BRAToSPHERE

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  • Welcome Subscription Economy

    Why own a car? When you can Uber/Ola everyday to office in a more cost effective way?

    Sounds familiar? Welcome to the new generation. A generation that does not believe in owning and would rather rent it out. Welcome to the “Why own, when you can rent” generation”.

    This generation believes in accessing anything anywhere on their fingertips in the most easy way. I don’t want to be stuck not having my car in the middle of the day. I want my car at a touch of a button.

    Welcome Uber.

    Similarly, i am not going to wait to get home and look up for that 4 year old CD to listen to that song. I want it on my fingertips.

    Welcome Apple Music (or well, gaana.com f you prefer)

    Welcome to the Subscription Economy.

    According to Zuora , Subscription Economy means – “the new business landscape in which traditional pay-per-product (or service) companies are moving toward subscription-based business models”

    This model was pioneered by magazines and newspapers, but off late has been in use by many other business models.

    Rather than selling a product individually, a subscription model asks the consumer to pay a periodic fee and gets him/her access to the entire gamut of services/products available. Repeat billing ensures subsequent revenues and the consumer is happy having access anytime anywhere.

    Off late, i have been a part of this economy without actually knowing that i was becoming one.

    The magazines and the newspaper subscriptions always existed alongside the cable TV subscription. TataSky recharge was a regular expense to watch uninterrupted TV. This was 2012.

    I wanted access to all of the channels irrespective if i would ever watch it. My monthly bill was around 800 rupees. I was happy. I hated the sight of the screen which says i did not have access to a particular channel.

    In spite of this hefty amount i was not completely satisfied. I wanted to be able to watch any movie any time, and not at the slotted time.

    Welcome TataSky Record.

    Wow! I can record my favourite shows and watch them at my leisure. The latest blockbuster making its world TV premiere at Sunday 9PM? No issues! I can still attend the party on sunday night and watch the recorded movie post the party, late sunday night.

    I was happy. But still not quite satisfied. I had limited space on the Set Top Box, and i hated deleting stuff i have seen once. What if?

    This is where the new age takes off completely.

    Welcome Hotstar.

    All (or at least most) shows are now all online. I just need a good high speed broadband connection.

    I am now off TataSky completely and HotStar, Netflix, Amazon Prime and the good old youtube have become my go to place for all visual media. The Apple TV i bought from Berlin is the best buy of last year.

    This is not limited to the visual media alone. Other aspects of life are being engulfed by the subscription model gradually.

    Don’t know which song to carry on the limited space on the iPhone? No issues.

    Welcome Apple Music. (120 rupees a month is a steal!)

    Can’t make up your mind on which magazine to buy/subscribe. Take it a step further.

    Welcome Magzter Gold (get access to all (rather most) magazines as they are published, at the click of a button)

    What do we welcome next?

    p.s.: Even Amazon India offers a subscribe button on most essentials.

  • Storm the Norm – Book Review

    After laying my hands on the new kindle paper white, i excitedly paid up for the kindle unlimited subscription with the aim to read up everything possible. Though the collection is limited, there are many interesting non fiction books in the collection.

    I downloaded the allowed 10 books immediately and got reading “Storming the Norm” by Anisha Motwani this one immediately. Being in the marketing profession, reading up on brands and their evolution seemed to the most obvious thing.

    The book explores the way top brands are built through the examples of some top brands that have been built in India. The Brands listed here are classified into neat segments and the mix is across industries varying from FMCG, telecom, automotive, etc..

    Reading the evolution of each of these brands helps the reader understand and learn how a brand is built on consistent communication of a great product, keeping the media and language relevant to the ages.

    The book did not live up to the expectations though. The monotony in explaining history of each of the brands seems more like reading up their wiki page, or the company page of these brands and it gives a feel that it is more of a PR pitch sponsored by each of the brands listed here. No negatives are highlighted about any brand and that builds on the suspicion even more.

    Having said that, the book serves as a good starting point for anyone to read up the history of each of these brands and get a glimpse of the inside workings on building a brand.

    It is a short book, lacking the depth that i was looking forward to. Maybe further detailing the finer nuances of brand building and the difficult choices faced by the people at the help and the reasoning used to arrive at the decision would have helped build further texture. If you’re interested in learning more about brand building, you might also consider exploring materials produced by outdoor marketing companies.

  • New Year Plans

    New Year resolutions are made to be broken, or so goes the adage. True to its word, I am nowhere there on any of my New Year resolutions. I think having a date of start to any activity, be it dieting or working out, just does not work. Setting a date in the future for something that you believe is for your good, is a way to procrastinate the thing. Isn’t helping anyone.

    If you are actually kicked about starting a good habit (the so called resolution) there is no better than time to start doing it, than right NOW! You are at your peak motivation level right now and getting to do the good thing right now will hold you in good stead to inculcate the habit.

    New Year resolutions,

    “Will start doing this from next month onwards”,

    “Will do this once this phase of my life is over”

    These are all reasons we give to ourselves to justify our procrastination.

    To top it all, more often than not, a majority of us then justify to ourselves why we should not be doing a particular thing after the date of start has gone by.

    “Oh! I had to quit smoking from Jan 1st 2017. It is already 10 days past that date and I am nowhere there. Chuck it! Will quit from Feb 1st”. Or worse, “Will quit in 2018! 2017 is too hectic and important a year to be going through all this heartache and mood swings”. Classic ways of procrastination.

    Sounds very familiar right?

    Procrastination – One big reason why we don’t achieve most of the things we set out for ourselves and attain a mediocrity level in most of what we do!

    So this year, unlike all my previous years, I have decided not to have any New Year resolutions.

    I would rather have plans. Plans for the year. This has been working at a very sub conscious level over the years.

    Plan for the month and sub plans for the week. Targets for the period and clearly defined milestones and goals to be tracking against them. Yes, there is an element of time again, but this time with a timeline. With targets and tracking achievements. This should help overcome the inherent procrastination.

    I am now completely corporatized!

    Happy New Year folks. Do let me know of your plans for the year.

  • Train to Kanpur

    “La Camisa Negra..”

    Song playing in the headphone, thinking of the discovery of voice program. The naughty kids wails are still audible piercing through the headphones. Sue you Bose QC. Noise cancelling it says. Can’t silence a small kid.

    Am in the train en route to a major town in UP, to attend my Niece’s wedding. Niece’s wedding? How old are you? Well, this one is a long story involving 10 off springs and a huge lineage, better left for some other time.

    Song changes to “Cup Song..”

    Coming back to the train. I am in the Shatabdi train, so called king of the Indian railway trains (Maybe the prince, if Rajdhani can be called the king) hoping that it would be a pleasant silent journey for 5 long hours. Little did I hope that these five hours would seem like an eternity.

    The journey to the railway station in itself was pleasant. Thank you Delhi Metro. Post my experience, when I had to drop my Mother in law to the station, and I nearly got her to miss the train, I rely on the Delhi metro more than the Delhi Roads. Not my fault. The un-predictable traffic. Even Google Maps goes wrong by a large margin when it comes to Delhi Traffic. Well, maybe I should have estimated the travel time better. Or better still, I should have seen the departure time better. 2:15 and 2:45 look so similar right?

    Song Changes to “Tribal..”

    Anyways, coming back to the train. Post the pleasant trip to the Station I was welcomed to the very familiar filthy and dirty station. I think it is high time we get a crusader against dirtying public areas. The 0.5% cess for Swacch Bharat clearly is not working. (No! 1% would not work either. Intention and action would probably work!).

    I don’t know why we Indians cannot keep basics in place. How much more effort does it take to walk a 50 mts more to spit in the spittoon, or discard the empty chips packet into a dustbin. No!  We just throw wherever we need to!

    Song changes to “bumbaya..”

    Coming back to the train, after the dirty experience at the station, I was looking forward to the train. Shatabdi’s are generally clean. I am at the platform at 3:30 for a train scheduled to depart at 3:50. The train is still not at the platform. I kill time browsing the wheeler books trolley, and buy a couple of magazines. The time now is 3:45PM, The train is still not here. I walk to the snacks stall and pick  a bottle of water and just when I manage to wriggle to manage the last currency note out of my wallet, I hear the train’s whistle. The anger of the vendor not having moved to cashless is subsided by the coarse whistle sound.

    I jump on in the train to my seat (Thankfully this is clean) and get ready my arsenal – iPad, Music, headphones and the magazines I just bought on the table in the front. I was looking forward to the short journey. 4:15 PM. The train is still on the platform. It probably would not be that a short journey. Why God? Why? Why does it always happen to the train I am travelling in? Who is this damn lawyer Murphy?

    Song Changes to “play..”

    The train finally moves at 4:25 PM and I settle in my seat. The train is relatively empty and I wonder why? Indian trains are always crowded. I sit by the window side, deep into my iPad reading and occasionally watching the roads outside. Very soon we would be out of Delhi and the view from the window would be full of mustard fields. What a pleasant sight. I already feel like SRK.

    The train screeches stop at 5PM and gets me of the slumber. Wait! Where did so many people come from? How did the ‘not-so-empty’ suddenly get overfilled with argumentative middle aged men and young women with wailing kids? Ghaziabad. UP sure has to be the most populous state in the country. The kid behind my seats starts wailing. He probably does not like my remark on UP.

    Song changes to “My life..”

    This is my life right now. The far from perfect train journey.

    I take up the volume on VLC to 200%. Creaking sound is better than wail sounds. Damn you Bose QC.

    p.s.: Just in case you are curious, the playlist of the music is Running Music Workout 2016

  • The Corner Office – Book Review

    The Corner Office. One term, one aim, one place that every ambitious working professional aspires to get to. What does it take to get there? Hard work, perseverance, smart brains, people skills, blah.. blah.. blah! A lot has been written on this – “What it takes to become a CeO?”. This is not a book on that. This is a fictional story of the race to the corner office amongst five individuals who join a company together as fresh bright management graduates.

    18580689The story begins off well with the right character building of each of the five individuals with a brief history and a glimpse of how did they get to join this huge end to end corporation with varied business interests (reminds you of TATA? or ITC?).

    Five different individuals start at the same point and come across different circumstances in their lives leading to different paths all leading with the same aim – to occupy the corner office. The demon in each of their closets and the way life deals with them forms the crux of this story.

    Though the book begins well and you start relating with the characters, and the story also is kept quite pacy, the format of the book somewhere lets you down. It is too plain jane and straight to keep one interested. A phase in life and five individual chapters detailing each characters life in that phase. With very limited intertwining and interactions between the different characters it seems like five individual stories brought together into one, king it very predictable.

    All through the book you get a feel that there is a larger message to be conveyed and you keep looking for it. The story even lingers in your head a couple of days after you have finished reading it, but alas! the message is lost somewhere. Or maybe, there was no message and this is just supposed to be a plain simple story of five individuals.

    Overall, a quick read to get a not so authentic peek into what goes on behind that charming well manicured corporate face.