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Friday, December 19, 2008

WATBlog Update There are 3 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

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BigFlix Looking At Distribution/Downloads Via Set Top Box - Will Bigflix Downloads be available via BigTv?
Tie ups Update - Ibibo - Sony BMG / IDBI - Paymate
“We Are An Unfunded Company & Have Grown from 0 to 20 people organically” - Allwyn Agnel - Founder - Pagalguy.com
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There are 3 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

BigFlix Looking At Distribution/Downloads Via Set Top Box - Will Bigflix Downloads be available via BigTv?

Bigflix.com the DVD rental portal from the Reliance ADAG stable is looking at spreading its wings beyond the online/retail model right to your bedroom and living room tv sets. According to this report Bigflix like netflix in the US (which tied up with LG) is looking at options of rolling out Movie downloads service right to your tv sets via set top box. It seems that the Bigflix guys are already in talks with OEM players to source the set-top boxes and they could launch this download service in less than 2 years from now.

What I am a little confused about is why wouldn’t BIgflix work with BigTv (A DTH Player with already a set top box in place) to roll out the same? Am I missing something here?

Also the other model that BigFlix could so in the case of a set top box model is an ad supported free download model in which the movie is allowed to be downloaded for free but ads are inserted within the movie.

As of now if you go to the BigTV site or even the Bigflix site there seems to be no mention of each other or any mention of distribution of bigflix or download of bigflix movies via Bigtv. Though Im unsure as to what stops them from moving in that direction? Any clue anyone?

Infact all the 4 Big’s BigFlix, Bigtv, BigFm and BigAdda can be integrated with each other at some level or another. And if you ask me it only helps in cross leveraging assets that are being created separately as of now.

Not sure if the guys at BIG are even thinking on these lines but the combined impact of the above along with a mobile aspect via reliance communications would really mean that they are leaders when in comes to entertainment content be it online, mobile, radio and tv as some sort of convergence across these mediums is surely expected.

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Tie ups Update - Ibibo - Sony BMG / IDBI - Paymate

Tie ups continue in this space and Ibibo which we have been tracking closely has gone ahead with another entertainment tie up and Paymate which recently entered the nepal market has closed a tie up with IDBI bank. Lets look at the details of these tie ups.

Ibibo Ties Up with Sony BMG - Launches Michael Jackson Contest

As stated earlier as well Ibibo is working very aggressively on its entertainment/contest strategy and this tie up with Sony BMG, the music entertainment company is no different.
As per this tie up a group on Michael Jackson which will be used to promote michael jackson songs on ibibo and users can vote for their favourite song which would then be converted into a two-CD album called Michael Jackson – The King of Pop.

Ibibo seems to be having an edge over other social networks when it comes to entertainment as a category. Whether or not this strategy is a sustainable one in the long run is questionable. In other news Ibibo is also powering social network for mobile manufacturer spice mobiles and the same can be access via wap.spicegang.in.

IDBI ties up with Paymate

IDBI Bankannounced a tie up with with PayMate to enable Mobile Payments facility for its over 3.5 million customers.

With RBI issuing guidelines for mobile payments it heartening to see public sector banks come forward and forge alliances with mobile payment companies like Paymate.
Here's how PayMate will work for an IDBI Customer:
An IDBI Bank customer can avail of free registration for PayMate's Mobile Payment service at any IDBI Bank Branch (registrations will shortly be extended on ATMs and through NetBanking). Once registered, the process links the customer's mobile number to his/her operative bank account and a secure Mobile Banking PIN (m-PIN) is sent to the customer. A customer can then start transacting as follows:

1.Once the customer chooses to pay via PayMate at the merchant, he/she only shares the registered mobile number with the merchant and instantly receives an IVR call from PayMate asking for a payment authorization with a 4 digit mPIN
2.Customer then punches in the mPIN which is authenticated by PayMate and the customer's bank account is debited instantly.
3.A confirmation of the transaction status is sent to both the customer (via SMS) and the merchant (through the PayMate interface) within a few seconds.

As one can see the process isn’t that long but adoption would still be an issue as people in India are careful with using technology for transactions. With 300 million + mobile phone subscribers this mode of payments could revolutionize the way we transact in India.

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“We Are An Unfunded Company & Have Grown from 0 to 20 people organically” - Allwyn Agnel - Founder - Pagalguy.com

WATShow caught up with Allwyn Agnel the young founder of a immensely popular MBA site Pagalguy.com. For all those who dont know Pagalguy is India’s leading MBA portal and is the number one destination for all those looking to give the toughest entrance exam CAT for an entry into the top B-School’s in India. Without futher adieu we present to you Allwyn Agnel exclusively on WATShow.com..

You can watch this and more such exclusive interview’s on India’s largest Digital media centric video blog WATShow.com .. WATShow has over 50 exclusive interviews taken over the last year!

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Thursday, December 18, 2008

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WATBlog Update There are 5 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

Here are the WATBlog email updates for watblogna@gmail.com

Rediff Goes Regional With 22 Languages Launch In Jan
Chakpak Gets Funding From Canaan - A Look At Canaan’s Internet Investments
ThomasCook.in To Focus on Domestic Market & B2B Segment
Microsoft Launches BizSpark - Takes On Sun’s Startup Programme
WATBlog Wednesday Bangalore - Startups & VC Mixer - In Pictures
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There are 5 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

Rediff Goes Regional With 22 Languages Launch In Jan

Rediff.com which was always sold on regional language and had also acquired technology startups in the space is soon to launch regional language versions of its flagship site rediff.com in 22 languages. So come January 2009 and rediff users would be able to use and converse on rediff.com in 22 different languages.

“After extensive study we found that regional languages are coming up on the internet in a big way. We will also be offering our customers the facility to communicate in 22 different regional languages soon,” said Rediff founder and CEO Ajit Balakrishnan as per this story.

He also predicted that in 3-7 years voice to text conversion technology will be there all over and a 90 per cent accuracy can be expected using algorithm based voice to text technology already and soon other dialects would come into the fold as well.

More and more of rediff’s users are from small town’s and B and C class cities and this shift and bent towards the local languages is to cater to the next 50 million internet users. Rediff very well knows that the differentiator for the next 50-100 million users could be language and not technology.

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Chakpak Gets Funding From Canaan - A Look At Canaan’s Internet Investments

Canaan Partners has funded Chakpak an entertainment and bollywood centric community site according to this article. The amount is not disclosed as yet but the news is confirmed. This is the third company in the consumer internet space that Canaan has invested in. The earlier two are Bharatmatrimony and Techtribe.

As far as talks in the industry circles is concerned both their earlier investments seem to have hit a rough patch in recent times. While bharatmatrimony was in the news recently for laying off people techtribe on the other hand hasn’t had much apparent success in monetization of the tech community via job referrals which is their core revenue model. Also with the slowdown.. jobs as a space has taken a beating and hence the jobs space which looked very promising a few months back looks extremely dismal now.

Same is the case for Clickjobs which is again a bharatmatrimony company and there was news of it looking for a strategic partner for sometime now and denial of it being shut down.

The only saviour for Canaan in both these businesses seems to be bharatmatrimony.com as marriages will probably be the least hurt by the slowdown as per industry sources. Even Consim Info’s (The company behind bharatmatrimony) other businesses like Indiaproperty would see a slowdown soon with the property market being hit.

Techtribe on the other hand needs to rework its monetization model and our sources tell us that they are already working on it and should be out with something early next year.

Coming back to this new investment by canaan in Chakpak.com. I first heard about chakpak through their early stage investors erasmic which is now Accel India. I must say they seem to have been doing very well on the number’s front. One look at their homepage and you would know that a vibrant community around entertainment and movies is building at chakpak. But the question of monetization still remains for chakpak as well. The top banner ad on their homepage being a google ad banner tells a story on how its difficult to crack direct advertisers and VC funded or no there is no difference if you see it from an advertiser point of view.

All in all advertising seems to be the toughest form of monetization in this space and Canaan which had earlier not invested in an advertising based business. Both Consim Info and Techtribe had transaction and subscription driven models. Given that even those businesses seem to be suffering at the hands of the slowdown Im not sure how chakpak would fair. One thing is for sure though the VC’s money will help chakpak to ride this downturn and be ready when the upswing comes around in a couple of years.

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ThomasCook.in To Focus on Domestic Market & B2B Segment

These are tough times for travel in India and tough times need tough and precise measures. That is what we are seeing across the board in online travel with companies focussing on niche’s rather than mass market and whole hog as I may put it. Thomascook.in the travel portal for Thomas Cook (India) Ltd, which was launched in May this year will now focus on domestic holidays and the B2B segment according to this report. This strategy in change of focus would be implemented from next year onwards.

Talking about the future plans, Amitabh Pandey, President & Head – eBusiness, Thomas Cook (India) Ltd said, "We are planning to add most of the domestic destinations online with various segmentation and categories. For instance Kerala packages may also be sold as ayurveda package, ecotours, back water tours, rejuvenation tours, etc. We are process of segmenting the tours under each category to enhance the search experience."

On the B2B focus he also stated, "We are looking at adding more aspects to our portal. We are aiming to focus in a big way on the B2B segment for travel agents and corporates. Currently we have about 200 registered agents online, but we aim to expand our penetration in Tier-II and Tier-III cities."

We had done a WATShow with Amitabh sometime back and asked him his thoughts on the travel space. The same can be viewed here.

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Microsoft Launches BizSpark - Takes On Sun’s Startup Programme

Microsoft yesterday lauched the Bizspark programme which makes microsoft technologies and network easily available to the startup community in India. This programme is very much like Sun’s Startup Essentials programme which has been running in India for sometime now.

The BizSpark program will give a startup access to:

Design tools (Microsoft Expression Studio with MSDN Subscription)
Development test and demonstration (Visual Studio Professional; Microsoft Server Software, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office System 2007)
Production hosting (Hosting Servers, IT Operations Servers)
Support resources (Both technical and non-technical)

They have also partnered with network partners like TiE, NEN, Proto, NASSCOM and IDG to deliver support across the start-up lifecycle by providing mentoring, idea validation, technology readiness and visibility.

This is microsoft attempt to attract the early startups and technologists who have been known for their staunch support for open source and ‘free’ software. This move my microsoft also provides the entire microsoft suite at almost no cost at all. The reason why microsoft would do this is to acquire startups at an early stage so that as they grow bigger chances are they would stick to microsoft technologies in the future as well.

All in all competition in this space between Sun and Microsoft only means good news for startup entrepreneurs especially those with higher technology needs.

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