem in India.  InnovAccer’s team comes from a varied background of engineers graduated from IITs, intellectual property specialists graduated from Franklin Pierce Law Center, USA, analysts, statisticians, and business innovation experts. Website: www . innovaccer . com

Tagged as: accounting, enterprise, india, innovation, internet, learning, marketing, online marketing, social-media, startup, technology, the-wachox-way

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YCombinator vs. 1M/1M at 114th 1M/1M Strategy RoundtableForEntrepreneurs

by Paul Joseph February 6, 2012 Featured

Today’s roundtable, as usual, was an international affair, with entrepreneurs presenting from different parts of the US, India, Israel, and many other geographies. Before I share what we heard from them today, I want to highlight an important aspect of 1M/1M that is repeatedly underscored in these roundtables: the international, inclusive, democratic nature of the initiative. In fact, one of the best ways we can delineate this phenomenon is by contrasting 1M/1M with YCombinator. This short video explains how the two programs differ: Bottomline: YC, superb incubator, is a program that applies to less than .01% of entrepreneurs, whereas 1M/1M is an inclusive, global program. The businesses we will discuss today will put this distinction in perspective. Hooduku First, Sudhendra Seshachala from Houston, Texas pitched  Hooduku , a professional services business that already has significant revenue from cloud integration work. Hooduku is a 1M/1M premium member and is interested in moving away from pure services toward a product+services model. Sudhi presented the idea of a platform that bridges between Microsoft Azure customers who are also using RackSpace and other Infrastructure-as-a-Service providers for their content management and delivery. He uses a classic and highly successful mode of building products, that of being deeply immersed in customer situations through services projects and using that domain knowledge and relationship to identify opportunities for building products. A major example of such a company is Appirio, which went on to get funded by Sequoia Capital and has since built a strong product-services company in the cloud integration domain. My advice to Sudhi is to not position his company as a ‘platform’ but rather pitch the value proposition as an ‘integration framework’. These subtle wordings make a huge difference in how a company is viewed. Buy Or Boycott Next Doug Lowenthal from Jacksonville, Florida presented  Buy Or Boycott , which he came up with at the recent Startup Weekend program. Buy Or Boycott wants to offer consumers an easy way to avoid buying products that have major issues, be it political or environmental. However, the user experience that Doug described to deliver this was not convincing. He proposes to offer a mobile app with which to scan every product in your grocery store shopping cart. I don’t believe consumers would do this. When we stand on grocery store lines after a long day or week, the last thing we want to do is scan a bunch of products with our mobile phones. NXI Group Then Kaushik Mitra from New Delhi, India, pitched the  NXI Group of Companies , a custom hardware vendor that presented itself as a laptop and tablet company. It took me a bit of time to parse through the details and figure out that NXI is NOT a laptop or tablet vendor competing with HP, Dell and Acer. Rather, it is developing custom hardware for consumers with specific needs. For example, they are in the midst of developing RFID-enabled tablets for the universal ID effort by the Indian government. Kaushik’s company already has $400,000 in revenue, and while the business is not a typical venture-fundable one, I see no reason why the company cannot continue to grow in its niche. Koolaring Last, Edoe Cohen from Tel Aviv, Israel pitched  Koolaring , a SaaS solution for building private alumni networks a la LinkedIn. I have seen numerous startups with this general idea. It makes perfect sense for universities to have their own private alumni networks, and it is only a matter of time before they do. Whether Koolaring will be the winner in that space or not will depend on execution. So you see, I just shared with you four businesses, none of which would suit YCombinator for a variety of reasons outlined in the video. However, 1M/1M is delighted to help any and all of them. If you want a deeper relationship with me, you are very welcome to  join the 1M/1M premium program . If you have any questions about the program, please, first study the website, especially  What to expect from the 1M/1M premium program  and the  FAQs . If you have additional questions, please email me, and I would be very happy to respond. Please note that I work exclusively with 1M/1M entrepreneurs.

Tagged as: facebook, learning, lose-something, online marketing, social-media, sramana-mitra, technology

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Bullets for your valentine (Fired from the internet)

by Paul Joseph February 6, 2012 Featured

Bullet Points that might help you decide what to gift on Valentine’s Day We’d all want every day to be a Valentine’s day but reality always has an interesting take on things. This makes it mandatory for us to earmark a day for love. So, Valentine’s Day will always remain a day when hearts pound hard and so do the ring of the cash register (now replaced by data packets over the internet).  With only a week to go before V-Day, one must have a fair idea about what he/she would be turning up on the big day. Lovers will gift flowers and chocolates till the times we run out of cocoa or something goes terribly wrong with pollination but with the advent of the internet, there are a gazillion other things to spruce up your love life. Here are some of the options followed by the ever  green   red options. Players like Chumbak or a lesser known but equally interesting Shopo.in come with a unique offering for Valentine’s Day wherein they add a lot more meaning to a gift. Shopo has an interesting serivce wherein LoveGuru Aisha would be online in the evenings to suggest gifts.” We’re celebrating the season of love which started from January 20 and we’re seeing amazing response which was very much expected. Usually it’s a wee bit difficult for girls to find something for their men but we have a special offering this time around exclusively for men as well”, says Krithika Nelson, founder at Shopo. Deal sites like Vouchersmate also have an interesting offer. “Our Valentine catalog for 2012 is exclusive greeting cards collection with selected flower bouquets and range of gift vouchers from top brands, a complete gift box for everyone you love and care” informs Amit, Founder Vouchersmate. And if you for some reason you don’t believe in gifts, you can do something special like go for a desert making workshop! This, if you happen to be in Bangalore, can be done at Chaipatty. And if your hormones within have started whispering about how experimenting can ruin it sometimes, here’s a more conservative list. Flowers The world’s flower trade is pegged at $100 billion which makes it very easy to believe that the first thing that would crop up in one’s mind when one picture Valentine ’s Day is a red rose (and a heart). You can always get a red rose on any other day but if you’ve woken up too late, you would be lucky to find a rose stem which could signify the purity of your love. Be prepared and get your flowers before hand from the likes of FernsNPetals. A TOI report says the highest price that a rose could fetch was Rs 36 last year. But the quality of these roses which have been stored and treated for the special day (to fetch rosy prices) is contentious. In this age where every Romeo, Laila and Majnu knows about the buzzword- innovation, flowers don’t fit in the bill. it always works as an accompaniment,  but you need a plan A. Perfumes The market for perfume in India is huge now where a luxury mall can expect to do a sale of Rs 50000 on a normal day. And a well informed decision about a fragrance can definitely earn oneself some brownie points wherein the polished connoisseur part of you is to be showcased. There are a number of e-commerce companies like Perfume2order catering to this need where you can find perfumes from a Chanel to a Nina Ricci. Perfumes might burn a few holes in the pockets but it definitely mends the heart. Chocolates The chocolate market in India is Rs 2000 crore as of 2011 in which Cadbury has 70% and Nestle has 25% of the market share! But the dark horses (or the chocolates) in these race are the ‘home made chocolates’ which are no longer only made in homes but have a very high gift value. Many ventures including startups like Chocofthetown have special packages for Valentine’s Day which see huge business.   Lingerie A bold option but for a fast moving India, certainly a hot topic with e-commerce players like Zivame and         MyLace doing really well. The discounts for the Valentine’s season are as high as up to 85% which would surely be enticing. And the other plus here is that both the parties involved so this might be the option worth trying wherein both the parties would benefit. Zivame founder Kapil Karekar says, “We started the campaign in the third week of January and the response has been overwhelming!” Here is a compilation of the websites mentioned in the article (the list is solely an indicator to the possible service providers in the various segments): FernsNPetals  (MD, Vikas Gutgutia’s romatic story about finding FNP),  Perfume2Order ,  ChocOftheTown ,  MyLace ,  Zivame ,  Shopo ,  Vouchersmate  and  Chaipatty .  Hope you find the match for your match! – Jubin Mehta

Tagged as: accounting, business, education, internet, learning, marketing, online marketing, social-media, unsexy-startups

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Did Online Marketing and Social Media Change 4 P’s of Marketing?

by Paul Joseph February 6, 2012 Featured

All MBA students, marketers, advertisers are taught the 4 (important) P’s of marketing. Invented in 1960s, these P’s have formed integral part of marketing education since then. All elaborate marketing plans for brands and businesses are (or were?) based on Price, Promotion,  Place and Product. But, with the growing influence of social media and online marketing, have these 4, well at least 3, P’s of marketing changed? Let’s look at each of those in this light: Price: This P of marketing says that you should price your products or services competitively across distribution channels. But do you really think you can do that when there are so many deal sites and comparison sites? Today, price is one of the major factors because of which consumers join social media sites – especially in case of travel. Aren’t companies forced to let the market decide the price? Additionally, with Internet, mobiles, social media, it has become very easy for consumers to identify inconsistency in pricing if you have introduced any. This can be very dangerous for the brand image because consumers will immediately find that out and even worse, talk about that more openly and to a wider audience. So Price can rarely be of marketing advantage. Promotion: With rising costs of traditional advertising and lack of ways for measuring effectiveness, many companies are turning away from costly advertising media like TV commercials or billboards. In past as well, many brands have succeeded without costly advertising and marketing. For example: With its umbrella marketing strategy, Amul spends only around 1% of turnover for marketing. When around 3.5% of revenue is being spent on advertising by fashion retailers, the popular Zara brand spends just 0.3%! Ferrari, the Italian sports car manufacturer does not spend a single penny on advertising space. They rely completely on special exclusive events, word of mouth and of course social media as their marketing weapons. Google started advertising only recently and Facebook also did not reach the valuation to the tune of $100B with advertising. But, with Internet and social media, word of mouth and forming a close connection with customers and users seem to be the key to promotion. Conventional promotion mechanisms are no more being banked on when the world has become such a smaller and well connected place with Internet. Place: Does place really matter in the Internet age? With so many online shopping sites, eCommerce sites, reviews and social shopping sites, aren’t consumers going on web for shopping? Most of the large stores like Shoppers Stop also have special offers for online buyers. I think, therefore, the ‘place’ parameter has seized to have significant place in the strategic marketing planning. Product: So we are left with last P –Product. ‘Product’ definitely has not have changed. No matter what you use for promotion, what price you keep and where you sell it – you got to have a great product. Yes, but one thing has changed. In this age of social communication and connection, you have to not only make products that meet the needs of consumers but also make them newsworthy. Today the verdict about product on social media reaches the consumer before the company’s advertisement. So make sure your product delivers the value beyond the expectations of the consumer. Users did not want an iPad until it was built but now they wonder how they lived without it for so many years. The key here is building great products, newsworthy products and enjoyable user experiences. I think Kotler’s conclusion “ The best way to hold customers is to constantly figure out how to give them more for less. ” holds very true – even today! : – )

Tagged as: business, culture, facebook, india, internet, learning, marketing, online marketing, social-media, technology, unsexy-startups

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Young Entrepreneur Interview: Costin Tuculescu of AnyMeeting.com

by Paul Joseph July 26, 2011 Featured

How do you make money by giving something away? Just ask the subject of today’s interview, Costin Tuculescu. Costin, a software engineer by education, is a serial entrepreneur whose passion lies in creating new technologies, finding solutions to technology problems, and producing new, exciting products and services. His latest venture is a full-featured web conferencing application, called AnyMeeting.com , which costs users nothing. Through bootstrapping, and eventually angel funding, Costin has grown the ad-supported business from an idea to a leading provider of online conferencing solutions, with nearly 40,000 users worldwide. With that kind of experience, you’ll want to read what this young entrepreneur has to say! Enjoy the interview! AnyMeeting.com is a great tool that offers a lot of functionality at no cost. For those of our readers who aren’t familiar with the company, can you tell us a little about your business model? Our goal is to make web conferencing as accessible as email for small businesses.  In order for this to happen, it needs to be free and easy to use.  AnyMeeting is ad supported, which allows us to offer such a great service completely for free.  AnyMeeting allows small business users to easily meet with anyone in the world at anytime for free, saving them time and money. You’re competing with some well-established webinar/meeting companies. How did you know your model would be able to stand up to the competition? As a whole, the web conferencing and webinar industry is growing at about 20% a year.  The current economic conditions have accelerated the growth as companies have been cutting travel expenses.  There is also a significant portion of the small business market that has never used web conferencing due to the high cost of service.  A significant portion of our current users represent this segment. AnyMeeting offers for free what other service providers charge thousands of dollars per year for.  For example, if you wanted to host webinars for 200 people, it would cost approximately $4,000 per year with a provider such as GoToMeeting or WebEx.  You can do the same webinars with AnyMeeting, completely for free. A free service is an excellent choice for anyone, from new users and small business who want to start giving webinars and having online meetings, to the advanced user looking to cut expenses.  While the price of web conferencing services is going down, nothing as feature rich as our service is being offered for free so, we know there is a market for our service.  Another differentiator between us and the big service providers is that our platform doesn’t need any downloads, installs or setups for your audience.  It’s completely browser based. You’ve added close to 40,000 users since launching in 2010. How did you do that? Which advertising methods have worked well for you? We’ve been very successful in our attracting new users through search engine marketing and social media. Referrals have also been a great source of growth for us.  Our users are so pleased with AnyMeeting that they tell lots of their friends and colleagues about us.  In a survey to our users, over 65% responded they have recommended us at least once, with 49% stating they have recommended us more than once. We’re big fans of SEO. Once you’re properly optimized and come up organically in search results, you’re gold, so that’s why we’re constantly working on it. SEM as well — Google AdWords and Microsoft Bing offer good ROI for our type of service. We’re also looking to create relationships with associations that reach our target market — small businesses that are just starting out. They don’t really know if it’s worth paying for a webinar service, so, they are open to trying us out first.  Reaching out to those specific verticals and online marketing have been our two main business tools that we use to grow our user base. What has been the biggest business challenge you’ve had to face, and how did you overcome it? One of the biggest challenges for any start-up is building the team.  So far, I’ve been very fortunate to grow the company with the right people on board.  However, finding the talented people that have the mentality of, “okay, we have to do whatever it takes to grow the company” and who share your vision, is one of the most challenging things because you’re not going to just put out an ad and find those people. It’s an ongoing process of networking and reaching out to your network, going to mixers and kind of putting the word out there. It’s an ongoing process to build, and continue to motivate the right team. What three pieces of advice do you have for young entrepreneurs interested in starting their first business? #1 – Plan out what you want to get out of this business?  Is it going to be a lifestyle business where you make a good living to support yourself and your family, or are you going to be the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs?  Deciding on what you’re looking to get out of it, and in what time frame, will help you set up the right goals, milestones, etc. #2 – Surround yourself with smart people that are good at what they do and you enjoy being around.  Since you’re going to be putting in 10-12 hour days, you need to make sure that you’re spending that time with the right people, all working together for one common goal – to be successful. #3 — Work your butt off.  For YoungEntrepreneur readers, starting your own company is your chance to get ahead of everyone else, and it takes hard work to become successful.  Realize that this venture is going to take the next X years of your life, and that you’re committed to its success.  The only way to make that happen is to work your butt off. How do you personally define success? Very simply, to me, success means exceeding expectations.

Tagged as: business, business-ideas, entrepreneur, family, Featured, marketing, microsoft, online marketing, price, small-business, success, user

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The Ultimate Guide To Customer Segmentation Part 1: What Are The Fundamentals And What Can You Expect To Gain?

by Paul Joseph May 9, 2011 Featured

Hi, I’m Dee Kumar and I’m a new contributor here on Entrepreneurs-Journey.com. In my first mini series I’m going to teach you the fundamentals of customer segmentation and how to use it correctly to increase your profits within a very short time. This will help provide the answer to some of marketing’s most asked questions including the infamous ‘ How often should I mail my list? ’. So many marketers talk about this, but no one has been able to give a good answer, until now. In this three part series I am going to cover three main elements. The first, in this article, is the fundamentals of customer segmentation , why you should be thinking of customer segmentation and the gains you can expect. The second part of this series will look closely at how to segment your customers correctly and the last will look at how to communicate with these segments correctly to increase participation on your blog or sales of your products. Members of my blog or Online Marketing MBA coaching program will know the quality of my credentials, but anyone that has never heard of me should click here first to learn more about me before reading the rest of this article (something every entrepreneur should check out before taking someone’s advice). What Is Customer Segmentation? Customer Segmentation put simply, is splitting your customers into groups based on some common characteristics for each group or subset. These characteristics can be anything from language, gender, age or spending but they should allow you to target each segment correctly and therefore help you motivate each group in the right way, thus making you more money. NOTE: Before we continue it is important to define what customer means. A customer is anyone you service. That means if you sell a product it can be a potential customer or an actual buyer. If you have a blog, then your customers are your readers. In order to split your customers correctly you have to know something about your customers. So in essence good customer segmentation actually comes down to how well you know your customers. Since good marketing is defined as successfully fulfilling your customers needs and wants it becomes logical that good segmentation leads to better marketing as it helps you to correctly fulfill the needs of each customer segment. There is however another key advantage of focusing on customers and learning more about them. Being good and really fast at something gives you a competitive edge only for a short-lived time, until someone better or faster out prices you. Being innovative also only works in the short term, especially since larger companies can copy your basic idea and wipe you out easily. Being customer focused however, gives you a long term strategy. You get to know the customer, an asset which helps give you a long-term sustainable advantage . Large corporations have known this for some time and treat their customer groups differently, but I’m going to show you how even blogs such as yours can use the same concepts to increase reader loyalty and reader spending at the same time. Where To Start With Customer Segmentation? Almost every one has heard of the Pareto principle , or as many of you will know it the 80/20 rule . It basically implies that 80% of all effects can be attributed to 20% of the causes, which in plain English means that 80% of your gains can be attributed to 20% of your efforts. So whenever you have good streak in your business, maybe your blog readership has doubled since last month or you have increased sales since last year, then it was usually due to 20% of your efforts that were the most important. Yep, that is correct, not all your efforts bring results, and your role as a good entrepreneur is to work out which 20% of your efforts are giving you the 80% of results. Everything else is noise and distracting you from what is important. Well actually, I believe that theory to be wrong because after having worked as an Executive Consultant with multiple multinational companies, roughly 90% of all profits can be attributed to just 10% of customers . Do you see what that means? It means that 10% of your customer base are feeding your profits. How? Well simply because they buy from you again and again, they are serial buyers. They are so fixated on either your products, your brand or even your image that they will buy almost anything with your name on it. This is why it is so vitally important to find out who those 10% of customers are, so that you can treat them well and work on strategies to keep them loyal for as long as you can. They truly are the lifeblood of your profitable business. This might seem a little alien to you, or even perhaps over your head, but let me show you how well-known Internet Marketers all over the world have started using my formula. Email Makes Internet Marketers Lazy It all started a few years ago when I was having a discussion on board the infamous ‘ Internet Marketers Cruise ’ with a number of well-known individuals, and I challenged some of their consumer relationship management principles. The cheap costs of email marketing means Internet Marketers tend to treat all their customers the same. They send them the same offers and the same emails, as unlike larger multinational corporations they do not have to think about the enormous costs of printing brochures and mailing them to their best customers. I suggested this was wrong because different types of customers have different types of motivation to buy. If I could segment their customers for them they would see an instant increase in profits. You see, people who buy from you less often need much more motivation to buy from you again, and customers who buy every time you send an email, simply need to be shown some appreciation to keep them buying from you at the same astonishing rate. Almost every marketer gets this wrong and as such is losing profit when it is sitting there for the taking. If you send too many emails to people who do not need it they unsubscribe. If you send too few then you get poor results. The secret is to segment your customers and treat each group separately. If you have been on any major Internet Marketers list you will have noticed over last few years that whenever they launch a new product you seem to have to opt into a new mailing list. Then when they launch yet a new product, you have to opt-in again to a different list to view the launch videos. What they are basically doing is segmenting their lists and elevating the quality customers to separate lists. In simple terms, they move the people who actually read their emails and click the links to a separate list. The people who actually buy the product from this separate list will also be separated again so that the owner now has three lists… People who do not bother clicking any links in their email People who click the link and thus showed some interest in the product Lastly your buyers, the guys that make you money They segment their lists by value of the customer . When they launch the next product, even previous buyers are made to opt into a separate list. This helps them separate the occasional buyers and the super buyers (the ones that buy everything you produce and thus the ones you should really be treating the best). Now you know what the professional Internet Marketers are trying to do and why you seem to have to opt into many different lists from the same marketers. (By the way the reason they produce so many products is that they know their top 10% will buy it for sure, so they keep giving them a reason to spend.) Coming Up Next In the next article in this series, I will show you how to use customer segmentation practically on your blog and how you can use it to increase comments and participation rates. I will show you why many people comment multiple times on blogs, but then disappear altogether, along with a simple formula to stop this ever happening to you. For this to work I need you to do some homework before the next article in this series. I need you to think seriously about two questions. These questions are: Who exactly is your customer? (It is not always somebody who buys something.) How can you divide your customers to identify the 10% that give you the most value? Try to spend at least 15 minutes thinking about this. Doing this now will help you take maximum benefit from the practical steps in the second and third parts of this series. Anyone who wants to make more money, either from their own sites, products or their blogs needs to start focusing on the principles of customer segmentation and customer relationship management that I will lay out in this series. Well-known Internet Marketers have started to take this advice seriously and so should you. Feel free to post any questions below and I will get round to answering them as best as I can. Dee Kumar Get your bonus copy of my book “How To Start An Internet Business & Make Your First $1,000 Online” Download Here

Tagged as: article, business, internet, online, online marketing, people, series

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OME Community with Christ University presents “Unravel the Myths & Reality of Marketing – Affiliate Marketing"

by Paul Joseph March 17, 2011 Featured

OME Community with Christ University presents “Unravel the Myths & Reality of Marketing – Affiliate Marketing” Harish Kumar and Shartaj who have more than 6 years of Affiliate and Online Marketing and Suresh Babu will share his experience with Google Adsense in this Workshop (Visit Yourstory.in for full news, other content, and much more!)

Tagged as: content, experience, frontpage, online, online marketing, other-content, workshop, yourstory-in

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