A LOT—A MIND-BOGGLING array of words—has been written on facebook, twitter and all manners of social media about a voter’s duty. I think the time is right for an Indian politician to ask himself or herself who are the voters and what do they want?
Yes, sirs and madams, who are your voters? He is your gardener who wants you to stop people from stealing his tax money. He also hopes for better schools, so that his boy or girl, when all grown up, does not have to follow in papa’s footsteps. Or she could be your tailor who makes your shirt fit so well when you appear before the camera. Perhaps she wants her village to get better roads so that her little brother can visit more often. She could also be your niece’s best friend. All she wants is to be left alone as she walks back from her tutorials. She wants you to ensure her safety in that particular stretch of road between her home and the bus stop. All these people who would be braving the weather, the summer heat and will be lining up to get that bit of ink on their fingers are people—non-homogenous mass of living, breathing, aspiring groups who make your nation. Yes, they serve your interests. As long as you serve theirs. The key to a responsive administration is a responsible electorate and it is vice-versa.
Our interview with Vinita Bali, Board Member of Britannia, was enlightening in this regard. During the conversation, Bali, a woman of power and prestige pointed out one problem the people in India–that we hesitate to demand more. Demand better administrators, politicians, bureaucrats and do your own job, with pride and honesty; Bali believes that India could compete with the best of the nations. Yes, we have a long way to go, but surely we are getting there. Read the interview on Page 12.
We also look at one of the Prime Ministerial candidates, Mr Narendra Modi, a little more closely this month (in the Issue section) and a glance at a beautiful love story of an expatriate in the Foreign Despatches. All three hopefully provide fodder for thought. Think—and justify our status as citizens of the world’s largest democracy.
There is no business like good business. Former Managing Director and Board Member of Britannia, Vinita Bali, talks a little of business, being busy, and the life beyond with DW.T he one enriching aspect about the life of a journalist is the sheer variety of people one gets to greet and meet. It makes the particular profession worth its salt. For non-misanthropes, there’s an added bonus; it gives a window into individual traits, quirks, occasional oddities that make each human being unique. At the time when this interview was being conducted, the writer was pleading (we do plead often as we almost always run behind some scheduled deadline) two polar opposites to answer her frantic calls, SMSes and emails. One of those resulted in a conversation conducted at 1.20 am (a career milestone), and the other came in a form of a crisp mail response (received in the mid-afternoon) which not only stated time and date for the interview but also the precise duration of the said event. American author H. Jackson Brown Junior, best known for his inspirational books, had once famously written, “Do not say you do not have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.” The outgoing Managing Director and Board Member of Britannia, Vinita Bali, would heartily, emphatically agree. She has been given the same number of hours as any other professional. Yet, she manages to pack in so much into that one day—like sardines in a tin box—that one is seriously impressed.
One could dismiss Bali’s ability as effective time management but her skill is a telling sign of yet another capacity; to concentrate and then de-focus when need be. Bali does not multitask. She manages one thing at a time, giving it her complete concentration, and then switches just as quickly to another with equal, determined deliberation. It is as if her left and right brain are synchronised. In the days of her youth, she was one of those wonder girls who managed to be an avid sportsperson playing hockey, basketball and badminton, attend her classes, go on to her kathak lessons afterward, participate in debates at school all the time keeping her respectable grade intact. “My father was brilliant academically and he was good with numbers. My mother, too, was academically sharp and also incorporated music, performing arts and poetry in her schedule. I say that I inherited my left brain from my father and the right brain from my mother,” says Bali. And that insync right and left brain has made Bali not only one of the most successful businessperson in India, it has also made her one of the most powerful social influencers battling malnutrition across the world.
She has worked for over 35 years, including 17 years of overseas assignments in a variety of marketing, sales and general management positions with MNCs like Cadbury Schweppes and The Coca-Cola Company. She has lived in the UK, Nigeria, South Africa, USA and Chile, apart from India. At the peak of her career, Bali was ranked 18th among the world’s 50 top business women by The Financial Times (2011) and in the same year, received the Forbes Leadership Award. Bali had joined Britannia in January 2005 after her equally illustrious stint with The Coca-Cola Company. She joined at a turbulent time when there was no designated Managing Director or Chief Executive Officer after Sunil Alagh left as MD. During her tenure the Company saw its fastest growth, she set up greenfield units, reduced cost and inducted new talent. Britannia’s net profit jumped from `105 crore in FY 2007 to `259.5 crore in FY 2013. During the same period, top line increased from `1,514 crore to `6,136 crore. All this from a woman to whom “corporate life happened”.
“A corporate career was not something I had planned. I always wanted to relocate, to experience new cultures, even if it meant travel to a new city in India. That is why I went to Mumbai for my MBA, after having lived in New Delhi during school and college. The corporate world has certainly helped me to enrich my life and make it more fulfilling. I have lived and worked in six countries on five continents, and travelled to approximately 70 countries and most importantly, experienced a diversity of cultures,” says Bali.
there was a time when Bali was keen on joining the Foreign Service after graduating in Economics from Lady Shri Ram College. “I needed a Master’s Degree before I could write that exam. So I experimented for a week with Delhi School of Economics and Jawaharlal Nehru University to do an MA in Economics. I also made it to Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, (which my parents were not too keen to send me to), and Jamanalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai. I believed that living in Mumbai for two years would be fun and that led to JBIMS. The plan was to write the Foreign Service exam after the MBA. However, as it happened, I got a job offer from Voltas even before I completed the course. Voltas gave me a wonderful break. And together with my team we launched Rasna, which became an instant success.”
We had to intervene here; Rasna’s not just a success. It is a three-decade-old brand and a part of every Indian’s childhood. How did it feel to be the person responsible for bringing it to the world? “Rasna was not my idea. I had joined the pharmaceutical and consumer products division of Voltas and the idea was to identify innovative products of individual entrepreneurs and get them to the market, which meant the entire gamut of consumer research, positioning the idea, communication, distribution and selling ” she corrects us. “Areez Khambatta was the inventor of the product.”
Between Britannia, Coca-Cola, Cadbury and the rest of the equally daunting brands Bali has handled tough jobs—wait, no she has not. For there are no tough jobs in business, only challenges that must be overcome. “I really did not think of any job as a challenge. Every problem is a part of the job and you have to address it. As a business person, my focus is to deliver profitable growth and competitively superior performance. Whether I am selling a soft drink or chocolate or biscuit, the task is really is to get more consumers to buy my brands more often. For that, the brand has to be relevant and meaningful and offer the best value satisfaction to consumers and through that route, higher profit for the company. I believe people in the corporate world sometimes tend to dramatise things. Our task is very simple. Business is about getting consumers to prefer and buy your brands in preference to other alternatives and ensure that you have a business model that supports this—whether it is an insurance policy, a two-wheeler or an edible product,” she says with a chuckle.
“The purpose of business is to create and sustain consumers by profitably commercializing opportunities and to work in a manner that is responsible towards its various stakeholders and creates value for all of them,” she clarifies. For the industry veteran that she is one is tempted to ask what for her is good business—the word that has been the mantra for most of the multinationals around? Bali would perhaps like to emphasise that only a good business is successful business because one cannot divorce a company from the society and consumers it serves. “For me, good business is responsible business. It is not about corporate social responsibility, but simply about corporate responsibility, which is sustainable”.
It was perhaps this belief that led to Britannia introducing fortified biscuits, “to be a small part of the solution to address the pervasive micro-nutrient deficiency we find especially among children, who are under-nourished or malnourished”. Britannia was also the first bakery firm to eliminate trans fat from its biscuit formulations.
Remember the bit at the beginning? That bit about the crisp email, the scheduled date and time? And that bit about the discipline to stick to that schedule? All that, and successive victories, had an unconventional beginning—the arts. Years before people starting to talk of a “fad” called liberal arts, years before they started to take that fad seriously and see it as a necessity, Bali was, thanks to her parents and her own initiative, learning to play the sitar, dance kathak and watch as many plays as she could. Sometimes she also donned the paint, if she could. At the beginning of our talk, I had asked about her mentors and was surprised to find that most of them were artists–dancers, classical musicians, and sports stars. Sushma Seth, Zarine Chaudhuri, and Barry John were her elocution and drama teachers in school and an inspiration; she admires her sports teacher and her Kathak guru and the many artists she has met over the years, for their dedication, passion and quest for excellence. The admission was so surprising that it led to a comment and elicited a laugh from her. Why would I believe that corporate people need to have mentors from the financial field?
“People think the arts are only about inspiration and creativity. But all great art fosters a sense of discipline, dedication, devotion, practice and application, all the qualities one needs to succeed in any kind of business. I get inspired by excellence—whether in a painting, a photograph, the sports or the arts. “I have no single mentor or a coach,” she says. “I am an eclectic person and a perennial student. I love to work, I love to travel. I love the theatre and despite a hectic work schedule, I have always attempted to keep pace with these interests. There is only one life we remember and it must be lived fully,” she says.
Work and play intermingle in her life. A work-life balance means how work fits in her life and not how life fits in her work. It is not only the arts that have a fond place in the heart of Bali, fighting malnutrition—not just in India but across the world—is a cause that she would like to dedicate her life to. She is one of 27 global leaders working with the United Nations on the “Scaling Up Nutrition” movement that 50 countries have signed up for, as they work assiduously to reach their Millenium Development Goals.
Vinita has received several awards, including The Economic Times Award for ‘Corporate Excellence 2009- Business Woman of the year’, The Teachers Leadership Award in 2009, The Asian Centre for Corporate Governance & Sustainability Best Woman Director Award- 2010, the Forbes Award in 2011, The Bombay and Bangalore Management Association Awards in 2012 and 2013, respectively. Vinita was ranked 18th among the world’s 50 top business women by The Financial Times in 2011 and has been on the Business Today list of powerful women for several years.
Modi, Kejriwal File NominationsPOLLS\\ BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi filed his nomination from Varanasi on April 23, 2014, and added that the city should become the spiritual capital of world. The Varanasi battle between BJP and AAP is turning out to be one of the most-keenly watched contests in the 2014 Lok Sabha Elections.
Modi promised state-of-the-art tourist and infrastructure facilities for Varanasi, committed to cleaning up the Ganga, and making Varanasi weavers both national and intrnally famous.
A day before Modi’s filing of papers, AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal, on April 22, 2014, filed nomination papers and addressed a rally where he attacked Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi for “helicopter democracy”. He mentioned that Modi would be arriving on a helicopter to Banaras Hindu University and would be leaving in the chopper after garlanding university founder’s statue—to start his road show. “People of Amethi are now fed up of Rahul Gandhi whom they see arrive and leave in a chopper. I hope Varanasi does not make the same mistakes, else they, too, will get to see Modiji mostly on a helicopter—but never among them,” he said.
Asks World to Take #GlobalSelfieCELEBRATION\\ In celebration of Earth Day on April 22, 2014, NASA announced an interesting initiative called #GlobalSelfie Day where they created a mosaic image of the iconic Blue Marble photo of the planet by combining photos taken by participants. In 2014, the theme and concept of Earth Day 2014 was Green Cities. The Earth Day concept was founded by a US Senator, Gaylord Nelson, after the oil spil incident in Santa Barbara of California. In 1990, the celebrations became global and now close to 200 countries celebrate the Earth Day. Founder Gaylord Nelson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from former President Bill Clinton in 1995. After the movement started, US Congress passed the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
In 2014, in a newsletter published by the United States Consulate General, US Consul General to India, Jeniffer McIntyre, noted the significant contribution made by Indian poet-diplomat Abhay Kumar in developing Earth Day as an international day. “A significant contribution to Earth Day has been the Earth Anthem, which was written by Indian diplomat Abhay Kumar, which includes lyrics in eight different languages. Truly an anthem for the Earth.” April 22, 2014, marked the 44th anniversary of Earth Day. McIntyre noted that the US and India have played a significant role in developing the Earth Day as an international day. “Our countries’ mutual promotion of Earth Day is one of several points of cooperation between the US and India.”
Next Phase to be a ClincherPOLLS\\ The Indian Geneal Elections 2014 began with brickbats as the Congress alleged that the BJP had violated law by bringing out its manifesto on the day when polling for Lok Sabha was already underway. The Congress asked the Election Commission to take action against the party. “The release of manifesto was completely in violation of the provisions of the Representation of the People Act and the instructions issued by the Election Commission,” the Congress memorandum said. The Congress also complained that the BJP manifesto had referred to the issue of construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya—against India’s secular structure. The Congress, too, released its manifesto on March 26, 2014. The schedule for the Lok Sabha elections was announced on March 5, 2014.
The sixth phase of the Lok Sabha Polls began peacefully enough except incidents of sporadic violence in Assam’s Kokrakhar district—even as voters trooped into polling booths across 11 states and a Union Territory, stacking up high percentages in the sixth phase of the Lok Sabha elections.
Bengal led the numbers with more than 63% polling by 1 pm. Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra, had a slow start but picked up pace in early afternoon, registering 26% turnout till 1pm in the six constituencies.
Around 12% of Maharashtra’s total voters are from the city. Bihar has recorded nearly 42.35% voting by 1 pm.
This second-largest phase will determine the fate of 2,076 candidates including Union Ministers and sitting MPs.
In Rajasthan, the voting percentage stood at 41% till 1 pm in five seats where polling is being held. Madhya Pradesh saw a voter turnout of 43.71% till 2:30 pm across the 10 Lok Sabha seats. In Uttar Pradesh—where polling was underway in 12 constituencies—36.62% of the voters had cast their votes till 1 pm.
In Tamil Nadu, about 47.19% of an estimated 5.50 crore voters exercised their franchise in 39 Lok Sabha constituencies and the lone seat in Puducherry till 1 pm. In Assam, 50% voting was recorded till 1 pm during the third and final phase of polling in six Lok Sabha seats.
In this round of polling, the stakes are very high for the Congress but more so for the BJP which is tipped to form the next government under the leadership of its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.
Tamil Nadu saw voting for all its 39 seats in one go. Chief minister and AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa is aiming for a clean sweep, including the Puducherry seat. This round will also have a bearing on the prime ministerial ambitions of Jayalalithaa and Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav, who is in the fray from bastion Mainpuri. In Uttar Pradesh, it is a showcase of heavyweights with Mulayam, his daughterin- law Dimple Yadav, external affairs minister Salman Khurshid, Amar Singh and Hema Malini in the fray.
Third Sex StatusVERDICT\\ Supreme Court on April 15, 2014, recognised the country’s long marginalised transgender community as the third gender. In a landmark judgment— lauded by human rights groups—the apex court called on the government to ensure their equal treatment. A bench of Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan and Justice A.K. Sikri directed central and state governments to grant recognition to transgenders as a separate third category of gender. The panel also added that if a person can be legally recognised as gender-neutral, then transgenders should be included in government welfare schemes offered to other minority groups. Because transgenders are not legally recognised in India, they are ostracised, discriminated against, abused and often forced into prostitution. Often known as hijras in South Asia, transgenders are classified as people who have had sex change operations or who regard themselves as the opposite of their born gender.
After the milestone verdict, 53-year-old Bharathi Kannamma of Madurai decided to run as an Independent candidate. She is thought to be the first transgender accepted as a candidate in a General Elections. The social activist said, “When transgenders make an economic contribution to their families, families will hesitate to shun them,” she said. Kannamma herself only came out in 2004 as a transgender. Until then, she lived her life as a man.
LAKSHMI AND I were classmates since 1966. In 1971-72, when I got to know her individually I realised I loved her, but I didn’t have the courage to even inform her. She too had the same feelings for me and for some years we silently adored each other for our individual merits and natures till at last we worked up the courage to confess. We went to Chandigarh for further studies and in 1975, completed our MS studies together. We felt we were inseparable and finally married there and I began working in the General Surgery department as the Registrar.
Although Lakshmi’s relatives and well-wishers discouraged her from taking up M Ch, in Plastic Surgery, a higher qualification than MS, I wished that she should study further and prove to the world that all men are not the same—jealous of a more qualified wife! Contrary to popular opinion, all husbands are not chauvinists. I feel that there should not be gender difference in obtaining qualification between wife and husband as one should have the right to get what one deserves, either in qualification or otherwise. I tried to help Lakshmi pursue her dreams, at least, in some possible ways within my capacity. Meanwhile, we had our loving daughter whom I adored and loved the most.
Then it was time to leave the institute after a fixed tenure of three years post-MS. Although we had the opportunity to continue as the faculty in PGI, we opted to go to UK to work and learn more in our respective subjects and also let go of a good chance of going to UAE.
I chose the option of going away from this country to overcome the blame or fear or consequences of inter-religious marriage that had always haunted me. A friend helped us move on and we reached UK soon enough leaving all our friends and relatives in India. There was certainly a sense of freedom in this new future, but it was tempered by a nagging fear—of growing and furthering in training and studies in the new environment. The need for earning and saving for the future so that we could sustain ourselves without external help mounted pressure on me. It was indeed a new environment, new weather, new people, new culture and so on but the sense of non-interference with our personal and day-to-day life kept me sane. I finally felt free from the pressures that haunted me.
I was literally tired after the tedious preparation and the long journey from India and I definitely felt lonely as I had always been surrounded by friends back home. I joined my first job, but left it soon for a better one. In my new job, I was very comfortable and happy as I was respected for my skills and qualifications in spite of being a foreign doctor.
We were initially staying at Downpatrick, a small town in Northern Ireland where I had got my first job in surgery. We were given a big independent bungalow to stay in the residential area of the town. It was December and very cold and lonely staying without any acquaintances in a strange land. However we had a middle-aged lady to mind our daughter when we were away at work in two different hospitals. We did not have a car and my wife used to start from home by 5:30 am to walk a mile to reach the bus station and it was another mile of walk to the hospital where she worked.
Life was certainly more satisfying abroad in terms of facilities and mechanisation in the medical sciences field. What attracted me most was the truthfulness of human beings without hypocrisy (of course in the circles I moved and lived). People respected me for what I was, and had a no-nonsense behaviour, not a little more nor a little less than what was the truth!
While in Chandigarh, my life was moulded to a large extent by my teacher—to be honest, hardworking and truthful. My visit and work abroad only reinforced my faith in life towards the same three principles and the loads of experience I was getting enriched their value further.
One night when I was on call, a drunken white man came with injuries that needed attention but he was so drunk that he insisted on a white doctor to take care of him. The nurse in-charge explained to him that I was the best available although I was coloured and if she ever got injured, she would prefer me to any white doctor in that hospital. But the patient was not to be swayed and adamantly demanded his way. Of course I was feeling bad about the entire nasty situation. The nurse and some other people present on the occasion tried their best to convince the man to agree to being treated by me. But the man, who was in a highly inebriant state, started using foul language. The nurse called the police and in less than three minutes he was booked under a nuisance case and was taken to jail.
In a way it surprised me that a white doctor was not called in to treat a white man. On the contrary, it was the police that was eventually called! I was, no doubt, very satisfied with the treatment I was receiving in that country as a surgeon in terms of quality and quantity of surgeries. But I was overworked, doing a lot of others peoples’ work too, which my wife felt was exploitation. It was probably true.
I was unable to clear some exams as a result all the work pressure, also as I hardly got time to prepare the way I could do in India, especially basic sciences that were long forgotten by me by then. It meant that there was no growth to look forward for me abroad.
Then the thought of our children, who would be brought up in western culture, gave us a lot of discomfort. I thought it would be wiser to go back to our native country where we could allow them to grow in a known Indian way of life. After spending five to six years in Belfast, UK, we had the options of settling there, or going back as faculty to PGI, or joining the Andhra state service, or getting into practice. We chose to take the latter option and settled in my native place, Vijayawada in private practice.
Life in the West, where I lived for six years, was indeed much disciplined, clean, hassle free, organised, satisfying, pleasant and mostly mechanical. What bothered me most was the materialistic way of looking at things in life unlike the philosophical and emotional way that we are used to in our day to day life in India. Radical thoughts about racial discrimination did not affect me as I took it to be a universal phenomenon having gone from India, a country with diversity. Of course, I never enjoyed the majority status anytime and I always was in the minority category all my life. Such things do not bother people like me who are a minority in their own country.
I returned from the UK in 1984 after completion of my advanced training in Surgery. I had already mastered the surgical techniques in the renowned Medical Institute in Chandigarh before I left for UK in 1978 but now taught postgraduate students in the UK. All the while, I practiced the three principles taught by my teacher.
Although I had left India with the hope of expanding my knowledge base further in surgical techniques and also buying time to be able to withstand the pressures of life and society and to sustain myself and my family courageously with the consequences of an inter-religious marriage, I enjoyed a richness of experience during my stay in the UK. The hygeneic, disciplined, scheduled and satisfying experience, both professionally and socially, was gratifying indeed. I feel that my devotion to work, personal skills and humility gave me the social status which I enjoyed in the western society. The confidencnce that I gained from my UK sojourn translated into rich dividends back home. It brought me widespread fame, reputation and status and dignitaries as patients who trusted my skills.
I strongly feel that one should visit the West and get a first-hand experience of its culture, but imbibe only good things that are found there. Professionally, I did not have access to any of the present modern gadgets or procedures while I was a trainee in India, and had only clinical skills to depend on when I had left the countryunlike the West. Even the Ultrasound or CT was unheard of during my initial career days. Today, when modern gadgets are available in the country, I strongly feel these should be used as complimentary to our clinical skills. One should not completely become slave to the gadgets alone like the West. This is what I teach my students and what I always follow—the fundamentals that each patient should receive the same importance and treatment that one would provide one’s own kin.
Here’s how...It happens all too often. The head of marketing presents the results of a high-visibility social media strategy to the executive team, and the signs look good. The company’s official presence on prominent social networks has lots of friends and followers, the content going out several times a week is getting social traction by way of shares, likes and retweets, and the company blog is getting quoted in a number of industry publications. Then come the inevitable questions—are we getting any business from our efforts? More importantly, can we justify this spend if there’s no bottom line return? The sad reality is that while most executives agree that social media was important for their business and that this trend is here to last, only 12 percent of marketers feel capable of measuring social media return on investment, as per a recent Adobe report. If you or your organization have struggled to make the ROI case for your social media efforts, this primer’s for you, walking through the basic but vital aspects of measuring your social media ROI.
Measuring Engagement: Likes and Follows
Possibly the simplest starting point is to start measuring the basics—your followers on Twitter, the number of likes on Facebook, the shares your posts see—and tracking the growth curves over a period of time to spot trends and correlate them with specific campaigns, both online and offline. This is vital to connecting the dots between a new campaign you may have done online or via your website, and the increase in eyeballs that it resulted in, either directly via followers or indirectly via social shares. If your efforts are prominently focused on Facebook, the Facebook insights dashboard gives you all of the analytics data for your Facebook page, allowing you to understand your audience and how they are reacting to your posts, so you can adjust your tone and messaging to meet their needs. Twitter too has its own analytics dashboard with which you can you can track timeline activity, including tweets that were favorited, retweeted, and replied to, plus it also tracks number of mentions, new followers and newly followed over a period in time. However, if you’re looking to measure the success of a specific keyword or hash tag, there are many tools to help you monitor this such as Brandwatch, TweetReach and Keyhole. Keyhole is particularly useful in that it tracks the reach, exposure, activity and top contributors towards the topic across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram—very handy if you’re tracking a topic for a campaign or event. There’s a free timelimited trial that may be enough to convince you to put down the money for the monthly paid plan. Just keep in mind that while this data is relevant and easy to measure, it shouldn’t be the only thing you look at while arriving at the ROI calculation.
Measuring Ad Effectiveness: Click-through Rate and Impressions
If you’re investing in paid promotions or ads on social media, the click-through rate (CTR) is commonly used to measure the success rate. At its most basic, the CTR explains how often people who see your ad or keyword on a particular site actually click and follow the link, and is expressed as a ratio of clicks to views. Practically every social media site has an ad analysis and reporting section which lets you access these measurements for your promotion spends, and a good idea would be to compare these metrics across the various networks on which you have an official presence. If you haven’t yet started on paid promotions on Facebook or Twitter, a simpler and free tool is Google Analytics, which does a great job tracking the number of visitors to your website, and identifying which channels these visitors are coming from—essentially an insight into how traffic is being driven to your website. Another great tool is Bitly, the link shortener which allows you to track everything you share on social channels? For instance, let’s say you have recently published a valuable whitepaper on trends in your industry, and you post the Bitly link on your Facebook and Twitter feeds, Bitly can measure and report on which channel your visitors used to click through to your whitepaper, which country they’re from and more. You can even integrate Bitly reporting for Buffer, an excellent tool for scheduling content posts on social network. If you’re a keen observer, you will have noticed that I personally use Bitly tracking for all links shared in the Further Reading section to track which links are seeing the most traction from our readers!
Measuring Influence and Sentiment: Your Online Reputation Management
This one is tricky and subject to much debate, since there’s no one accepted way of how to arrive at a number to measure the influence of your company’s social presence. We’ve spoken in the past about tools like Klout, Kred and PeerIndex, and others like Social Authority and BrandWatch that attempt to measure your influence and credibility in your industry. The other aspect is sentiment analysis, the general tone and tenor of conversations surrounding your brands, products and the company at large. Sure, you could run several keyword searches each day across all your social channels, but it’s far easier to look at tools like HootSuite and Social Mention which track what’s happening across your social media accounts from one dashboard. These are great tools to feel the vibe about your brand, and identify issues and customer complaints that may not yet have even been expressed via formal customer service channels.
Beyond Traditional Metrics
It’s easy to follow the metrics I’ve outlined, primarily because they’re easy to assess (given most of them are numbers) and also because they’re somewhat aligned with metrics that are well understood by companies’ marketing departments since they’re already used for other media channels (such as reach and frequency). However, by virtue of social media being fundamentally different from other media channels, you must evolve your own metrics that measure the depth and breadth of relationships between brands and their audiences. Too many organizations place importance on metrics that represent their position in the competitive landscape while overlooking the relational metrics with their community and stakeholders. Sure, comparing how well you’re doing, in terms of fans and followers, against your competition is a useful metric, what companies need to start paying close attention to is how close their brand is to their community. For example, how many comments do you receive on your social presence each day, and how many are replied to? What is the kind of feedback you’re seeing? While reporting social media success to management in conventional ROI terms is important, speaking of growing brand engagement is equally important to assess social media’s true added value.
Deafening Silence on the Environment In India’s ElectionsAS THE GREAT Indian election tamasha winds down, many are feeling good about how the country has pulled off what S.Y. Quraishi, the former chief election commissioner, describes as “ not only the biggest election of the world, (but) probably… the biggest human event of the world.” Considering the scale of the production, this is entirely understandable. Now that the votes are almost in, many will sanguinely look forward to a period of relative calm. They will pray that the talking heads on television, Arnab’s selfrighteous homilies, and the outpourings by many in the intelligentsia will give way to a saner, more constructive discourse of the kind that the founders of Constitution would have preferred. While moving the draft of India’s Constitution in 1948, Dr BR Ambedkar had remarked: “Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated… Our people have yet to learn it. Democracy in India is only a top dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic.” Over six decades later, one wonders whether our political discourse has improved over the years, or whether public life continues to be shaped by petty self-interest, crony capitalism, and sanctimony rather than what matters to those struggling with the gritty realities of life on India’s “soil.”
Reflecting back on how India’s leading political parties wooed the voters these past months, it is clear that they employed every stratagem in the book. Most visibly, they selectively interpreted history to trumpet their plans for the country’s future. Where the Congress showcased a 21st Century welfarist agenda (reminiscent of Indira Gandhi’s populism in the 70s) by trying to appeal to farmers, Adivasis, and minorities, the BJP brought back it’s Ram-Janmabhoomi temple agenda wrapped up in its brand of economic nationalism. The Nehru versus Patel “great man” debate was resurrected. Since the Aam Aadmi Party really does not have a history to speak of, Arvind Kejriwal invoked Mahatma Gandhi’s idea of “swaraj” while attacking other political parties with gusto. All this was expected, and played out as per a script we now know by heart. But in the midst of this electoral din, have we missed something, an issue larger than our elections in continterms of its impact on India’s citizen, indeed the global aam aadmi?
When Indians were voting these past weeks, unexpected hail storms flattened crops in parts of northern, central and western India, dashing the hopes of millions of farmers, driving some to suicide and triggering fears of agrarian distress on a large scale. These storms came less than a year after last year’s floods in Uttarakhand, and continue to this day. Such freak weather events have been increasing over the past decade, causing draughts, snowstorms, and floods in places that had rarely seen them before. Tsunamis, the “polar vortex,” and hurricanes of all shapes and sizes have increased in frequency and intensity in recent times. These sorts of occurrences have not only caused damage where they have unleashed their fury, but have also triggered socioeconomic and political problems that governments are struggling with. One mentions these events to flag a huge lacuna at the heart of India’s political discourse during the recently concluded elections: The virtual absence of any discussion on the environmental challenges facing the country as we hurtle towards an uncertain future. It is extraordinary that not one of India’s major political parties competing for national dominance has said anything consequential on how it will tackle the specter of global warming, and the effects of carbon emissions, water pollution, and environmental degradation. Barely a year after the havoc in Uttarakhand that decimated virtually half of the state, how is it that none of our major leaders, from Narendra Modi to Rahul Gandhi to Arvind Kejriwal has said anything about the impending environmental crisis that confronts India? How is it that even as hailstorms are decimating crops, all that the mainstream political parties can do is debate the sluggishness of India’s procedures for granting environmental clearances to big industrial projects—many of which will go on to pollute the earth while displacing countless communities living on the margins of India’s “growth” story? Should policies of sustainable development not be an integral part of any election manifesto?
As millions of Indian voters were lining-up to cast their votes in April this year, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of 1,250 environmental scientists and approved by 194 governments, published an assessment on global warming. Their report makes it clear that climate change is real, is impacting the lives of people around the world, and we are doing far too little to mitigate its adverse effects. “We have assessed impacts as they are happening in natural and human systems on all continents and oceans,” said Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the IPCC, which was jointly established by the U.N. and the World Meteorological Organization. “No one on this planet will be untouched by climate change,” he added.
Where the report acquires great significance is in the way that it links the issue of climate change with countless other socio-economic and political risks that humanity faces. For instance, the IPCC notes that global warming increases the chances of political conflict and is capable of making poor parts of the world (like many parts of India) more impoverished. “Climaterelated hazards constitute an additional burden to people living in poverty, acting as a threat multiplier,” the report’s authors write. Let us not forget that the human suffering in Uttarakhand last year was as much the result of excessive flooding as human mistakes such as indiscriminate construction and bad planning. To its credit, the IPCC’s report is not all doom and gloom. It also contains a number of possible solutions to these problems, but is India’s elected leadership listening? On April 22nd, again in the middle of election season, the world celebrated Earth Day. It should remind us—as earthlings—of our place in the larger world, of our global interconnectedness, and indeed, the fragile balance that sustains life on earth. There may well be a link between China’s air pollution, America’s dependence on oil, and India’s hailstorms. Certainly, the IPCC would like us to think so. As India welcomes a new government, one can only hope that it will function with a sense of perspective, informed not only by the virtues that Dr. Ambedkar associated with the phrase “Constitutional morality,” but also a commitment to what sustains life on the planet as a whole.
The dynamic CEO of Olacabs talks about his unique business model and the magic mantra that has his fleet expanding exponentially covering a city a day...It’s in the Forbes India list of five startups to watch out for in 2014. It is the toast of the venture capital (VC) circuit—in November 2013, the Series B round of funding it raised from Matrix Partners India and existing investor, New Yorkbased Tiger Global Management, has been pegged by market watchers to be to the tune of US$20 million. So what’s generating so much of media and market interest in Olacabs?
Bhavish Aggarwal, CEO and Co-founder, Olacabs, certainly does not look like Mandrake with a hidden magic wand. Dashing and young, he flashes a smile and explains the USP behind his business venture: “I think the magic simply lies in our focus towards deeply analysing and understanding the problems that Indian commuters face on an everyday basis and developing solutions that can solve them. The fact that we are good at technology gives us a definite edge as well.”
Ola had more than an edge in a business sector that had been at the mercy of a haphazard system. A business model with intense analytics, hi-tech and light assets was something that the transportation sector in India had never witnessed. Ola had a perfect winning combination.
In 2013, it was this tech-edge that gave Olacabs, launched in 2011, the confidence to take on Uber, the US market leader that is aggressively expanding its footprints in Asia. The other advantage of course is the native one—an in-depth understanding of the chaotic Indian traffic and logistics conditions.
“Unpredictability of public transport is the biggest problem that plagues commuters across different cities in India,” Aggarwal articulates urban India’s woes. “Public transport is not easy to access, does not run on schedule and offers very little comfort. Reliability and safety are issues of concern too.” It was an experiential journey though in 2011 that brought these painpoints home as a possible business proposition to the IIT-Bombay engineer.
“During a trip to Wayanad along with my friends I was stranded in the middle of the forest because we refused to pay extra money to the cab driver. This experience made me realise that although this sector has many players there is tremendous scope for improvement with the help of technology.”
Ola was founded to provide a viable alternative to commuters in India “who have always been at the mercy of irregular and unpredictable cab services”. Aggarwal “founded Olacabs with the intent of addressing these aspects” and is doing just that—taking his Mumbai-centric idea pan India. Currently operating in six cities—Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Goa and Pune—with the fresh round of funding, Ola is aiming to take its fleet count higher, expand its operations to more cities and also improve technology.
Aggarwal credits his success to the profound simplicity of his business premise: “When a company is founded with the intent of providing an essential service to the public and works towards delivering good service consistently, it is natural for the demand for such a service to grow rapidly. That is what has helped us reach the top.”
To ensure this, Aggarwal is constantly pushing Ola a notch higher. In February this year, Olacabs took its intent a step further launching Ola Mini—a second range of cab service at auto-rickshaw prices—in Bengaluru. With this innovative model, it will also capture a bigger slice of the market. Ola Mini currently has a fleet of 250 AC compact cars like Tata Indica Vista and Ford Figo and commuters can hail a cab at `13 per km (US$ 0.20) with a base fare of `100 (US$ 1.61) for the first 6 km. The fleet will be increased to 1,000 by year end.
Its earlier fleet of sedans and luxury cars was at the last count 8,000 and growing. “When it comes to cab aggregation space, we are the leaders in the market,” says Aggarwal. But before the operation reached such scale, Aggarwal and Co-founder and CTO, Ankit Bhati did a thorough analysis of the market and found “inventory utilisation among small cab operators (ownership of 2–5 cabs) in India is an abysmal 40–50 per cent,” says Aggarwal. This gave birth to the idea of a car rental aggregator and pointto- point cab service provider who would remain asset light by bringing a large fleet under a single umbrella with state-of-the-art technology. But there’s more than the first mover advantage to Olacabs.
It is Ola’s advance technology expertise that differentiates it in the crowded car rental space. There are more than six to seven organised player in the over US$ 6 billion market that is growing at 20 per cent annually. However, 90 per cent of the market is unorganised leaving space for players like Olacabs with their techsavvy service.
“We have developed innovative apps (Android and iPhone) that enable customers to view and book Olacabs in real-time. At the press of a button, the app provides the position of all available Olacabs near the customer, on a map. The customer can simply click on the button ‘pick-me-up’ to book the nearest Olacab. No address detail needs to be fed. The app has the inbuilt feature to identify the customer’s location through GPS and the same is forwarded to the nearest driver,” Aggarwal explains the technology.
The backend technology is another big differentiator. “We have run analytics on the GPS and pickup and drop data collected by our cabs over years to develop a system with predictive capabilities that helps us in using our inventory better. Through our system, we are able to analyse the demand patterns in a city and our system feeds this intelligence back to our drivers thereby increasing their chances of finding a customer and reducing idle time,” Aggarwal adds.
Ola also offer services like SMS tracker using which a person can get an update about the whereabouts of his cab through a simple missed call. Another recently introduced feature is Ola Money using which customers can recharge their Ola accounts and the travel amount can be deducted directly from their account thereby removing the hassle of finding change to pay the driver after the ride.
India’s startup landscape is innovation driven. It is the power of ideas that is pumping up Olacabs too. One such big risk commitment was “Your cab arrives on time or we pay for your flight”, started in Bengaluru in September 2013—a rather high risk campaign. But Olacabs attributed their confidence to the power of intense analytics. In Bengaluru, despite the scale of operation (demand and supply equally high), the company brought down delayed pickups by almost 100 per cent to 0.9 per cent, to an average 7 minutes that it took to identifying the last mile to the customer’s gate.
On the ground, Aggarwal displays a maturity beyond his 28 years. For Olacabs, with its team of 500 employees managing an expanding team of more than 1,800 operators is a constant struggle. Aggarwals admits, “Maintaining consistent quality across all cities is a bit of challenge.” Ola has instituted a separate team which takes drivers through a training programme during induction. “The drivers undergo etiquette training and have to follow certain rules while dealing with customers,” explains Aggarwal. He concedes that while it is not easy to teach every driver to be polite and accommodative, “we at Ola instil a sense of ownership among our driver partners.” Each driver is made to feel like an owner and as a result he feels he owns every ride assigned to him. “This sense of ownership inevitably leads to good conduct and satisfied customers.” Ola seems to have analysed human nature perfectly.
There are other human-centric programmes that have helped Ola maintain its market leadership in the space. For instance, it promotes driver entrepreneurship. At its launch in Pune in January this year, it organised a Driver Mela where cab drivers who already possessed vehicles could get their cab evaluated and if desirous exchange it with a new one or buy a new or additional cars, all with the assistance of Olaassociated financiers.
“Our business model ensures that drivers benefit from being a part of Olacabs. We hope to continue creating entrepreneurs out of drivers in every city that we go to and help create a platform where drivers can get a consistent source of livelihood,” says Aggarwal. Ola also incentivises its drivers with medical insurance reimbursement and a free education scheme for children.
Fleet maintenance is another priority, carried out through a standard set of rules wherein every cab on the platform undergoes regular stringent checks. “This helps us ensure the level of quality expected from a brand like us.” It helps that the CEO has a background in computer science that enabled him to create a technology-enabled environment and support system. Each cab is fitted with an android device which monitors the number of hours clocked.
Under Olacabs unique business model of a cab service aggregator, the company does not own a single cab. It had to persuade various cab owners to come under the Ola umbrella. But Aggarwal had worked the idea out for himself when he floated Ola. “Owning a cab is not the most important aspect in the cab industry,” he discovered. As he says, it is more essential to get regular bookings to sustain in this industry. “Any driver who understands how this industry works knows this,” Aggarwal says, giving a glimpse into his perspicacious business acumen.
Ola ensures that cabbies do not have to wait for customers at curbs or taxi stands. “We provide a platform where drivers start getting bookings as soon as they enrol with us without them having to spend a penny on marketing their services,” Aggarwal says.
As benefits accrue, Ola’s credibility builds up in the market. With its advanced technology, it has created a marketplace where cabbies now seek the umbrella of its brand name. “We get a lot of requests from cab drivers to join our platform after they see the benefits that our existing drivers get. Initially we had to explain our business model to drivers to get them on board. However, today word of mouth drives enrolment. We don’t have to work so hard anymore as most drivers in the industry know and understand how they can benefit by tying up with us.”
With the focus on cabbies on the one hand and customer focus on the other—“our focus on ensuring that every trip that our customers take with us is a great experience is what keeps us busy and excited everyday”—Aggarwal has the “vision to expand services to every city in India”. We are watching this space eagerly.