A Crowd In Hand

The last time I experienced Delhi winter I thought it was overrated and the 16 of Bangalore was colder than the 4 of Delhi. I accounted this to the wind speed and altitude difference. This time however the winter already seems cold. Maybe because I’ve been living in Delhi for a little over 4 months and pretty much accustomed to the windless oven. Now I see people leaving for home earlier, shops shutting down earlier, the sun shying away faster and a dead silence descending over the night.

  It was the silence of the cold Friday night. I heard a railway horn blow at a distance. The line was about 1200 – 1500 meters away and would’ve been inaudible if it were not winter. It was in this silence that kept me awake. I finally decided to watch the movie Lucia.

 

I think it was August 2013, when I suddenly started seeing all these posts from on FB about how awesome Lucia is and surprisingly, I BMS-ed  it and what do you know! A PVR in one of the malls of Gurgoan was actually showing Lucia. I didn’t have a lot of company to go watch it, I had found zero Kannadigas and my friends of Delhi weren’t really interested. This wouldn’t have happened if you’re in Bangalore. I’ve been dragged and I’ve dragged my friends to movies of the languages we didn’t follow, but it was fun and it happens often in Bangalore.  

Anyway this post isn’t about language. It’s about the concept of crowd funding. The introduction credits of Lucia movie said that it’s the first CrowdFunded Kannada movie. I googled a little later and found a news result dated Nov 12, 2013. It said the first Crowd Funded Malayalam movie with a Tamil/Malayalam cast and a Bengali Director would release soon, cool so Kannada is ahead (yay :P) More googling lead to a Reuterspost about the movie. It says the story writer had made a blog post where he said that he had tried to source the movie but had failed for 3 years. Suddenly out of the blue he got 200,000 rupees into his bank account from a lady in UK. More funding from random strangers followed and that’s when they decided to make a movie out of funds from the crowd. 

This idea is ingenious! Kannada film industry of the ‘Sandalwood’ is known for its low budget or its Tamil/Telugu adaptations; Lucia was so big and radical that people said it brought a paradigm shift. Though it was still a low budget movie, it was very well received. The plot of the movie itself is so delicate and complex. The actors did good and the songs were pretty good too. The movie all in all was good, it was also released in Pakistan; the Tribune even put a review of Lucia. Sadly I still don’t think I would find people who would want to try the movie. (it was released with subtitles ofcourse)

Last year I had authored a white paper dealing crowdsourcing for software testing and since then I had started to appreciate the benefits of using a crowd. I read a bit more about crowd funding and the more I read the more I was interested, this idea is already catching up, crowd funded movies were already famous in the west. The next result said Crowd Funded travelling; a site called Trevolta said it would sponsor trips! The idea is simple; travelers post their travel plans and the company tries to sponsor it, the sponsors may be from simply inspired and passionate travelers or marketers sponsoring for marketing use. Whatever the case, you get to go on a trip free of cost! Why wouldn’t it work?? The idea is relatively new and the site has very less right now, but you can check out their FB page just in case (I know free publicity right? They better fund one of my trips :P :D )

I was thinking hard about how to make use of this idea, maybe I could use CrowdFunding to raise capital for my entrepreneurial ideas too… and that’s when it hit me that this is what we do in India! A Ganesh mela or a Durga Puja pandal or holika dahan all happen with crowdfunding! We call it chanda and now we’re giving it a fancy name, come to think of it, it doesn’t seem so radical or big or new idea at all! And today, we have so much money; Banks, Investors and VC’s and ready to give you all the money if you have an idea, and if not these guys then you can just get money from the crowd! What we need is planning, transparency and proper IT integration and we could use CrowdFunding for anything! So... Go! 

Piggybacking? No its just BBM on Android.

In one week I saw more than a hundred people post their BBM pin on their fb timeline. A few of them sent me their Pins on my whatsapp too. Some of my friends asked me what it was and some asked me what my BBM pin was. Well, I’m not gonna install BBM on my phone yet, but I’ve got to say, I’m really surprised.

I tried to look up on it and searched for it on twitter and on google news. Suddenly, BlackBerry is all over the news! The BlackBerry Z10 launch wasn’t even half as famous as this! And it was supposedly the flagship!! It hit me! Piggyback marketing!

 

My friend Akshay had just started freelance photographing for friends. He took small projects like mehandi rituals, children’s portfolio etc., this was one such child portfolio for a friend. He wanted about perfect photos of his 4 year old angel. Akshay had clicked about 6 photos and apparently he wasn’t comfy with the money part. No wants to pay 3K for 6 photos, especially if the photographer is a friend. So I was sent to deliver the photos and extract money from him. Akshay had told me to get atleast 1.5K from him, and also spiced it with the line ‘I’ll give you an envelope, 10% of what you bring from her is yours.’ btw  I was also a friend to that guy mind you. 

I stuck to my guns of praising the baby and telling him how much Akshay would like to work with the baby again. I didn’t ask him for 3K. I just said ‘Akshay sent me here to deliver the photos and collect the money.’  He knew how much he had to pay, if I opened my mouth I would just ruin what’s cooking in his head.   

Did he give 3K? Well you know how we are… He put 2K inside an envelope and wrote something about paying the rest when he comes back for the next session or something. The point is, I was scared, out of place, and so totally awkward about asking money from a friend, but I rode on Akshay. He and his photos were selling high, I just had to cling to him and do the job to collecting. And that’s all I did. Akshay later said that he got much more than what he’d expected and I got well… not the 10% but I learnt Piggybacking. 

Now the main point, Piggybacking is what BlackBerry did unknowingly. More than 10 Million app downloads, twitter and news coverage from all over the world and here’s more, there’s even a scandal about fake app reviews. They couldn’t have got this much publicity even if they’d planned it. 

The concept is again simple, Android is selling high, put BBM on Android and you’re famous again. One line! 

Could this mean the big bosses of BlackBerry will get their heads together and try more piggybacking? Well that depends on how desperate they are. Piggybacking can be a taboo when you’re someone as big as BlackBerry. Wait, what about BBM on Apple? Is that be just as popular? Well people who use Apple already have lots of chat services that are cooler than the average Android messaging apps.. so… we’ll see.

My dearest Nokia tried it with Microsoft windows phone, but you don’t piggyback on something new, you’re pigs gotta be big right? And in case of Microsoft, the problem is Microsoft isn’t doing that great by itself, plus windows phone is new… so it’s like Nokia tried to ride an amputee pig with a new artificial leg! Ok you try making sense of that! Bye :P

Fashionataion

Hey why don’t you post it on your blog too? I’ll give you a free shirt :P thats the reason for this post :D

A friend of mine just joined hands with one of his friends from his days in the UK to deal in fashion. I didn’t really understand what they meant to do but I had a feeling that they were gonna make an online clothing store and sell cloths. As simple as that. But as it turns out, its not that simple. 

I found out about the real deal of craziness… or lets say freakological obsession with fashion and sense of style was clearly pointing to the fact that they had their heads working on doing something bigger.  My friend asked me to write an seo article that could help route traffic towards their site. It  wasn’t  really that hard, but this was only my second article on fashion. The first one was on nail art! :P

Anyway so as I went on writing I did realize that some of the things I said in the write were actually true! :O I know! That never happens in advertisement articles right? At least not mine! :P So I went ahead and looked at the site.. they really did have designers live on the site.. and I just wondered for a sec if I could get someone to stitch me something that’s exactly my size! :D ok im not that bothered about cloths.. cuz I kinda believed that it’s the ‘who’ more important than the ‘what’ or maybe I said it cuz I just couldn’t find fitting cloths :P (just in case your thinking I’m fat.. im not :P)

Ok so heres the article I wrote for him... I’m posting it here cuz hes my bud and well… yeah also for the free shirt :P 

Fashionation is not a real word, at least not yet. It’s a made up word for fashion and fascination. Fashion in a bird’s eye view can mean a way of life where everything you do or wear intrigues and makes a statement. The general perception of fashion is looking good or using something that can make you look good. A fashionable phone or a fashionable article of clothing is generally perceived to be a good looking merchandise that brings you appreciation. Sadly, that’s probably the worst way of defining fashion. 

 

 As I’m writing this article in the wake of a new online clothing store that I saw over the weekend, let’s stick to cloths as fashion. Clothing is probably the biggest way of looking fashionable, and over centuries, people have been expressing themselves by creating and wearing different kinds of cloths. This idea of expression of feelings, thoughts and ideas through dressing cracked open a whole new world of designers and trend makers across the globe. Today as we make way for a world of freedom and expression, we see more and more people taking up this creative way of expressing and adding the much required glamour and valor to the cause.

The biggest dread of all fashion enthusiasts is keeping up with fashion. Being aware of where to find what and when to do what is another major road bump. Just the other day, my friend visiting Bangalore for the first time asked me ‘who’s cloths are hot in Bangalore this winter?’ I fell face first at that. I had no idea of the designers in Bangalore, I always bought from sites or stores that had decent looking cloths. I Looked up a few regular sites online, but couldn’t find anything that tells me who’s selling what. That’s when I stumbled upon www.mydesignersales.com

 

mydesignersales is the online store of a Bangalore based Clothing and Fashion Corporation called United Fashion Mart. The firm itself deals in the manufacture and sales of apparels and accessories with zeal for spreading awareness and tasteful sense of fashion across masses. mydesignersales being the online store makes access to fashion more reachable and affordable to all.  Plus Being in Bangalore, it’s only a matter of time before there are free reigning fashion stylists running amok on the streets!

mydesignersales takes a whole new approach to selling cloths online. It’s like an online version of a boutique where you can get to personally see, meet and socialize with your designers online. mydesignersales has a list of the top selling fashion stylists from different cities across India, or maybe even the world. Going to Delhi for a week? Buy the top selling designs of Delhi in Bangalore and blend in to the Delhi crowd! Try! Designers like Julie Kagti, Anu Nagappa and Arjun Agarwal are some of the top selling labels on mydesignersales. 

Apart from giving you the advantage of meeting your designer, if you’re really really nice and of course ready to pay a little, you can even place requests and get your own designs loaded onto the website! That’s definitely got to be a first! mydesignersales clearly has a lot of new things to offer. In the end, making people express themselves and reflect their personalities using the powers of fashion is what these FashionFreaks aim at. That’s why they say, each time you visit mydesignersales, you’re assured of fashionation! ;)

That was it! Buy clothes from my frn y’all :D 

Oh btw.. if you think Im good at seo then.. you can mail me.. I write for free shirts all the time :P

Fight For Who?

As I picked up the old book again, the words 

“he didn’t want nothing for himself” 

grew over me. Bound by its echoing cries I took a closer look, close enough to smell its age. April ’80 was written at the bottom of the first page. A few faded words making a sentence could be made out just above the date. 

It read:

"Do you think you can fight for others?

Usha Ratna"

The person who had gifted this book to my aunt over 30 years ago had  mockingly laid in a stiff punch.

I had missed this line when I first started reading the book. Maybe it was the eagerness of starting my first Steinbeck or the poise of being allowed to try a communist book or simply getting a book from my aunt, I just missed it. 

But it came back with all guns blazing.

I was lost for words, emptied of thoughts, and devoid of feelings. I was lost. 

Thirty years after the book had first traded hands, it spoke to me. 

“Do you have what it takes to fight for others?”

I don’t know. 

Maybe I do. Maybe it’s easier to fight for others. If you are fighting against being selfish and looking for ways to be selfless. Fighting against bonds, trying hard to stay detached, free, and bigger than yourself. Looking for some kind of meaning, a place, your place; without losing your balance or the touch of reality. Then maybe we should take to fighting others’ battles. 

Or do we even care?