Business

Entrepreneurship is not only about getting that “great” idea

May 15, 2013

Entrepreneurship is often considered synonymous to unlocking a great idea and then making money off it. Unfortunately this definition also mean that a lot of people who are good at certain skills but do not get that “brilliant idea” stay away from becoming an entrepreneur. To me this is a wrong reading of the concept. [...]

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Turning away genuine customers while avoiding free loaders

May 7, 2013

An interesting story about people who try things offline and then buy online has been published here. It seems that offline stores bear the brunt of staff costs, when staff help customers make choices about buying. Many times , the supposed buyer just walks off after testing the product and later buys the same thing [...]

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Customer and vendor relationship is like a marriage, needs trust and commitment from both

March 19, 2013

Recently a software I developed, did not work at all on a new customer’s website. It was because  of the open source nature of the system where the ecosystem is varying and complex unlike the closed, proprietary ecosystems. In a closed system, things are more controlled and thus there are fewer problem with software standards. [...]

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Is exiting a business on your mind? Plan for it now

February 26, 2013

My bank from last many years decided to drop many customers(including me) for reasons that are not known. Probably they are winding operations or letting go of unprofitable customers. Recently a TV channel provider decided to reduce the number of services they offered to their former premium customers. It appears strange that in the mad rush [...]

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A small guide for service creators on living with and surviving competition and commoditization

February 12, 2013

A friend of mine was expressing sadness at the fact that the work he is doing is paying really less these days. There is huge competition and since supply is high and clients are not averse to bargaining. In the age of internet where you can get services as cheap as $5, I feel the [...]

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Experience with airlines: Lacking value creation attitude

January 31, 2013

In the hay days of 2005 to 2006, India witnessed its great aviation boom. It was a completely new phenomenon that caught Indians by surprise. Before 2005, it was very costly for Indians to travel by airlines. Now because of a few low cost airlines( one offered a few seats at mere Rs 500 (< [...]

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Building trust initially and then selling a little later

January 15, 2013

I have entered a stage where I have launched my first commercial product online. It is a simple plugin that lets one share their content on internet. Like any other entrepreneur , everything that is related to plugin, design, coding, testing and now marketing has been done by yours truly. The plugin was conceived from [...]

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Trust, creativity and permission : Three tenets of marketing

January 8, 2013

Long time back I wrote a post about Customer expectations: once set, you may not take them away. Instagram in the recent news lost about a quarter of its customer, after it announced that it was making a major change to privacy policy. Since then the company has retracted the changes but the damage is [...]

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Competing by switching to a new market

January 2, 2013

A big problem that a new comer faces in business is as follows . “Almost every idea that I get is already taken up by someone else” or “During research I found that not only my idea is taken but the also the business has implemented the idea has already acquired significant market”. Often the [...]

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Your product is not your business

November 22, 2012

It is often that one meets people who want to start an online business. Most of them are worried about the technical aspect such as what software to use, which payment gateway to integrate with and many others. E-business is a very challenging  like any other business. It is very rare that a idea gets [...]

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