Next stop, Fullerton Wireless

On a recent trip to LA, I was traveling by train to Orange County...due to a much avoidable confusion with the conductor, I got off at a wrong station - Fullerton, a city 22 miles south of LA with a 135K population. While I waited for my friends to give me the extended ride, I figured the City of Fullerton is a fully free wireless city! It was just amazing, I could sit or stand anywhere I wanted...a traffic light, park bench, train station and there'd be Internet - just like air! I hung out at a corner bar called Tuscany Club and along with some good beer, there was Internet too. So it is a reality...cities becoming wholly wireless and I keep reading more and more about it...San Francisco and Philly in the leading game....read this Economist article (requires subscription). Just like we know some eternal economic truths such as land prices will go up, air travel will go up, people will age, healthcare industry will always stay and stay healthy, global temperatures will rise, gas prices will rise or be redundant, cars will be replaced, stationed servers will die, Internet-telephony will drive telecom costs to near-zero, people will continue to eat and mate, kids will continue to pop-out...it is rather easy to surmise that wireless connectivity will be ubiquitous just like radio and electromagnetic waves - it'll always be there and everywhere. The interesting question is what will happen then? What businesses will start, what businesses will collapse, what new services/ products can be delivered? Food for thought.

Free Travel

This is some good stuff emailed by my uncle in Texas...


These websites keep track of prices which may have been mistakenly posted like $50 to fly to Fiji!(From an article in Wall Street on Saturday May 27th)

airfarewatchdog.com
farealert.net
flyertalk.com
freetraveling.com

Live a Second Life

Ever thought of marketing to virtual avatars? As I write this, I'm downloading Second Life - an online realty game (can I call it so?). People use real dollars and buy Linden money to buy virtual property and then they go about leading (not-so) normal lives in the Internet world - they buy land, date and have relationships, protest against things, work, create things. Second Life (Business Week article) has 65,000 paid users and 100,000 unpaid users - it's very sticky because you tend believe that that life is also true. So, what's the business angle. At least 3,000 people have quit their jobs to play second life full-time - they create online goods and and sell it in the virtual world (sometimes in the real world - an Australian programmer wrote a game for second life and sold it to cell phone companies in real-life!) - at some point, they can also cashout for real dollars. Unbelievable?! Too sci-fi? Not really, marketeers including Coke are beginning to take notice and planning on ways to use virtual worlds to market their products so consumers see them and buy them in the real world using real dollars. Back to the future, eh?

Sign of the times - remote heart surgeries + new offshore locations

Here's an interesting article in the current edition of Time magazine on "outsourcing your heart"...given the surmounting healthcare costs, employers are providing medical tourism as an option for employees - the perk? they can take a family member along and also pocket some of the savings from not-using US insurance.

This month's HBR runs an article on new offshore destinations because India's hot cities are getting too expensive. You can read an overview and buy it here.

Just dial VSS Mani

Over the past weekend, I hung around in Hyderabad celebrating my parents' wedding anniversary. I also chilled out with my "co-bro" who recently converted his fastfood venture into a thriving catering business. He spread his beans across various marketing channels and finally settled on a service called Just Dial that brings him 90 calls/ month - from hip parties to pooja food - he does it all. To list his business in the "premium" vendors list he pays Just Dial a neat chunk of change. In passing, he mentioned that the company (Just Dial) generates Rs.100 crores ($20+ million) in revenues and is gearing up for an IPO - that of course perked my ears. He told me about the time he met the energetic first-mover Mr. Mani who started Just Dial in his garage with 2 people and now has scaled to 1,500 people. The impressive thing is it's a business targeted at the domestic market and built on the Internet economy. Check it out.

V-PUL and Tick-Tock toy wire Mumbai

A few months back, a stubbled, droopy-eyed, Gujarati businessman called Vipul bhai came by to our offices selling custom-made brochures, giveaway pens etc. And we gave him a try. Though he typed up "Saeson Greetings" on some gift boxes (we returned, he corrected for free), he did a pretty cool job. Everytime he comes, he shows me something new that he's made for some marquee company. He looks keenly at how my eyes move and face changes to push or pull back a product or cross-sell another. Here's how it goes...if I muse over expensive-looking pens, he'll say don't worry about the cost, pay me later...if I play with a woody gift box, he'll cross-sell "hannggrave" pens and keychains to go with it. Yesterday, we talked about scale and all the good stuff...and he told me his business principles: 1) Profits: He will make profits on every single deal - that's super important to hedge losses 2) Goodwill+Branding: He will always giveaway samples and items for personal use free 3) Customer-service: He will be available at anytime of day/ night for a customer of any size. He will always, always follow-up 4) Sales: It's the lifeblood of his business, so he sells everyday - mainly through references. He's not pushy but he'll casually call. 5) Globalization: He sells in Nigeria sometimes. He actively plays close attention to how global companies make products.
Net-net: His revenues are $120,000/ year (more than an ave. MBA pay) and he works by himself.

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When driving from South to North or back in Mumbai, ever wonder why there's consistency in the products sold at the stoplights? For example, currently they sell a blow-horn+mask that perks up the ears of the mask as one blows. World and India maps are sold near restaurants. Another is a tick-tock sound making toy sold only by blind men and women at train stations or shopping streets. A weighing device for measuring up to 1 kilogram sold by young men. Teenage kids selling pirated books of the latest business best sellers near stoplights/ airport. There's acute consistency in one end of the city to the other - in hiring (type of salespeople), in sales process (how it's sold), place (types of places it's sold), and of course, price and bargaining room. It is not very difficult to imagine that there's a hidden world envisioning this product cycle (how do you decide that the customer will buy tick-tock toy?) and hiring similar types of people and sending them out to the city to sell, sell, sell. Taking just one product, the revenues might hit close to Rs.200,000/ day or Rs. 6,000,000 ($135,000)/ month (back of the envelope). It definitely calls for a dekho!

These are only two examples of the unseen economic world in Mumbai and similar cities that actually wire their local economies and run them.