Marketing Ganga

Category: Uncategorised

  • Mumbai and Maharashtra Cinema Halls

    Once upon a time, Mumbai had 130 cinema halls. In the course of time, 50 halls have closed down and 80 are still operational. Out of these 80 halls, almost 15-20 halls are in dilapidated condition, and can close down anytime. There is an Association of Single Screen Theatres.

    Cinema Halls in Maharashtra

    Previously there were 1400 cinema halls in Maharashtra. There are now 565 cinema halls. Some halls are 70-75 years old. The redevelopment laws are very stringent. There should be a hall of at least 300 seats with a separate access in the redeveloped property. The land for cinema halls has been reserved in development plans of the city. The exit is not easy for the halls.

  • E-Commerce

    E-commerce in India is valued at $ 14 billion, and has a growth rate 33 per cent. It is staffed by youngsters from the prestigious institutions such as the IIMs and the IITs. Most ventures are just five years old. There are six companies which have a valuation of $ 1 billion plus. Still in terms of the areas catered to, the market is skewed. Most of the e-commerce, to the extent of 70 percent, consists of online travel business. The e-tailing comes second at 17 per cent, but growing very fast to catch up.

    The global e-commerce market is valued at $ 1.5 trillion and has an annual growth rate of 20 per cent. The biggest share is that of the USA, followed by Asia-Pacific. The internet penetration and mobiles have fuelled this growth.

    The Digital India initiative will boost e-commerce in India by roping in the rural and urban areas both. Mobile applications stimulate e-commerce growth, and in India start ups are working on this. E-commerce has to tie up with mobile wallet providers and banks to streamline the payment mechanism.

    Though right now the growth is due to price incentives, in the long term it will be driven by efficiency and data.

     

  • Valuation of E-commerce Start Ups

    Start ups in the e-commerce space attract huge amount of investment. Is it a case of too much money chasing too few companies? Some fear that there could be a crash just like the one the dot.com companies faced in 2000.

    Most start ups have been bench-marked against those in the US and China, and unless some disruption occurs in the environment there, there is no fear of the valuations tapering down. Indian start ups have scaled very fast. The issue is whether these investments will fetch healthy returns or not. Many global funds, especially the hedge funds have limited exposure to the Indian digital market. The global capital inflows, therefore, will insulate India from the adverse effects. As long as there is liquidity in the market, the valuations are justified. And the exit environment must be supportive.

    These e-commerce entities have been valued at 2-3 times their Gross Merchandise value (GMV ). Most retail companies are valued at 1x their sales. These e-commerce companies are growing fast — say 200 per cent. Why can’t we value them at 2x.

    The problem is with their business model — heavy discounts, selling below cost, negative goose margin. Valuations are based on too much future assumptions.

  • Video Content : Online and Mobile

    More more Indians are consuming content online, on cell phones and tablets. India has 125 million Internet users, of which 35 million consume video content online. There are 30 million smart phone users and 66 per cent of the data consumed by them on their 3G devices is video. In 2014, there were 100 million smart phone users. The consumption of video is around 60 per cent. Star India has launched Starsports.com in 2013 and it is a paid platform right since its launch. Sony has launched Sony Liv. The cost of one-minute ad spot on Sony Liv or any broadcast platform ranges from Rs 400 to Rs 600 per minute. For high TRP programmes, the rate could be even Rs 800 to Rs 1000 per minute. By 2020, almost 70 per cent video content consumption will happen on mobiles and tablets.

  • Immediate Payment Services : IMPS

    Immediate Payment Services or IMPS is one latest technology in account-to-account money transfer or remittance and cell phone money transfer space. It is a system that transfers money in real time. It is developed by National Payment Corporation of India. This is the future of remittance and merchant payment, as the transfer is in real time

    IMPS is done directly or indirectly. Banks allow their customers to do money transfer over their online account or through mobile applications. The other indirect route is to approach any local agent or retail outlet of a pre-paid instrument company ( PPI ). There are many pre-paid instrument companies such as GI Tech, Oxygen, ItzCash, PayWorld and so on. PPIs command 40 per cent share of the transaction value.

    Mobile transactions are popular and mobiles have penetrated the society much more than the Internet. In this payment network, the NPCI has tied up 85 banks and 11 PPIs.

    IMPS is very swift. No other technology can match its swiftness. The system is popular among migrant workers, students, vegetable sellers and urban people.

    GI Tech’s ICash is an IMPS-enabled card. It also offers a Scholar Card to students to pay fees at Lovely Professional University, the first-ever university to use IMPS-enabled payments.

    Transactions of IMPS have surged from 3 million in 2014 to 13 million in 2015. In money terms, it stands at Rs 10,550 crore in 2015. NPCI wants to reach a goal of 100 million transactions by September, 2016.

     

  • Clayton M Christensen — HBS Innovation Guru

    Clayton M Chistensen, the HBS innovation guru, was diagnosed with follicular lymphomo, and an ischemic stroke. He fought the illness successfully and released a new book titled How Will You Measure Your Life ? which has a genesis in a lecture he delivered to graduating class of 2010. The book is co-authored by James Allworth and Karen Dillon. The sources of happiness are the relationships with the family and friends, the work we do and things you can do in life that can deny us these sources.

  • Feluda

    Satyajit Ray studied art at Visva Bharti, Shantiniketan. He started his professional life as a junior visualizer at the ad agency D.J. Keymer, Kolkata. Ray’s Feluda first appeared in children’s magazine Sandesh in 1965. It was a Bengali story. It made a comic debut in the Telegraph in 2005. Feluda is not a historical figure. He is supersleuth Pardosh C. Mitter a. k. a Feluda. Tapas Guha retold the Feluda’s stories in two comic books Beware in the Graveyard and Bagful of Mystery. Feluda’s original Ray illustrations were westernized, and they were approved by Sandip Ray, Satyajit Ray’s son. Guha was worried about smoking and lack of women in Ray’s stories. Smoking is an integral part of Feluda. A half-smoked cigarette lying on the grass was shown, as smoke fills up the air. Ray had no women in any Feluda comics. The outsiders — salesmen, diners — are now made women.

    This post coincides with Satyajit Ray’s birthday today, May 2nd. Auspicious !

  • Achyut Palav — Calligrapher

    Achyut started on a career in calligraphy from Shirodkar School, Parel, Mumbai where he was chosen to write on the board. He later joined J J School of Arts. He was mentored by R K Joshi. Ulka offered him a scholarship.He did research on the Modi script with the help of d g Godase and Ashok Kelkar. In one of the seminars at the IIT, the renowned calligrapher Snider spotted his talents and invited him to Germany. Achyut’s work was exhibited at Germany, London and Netherland. He started Achyut Palav School of Calligraphy. His works have been exhibited in London Between 28th May, 2011 and 5th June, 2011. He also held demonstrations and workshop in London.

  • Late Mani Ayer

    Mani Ayer, the ad legend, passed away on February 8, 2010 at the age 75.He is regarded as the man who laid the foundation of Ogilvy and Mather. Ayer joined D J Keymer’s in 1950. Its ownership changed and its name became BOMAS and then S H Benson. Later it became Ogilvy, Benson and Mather after David Ogilvy absorbed Benson’s. He spent 36 years in Ogilvy and Mather, India. He was 38 when he took on the role of MD at Ogilvy, India. The collapse of Kersy Katrak’s MCM took when Ayer took over.Ranjan Kapur took over from Ayer in 1994. Piyush Pandey is Kapur’s successor. Ayer put in place the four pillars of the agency — Ranjan, Roda Mehta (media), Suresh Mullick (creative) and Piyush Pandey. Suresh Mullick passed away in 2003. That set them going for a long time to come. In the 1990s, many senior ad people sold the stakes to International networks.Ayer was too principled to do it. He retired when he turned 60 in 1993 and stayed away at Chennai. Ayer brought a high level strategic thinking and business orientation to the advertising process.

  • Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Plants

    Municipal waste is put on land reserved for this purpose, but with the rise in municipal waste in urban India, there is  no land to fill such an enormous amount of waste, the  estimated the waste production being 165 million tonnes by 2031 and 436 million tonnes by 2050.Right now India generates 70 million tonnes of waste a year, of which 80 per cent is dumped without precaution in landfills. These landfills emit toxic gases such as dioxins and greenhouse gases such as methane. The second method of waste disposal is composting which has not worked as the waste has not been segregated due to several reasons. Since we cannot stop the generation of waste and other methods are found ineffective, in the short to medium term, an alternative is to use WTE plants to take care of what cannot be reused or composted. Waste that is organic and 50 per cent is organic, can be gasified or composted. The problem is non-organic waste or mixed waste.

    Waste-to-Energy plants are essentially doing controlled burning or incineration of waste to convert it into energy. Waste-to-energy plants are resented as they spread foul smell and fly ash. In developed countries such plants are located in the heart of the city. There is no significant public opposition to them. The WTE plant if well run does not leave any ground for opposition. If not well-run,. it is very dangerous Smell mostly comes when waste is transported. Waste can be transported in closed containers or underground. That takes care of the smell part. Burning causes pollution but modern technology is used to make it minimal. At 850 degree centigrade, dioxins and furans which are cancer causing are not produced. There is a scrubber that prevents fly ash from going through the smoke-stack.The waste has low calorific value, especially Indian waste on account of its high moisture content. Some energy is utilised to remove water or moisture from the waste. Western technology is not suited to deal with this problem and hence Chinese technology is used by Indian WTE companies.

    In India, several plants of WTE are operational. Ramky is one company that builds such plants. The Okhla Waste-to-Energy plant is located between Apollo Hospital and CSRI at Delhi.There are plants at Jabalpur, Pallavpuram, Surat, Jawaharnagar (Hyderabad). These plants produce energy ranging from 5 megawatts to 25 megawatts. There is significant reduction in pollution as compared to coal.

    The plants are high-cost and have a long pay-back period. The monitoring of gas emission in real time is difficult. The regulation must be sound.The plants put many out of the job.