Am I A Producer or A Performer?

A question I've asked myself quite a bit over the years and now found an answer to. Ofcourse, a lot of people think they are both, but they are sadly mistaken. Below is my result of the 'Are You A Producer or A Performer' Test:

You Have PRODUCER POTENTIAL

You show a tendency to use the internal skills — what we call habits of mind — that producers apply to everything they do. They include:

• Empathetic imagination: seeing blockbuster potential in the needs and wants of others
• Patient urgency: operating simultaneously at multiple speeds and time frames
• Inventive execution: bringing together creative thinking and operational prowess
• Taking a relative view of risk: accepting immediate losses if they lead to a better future
• Leadership partnership: looking for others with complementary skills that enhance their own

However, you are also comfortable in the role of a performer, working in an environment where the parameters and rules of engagement are established.

Corporate environments need both producers, who have the ability to imagine entirely new products and business models, and performers, who can navigate known systems to optimize opportunities. Performer opportunities abound in business (and greatly outnumber openings for producers), so many people with producer potential get drawn into a performer mind-set. It is distracting to try to fulfill both roles; it is better to pick one approach, and look for a partner who can complement you.

If you want to see how far you can go as an innovator, try to get involved with a new opportunity at your company and approach it as a producer would. Question standard approaches to a problem. Imagine what different designs to the pricing or business model of a product might yield. Look for a performer who can help it get the recognition and support it needs to come to life.

You can do the test here.

‘Smart Wand’ Wearable Monitors Patients Closely

If you were ever a patient or a family member has been one, then you really do keep your fingers crossed that everything turns out alright, don’t you? You are literally in someone else’s hands and that’s not necessarily God! 

The hospital staff has you and hundreds of others, whom they are monitoring at the same time, and a slip in concentration or just lack of timely attention can be fatal.

A bunch of IIT-Mumbai geeks – Suryakant Thoraskar, Vineesh VS, and Anjaly TR – came up with an idea, to make life easy for healthcare professionals. Vineesh VS told Networked India what inspired him and the others was that, “According to statistics, the number of qualified nurses-to-patient ratio in India, is far less than the required number. There have been many unfortunate incidents where the condition of a patient has gotten worse, or they even die due to the lack of timely attention from the nurses. With the limited number of nurses, hospitals are struggling to give proper care to the patients.”

Knowing this, a wearable like Smart Ward was just waiting to happen. It is an automated patient monitoring system, based on the Android platform, that provides real-time values of the patients’ vitals, and alerts the staff about critical changes in those parameters. He added that the big challenge for them was:

Keeping the price of the wearable as low as possible while maintaining the quality of the signal. Hence, we needed to keep only the necessary vitals which are really required for regular monitoring of the patient.”

Worldwide, there are others as well, who have realised the importance and the need for such devices and apps. Like the students at the University of Wollongong in Dubai, who have designed the MyChol app, which monitors a patient’s health and fitness level and “includes diet logs and step trackers but adds unique features such as cholesterol level logs as well as calculations based on factors specific to the patient.”

Picture is representational and was written for Ericsson's blog.

DEIAB: A ‘Jugaad’ Route To Teach Rural Kids

Ever wondered if children living in remote areas of India have even seen a tablet? Or held one and learnt their lessons, when there is no steady electricity supply to their villages, or even teachers available? Well, someone has made this happen now. Founder & Director, Edtech, Buddha Burman has set up Digital-Education-in-a-Box (DEIAB). He was inspired by a conversation he had with a friend, Rohini, who had spent a few years in West Bengal and the North-East and had described some of the schools she had come across in the rural and tribal areas.

Burman told Networked India, “She went on to mention a study called the ‘Digital Youth Project’ conducted by the MacArthur Foundation a few years ago. The study explored how digital media is changing the way young people learn, play, socialize and participate in civic life. As per the study, the term digital divide, when used a decade ago, described the gap between those who had access to computers and the Internet and those who did not.”

“While doing some field test in a remote, rural school, a kid approached us and asked: ‘Will this system help me in becoming a Scientist?’ We were moved to see the dream of a rural kid and this motivated us to find a way to educate millions of rural kids, so they can live their dreams. Also most of the big educational companies, only focus on the urban population segment.”

He added, “Today, it is less about access to technology and more about participation. Participation includes the quality of engagement and what people are doing with the technology that they have access to. This, along with my experience at the rural schools that I had visited, motivated us to start thinking about something that could bridge the digital divide. Thus, arose the idea that led to the building of this operational prototype.”

DEAIB is an advanced portable education platform that extends the ability to create a digital classroom in the middle of nowhere – without the need for buildings or electricity. So, imagine a Wi-Fi-enabled classroom in a pristine location, where digital content, tablets, and quality teachers, engage students and make a positive impact on their learning and performance.

The complete ecosystem features affordable hardware, software and long range Wi-Fi, tablets for autonomous learning, teachers for supported learning, and innovative educational content. An intermittent connection to the cloud enables the syncing of data between the remote hub and the central cloud server, thus helping DEIAB track learning progress and the effectiveness of the system. This platform will act as a service model and will drive accessibility in remote areas.

For the DEIAB team, who were also finalists at the mBillionth Awards South Asia 2015, the biggest challenge was to build a system which is hi-tech, yet simple enough to be used by people in rural areas. So they designed the system to be portable and which works with very low power, using solar energy, and connected to a long range antenna which creates a Wi-Fi zone of around 1 km, so students can use tablets easily.

Having made such a laudable attempt to create a level playing-field for children lacking resources, for Burman, the icing on the cake is when people come to see how the system works and then are amazed about it. And he loves it, when he hears this from many parents: “Babuji agar yeh baksa humarey bachhon ko miljaye, toh woh bhi afsar ban jayenge.” (If our children get this ‘box’, even they will become officers.”)

Read more similar stories:
http://www.networkedindia.com/2015/08/24/lab-on-a-tab-is-inspired-by-kids-potential-to-be-curious-thiagarajan/

http://www.networkedindia.com/2015/07/18/shikkhok-teaches-500000-students-for-less-than-rs-1000-a-year/

The Cool Digital Study Tool For Millennium Kids

Parents are worried about how to bring up their children well in this pervasive digital world, where too much information (of the right and wrong kind) is available at their fingertips literally, through smartphones and other devices. But it’s really education, where all parents want digital enhancements to benefit their kids. While, this is slowly starting to happen, it is still not a common enough feature of most curricula.

This is something Neeraj Jewalkar, CEO of Smartur 3D found out, when he started scouting for schools for his four year old son. He realised that most schools were sticking to the tried-and-tested methods of teaching. As he told Networked India, “Use of technology in classrooms was very rare. Thus the journey of Smartur began, with a strong conviction that technology would make a transformative impact in the learning outcome of students in school.”

Smartur 3D is an e-learning Android app that is targeted towards students, ranging from kindergarten to the 12th grade. It offers 3D visualisation of key science and math concepts, using cutting edge technology, to bring those concepts to life. Having over 300 models, across grades, helps with making studying stress-free and fun. The app is targeted towards both students as well as teachers for maximum adoption. While the teachers can access it for free at present, the student pays a minimal amount for it.

Some of these models include: Human anatomy, skeleton system, digestive system, respiratory system, excretory system, animal cell, plant cell, Brain, arrangement and types of teeth, parts of the ear. sectional view of eye, bacterium, hydra, germination, parts of a flower, amoeba, animals, fruits, flowers etc. To give it more of an international flavour as well, models include 10 types of christmas trees used across USA, and important monuments like the Lincoln Memorial, Statue of Liberty, Liberty Bell etc.

This digital learning product has won the ‘Best Smart Class Product’ last year at the World Education Summit, and has been nominated for the mBillionth Award South Asia this year, in the M-Education and Learning category. The app is free to download, with some course material available for free. However, the entire app content is further available for a cost of Rs 575, for both CBSE Class 10 syllabus and Digilab, for a period of one year on a subscription basis.

The software is available for Rs 30,000 and can be used by an unlimited number of students and teachers, and as Smartur 3D’s site states, it is already being used in over 12,000 schools, by students from over 25 states. Over 6,000 teachers are engaged in their e-learning programme.

The main features of the app are:

• Interactive 3D
• Stereoscopic 3D
• Augmented Reality

Of these, Augmented Reality is the most popular feature as it helps bring 3D learning content from the virtual world into the real world. Smartur 3D is used by teachers in classrooms to help explain difficult concepts to students, in an eye-catching and interactive format.

Neeraj recalls, “When we built our first version of Smartur 3D and started approaching schools, there was a lot of appreciation for the product. However we soon realized that most schools just did not have the basic hardware to run the product. This was particularly painful. Most schools lacked even a single working computer.”

“We had to go back to the drawing board and relook at the entire approach. We figured out that the only way to have Smartur 3D reach the 200 million students across the country, was to go mobile. We had to rebuild the entire product from scratch for the mobile platform all over again!”

The rebuilt product is so cool (see their videos) that it will make adults want to go back to school. And why not, with features like these in the app: Take apart individual parts, hide parts, highlight parts, set transparency, break-up the whole model, analyse parts, take a screenshot of the model, it allows for customisation, and it even has a pen tool for drawing and writing your own points on the model.

All in all, Neeraj feels the decision to go mobile was the best. He added, “Once Smartur 3D was available on mobile, we saw tremendous adoption. The most satisfying aspect was the extremely high enthusiasm of teachers from government schools in using Smartur 3D in their classrooms. We felt that the product was finally reaching the most needy lot of users.”

Smartur 3D is truly a collaborative way to study. Its content creation features lets you capture images of the model in HD (high definition) or lets teachers shoot a video, while explaining a model. They can even add a video in, while lecturing. Classroom teaching doesn’t get more interesting than this. And studying has just got so much more sass!

Read more stories in the Education series:
http://www.networkedindia.com/2015/09/11/mindspark-shoos-away-math-phobia-with-its-enriched-content/

http://www.networkedindia.com/2015/07/20/loksewa-nepal-app-is-efficient-cheapest-mode-of-studying-for-nepal-govt-exams/ 

Philips Smart LED Lights Beam Promos To Your Phone!

France is known for the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, its wines and cafes and it’s chic boutiques. Now a Carrefour supermarket in Lille has got cool new LED lights, that have been designed by Philips. These lights transmit codes via light waves, which are undetectable to the eye but can be picked up by a phone camera, and which doesn’t need any additional accessories.

In a  Philips release, Director of Commercial Models and Innovation for Carrefour hypermarkets in France, Celine Martin said, “We are always on the lookout for innovations to facilitate customers’ navigation. Thanks to this new application, which uses Philips technology, we are now able to provide our customers at the EuraLille Carrefour with a new service, enabling them to quickly search and locate their preferred promotions or detect all the promotions around them.”

 According to BBC News, the Philips system requires 50% less electricity than the old lights it had replaced, with 2.5 kms of these new LED ones. These lights work by making each of the LEDs transmit a distinct location code. So, if users have a compatible app and let their smartphone camera look upwards, it helps determine their location, (which is accurate up to 1 metre) and the direction they are facing.

Gerben van der Lugt, Head of LED-based indoor positioning at Philips Lighting commented, “We are leading the way with connected lighting for retail with Carrefour,” commented Gerben van der Lugt, Head of LED-based indoor positioning at Philips Lighting. “Our connected lighting system has the potential to transform shopping into a more interactive and personalized experience. At the same time it will enable retailers to differentiate themselves, enhance customer loyalty and provide new services to shoppers.”

Carrefour’s mobile app ‘Promo C’ou’ has the Philips software and cloud-based location database integrated into it. The app was created by Think&Go and can be downloaded from Apple’s App Store in France. This is an opt-in app and Philips reassured users that the “patented indoor positioning system does not read information on a shopper’s smartphone.”

Written for Ericsson's blog Networked India and you can watch a video of how the lights work here.

Cool Jewellery That Will Make You Feel ‘Safer’

Women (and men) can now get a cool looking safety wearable device from Leaf Innovations. Founded by Avinash Bansal, Ayush Banka, Chiraag Kapil, Manik Mehta and Paras Batra in March 2014, this device is called Safer and can be worn as a bracelet, finger ring or necklace.

It’s for use during emergencies and when the wearer feels unsafe – it works on push button technology, so all a user has to do is to tap on the jewellery twice, which pings for help by sending out automated alerts to family, friends, the police and the larger community in the vicinity, after a brief 30 seconds gap. This ‘gap’ has been programmed in to stop a false call, if the jewellery has been accidentally set off.

A user needs to download the app; buy the jewellery; then sync the jewellery with the app to activate it and then add guardians. You can pre-order this and even check if it’s compatible with your phone before doing so. Here is the list and since some specific phone models are mentioned, it’s best to check before buying the device. It’s available in black, blue, and green colours and priced at Rs 3,500. The device is waterproof, rust-proof and has a battery life of six months.

This ‘safety jewellery’ comes with features like SaferWalk, where a destination has to be entered, then the user’s selected guardian can see her/him reach her/his destination in real-time. Once the person gets there safely, live tracking is disabled. It also has sound notifications, which ensures no important call or message is missed. It obligingly sends a reminder via the phone, if the user forgets to wear the device or forgets to carry the phone.

According to this source, an app is in the works too, which “will work without internet or even cellular network and is supposed to come out next month. In case, the guardians do not have the Safer app on their phones, an SMS with a help message and the user’s location will be sent.”

The firm raised Rs 10 lakhs as seed-funding, at an IIT Bombay event from Mumbai Angels, early this year. There are plans to launch a similar range of wearables for senior citizens and teens, in the future.

Written for the Ericsson blog - NetworkedIndia

An App That Honours 'Invisible' Women Achievers

A new app called 'Women on the Map' buzzes your phone, when you are near a place where a woman has made history. This innovative app concept took off, over concern that women who had made historic contributions to society and had significant achievements to their name, didn’t get honoured in the same way that men did. BBC Newsbeat reported that this app has been included as part of Google's Field Trip app, which points out interest places when you visit different areas. The SPARK Movement worked with Google to develop this. And here are some facts that sparked this initiative in the first place:

• There are no US holidays named after women
• There are no women on US paper currency
• Only nine of the 100 statues in the US National Statuary Hall are of women.
• Fewer than 25% of US postage stamps honoring people feature women
• In New York City there are 150 statues of people: 145 are men and 5 are of women.


So to make prominent women visible and make their contributions better known than they are at the moment, users have to select the Women On The Map source within the Google app, to get the alerts. Their phone will then buzz when they approach the exact location where a woman has done something extraordinary, and they can then read all about her and her achievements. 

Here is an example, if you visit the town of Lyme Regis in Dorset, the app alerts you to the work of Mary Anning, who discovered fossils of a Plesiosaurus. So far more than 100 women feature on the app but the the SPARK movement is hoping  that more people will contribute to the database. Anyone can do so, by sending in 150-300 word biographies about women who have inspired them. She could be someone from your hometown or from ancient history. 

The app’s target audience are girls between the ages 13 and 22 and is offered worldwide. Some girls in this age group helped research the women they wanted people to learn about, which included the stories of 119 women from 28 countries, with more than 60% being women of colour, Executive Director of SPARK Dana Edell told The Huffington Post. 

A SPARK team member, Ajaita Saini explained to The Huffington Post, "The purpose of Women on the Map is to show the world that there were (and are) so many women whose accomplishments have been seemingly invisible to us. We need girls to know that they can be whatever they want, and their contributions are as equal, as if a guy did it instead. Likewise, we need guys to know that not everything done in the past was the work of men."

How Much Do ‘Free’ Apps Really Cost?

Did you know that those free apps you are so addicted to are not exactly free? You pay a price one way or another. When researcher William Halfond from University of Southern California looked at this question closely, he came up with some stunning answers. His research showed that:

• Apps with ads use an average of 16 percent more energy, lowering the battery life of a smartphone from 2.5 to 2.1 hours on average — or down to 1.7 hours at the high end of energy usage.
• A phone’s Central Processing Unit (CPU) is like its brain, and ads eat up a lot of that brain power, slowing it down. Apps with ads take up an average of 48 percent more CPU time — 22 percent more memory use and 56 percent greater CPU utilization (the amount of time the CPU was used).
• Because the ads themselves are content that has to be downloaded, apps with ads cause smartphones to use much more data — up to 100 percent more, in some cases. On average, these apps use around 79 percent more network data, costing an estimated 1.7 cents every time they’re used (based on the average cost per MB charged by AT&T).

Halfond said, “In absolute terms, this is very low, but in the crowded and competitive world of apps it’s a huge difference. It can make the difference between your app getting downloaded or going unnoticed.” He is hoping app developers notice this research but admits that at the moment, they are kind of clueless.

The team compared 21 top apps from a list of 10,750, that had been in the top 400 of each of Google Play’s 30 categories, from January to August in 2014. They then measured their effect on phones with analysis tools loaded onto a Samsung Galaxy SII smartphone.

Halfond collaborated with  Meiyappan Nagappan of RIT, Stuart Mcilroy of Queen’s University, and Jiaping Gui of USC.

Written for the Ericsson blog.

Fun facts about fake readers

As someone who loves reading, it was good to come across these fun facts in a Landmark store magazine. Now that we have been warned, it will get tougher to spot people who actually know anything about a book because they have taken the effort to read it. I'm getting ready to be deluged by conversations with faffs who have just read reviews of books. 

Well, it's probably a step-up from fake reading!

 Source: Landmarker

What Does The Mobile Internet Ecosystem Contribute To The GDP?

Want to know how much the mobile internet industry is worth? How much do apps contribute to a country’s GDP? Since everyone uses a mobile phone, these numbers are huge and all set to soar even further. A report called ‘The Growth of the Global Mobile Internet Economy’ done by the Boston Consulting Group stated that “The revenues generated by the mobile Internet ecosystem are a big contributor to global GDP. We estimate that in 2013, they amounted to $682 billion in the 13 countries (mentioned in the graphic) that account for approximately 70 percent of global GDP, or a substantial portion of the $2.9 trillion a year in revenues generated by all mobile technologies worldwide.”

But look where these numbers are headed in 2017. “By 2017, we estimate that mobile Internet revenues will have grown to $1.55 trillion across these 13 countries, an annual increase of 23 percent. Even in the economies where the mobile ecosystem is most mature, such as Japan and South Korea, annual growth will still be around 10 percent. In the major economies of the U.S., China, and the EU5, growth will be around 25 percent a year or more. The single largest contributor in the future will be apps, content, and services, fueled by the rapid expansion of mobile shopping and advertising”, the report elaborated.

Since apps and other forms of content is where the money is, how much is this ecosystem worth it currently, and going forward? While most app developers give away their work free, (“the vast majority of app downloads continue to cost nothing: nine out of ten downloads in 2013 were free, and eight of the ten most-used apps globally are given away”), the freemium revenue and the advertising models are what will reward them. While this seems obvious, smaller developers need to give away their work free of cost to generate word-of-mouth publicity, which more established players don’t have to do.

The report explained, “Global mobile advertising revenues are expected to have reached $18 billion in 2014, up from $13.1 billion in 2013, and this growth will continue until 2017, when spending will exceed $41 billion. About 90 percent of Apple’s global App Store revenue in 2013 was attributable to freemium apps—which are free to download but can ultimately lead to in-app purchases—up from 77 percent in 2012. Freemium apps have demonstrated their profitability but some have also come under criticism for allowing users to incur unexpected costs, such as through any in-app purchases that they wind up making.”

“One area where developers are demonstrating success is building apps for other businesses. Some 70 percent of developers say they are profitable when doing contract work for others. Demand for app development is growing as industrial applications increase. Companies often do not have their own in-house developer talent and are willing to pay for functionality that can increase sales and profits.”

While cheap knockoffs are a issue for developers to deal with, their bigger problem is how to make money, when more than half of them earn less than $500 a month per app, and “the top 1.6 percent of developers earn more than the other 98.4 percent combined.” These are usually the bigger app developers who do more niche work (eg. a wedding planner app) for people or companies, who hire them for their expertise. Moving towards providing these more specific “on request” kind of apps will prove more lucrative for developers.

Written for the Ericsson blog. http://www.networkedindia.com/

Which sectors are attracting VC funds?

The United States has defined the words ‘innovation’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ for the rest of the world to follow. So what’s the latest score when it comes to raising funding? In the first half of 2013, according to the ‘Innovation Report’, San Diego had raised over $580 million from venture capital resources. 

While more current figures are not available, below is a bird’s eye-view of the industries that raised all that money, and from whom, in the ecosystem.  It’s a good indication of what is on VCs' radar.

Surprisingly, going green is getting a lot of attention. Clean technology companies (52%) raised more than vanilla IT/media/Software/SaaS startups (8%).  Life Sciences got 30% of the funds.  Wireless Health, another recent area of high interest, got 6% of the greenbacks.

The Defence/Cyber/Robotics sector got a meagre 3% funding. If more weapons of war have civilian application, I think the interest might shoot up in this area. After all, Google and Amazon are testing drones for making shopping deliveries. So having a dual purpose might be a good way to lure money. It also helps the VCs look good in the media, with regard to their choices.

Consumer products and sports innovation evened out at 1%.  But most consumer product giants have huge R&D budgets in-house to support innovation. So this might actually be the reason, why they were not able to raise much from the open market. 

Suggestions for startups in these areas: Pitching to a P&G or Unilever might be a good idea too.

Sports entrepreneurs: Approach those wealthy sports clubs who pay millions to players. They certainly seem to have the dough.

Innovation: Key Challenges that Firms Face

Innovation is such a buzzword these days. But what are the key challenges facing companies looking to innovate?  In order to get some answers, Innosight, an innovative consulting firm co-founded by Clayton Christensen (he’s a Harvard Business School professor and author of several books, notably ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail’) surveyed 823 Strategy & Innovation subscribers online. These people spanned more than 20 industries ranging from financial services, healthcare, telecommunications and consumer goods.

Sixty percent of respondents were in senior management (with the largest category being CEO/ Managing Director). Another 53% were in strategy or general management roles, and 15% were in marketing or product development.  Twenty-three percent of respondents worked in organizations with revenues exceeding US $1 billion, while 19% worked in organizations with revenues between $50 million and $1 billion.

The survey results were published in a paper called ‘Strategic Readiness Survey’. It revealed that for most, developing ideas is not much of an obstacle (only 11.3% felt it was), but 22% felt scaling them and bringing them to market was a challenge. Another 19.5%  felt commercialising ideas was an issue.  Sixteen percent felt getting the right talent and resources was a headache. While 14.3% felt securing funding was problematic and 10.8% felt the lack of leadership support for innovation.

The paper highlighted other factors, such as which of these five – disruptive lower cost solutions, changing consumer behaviour, new technologies, commoditisation, and globalisation - would make a significant-to-medium impact on their business in the next five years.

Around 75% respondents said commoditisation will have significant-to-medium impact while 68% said globalisation would have a similar effect. But a huge 93% said that disruptive, lower cost solutions will have a significant-to-medium impact on them. This was followed by 92% who felt that new, enabling technologies will make a big difference to them. This was consistent across different size companies.

The survey stated, “Of those who do use these kinds of strategy tools, about 38% reported that they are “incredibly useful” and 56% said they are “moderately useful.” This suggests that while the process might be difficult, more robust and precise tools typically do improve outcomes. Moreover, companies that use these tools report greater confidence to respond to longer-term marketplace disruptions. Fully 50% said they were “confident” or “very confident,” compared with 37% who don’t use planning  tools.”

The reasons given by executives for not doing any scenario planning were that 41% felt they didn’t have a good process for confidently envisioning the future. Nineteen percent believe the market is too unpredictable to spend time doing scenario analysis. Fifteen percent said they “spend most of our time fighting fires and don’t have time to think about the future. While, 14% felt their leadership didn’t have long-term focus.

This lack of confidence shows up in response to the question “How confident are you that your organisation is prepared to change in response to disruptive trends?” This question was asked many times over different time-frames to see if people were more optimistic or not, with their responses. The answer was that only 42% were “very confident or ‘confident’ that they were prepared to transform within a  5-10 year time-frame.” This further reduced to 36% among respondents in big enterprises, and a low of 27% in those very same companies didn’t feel confident at all. 

This confidence gap is further heightened by the fact that 48% of large enterprises (with over $1 billion in revenues) admitted that they were “much slower” or “somewhat slower” when responding to marketplace disruptions.  In a related question, 44% stated that they were responding to newer growth opportunities “ somewhat slower” or “much slower” than their competitors.  Only 21% said they were moving somewhat in sync with the market or were “much faster” than it. The writing is on the wall though, for all companies across sectors: Innovate and get creative or get left out and go bankrupt. With only about 12% of organisations having a long-term formal growth strategy of over 5+ years, the choice couldn’t be more stark than this.

In light of this, another Innosight corporate briefing called ‘Creative Destruction Whips through Corporate America’, came up with the conclusion that if current trends continue, then about 75% of companies on the S&P 500 list today, will not be around, or will get acquired by 2030.

Written for Beyond Jugaad.

Big Brands don’t Reward their Spendthrift Clientele

The urge to splurge has been tapped into by many businesses. Loyalty programmes keep the regular clientele of stores/brands coming back for more. It works well for both parties - the people who love to shop till they drop and obviously, the stores themselves.

Here are some statistics: 76% of US retailers and 75% of US shoppers are engaged in loyalty programmes.  In India, Shopper’s Stop claims more than 60% of sales are from loyalty members. Subhiksha claims 80% of sales come from loyalty members – so why they went bankrupt, is the big question.

After all, putting together reward/loyalty programmes takes effort and time but if your merchandise is of an inferior quality or despite the discount the membership card entitles you to, they seem steeply priced in comparison to items sourced by a rival store, then smart shoppers are going to ditch the reward membership card. For eg: At Lifestyle, a pair of khaki shorts is priced at an outrageous Rs 800 while I’ve picked up full length formal trousers in a wrinkle-free cotton-satin fabric, for the same amount at Westside, two years ago. 

Here quality was not an issue but who is going to pay Rs 800 for a truncated pair of pants? Maybe Lifestyle’s reward card – Inner Circle – members really don’t care about the price factor at all and just want to be seen with Lifestyle’s shopping bags rather than say, Westside or Pantaloons. But for my money, I’d rather buy full-length khaki trousers and wear them for a few years and then crop them into shorts eventually, which is what I’ve done in the past. 

If this is the case of s prêt store like Lifestyle, then there are high-end stores which also, from the look of things in their store windows, over-price items and sell them to their loyal shoppers. You have only got to look at some of the clothes at Marks & Spencer, to realize, you get much better and cheaper stuff on Colaba Causeway or on Hill Road, Bandra (in Mumbai). 

Ever seen the display in the Versace window (before it shut down) at INOX, Nariman Point? They flaunted such mediocre stuff that I was never tempted to go in and look at their label…or ask the price of the outfits. One reason being, I don’t want to die of a heart attack at a young age. The other being, I know where you can pick up better clothes at a more reasonable place in Breach Candy – a one-time shopping mecca for people with money and before these big label stores came up to pull wool over our eyes. I’d rather buy Versace crockery than those outfits with my money. No wonder that place shut down. 

A source in the real estate business told me that the Poonawala family – yes the horse-breeders and Derby enthusiasts who flaunt Ferraris and Lamborghinis and should have known their brands well - were in fact cheated by the people who licensed the Versace brand to them. They palmed off outdated stock to the Versace outlet here in Mumbai, and customers were not being fooled about it. More power to us! So, I was right when I walked past that display window with complete indifference. The same thing has happened to Escada, another really top designer brand worn by people like Princess Diana. 

A friend who travels abroad quite a bit told me that Marks & Spencer is also a has-been brand in the UK and a lot of their range in India is also not quite the current season. This is a brand that is desperately trying to recapture the magic they used to enjoy years earlier, where if you were seen toting their shopping bags, you were considered classy. So, if you want to buy the absolute latest from Marks & Spencer, then even their original store in the UK is willing to send stuff to us in India with standard delivery charges reduced to £10. 

Mango has a better range of clothing and their jackets are superb. It’s a pity we don’t really need to wear them much in Mumbai. Guess is another brand that has a good range of clothes and shoes. This information is for people who absolutely must have branded stuff in their wardrobe. So, from what I have seen, these two brands provide the bang for your buck. 

Anyway, most readymade garment stores in India are – and have been for some time now – importing clothes from Bangkok, Thailand, Korea and Spain. I’ve bought amazing imported clothes from a store called Breach Candy Boutique for years and which I later find some celeb wearing with a much bigger brand label attached to it. 

When I decided to find out what high-end brands, across categories, are offering to their loyal customers, it turns out that not many stores even have a loyalty programme in place for the people who sashay in and spend huge amounts of their money there! Expensive chocolate brands like Bateel, Patchi and Leonidas have nothing to offer people who come there and pay approximately Rs 300 for 100 gms of chocolate (at Bateel) or anywhere between Rs 75 to Rs 95 for a piece of chocolate (at Patchi). As anyone can see, people can have an entire meal for this kind of money. But Leonidas’ store manager, Vrinda Rambhia said that a reward programme is being designed, while Patchi franchise owner in India, Rashmi Joshi also confirmed thinking about such an incentive. She’s waiting to open a few more stores and then introduce a reward programme. 

Clothing and accessories brands like Guess and Mango also don’t have any reward programme in place. When contacted, a Guess store employee said they were thinking about starting something, but when are they going to do it is anyone’s guess – pun unintended! Lladro also has nothing for regulars who are fans of their beautiful porcelain figurines, which I think is a shame. I would love to sign up for their ‘buy one and get one free’ offer if they ever came up with something like that! Their Lladro range sells from Rs 6,000 onward and their Nao range sells for Rs 1,000 onward. So, may be pairing one with the other could do wonders. 

Marks & Spencer has just introduced a spiffy looking card recently. The enrollment process is very simple. All you need to join is spend Rs 2,500. Their website gives these details: 

• For every purchase of Rs 100, you earn 1 point. Every point you earn is equivalent to Re.1
• You also earn points for purchases made on discounted items.
• The reward points you earn reflect within a short span of 7 days and can be redeemed against further purchases at their stores.
• You can start redeeming your points once you have accumulated a minimum of 50 points, after which you can redeem them in denominations of Rs 50. 
• This programme is valid in India only.

 Benefits

• Refer a friend and earn points. Help a friend discover the privileged world of the M&S Club and earn an extra 50 points.
• Birthday/anniversary offers: You can look forward to treating yourself with a special 10% discount on all Marks & Spencer merchandise on these days. This does not include the sale merchandise.
• Special Invitations: As a part of the extended Marks & Spencer family, you can look forward to some special invites.  

Like Swarovski's bling? Then you are in luck. Here is more information on the Swarovski Reward Programme. When contacted, their representative Divya Bakshi e-mailed me these salient points. Swarovski Crystal Society (SCS) members enjoy a whole range of special benefits: 

-   The chance to purchase the current annual edition and other exclusive SCS products

-   An annual membership gift 

-   A free subscription to the quarterly Swarovski magazine 

-   Access to the exclusive members-only area on the Swarovski website 

-    Free admission to the "Swarovski Kristallwelten / Crystal Worlds” in Wattens, Austria including a warm welcome in the VIP lounge 

-    Invitations to special SCS events and tours 

-   A personalized membership card

Members may join the SCS for either 1 or 3 years. Membership begins with payment of the membership fee and expires automatically at the end of the chosen period.  Several weeks before your membership expires you will receive a notification along with an application to renew your membership. There is no obligation to purchase any Swarovski articles

To become a member, simply carry out the following steps: You can fill the application form which is available at the SCS retail outlet along with the membership fees and submit it to your selected SCS retailer, where the membership can get processed. The token membership fees to join the society is as follows:

• INR 2,750 for one year membership
• INR 5,000 for three year membership
• INR 2,400 for one year renewal/ rejoin
• INR 4,500 for a three year renewal/ rejoin

Such loyalty/reward programmes are being designed by websites like this one http://www.netcarrots.net/net/services/customer-loyalty-programs.aspx  among many. So, the expertise is available to get a programme going. Then why is it that all these big brands I spoke to, except for Marks & Spencer and Swarovski, don’t have anything in place? I mean for the kind of money they take for their stuff, this is hardly an add-on service. Are they not grateful that even in a third world country like India, there are people with disposable cash to buy their brands? So, don’t they want to reward such spendthrift souls? 

My guess is that, the reality is quite different. These brands have the snazzy showrooms but they don’t get all that much business to justify coming up with a loyalty programme for the let’s say, average of 50 customers they may be seeing in a month, who walk into their store. May be, even this number is on the higher side and besides even out of those 50 people, a lot of them just browse and walk away – I do it. Such brands often see more people window-shopping outside their store than people actually plunking down hard cash, inside the store.