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There are 6 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India" Interview With Pranav Bhasin, Co-Founder Lifeblob.com - Discussing the Million Dollar Funding and the Future
What is the value that LifeBlob adds to a users life? Why should one signup to Lifeblob?Let me answer that with a story. Last year, I and 2 of my friends went out for a weekend trip. We had a great time there and took lots of photos. When we came back, all of us uploaded photos to our respective photo sharing sites, wrote on our blogs and passed links around. All that seemed fine until I wanted to show our exploits to my cousin a few months later and had a real hard time finding those links. But there is a bigger issue here. When we went on the trip, that is a portion of our lives that we share with each other. Literally speaking, our life paths crossed at that instant in time. But none of the existing services capture and represent that information at all. This is where Lifeblob comes in. Lifeblob is your personal diary with a twist - it has a social angle to it. With Lifeblob, when I make a post about this trip on my personal diary and list my friends as participants, the post not only becomes a part of my personal diary but also the personal diaries of my friends. In this way, it accurately represents this trip as a piece of my life that I share with my friends. But these pieces of my life may also be shared with places (like Bangalore) and other associations (like our company Lifeblob) that I care about. So Lifeblob also allows you to link your posts to places or any other associations and your post will automatically show up on these timelines as well. So whats the big deal?
If you look at the big picture, Lifeblob is like a huge mesh of personal diaries ( or timelines ) that are interconnected through the posts that are made on them and we allow you to either walk on one Q2) How long did it take you to raise funding? What were the key requirements from the investors?We started the process of fund-raising towards the beginning of this year. Our biggest challenge was to ensure that raising funds does not take priority over our execution on Lifeblob. The investors looked at all aspects of Lifeblob during the evaluation. I wouldn’t say there was a specific key requirement - team, technology, marketing, monetization, scaling were all equally important. Q3) What is the monetization model for Lifeblob? What is the exit route?In the short term, Lifeblob will generate revenues by showing banner advertisement and providing paid accounts provide additional value or target niche segments. In the longer term, Lifeblob will also generate revenues by selling merchandise, providing value added services built on top of its API and building strategic partnership with companies to offer them extremely targeted branding and advertising solutions. Our focus is currently on execution and scaling the service fast. We are not aiming for a specific exit route right now. Q4) What is your milestone for the 1st Year?We are looking to aggressively expand our service and become a major global player in lifecasting services in the first year. Q5) Your advice to product startups looking to raise funding?My advice would be for everyone seeking to raise funding would be to answer the following questions before anything else:
Most of the times, startups don’t know what they are looking for and candid answers to these questions will provide the much needed clarity. Another important point is to make your work talk for you - putting your efforts into building something that you can show will give you more mileage than trying to convince an investor that you can do it. ConclusionWhile he didn’t seem forthcoming with details on most questions, Pranav did convey very well that the intent is long term for the team at Lifeblob. We wish them luck in their plans. Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult 25 Must Reads For the Mobile MarketerThe mobile and mobile VAS industry has been a popular topic on WATBlog for quite some time. While looking for some new news in the sector, I had a sense of feeling underfed on information about the business of mobile communication. This led me to find and list some interesting posts on the mobile industry and mobile advertising. This post lists 25 of the ones which I found most interesting and value adding. Must Reads on Mobile Market’s Potential
Must Reads on Mobile VAS
Must Reads on Mobile Marketing
Must Reads on Mobile Advertising:
Must Reads on the Indian Mobile Industry
A little more interesting Information for the mobile marketer
That concludes the list of stuff that I have across and studied over the past few days, and some even before that. Of course, this is in no way exhaustive and there are enough chances that you might find better ones than those listed here. In fact it would be great if you do and add them to the comments, it would be mighty useful for anyone keen on reading this. The mobile internet and VAS industry is something I am kicked about in terms of business prospects. And I am sure reading these will help you unlock a lot of business opportunities and make the most of the obvious advantage that lies in the mobile world. Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult TRAI’s Newest Recommendations Suggest Unrestricted VOIPThe Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has today released recommendations on what could change the future of Internet Telephony in India. According to the recommendations released, the regulator claims that the Indian Government should remove all restrictions that have been imposed over Internet Telephony in India. Currently, ISPs are forbidden to end VOIP calls on PSTN (landline) or mobile phones here in India. However, PC to PC calls have been cleared out as exceptions. This has severely hampered the growth of such technologies and have prevented the reduction in global calling rates. Citing the reason that telecom operators, who hold the Universal Access Services License (UASL), have failed to offer advanced value added services like Internet Telephony to the consumers, TRAI has, hence, recommended that these restrictions be lifted so as to allow a liberal environment. However, it will be long while before the Department of Telecom (DoT) actually considers these recommendations. Back in May 2008, TRAI had put forward some guidelines on liberalization of Internet Telephony in India. Today, Mr. S.K. Gupta, the Advisor(CN) for TRAI, says in the recommendations released:
The recommendations put forth the following salient features: 1. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to be allowed to terminate calls on PSTN/mobile phones and vice-versa. 2. ISPs and National Long Distance (NLD) Operators to have mutual understanding among each other. NLDs to be permitted to use the public internet for unrestricted telephony. 3. Separate distinct numbers for Internet Telephony. 4. Emergency number dialing and Quality of Service have not been mandated yet. As the world advances with newer and faster technologies, we are still stuck with the out dated ones. It is interesting to see the regulator come up with newer recommendations that would hope to ease up our efforts to pace up with the global advancements. Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult Zapak's Downloadable Games Model Failing? New Focus on Selling Discs ?Is Zapak.com, the online gaming portal owned by the mighty Reliance ADAG group, failing in its plan? Downloadable games, that is? This report by Business Standard hints something towards this. Reportedly, Zapak’s now offering the gaming CDs to beat the lukewarm response for its online downloadable games. Rohit Sharma, chief operating officer, Zapak Digital Entertainment said “The downloadable business is lagging behind owing to issues like robust payment mechanisms and people’s reservation to pay online. However, online gaming segment continues to be the focus of the company.” Well, people’s reservation to pay online will always be there. Specially for stuff that they can source through other channels for free. Advertising always looked a viable option. It made sense to advertise Zapak.com itself, first. In India, Zapak.com had an Alexa ranking of 77. This is largely due to promotional activities taken up by Zapak. Loads of TV commercials and offline initiatives like the Zapak Gameplex. It even tried its hands at merchandising with Love Story 2050. Zapak marched ahead of both its competitors, Games2win.com (Alexa.com India Ranking 928) and Indiagames.com (Alexa.com India ranking 1114). However, mounting costs over heavy promotions ensured the high cost of acquisition of customer, for Zapak. In order to be profitable, it needed higher level of revenues. Its involvement in various offline initiatives can be seen as an effect of the Reliance brand. The want to be ubiquitous had fueled the expansion strategy of Zapak.com. I see the discs release and another expansion strategy. The COO of Zapak has said himself that the downloadable business has some issues. The good thing here is that Zapak is acting like a startup, modifying its strategy quickly to keep pace with the market. At Rs.49-99, the games are placed quite competitively. Also, through its discs too, the idea is to drive more traffic to Zapak.com as the game contains a beta version of the MMOG that the company plans to launch soon. With a targeted revenue of Rs.5 crore in the next there months, the company plans to launch 10-15 games in every two to three months and has already released 150,000 titles of 47 titles in action. The offline + online synergy in strategies always work well. So far, even for Zapak, the offline initiatives have helped growth in the positive direction. Apart from revenues, Games CDs can be a strong branding exercise too. Imagine a kid walking in to a mall and seeing 1,000 CDs stacked infront of him, all shouting “Zapak”. Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult Reliance ADAG's DTH Service To Be Launched On TuesdayThe long awaited Direct-to-Home service from Reliance ADAG will be launched on Tuesday, reports Afaqs. Reliance will be starting with a basic offering of about 200 channels. The price will be an aggressive Rs.200-250. Reliance will be using the MPEG-4 technology for compression in their DTH platform. MPEG-4 is an advanced technology that allows upto 30% more channels on the same transponder. The established players of the market, Dish TV and Tata Sky use MPEG-2 technology. However, the choice of technology only affects the number of channels that can be delivered and not the audio-visual reception quality. The older players, Dish TV and Sky TV has said that they have proved in front of TRAI that MPEG-4 does not offers superior audio-video quality. Well although this is true, I’m sure Reliance will market it heavily to prove its superiority over the existing platforms. Again, I believe the customers should stay informed that the older MPEG-2 set-top boxes won’t be able to work with the new MPEG-4 reception. Dish TV had earlier said that upgrading everyone to the new MPEG-4 technology will include unnecessary expenditure for the DTH service provider. DTH war in India is heating up. Besides Reliance, Bharti will also be entering the DTH market soon. With cable TV prices skyrocketing and the reception quality downgrading, DTH seems like the only viable option. Many have opted for it already, and the aggressive marketing by the players is turning the heads of the rest. ADAG sure can get aggressive on the price front. Let’s see how Bharti plays its game now. Do let us know if your comments / feedbacks about the Reliance’s DTH service. Related PostsAlso check out Our Jobsite: WATJob Our Video Show: WATShow Our Gaming Blog: WATGame Our Consulting: WATConsult After Cuil, Wikia Search Now to Take on Google
Google is popular, no doubt. However, apparently, Google’s popularity is causing other sites to start their engines in full swing, in their attempts to take over the search engine giant.
Last month, Cuil.com, the search engine started by ex-Google employees came into the lime-light by announcing that they indexed more web pages than Google and the search results were better than that of Google. Thousands flocked to the site, wanting to test out the features that the developers claimed. However, it didn’t take long for them to find out what the real deal was. Now, it’s the turn of Wikia Search to try and take on the giant. Wikia is the brainchild of Jimmy Wales, the founder of, unarguably the largest collection of information in one place, Wikipedia. Wikia Search is a human powered search engine that was launched in Alpha back in January. We caught up with Mr. Wales back in January for WATShow, who was here for the IIT TechFest. Speaking at the Global Brand Forum in Singapore, Mr. Wales said:
How is Wikia Search different? Wikia adds the ‘human’ element to search. Similar to Wikipedia, Wikia Search is an open-source and free search engine with social networking features. The search engine comprises of 3 components: 1. A web search engine 2. A social network 3. Mini articles When a user makes a search, the search results are actually contained in these mini articles, which are nothing much smaller wiki pages. These mini articles are written by people, hence ‘people-powered’. Will it be successful? This particular approach takes ‘Search’ to a new level. People-powered search engines have been announced in the past too but have failed to make a mark in the market. Similarly, I fail to see the search engine going anywhere near Google’s search market. We have already seen Google’s approach towards their products. Microsoft too has spruced up their efforts to take on Google, by buying Powerset and are bringing a host of new features to their Live Search. True, semantic web-search is one-step ahead in terms of technologies and implementation. The commercial viability of semantic web may be here but I don’t see smaller search engines displacing Google’s position. What do you think?
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