Bharatmalik.com

As an online marketer, one has to try different permutaions and combinations to find what works better in order to generate demand.

What is Lead Generation- When customer has intent to buy your product & he needs a hygiene factor to go with you as a service provider.

What is Online Booking- When customers has intent to buy and he is going to pay you online to transact with you.

There are pros and cons of both technique, and I think biggest differentiator is what kind of product a customer wants to buy makes his decision to go for lead generation or booking online.

When a product is commoditized like domestic flights, he may not like to fill in a form and wait for travel agent to get back to him like traditional travel agents used to operate. Customers would be more than happy to pay online and get his tickets on the fly.

Whereas, customer needs a handholding and he is not sure about the content and product he is buying, he fills a form and generate a comfort factor from the service provider.

We have tested this with our holiday packages section for outbound travel, where customers are still reluctant to buy either because of content, product or paying that much huge amount for their leisure travel, this lead generation model has given significant demand to serve our customers.

Having said that, it wont be too long when these kind of products would become part of online booking by the shear amount of scalability it holds and also, money and time it takes to acquire customers offline.

Basics of Web Design
Web design is made up of some basic premises, and if you understand them you can design pages that will impress and illuminate your readers. here there is some tips for a nice webpage.

Before You Start Building a Website
Learn what you need in order to build a website for your business or for pleasure. There is more to building Web pages than just learning HTML and CSS. You need a hosting provide and a domain name.

Alignment in Web Page Layouts

Most web site templates perform page layout by using a few blocks of content, for instance a header, a left column with the navigation, a right column with the main content, and a footer. Simple Web page layout Any attempt to code this page must start by roughly positioning these four blocks of content. Style details can wait; first you should make sure that the content blocks are aligned correctly in all browsers on all

resolutions. There are two ways to do this: pure CSS and minimal tables. Although pure CSS is the best choice overall, it has its problems.
Advanced CSS
One of the many great possibilities in CSS is the use of shorthand properties, which let you specify several properties by using only one.

Color and CSS
There are several different ways to specify color values in CSS, the best known are with color names and color numerical values. But there are two other ways you can define colors in CSS 3 and once you understand how you can define your colors you’ll have more options available in your color palette.
Creating Better Links

Links are the mainstay of your site. If you don’t have good links, people won’t stay.

When i was building Affiliate Marketing in Yatra.com, I came across many affiliates/websites operating coupon codes websites in US. It made me curious to get into detail as to what is so lucrative about this piece of the online marketing.

I deep dived into it and found out that 85% of internet population in US checks coupon codes, discount codes, voucher codes or promotional codes online. This is humongous as far as reach is concern. And it answered my question as well.

Some of websites i dealt as a Business partner directly from affiliate networks are www.couponwinner.com, www.couponcodes.co.uk, www.retailmenot.com.

I guess with economy downturn more and more people will move towards deals and discount, and for marketer it makes it easy to reduce the cost of acquisition and clock more sales.

However downside of this, your brand may become discount oriented and hence would not be counted as service provider.

So a word of caution here, use these coupon codes and discount codes as an emergency resort to improve sales rather than risking your brand’s value proposition.

I am still struggling to sleep at night after that Taj incident where I lost one of my closest near one. I could not understand how things change and left you shattered. I come across these symbolic words and thought why to give up, there is still some hope alive.

One day I decided to quit…

I quit my job, my relationship, my spirituality…

I wanted to quit my life.

I went to the woods to have one last talk with God.

“God”, I said. “Can you give me one good reason not to quit”

His answer surprised me…

“Look around”, He said. “Do you see the fern and the bamboo”

“Yes”, I replied.

“When I planted the fern and the bamboo seeds, I took very good care of

them. I gave them light. I gave them water.

The fern quickly grew from the earth. Its brilliant green covered the

floor. Yet nothing came from the bamboo seed.

But I did not quit on the bamboo. In the second year, the Fern grew more

vibrant and plentiful.

And again, nothing came from the bamboo seed. But I did not quit on the

bamboo, he said.

“In year three, there was still nothing from the bamboo seed. But I would

not quit.

In year four, again, there was nothing from the bamboo seed.

“I would not quit.” He said.

Then, in the fifth year, a tiny sprout emerged from the earth.

Compared to the fern it was seemingly small and insignificant…But just 6

months later the bamboo rose to over 100 feet tall.

It had spent the five years growing roots. Those roots made it strong and

gave it what it needed to survive.

“I would not give any of my creations a challenge it could not handle.”

He said to me. “Did you know, my child, that all this time you have been

struggling, you have actually been growing roots”

“I would not quit on the bamboo. I will never quit on you.”

“Don’t compare yourself to others.” He said. “The bamboo had a different

purpose than the fern. Yet they both make the forest beautiful.”

“Your time will come”, God said to me. “You will rise high”

“How high should I rise” I asked.

“How high will the bamboo rise” He asked in return.

“As high as it can” I replied.

“Yes.” He said, “Give me glory by rising as high as you can.”

I left the forest and bring back this story.

I hope these words can help everyone see that God will never give up on you.

Never Give up…!!

Google’s CEO, Dr. Eric Schmidt, had this to say when asked about the characteristics of very successful entrepreneurs:

I think the most important characteristic of an entrepeneur is that they’re going to do it whether you give them permission or not. They are motivated by something inside of them. It’s not something that can be taught… they feel it, they want it, they’re driven to it. And when you find such a person, they’re usually a pretty good person to hang out with. They’re gonna do some interesting things.

L. John Doerr is an venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers once said–

                “To ask permission is to seek denial.”

Another one in the kitty, just received an email that Yatra has won the coveted Express Travel award for best OTA. This award is certified by Deloitte consulting and is viewed as most premier award in its category.

And will give wings to Yatra’s dream to become undisputed king of online internet space in travel domain. This holds lot of responsibility on our shoulders to serve our customers efficiently.

Cheers

Wal Mart, the giant retailer, owns all the trucks that move its goods across the length and breadth of the U.S. Bharti Airtel, the biggest telecom services provider relies heaviliy on its partners for many activities such as IT, network management and call centre operations.

Both Wal Mart and Bharti Airtel are incredibly successful companies. Though they have widely different approach to outsourcing.

So how should a company decide what to outsource and what not?

Where are the boundaries of the core, Ravi Aron professor of operations and information management Wharton Business School has developed a concept of “Revenue Distance” that helps in taking these decisions.

Revenue distance measures how far removed a process is from a company’s revenue generating activities. The farther an activity is, the easier is the decision to outsource.

Ultimately companies generate revenue from their customers, therefore any activity that strengthens a bond with the customers has a shorter revenue distance and it should therefore be kept in-house.

Take an example of search engine marketing activity that involves product knowledge, keyword research capabilities, optimization of the campaign, bid management & managing account.

Since product knowledge, keyword optimization has a shorter revenue distance because it is highly domain specific and requires through knowledge of the product and hence should be kept in house but bid optimization and campaign operational aspects can be outsourced.

It is always a function of relative contribution of the process to the value a company creates for its customers. and what does this process support the ability if the company to monetise the value that is created for the customer.

Process which are high on both are low on revenue distance and hence should be kept in-house. And process low on both should be outsourced.

Important to note here is that this models says companies in a rapid growth phase will focus more on value creation for its customers and those on mature industries will focus on revenue capture.

Take the same example of Wal Mart, logistics is several steps away from the revenue generating activities, however retail is a mature industry in the US and value capture is more improtant. To reduce the time to service the order and goal is to cut down the time that goods stay on shelves, for these reasons complete control over logistics gives them flexibility to deliver value to the customer and hence can not be outsourced.

On the other hand Airtel, is in a rapidly growing industry and its focus is on creating customer value through responsive sales, service and new product development. At this stage of the industry’s lifecycle, it is less important to get value capture from the activuties like network management, tower management it infrastructure. And outsourced to third party or like they have opened another company to cater that and hence for better management to provide 360 degree value proposition, it bacame a sister concern company of the Bharti Airtel.

The Red Herring 100 Asia is an exclusive event honouring 100 cutting-edge private technology firms from Asia. The winners were selected from more than 1,000 companies based in 16 countries including China, India, Japan, Singapore, Korea, Australia and Vietnam. 

Yatra.com is among those top 100. This is the moment of pride and proud to be part of the company since the launch and was involved in building blocks of every inch of it. 

Memories goes back to the days of starting as a seventh employee (007) in a conference room from First India Place (Gurgaon) with all chaos of setting up servers in the corner, website layouts, business strategy all in that one room.

I guess, this is one of the happiest moment that i will lavish in my professional career for long time to come.

Follow link to read more : Red Herring Top 100 Award 2008

Every new initiative that I’ve ever engaged in has initially been seen as a distraction by people internally. They’ll will say, why to join a start up and put breaks to a stable career? Then the micro economics of the job down under.

 These are fair questions. There’s nothing wrong with asking them.  What I have found—and this is an empirical observation; —is that when we plant a seed, it tends to take some time before it has a meaningful impact on the economics in the overall scheme of things whether it is related to your career or new project initiatives.

A firm believer in doing things and let it be performance driven than words driven. So far it has paid off and results are there to follow. 

Point I am trying to say is perspective constitute 80% of your attitude in achieving your targets. This works pretty well when it drain down to all team members working with you.

It energizes team member to deliver that extra mile required for any start up or any new initiative or project’s success.

An Institutional “Yes” builds Perspective worth 80 IQ points than A Diplomatic “No”. As quoted by Jeff Bezos, CEO and Co founder of AMAZON. 

Bombay blast left me shattered completely and i really don’t know why humans are killing humans. Why can’t they live and let live.  I pay my tribute to all those who became victim of this indiscriminate firing and condolence to grief stricken parents, brothers, wives, and sisters. A tribute from bottom of my heart:

Jindagi ki chand ghadiyon mein………….
Khusiyon ko dhundti unn ghadiyon mein………
jaane kab hui “Jameer” ki maut………..

Kya nahin dekh paayi unn bebas ankho  mein……….
vo sapne jo sanjayo the apno ki rah mein………
sukhe paton ki tarah bikherenge rah mein……..

“Jameer ki maut” hui he aaj……….

iss kadar ki… khuda bhi khauf karta he aaj……

ki insaan baana janwar he aaj………

dua he rab se itni……….
JIndagi chahe ho insaan se juda………
par jameer ho sab ka khuda…..

Hui he Jameer ki Maut aaj…
Khuda bhi khauf karta he aaj………