Saurabh Gupta » Mobile Content

How will you know when you’re successful?

Saurabh Gupta — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:20:21 +0000

At the International Young Communications Entrepreneur’s forum in London, earlier this year, I was asked a simple question by Sir Chris Powell (the founder of DDB London & Worldwide), “How will you know when you’re successful?”

The question had me stumped. I gold-fished my way through the answer but the question stayed with me.

“How does one know when one is successful?”

100 more clients? 20 offices? Global product? Networks? million followers on twitter? A boat? private planes? Two divorces and three alimonies?

What?

How was I to know when I was successful? Would there be a sign or waving flags at the finish line? An invisible red tape that I could chest proudly? The problem is an enterprise is not a 100 metre run, it’s not even a marathon, more often than not its an entrepreneur’s lifetime. It’s a long enough time to get lost chasing short term goals and lose sight of the ‘big picture’.

The question had me thinking and prompted me to take another look at what we were doing and where we were headed.

To imagine ‘success’. What it would look, taste, smell, feel like!

The answer came to me as i prepared a case-study presentation for the National Entrepreneurship Network. I went through the entire story of how Phonethics was set-up, how our office got sealed off in Delhi, how folks did good and bad by us and how we went from a -40L to a 2Cr+ set-up in 15 months. It struck me that the journey is the reward! The very attempt to strike out, to do something different, challenge the status quo, create is an extremely powerful emotion! (the money helps and frankly there’s more of it chasing you when you no longer chase it)

I’m proud of this journey and of our goals, thankful to my co-travellers and the entire eco-system and determined to never confuse ’success’ with ‘intent”

great letter announcing very good news!

Saurabh Gupta — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:47:26 +0000

C&binet (www.cabinetforum.org), a not-for-profit network created by the UK government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) was launched in 2008 to foster international dialogue about the creative economy focussing on the four main themes including access to finance for creative industries, new business models for online content, developing talent and securing creative rights.

The first annual C&binet forum on Nurturing Creative Content in the Digital Age is taking place on 26 – 28 October 2009 at The Grove in Hertfordshire and will bring senior creative business leaders together with policy makers and investors to identify and support the most effective means of protecting, producing and commercialising creative work.

The opportunity to attend this forum was opened up to several members of the International Young Creative Entrepreneur (IYCE) network.

I’m happy to say that Saurabh Gupta, Founder & CEO, Phonethics from Mumbai has been selected to attend the forum next month.

Saurabh was the India Finalist of the International Young Communications Entrepreneur Award 2009 and was awarded a special commendation at the UK ceremony for his commitment to innovation and his strong sense of the global potential of his business.

No FEAR

Saurabh Gupta — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 16:12:30 +0000

People pay for content with money OR their time*
From a consumer perspective, ‘paying’ for content has to emerge as a problem solver and not another problem to deal with.
Consider the scenarios in which a consumer pays / is willing to pay for content –

to save money
to save time
to save effort: curated bundles of content along interest based verticals (value addition)
unbundling of complex (and expensive) media packages (like selling ‘singles’ in the music business)
on the move access
language services (translation, text to speech)
budgeted institutional media / content purchase

Consider some of the challenges (at least in the Indian context) –
1.    Lack of a digital (monetisable) identity like credit card etc
2.    Language (local language content is in short supply)
3.    Access (awareness and availability)
As a Creative Individual and a mildly puzzled entrepreneur I find myself asking a few key questions:
a.    Creation – why are we creating what we are? Is there a precedent/gap/trend that we’ve identified? Can we collaborate/use online tools to reduce the cost of production? Do we know the target audience well enough? Can we collaborate with other online destinations (where our audience is) to identify and access the audience?

b. Distribution – are we optimally using ‘free’ platforms we can leverage to increase discovery and impact of the content? How do we separate the discovery and consumption? Is there a regular social media outpost that we can manage to inform and update our loyal customers? Do we allow them to bring their friends to the party?

c. Billing – have we passed on the benefits of reduced distribution, advertising and delivery costs to the consumer? Is the content ‘cheaper’ because of it? Is it easy to access? Have we hobbled paid content with rights management softwares? (reducing the effective value of the purchase) Is the content bundled? Can the customer pay for smaller bundles of content? (micro-payment friendly)

TWO SECRET WEAPONS (well, not so secret actually but effective all the same)
1. Mobile phones – we imagine it as a key element in the ‘paid content’ ecosystem both as a payment gateway and a delivery channel. ‘Text to pay’, ‘pre-pay’ and ‘micro-payment’ are only just being used to pay for content but are simple enough and available in a great scaled environment so as to make it (payment through mobile phones) feasible.

2. People pay for content with money OR their time* – We have to figure how to monetise the latter. Advertising still remains the best way to monetise the time users spent consuming your content, the question is how innovative can we be about it. At what point does it become feasible to sell your own advertising deals (which maybe smaller and more painful to service) that allow the advertiser to FULLY UTILISE the scope and audience offered by your business?

SUMMARY: Build platforms, ‘ease’ and ‘simplicity’ score big – bigger than we imagine, collaborate to create industry standards with peers: tying up with even one more company like yours is a ‘collaborative’ effort! And the biggest thing – DON’T BE AFRAID TO CHARGE FOR WHAT YOU CREATE

Why Digital doesn’t mean FREE

Saurabh Gupta — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:08:49 +0000

Spotted this on Paidcontent. Amidst all the hullabaloo about Chri Anderson’s new book ‘Free’ it remains to be seen if media in India or for that any kind of proprietary material is ever going to be distributed free ‘officially’. In fact it remains to be seen if the free-mongers will survive the end of their VC funded runs. I’d written about why Free Digital Media was not just a bad idea but probably also an impractical one. (Rupert Murdoch has famously said the obvious that ‘free is not a business model’)

The irony of course is that we’re a piracy ridden economy so the argument (for paid media) gets diluted every time a pirate hawks the latest book or movie at the traffic light. If they’re doing it, shouldn’t we? Won’t it get us MORE readers/viewers/lovers/anything? Won’t these default users shower us with riches someday? surely more users are better than less in today’s globalised hyper informed world? NO

While nothing makes it less illegal, unorganised piracy is still only a minor dent and doesnt have either the access or the many comforts that professional packaging and curation provides. It’s when the content creator promotes the notion that it costs nothing to create digital content simply because it is ‘Digital’, or even worse, throws open it’s doors to a third party (i’m thinking large benevolent colourful yuppie search company) that steals (yes, it’s theft) and serves proprietary material monetising it for piles of gold, that the entire business model needs to be reassessed.

Ask any content creator in India who’s dealt with aggregators and telcos in India. Till last year noone ever saw a dime from revenue shares, in the same time VAS (Value Added Services) revenues shot through the roof. The race to be ‘mobile’ without an indigenous business model filled third party coffers and trivilaised the very product being hawked by the digital baniyas. The race for users will do the same to proponents of ‘free’.

Next – So, if we agree it’s not going to be free, What is the model? How about a digital news-stand?

The Shop Floor

Saurabh Gupta — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:25:11 +0000

This could also have been titled ‘Why i love what i do’. It just occurred to me that all of us in Phonethics operate our sales floor like a trading floor of the good old stock markets! at any given point of time during the trading hours (typically between 10.30 and 6.30) some of us are talking feverishly into our phones, selling, explaining, talking and responding to the many many client enquiries that we receive. The buzz (when its there) is to die for, its infectious, its unique and as a leader, its invigorating. The thrill of discovering something new and getting it to market, to weigh in on the side of our clients is totally amazing. Constant information hunger and healthy one upmanship (i discovered this new cool tool/widget/piece of code/style of animation..) contributes to it.
I wonder how many people can actually say this about their workplaces!

Free? Why

Saurabh Gupta — Fri, 29 May 2009 11:11:11 +0000

Indian newspapers have still not gone down the ‘free’ path and Arun Poorie, the Founder, MD of India Today (a group that publishes in 13 indian languages and also has publishing and distribution rights for several international brands) has said recently that the free-on-web model hurts their business model and makes no sense at all! one might think ‘of course the publishers are going to say so..’ but as content creators we’ve seen that providing content for free is not a business model by any stretch of imagination. We have hosted short form content on youtube for eons on and havent made a penny (at least directly) from the content, the same material is distributed by the telcos and makes a tiny sum of money every month in royalties.

I feel that consumers will pay for content (delivered digitally) that’s bundled well, available on the go (think mobile) and MUCH cheaper than its traditional counterpart. This is something that requires the industry to act in concert and that’s what they’ve been dragging their feet over

The music business has already sunk its own ship by playing the stone age man game. there still is no other platform selling ‘units’ and accepting micropayments apart from itunes! Some of us would happily pay for tracks to save the trouble of searching, downloading and listening to poor quality mp3s. of course we’d like to pay less than what a CD costs, have the liberty to do what we want with the song after we’ve bought it and so on..

free is not a business but nor is ‘only me’ a strategy in this economy and digital age

Creative cretins

Saurabh Gupta — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:23:00 +0000

What makes a great idea? How do we know it will viral? try a simple experiment. Send it to the client you wrote it for. if s/he buys..its brilliant..if not..it’s irrelevant.

Creative folks being attached to commercial creative output is like a dentist being attached to the rotten tooth. its your job to get it out (the idea) if someone likes it good, else go back to work

2006 – piece for ‘Impact’ magazine

Saurabh Gupta — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:04:41 +0000

Early in 2006, I had the opportunity to sit in on a meeting where a determined twenty something boy was pitching his business idea for a mobile application to a bunch of ‘suits' (Funder types).

When one of the suits asked him why he wanted to wait for an year to launch his product, he replied “What's an year? It passes in a day!”

It does and it did. 2006 whizzed by.

The saliency of 2006 for the mobile sector lay in the twin mantras that I observed in the meeting mentioned above – innovation and persistence.

Mobile Application Developers, Telcos, Aggregators, Content owners and all the other parties of this myriad circus showed tremendous aggression in launching cutting edge applications and content. From booking Cinema tickets on the mobile (PVR Cinemas) to selling branded games, Fun cards (Hutch) to Songcatcher (Airtel) the year saw one cool application after the other. VAS revenues soared as TV programming seamlessly integrated SMS as the tool of choice to involve viewers in the numerous reality shows and contests. Almost all of these were well thought out and well executed products. Considering that SMS is still the largest component of Value Added Services the marriage of text Message and Reality Television was the biggest money spinner of 2006.

With Millions of direct investment by Venture capitalists, Foreign Equity Funds and other investors in the sector, 2006 was a good year.

A ‘hit' or what is known as the ‘killer app' (the suits!!) however, remained elusive in 2006. No game, application or content type achieved a cult status to match, leave alone outsell mobile versions of Cinema or cricket content. In fact a marketing manager (another suit!!) with a Telco recently put Dhoom 2 as the biggest mobile downloads blockbuster ever.

The Terrapinn Mobile Content Forum last year in Singapore was attended by companies from across the world. This is the Asia forum, I thought, what the hell are all these Americans and Australians and Canadians and Mayans (not really, but perhaps the only ones missing) doing here? Over the next few days I realized that they wanted to sell or buy in Asia because it boosted not just the bottomlines but also (and more importantly) their content libraries back home. With a huge migrant population, Asians represents a sizeable chunk of the consumers in almost every developed nation across the world. Even though everyone cribbed about the shoddy margins and lack of transparency amongst the Telocs in Asia, it didn't stop them from acquiring more Videos, Animations, Ringtones and Wallpapers in 14 different languages.

Apart from their worldwide presence what makes these guys successful is that they have redefined the words ‘Mobile content'. They sell to any Device that's mobile. To the device not the medium.

In 2007, Mobile content will mean not just content on the Mobile phone but content that's Portable, Personal, and available on the move on the device of your choice. This means more power to the copyright holders of original content. Increased distribution and non-exclusive rights sharing allow a creator to make money many times over from a single product.

Let's connect some crucial dots between the Mobile Phone and Portable Content.

In 2007:

This will be the biggest mobile news of 2007 – Money on Mobile.

Payment gateways on Mobiles and Payment facilitation applications are currently being tested and deployed in a phased manner. Trials at restaurants and cinema halls have shown encouraging response from the consumers.

Ad on mobile. Traditional media guys in T.V and Advertising have begun using short codes (SMS) for marketing as a regular and natural extension of branding activity. Though tentative this acceptance and embracing of this nascent sector bodes well for the more adventurous stuff to follow.
3G remained a puzzle and a prayer for most of 2006, so my money is on a good if not very good 2.5G application that will bring all manners of content to GPRS enabled phones.
Over the counter content will appear as the portable devices become more sophisticated and affordable. Bluetooth, USB, MMC and SD cards will become the delivery mechanisms of choice.
Content companies looking at regional content will mushroom and flourish though watch out for some serious mobile gaming and content action from Bollywood guys plush with the 2006 loot.
Learning, Travel and Healthcare will see some of the coolest content and applications. Peer 2 Application (P2A) solutions from hospitals, hotels, hostels and your neighbourhood doctor.
As people grow familiar with the capability of the funky tech gadgets they own, they are going to devise ingenious ways to use the tech at their disposal to Create, Share and Store. Combine this with connectivity and we should expect another Youtube if not Google.

In India the mobile phone is definitely going to see the convergence of essential services like GPS, TV, BANKING within the same device sooner than later. The big ideas for this did not happen in 2006. There is no guarantee that they will in 2007.

But, then..

Tinfo Mobile developed an award winning application that teaches people how to read and write. The young boy (at the beginning of this piece) got the money he wanted. Probably the few things about 2006 that are likely to make 2007 interesting.