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Music Goes Social With SongBuzz – Review Of Rediff’s Latest Inn
2009-11-24 12:33:00
Rediff.com take a social step in their scramble to brinto draw more user attention. And they are heading towards entertainment seking immediate results, for sure. Their latest innovation being SongBuzz, they use the Twitter-based model of streaming your updates in the form of songs. So users can sign up with their respective email ids and then get started with letting people in their ‘World Stream‘ section. Other categories include ‘Find People‘ and ‘Blog‘ which hasn’t seen a great participation since it’s launch. Worldstream is a kind of real-time stream of what others are streaming right now. In worldstream you can see what others are playing and if you their choice you can follow them. There are not many other social elements in the site, but they claim to add more in future. They call this their ‘testing phase‘ so one can’t expect astonishing features from it. The music player at the bottom of the page plays the ...
More About: Social , Music , Review

Fortune Tellers Become Salaried Tele-Astros Now – They Spell It Big F
2009-11-24 09:19:00
I once heard that the youth brigade or the so called ‘Youngistaan’ have become self-sufficient when it comes to taking their own decisions, at least when it comes to cricket (betting), stock markets or finding a partner! Statistics slightly differ from what we presume, as 80% of the callers using the 24 x 7 astrology services via mobile happen to be young and still seeking face-saving advices from mobile fortunetellers. If you still haven’t figured out where are we talking about, the astrology services available just a dial away seems to be catching instant eruption. At WATBlog we have seen online astrology sites getting into language preferences. Language preference being a big market advantage in the online business, the entire suite of Astro services existing on the English version are now available in Hindi and other regional languages. This including Live phone advice, vedic astrology services, palmistry, life prediction, career prediction, love horoscope, he...
More About: Fortune , Tele

Gazing At The 3G Saga… Day In And Day Out!
2009-11-24 07:09:00
Dynamics of the Indian Communication Industry have been on a drastic revolution spree since last few months. Be it Price wars, MNP or 3G. Already pegged as the next big thing in Indian telephony, 3G seems to be the only rescuer of this slowly sinking ship. Each player in the current times has so much at stake just to acquire one out of the 4 slots earmarked for each circle. 3G in India has seen lots of action since the idea got conceived. We at WATBlog have always followed majority of  the moves in this regard. And now, finally after a long delay in auction, and the different ministries in the union government coming to a final understanding, ‘The Indicative Itinerary’ for the spectrum allotment has been decided (subject to change according to future inter-ministry conflicts). As we all know, since the very beginning it was decided to carry out the auction in four phases – Invitation Stage, Pre-qualification Stage, Auction Stage and Grant Stage. The central gover...

Smart Google Adds Smart Ads – Acquires Teracent
2009-11-24 06:12:00
The way Google ’s Acquisition Express is rolling along it might soon need a dedicated blog to announce it’s acquisitions. Having already acquired 5 companies since August, they have just announced the purchase of smart display ads maker Teracent. Founded in 2006 by Vikas Jha, Teracent relies on it’s ‘sophisticated machine learning algorithms to instantly decipher and select the optimal creative elements to formulate each ad impression by deploying an unlimited number of ad creative combinations through a single ad unit.’ It basically creates the display ad on-the-fly based on factors like geographical location, content, time of the day and other such real time data etc. An example of Smart Ads -> Based on analytics – A cost conscious person might see While a music enthusiast would probably see Teracent has a significant number ex Yahoo personnel on its rolls, along with a number of other professionals from companies such as Advertising.com, I...

Just Rs.19 To Change Your Telecom Operator AND Still Retain Your Number! &n
2009-11-23 15:32:00
We have done an extensive coverage of MNP (Mobile number portability here on WATBlog and also covered the rumored charges of Rs.300 for shifting from one operator to another. We have also discussed the limitations of MNP. Well TRAI has put all these rumors to rest by announcing that MNP would come into effect by 31st of December this year and the charges for shifting from one operator to another is pegged at a meager 19 rupees. Now this should surely make the operators sit up and take notice as the dynamics between operators could change as this could bring a shift from the incumbents to the entrants in the telecom space. The guidelines for who can opt for mobile number portability was clearly laid down by TRAI and we covered the same as well in this earlier post. Now TRAI has announced that the operators cannot charge the consumer more than Rs.19 to shift his number from one operator to another. TRAI has announced that MNP would be implemented in category A circles by 31st Decembe...
More About: Change , Telecom

Government To Push Rural Telephony – To Amend USO Fund Allocation Rul
2009-11-19 13:08:00
Indian Telecom growth has seen tremendous growth in past few years. The growth has largely been concentrated in urban areas where Tele-density has almost reached 100 per cent. The rural telephony although still lags far behind the urban telecom circles. USO (Unique Service Obligation) funds were raised by the government through a Universal Service Levy (USL), currently fixed at 5% of the Adjusted Gross Revenue of all telecom service providers. All operators including public and private can access the USO funds (grants) to create telephony infrastructure in villages. Government sensing the inferior treatment given to rural telecom circles by telcos has proposed an amendment to bring flexibility in accessing USO fund. Many telcos are unable to setup their own networks in rural areas due to scaling of cost and lack of enough mobile subscriber availability in those areas. Thus government is looking at releasing USO funds to telcos without any initial bidding for subsidy. This...
More About: Telephony , Fund

Marriage Of Brands – IndiaMART & NDTV Get Together, HP Powers The All
2009-11-19 12:37:00
Another news comes from the IndiaMART camp, they have launched a portal for SME in partnership with NDTV – NDTVSME.com. Objective behind this portal creation is to address the information, transaction & service needs of SMEs. This portal contains trade shows, leads, tenders, travel, IndiaMART Success Stories, IndiaMART clients, and HP Smartbiz as well. This will offer rich user experience to SMB and focus to provide global exposure & business enquiries to small businesses. Dinesh Agarwal – CEO, IndiaMART said, “NDTVSME.com is a marriage of brand and reach of NDTV with the strong B2B recall and content strength of IndiaMART.com, which makes it a formidable property.” However, Vikram Chandra, CEO, NDTV Networks is excited about the reach of NDTV to the SME community through this portal. And, Deepti Dang, Head, Marketing Commercial & SMB, Personal Systems Group, Hewlett-Packard India, said that SMBs contribute most to their business and they have made this associat...
More About: Marriage

Yahoo To Shut down ‘Yahoo Go’ – Shifts Focus Entirely On Mobile Web
2009-11-19 11:42:00
The news of discontinuing services from Yahoo ’s fold is no surprise as the company gears up to cut its cost and drive all its energy in its core segment i.e. Portal. This time Yahoo has decided to pull the plug from ‘Yahoo Go’ its mobile application. Yahoo has notified its users that ‘Yahoo Go’ will be discontinued from Jan,2010. This was pretty much expected as Yahoo has not upgraded the application since more than a year. Yahoo has also doubled its resources on mobile web division as it feels that the improved browsing experience will allow it to capture mobile web market through its mobile portal. Current active users on ‘Yahoo Go’ can  start using the service on m.yahoo.com after Jan-2010. ‘Yahoo Go’ had tie-up with many handset manufacturers like Nokia, HTC to pre-install the app on their phones. The service which was launched in 2006 provided news, mail and weather updates on Mobile . Yahoo’s current mobile site allows all the similar feature alo...
More About: Mobile Web , Focus

Atom Tech On A Tie Up Spree – Ties In Rcom and Makemytrip
2009-11-18 08:06:00
If you are a mobile payments solutions provider then the key for you is distribution. Distribution can be achieved by partnering with several players. This is the exact strategy that Atom Tech a mobile payments and m-commerce enabler seems to be following since 2 years now. In recent times it has announced two major deals. RCom Deal with Atom Tech Reliance Communications (RCOM) has sealed a strategic tieup with atom Tech to provide mobile payments solutions via multiple banks (Indian and Foreign). Reliance subscribers will now be able to purchase insurance services, DTH recharges, movie tickets, books & periodicals, consumer goods, holiday packages as well as bus & train tickets using their Reliance Mobile connection, these services will also be available on R-world for all GSM customers. Mr. Anil Pande, Head – Product, Mobile Data and Content services, Reliance Communications said, “Our agreement with atom technologies will set the ground for RCOM to make an aggress...

New Google Translate With Instant Results: Not That Great With Indian Langu
2009-11-18 08:01:00
After informing you about the grand announcements made by Google last week, here comes another product from the Google factory, only this time its an improvement over its previous edition. Google recently launched a new look Google Translate with a few additional features. But again I guess Google has still not been able to decipher the Indian Grammatical Code and hence even the new improvised version has not much of a support for Hindi to English translation or Vice-Versa. Google Translate is available in 51 languages which according to Google covers 98% of all internet users. This implies Google Translate can process 2550 permutations (each language being paired with each one of other 50 languages as Original and Translated). Though the program is great for individual short sentences or words, there is still a lot to be developed in order to have even 70% accurate (by accuracy I mean grammatical) text as compared to its original. Nonetheless, the program is more or less one of a ...
More About: Results , Great

Google Launches Image Swirl Experiment – How Far Will It Swirl?
2009-11-18 07:19:00
Have you ever used Google Image Search to look for ‘Apple’ the fruit and instead find yourself sifting through scores of Ipods, MacBooks, Iphones and a certain Mr. Steve Jobs before finally finding that, literally, forbidden fruit? Well, then you’d better hope that Google’s latest Labs Experiment -> Image Swirl is a big success. What does it do? It takes potentially ambiguous image searches and tries to organize/separate the results into 16 distinct categories. It relies on metadata and other image similarities to achieve this. To some extent this is similar to wonder wheel which is available as a part of Web Search. The quest for the apple on this experiment ended like this. 2 categories for the fruit, 1 for Apple logos, 2 for Iphones/Ipods , 2 with Apple screenshots and others seemed to be somewhat of a mixed bag. Pretty Good for an experiment. You are likely see to images that shouldn’t be there, but the automated algorithm it uses is far from pe...

Twitter Updates: Find People API Released, UK First For MMS Support
2009-11-18 06:22:00
November 16th, was a certainly an eventful day for Twitter. Apart from moving into a new office as tweeted by @twitter itself  ‘Official pics from the shiny new Twitter HQ! http://bit.ly/2oVk85‘, other big developments took place as well. People Search API for Third Party Apps – Now Search for People Did you know that a large number of Tweeple do not even visit the Twitter website? They use third party clients to do their business. TweetDeck, Echofon, HootSuite, Disgby, etc for Computers and Tweetie (iPhone), UberTwitter (BlackBerry), ceTweet (WinMo), etc for smartphones are some of the more popular clients. While these clients provided some interesting features such as Tweet Statistics, intergration with Facebook and good user experience compared to the otherwise ‘vanilla’ Twitter website. They lacked one of the most basic features that one would expect – The ability to search for People. However that could change very soon. Twitter posted on ...
More About: Updates , Find , Support , Released

Mobile Social Networking – It’s Not a Fad!
2009-11-18 05:32:00
Taking the benefit of hind-sight, a survey was published 18 months back which clearly stated that Netizens would use the mobile to not just alert friends or family, but more. And this activity, which was unclear and termed more at that time is slowly becoming clear and has become one of the basic drivers for telecom growth in our country. I have no hesitations in admitting now that Mobile Based Social Networking is not a Fad. And, to know a fact, Mr. Jean Laurent Poitou, MD for Accenture’s Electronics & High-Tech Industry Group seconded my thought when he said, “The next wave of technology will be driven by connected devices. Mobile connectivity has reached people the fastest of all technologies and the wave of mobile internet will be driven by social networking.” If you are a close follower of what’s going on in the web arena nowadays, you would have come across many such reports in the recent past which have audaciously reported that ‘Mobile Soci...
More About: Social Networking

Events Update: ‘Envisioning The Wired SME’ By TIE New Delhi
2009-11-17 09:09:00
New Delhi ’s chapter of TIE is organizing a panel discussion “Envisioning the wired SME” on 28th November in New Delhi . The event is hoped to explore the opportunities and challenges faced by SMEs’ and the critical elements which will go into helping SMEs’ achieve the necessary growth and scale. The mailer says the agenda, driven by marquee entrepreneurs, CXO’s and domain experts would provide insights on the following topics:- Challenges & Oppurtunities for SMEs in today’s market Using Innovation and R&D to accelerate business growth Leveraging technology to achieve scale in a cost effective manner Reaching out to new markets,customers and partners Scaling up – funding, operations, processes For more information on the event and to register click here. Related Posts TiE Entrepreneurial Excellence Awards Deadline Is Today! Event Update – Startup Lunch comes to Hyderabad on 23rd August New Developments at Facebo...
More About: Events , Wired

Where Have You Been? – Ask Google Latitude’s Location History
2009-11-17 08:52:00
When you get lost in a jungle, you still want to get away with it, sheer determination, marking your footmarks on the trees you passed and keeping by the riverbed is the key. Then came the age of Sat Nav tools to help you know which part of the jungle are you baffled at. The social media revolution also helped people to forget the perplexity of a situation and interact with friends no matter what part of the globe they are heading. Integrating the social networking gaga with global positioning, the so called King of search engines devised Google Latitude. Today Google Latitude helps people keep a track of friends and families wanting to constantly know about their location. Pretty genitive, isn’t it? Well, it might help someone to keep an eye on the girlfriend/boyfriend who has the habit to go venturing around for possible opportunities. Semantics remain, while Google Latitude take their technology a step ahead and abide location history to their kitty. The service was includ...
More About: History , Location

Saturday Startup Review: BillsReminder.com – Now Remind Yourself To C
2009-11-14 10:04:00
This is part of an ongoing startup review series supported by our sponsors Sun Startup Essentials. Startup: Billsreminder.com All entrepreneurs would agree that collections is a single largest problem they face. Given how many bills we deal with in our lifetime its surely quite a tough job to remember different due dates and constantly remind our customers to pay them up. This is exactly the pain point that our startup for today is looking to solve. One sentence description: A easy to use bill reminder service About Startup: BillsReminder is a product by the startup Flexiidea based out of mumbai. Billsreminder is a service which lets you import dates and details of your bills and set alerts as reminders for their due dates for collection. About Founders: The company is founded Vivek Khurana, Gaurav Manik, Shachii Manik who come from having worked in some of the world’s major technology and service organizations Funding Status: Not known WAT’s HOT: This is a big pain po...
More About: Review , Saturday

IMI Mobile Raises $13 Million In Funding From Sequoia Capital
2009-11-13 13:40:00
The funding is surely coming easy for mobile VAS providers, it seems as One97 just few days ago announced their plans to go public and now IMI mobile, another VAS provider announced their funding updates. IMI mobile has raised funds to the tune of $13 million from Sequoia Capital and existing investors First Mark Capital. IMI mobile is looking at major global acquisitions through the latest infusion of funds and as such been focusing on overseas market for quite some time. The company recently tied up with MTN to provide its proprietary service delivery network to African telco. According to Vishwanath Alluri, IMI mobile, “The VC funding will be used to make acquisitions in Europe and the US. We are targeting to close one buyout by calendar 2010. The new financing will enable us to develop our cloud infrastructure for Tier 1 telecom operators and allow us to expand our customer base .” IMI mobile provides VAS products to cater general audiences through song downloa...
More About: Mobile , Funding

Google Chrome OS Download Could Be Just A Week Away!
2009-11-13 13:12:00
If Michael Arrington of TechCrunch has his sources in place, it seems likely that the much talked about Google Chrome OS could be available for download in a week. Yes, that’s right a week! Ever since the project was announced in July, experts have debated what Google’s ‘New Era’ OS would be like. There have been ‘alleged’ screenshots and even ‘fake’ torrents doing the rounds on the internet. The wait could be over,  there is a catch however. Only those with supported devices will be able to use this version. The company had announced earlier that it is working with the likes of Acer, HP, Freescale, Adobe, Qualcomm, ASUS, Texas Instruments and Toshiba. There is also concern over the availability of hardware drivers as it is believed that Google is leaving that task to the hardware manufacturers. Chrome OS is expected to rely heavily on web apps for most of its functioning, a kind of ’switch-on OS’ instead of the ‘bo...
More About: Download , Week

GSM Subscriber Base Higher By 10.3 Million In October
2009-11-13 12:26:00
The action witnessed in telecom tariffs in recent past seems to have provided a boost to net subscriber addition count for GSM telephony. The total subscriber base in October was seen higher by 10.32 million compared to 9.03 million recorded in September. The total GSM subscriber base stood at 355.2 million in October. Vodafone Essar recorded the highest net additions of 2.98 million and seen subscriber count at 85.8 million subscribers. Bharti Airtel added 2.7 million subscribers and seems to be loosing race in acquiring new subscriber base despite being the largest telco in India with base of 113.2 million. Idea seems to have performed exceptionally well with net additions of 1.9 million whereas BSNL could add just 0.6 million new subscribers. Aircel also added 2 million subscribe against 1.3 million added in September. The October figures for Reliance telecom, the newest entrant in the GSM space were not disclosed but it certainly looks that despite waging a price...

SMS Based IM, Social networking – The Next Killer App For Indian Mobi
2009-11-13 11:56:00
Couple of years ago I stumbled on an idea of SMS based IM and social networking, though the idea gave me goose bumps with the extent of potential market, I was eventually convinced that mobile internet will be the thing, partly because I was already working on a mobile internet based idea and left only repenting now. Nokia Research and other’s (including a San Deigo based startup called ShorthandMobile) are reportedly working on text based IM and Social networking applications. This is a smart move on part of Nokia, because India which is the second largest market for the company has a great penetration of SMS services and SMS based IM/Social networking might just be the next killer application for this market. “We Meet”, the first product of this kind to be rolled out by Nokia reportedly could be used by families, groups of friends or small businesses. Users can create chat groups from their contact lists and communicate by sending text messages. The software &ld...
More About: Social Networking , Indian , Networking , Killer

Now Google Expresses Interest In UID – How Will The Project Benefit F
2009-11-13 09:56:00
Just yesterday, we saw Yahoo being interested in the Unique Identification Project . As quoted by Yahoo’s CEO Carol Bartz, “We met the Prime Minister today and discussed among other things, how Yahoo can help the Government in the project.” Looks like several more giants will be coming in soon. As said in our last post, under such circumstances when everyone has expressed their interests, then how could Google just sit and stare. It started with Microsoft wishing to help the Government in the UID project followed by Intel, Yahoo and now its none other than Google. Google has also made it clear that they are interested to play a major role in the forthcoming project. There are several reasons as to why such tech giants are interested in this project. Huge databases to organize the Unique ID’s, integration with different Governmental agencies and the online authentication makes it much more than just a project because of which such tech-giants are keen enough t...
More About: Interest

Manish Vij – Co-Founder SITG On Blazar & Future Of Digital Advert
2009-11-13 09:42:00
Recently Quasar which is a digital agency which was acquired by the WPP group launched another agency by the name, Blazar. Now its not uncommon in the traditional agencies to launch new smaller agencies servicing a niche but its probably the first time such a move was made in the digital space. Hence we spoke to Manish Vij – Co-founder SITG on the need for Blazar and also the future of digital ad agencies in India. 1) Why Blazar? We have launched Blazar for two reasons: To garner more market share To benefit from a smaller ecosystem My belief is that smaller ecosystem benefits client servicing and creative innovation which is the need of digital today. Small ecosystems allows closer connection with clients as Larger ecosystems are more process driven. Innovation is digital is the key need of today. 2) What is the USP of Blazar vs Quasar? Digital is still a peoples business and if you want to scale you would need great people across the board. Blazar will evolve with its ow...
More About: Future , Founder , Advert

Full Access To Tenders For FREE – IndiaMART’s Latest Gimmick
2009-11-13 08:53:00
As I predicted in our previous post on TradeIndia that soon IndiaMART will be in news.  Here comes news from IndiaMART platform. They are now starting focusing on its Tenders portal (which was not in limelight earlier). They have opened all the doors for getting tender notification. Now, members will have full access to government & private tenders from all across the India. No need to subscribe for getting the full access, its available for FREE. After sourcing guide, IndiaMART is now offering FREE tender notification service. Currently, they have database of more than 50,000 live tenders. Earlier, member has to pay around 2000-3000 Rs. for giving 3 months access. Mr. Dinesh Agarwal, Founder & CEO, IndiaMART.com says that they are always serving its customers the best business services and by giving free full access to tenders they are helping SMEs who use tenders as instruments for their business growth. IndiaMART is sacrificing the revenue generated through subscription...
More About: Free , Access , Full

India Lose ODI Series, But Vdopia Blessed With CricketNirvana
2009-11-13 08:27:00
Whatever the outcome of the India Vs Australia ODI series, fans got a run for their money as they got to watch some close encounters. Although disappointed at the end, what more can you ask from a thriller cricket game? Come to think of it, online video monetization during such huge events seems interesting to watch. ‘Huge’ because needless to say, cricket in India knows no limits which marks a bang on deal for video content be it online or via mobile. And, advertisers are all stirred up for more such tournaments lined up featuring India, which holds the key. Nimbus Communications’ CricketNirvana.com has been one of the most bang-up destinations visited by a cricket fan online to know live scores and analysis. In the recent past, news breeds Vdopia partnering with CricketNirvana.com for providing free premium content to all the cricket buffs, besides also catering leading brands a platform to reach their target audience. “Our partnership with Vdopia is a combin...
More About: Series , Blessed

Exclusive Interview With Pearl Uppal Ex-Yahoo & Current CEO Of Fashiona
2009-11-13 05:45:00
Pearl Uppal is in the news lately for quitting Yahoo as Sales Director and then announcing her new venture in association with Harish Bahl of SITG. The new venture is in the online retail space and is called Fashionandyou.com. Fashionandyou.com is expected to launch on the 16th of November.  We did an interview with Pearl to know why she turned entrepreneur and what is Fashionandyou all about. Here is our exclusive interview. 1) What made you decide that you wanted to start your own venture? The thought of going entrepreneurial had crossed my mind several times in the last 2 years. I was sure I wanted to create value in the internet industry, but did not feel enthused about the idea of continuing in the digital advertising space. No particular opportunity caught my attention and interest till I came across  the online private sale model. This business model serves a real gap that exits both for consumer and for the brands in luxury and high fashion space. I believe this model w...
More About: Exclusive , Current , Interview

WATFive: Google-Worldbank, Facebook Ads API, Microsoft-ComScore, Mobile Che
2009-11-13 05:05:00
As promised here is your daily dose of WATFive news stories: Google  - World Bank to counter Microsoft -Wolfram Aplha Partnership It seems all the Google competitors unable to beat its prowess are finally turning into bargain hunters to remain afloat. Its only been a day since Microsoft tied-up with Wolfram Alpha data to enhance Bing’s results and Google is already turning tables by forging similar informal tie-up with World Bank. Try this : Internet Users in India Google has started to display graphs from World Bank for queries related to population and other demographics stats. Google in the past has been busy adding many new data sets to its results with alliances ranging from U.S. Bureau’s to many regional NGO’s. The aspiration to archive and serve greater content do not ends here as Google has also said,”there are still many other data sets and sources out there, and we’re excited about the possibilities for the future.” and has asked...
More About: Mobile , Facebook

One97 Going For An IPO – To Raise $100 million
2009-11-12 11:34:00
One97 communications, the provider of India’s largest deployed telecom application platform is reportedly planning to go for an IPO in 2010, One97 will use these additional funds for its exapansion plans both in India and abroad. This is the second vas player after Onmobile which will look to be a listed entity in India. One97 has earlier raised around $28 million in funding from SAIF partners, Intel capital and Silicon Valley Bank since 2007,”We plan to give our stakeholders the right amount of return on investment and liquidity at the right time. We may look at raising up to $100 million” said Vijay shekhar sharma, MD One97 communications as quoted on Vccircle. One97 has been a leading VAS provider in India with a range of products and services catering to consumer and corporate clients, it’s corporate clientele includes Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone, Tata Indicom, among otherrs. Planning to expand its workforce from 750 to 1000 by the end of the ...

Shaadi Launches Secure Talk Service to Talk to NRI Grooms
2009-11-12 11:19:00
Are you looking for life partner in UK, USA or Canada and fedup with expressing interest on matrimonial sites and wait for days for their replies. Shaadi.com has made this process easier for you and introduced Secure Talk Service which allows you to talk to potential partners on their registered contact no. (without revealing your contact number). Shaadi.com is using click-to call (web-enabled telephony) service to connect the prospective members in US, UK, Cananda without divulging his/her contact number. Currently, SecureTalk service is functional in UK, USA & Canada only, will be available to Indian members shortly. How it works: To avail this service, you are required to register yourself on shaadi.com subscribe for secure talk and recharge your account for making calls & make online payment. Now, click on SecureTalk button on profile page & talk to the person from your account without revealing your own contact no. You can also recharge your account at any time. Sh...

Quasar and Contests2Win Launch New Digital Agencies – One Too Many?
2009-11-12 09:07:00
Interactive agency Quasar has launched a new digital agency, fittingly called Blazar (a Blazar is a compact Quasar). According to Manish Vij (Co founder of Quasar) ”Blazar will have creative, media planning and buying capabilities. It will offer all kinds of digital marketing solutions, ranging from display advertising, social media, search and mobile marketing to online reputation management,” (Source: afaqs) Interestingly, Blazar doesn’t seem a secondary agency in terms of its scope of services and provides a complte digital solution as can be seen from Vij’s words. Afaqs also reports that Technology and software development services will also be made available. I couldn’t quite find any piece on if there is a specific need that Smile Interactive and WPP are looking to answer with this venture. It just seems like a move to increase the share by addressing the problem of competing accounts. This is quite different from the other agency launch that is ...
More About: Launch , Digital

India’s Telecom Space – A Case Of Lofty Targets & Inflated
2009-11-12 07:58:00
There are targets and then there are targets! Some targets make you smile and some targets make you wonder. Now dont get me wrong.. I may be sarcastic and a cynic sometimes but by and large I feel very bullish about the Telecom space in India . But it pains me when I see a larger than life picture being painted about the space. It pains me when I see Internet penetration numbers being inflated and multiple numbers floating in the market only to add to the confusion. Infact offlate a lot of people have been stating that the 500 million odd mobile subscribers are infact inflated due to dual sims and unutilized sim cards. Now it seems even 3G is starting to have lofty targets and claims. BSNL Punjab Telecom Circle Chief General Manager P K Paliwal has said “I think acceptance will increase exponentially when the services are available across the state.We expect to add 95,000 3G customers by March 2010.” Now this consider this: BSNL has been able to garner only 5000 3G subscribers s...
More About: Space , Case