It’s a new day, it’s a new place

Posted on: January 28,10 By Himanshu 1 Comments
It has been almost five months since my last blog post. Lots of things have changed now, the good news is that I am now married to Janukin [engagement news here]
In May 2009, I left the startup I was associated with [updates here] and have now relocated to Bangalore. In order to gain some stability, I have again rejoined Mphasis. The entire post is full of updates i.e Marriage, relocation, job however there is one update which is very important for me[as a blogger and for you as an end-user i.e my loyal readers].

The content of this blog is now moved to my new domain http://blog.himanshusheth.net [which is using WordPress and the theme is developed by V.V.K Chandra [again our contact happened through this blog, not to mention "He has done a phenomenal job to design a simple & sleek theme"]. I am sure, before you move to the new destination; you would want to be connected to this blog, so go ahead and update your feeds:

Subscribe via Reader [Courtesy- Feedburner]

Subscribe via Email/Twitter etc. [Courtesy- Feedblitz]
http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=642472

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Posted in Blogging, Personal | 1 Comments

Let’s get started …

Posted on: September 11,09 By Himanshu 1 Comments
How many times, we feel like talking to someone but can’t even take the first step. It starts with “How to approach” and once you approach “How you build a meaningful conversation”. If the conversation goes like flowing water, than it is of no worry but if it does not, “the onus lies on the initiator to transform a talk into a conversation”.

I had an interesting experience during my association with a startup where we handed over free gift to each person who helped testing our product. The free gift was definitely priceless for us since it would help us to spread our word [as our name was printed on the gift] but very few people noticed it. That is where each one of us started interacting with every person during the testing process[spending an extra minute or so] to explain about our product and startup through the “name” which was printed on the freebie.

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Posted in Marketing, SocialMedia, Twitter, Viral Marketing, Web 2.0 | 1 Comments

Book Review – Entrepreneur Journeys : Bootstrapping, weapon of Mass Reconstruction

Posted on: September 03,09 By Himanshu 3 Comments
Earlier on ThoughtsPrevail; we reviewed Sramana Mitra‘s book Entrepreneur Journeys-Volume I here & here, in this article we review her book Entrepreneur Journey’s [BootStrapping : Weapon of Mass Reconstruction]

Like her previous book, Sramana follows the same format where she interviews successful entrepreneurs however this time around they are the ones who have successfully bootstrapped their business. The interviews provide vital answers as to whether a startup really needs VC funding or it can be entirely bootstrapped. It also gives some insights into why mentorship is so important for any startup.

Notably the book includes interviews of the so called sultans of blogosphere-Om Malik of GigaOm and Rafat Ali of paidContent [which was acquired by Guardian for $30M].

Though there are many inspiring interviews, the only downside of the book was that the focus was mainly on US based startups but this does not take away the core message delivered through the book i.e “How to bootstrap a business”

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Posted in Books, Entrepreneurship, Review, Sramana Mitra, startups | 3 Comments

Marketing in Rural India

Posted on: August 30,09 By Himanshu 3 Comments
Few days back, I just had a short chat with one of the co-founders of an IIM-A‘s Iaccelerator startup and our conversation diverted to an article that was published in Outlook Business. The article tells about how a simple SMS is helping the Indian farmers plan their farming better and in turn helping them generate more profits.

Just came across a very insightful presentation which talks about why rural India is so important & how one can tap the rural market. The most interesting point from the presentation is the statistics about Rediffmail -

Out of 20 million Rediffmail signups, 60% are from small towns. 50% transactions from these towns on Rediff shopping site.

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Posted in Business, India, India Shining, Marketing, Presentations, Rural India | 3 Comments

Gogola : Because it’s not Google

Posted on: August 23,09 By Himanshu 3 Comments
Last week, I was holidaying in my home place – Mumbai and we went out shopping for my marriage which is due on 23rd November, 2009. We were shopping at Bandra which is considered as a very posh place & there we can across a small chat [???] outlet. With the scare of swine flu, customers normally avoid from going to such places and this is where it becomes important for the shop owners to win back the customers confidence.

But what if, we use a household name to brand our small product. This is what MIGHT make the customer to purchase & use the product. And the chat outlet did exactly the same. The brand which was used was none other than Google and the product – Gola [????] was named Gogola, some interesting pictures below:

Considering that Internet explorer is the most widely used browser in India, using it effectively would be considered as “Another feather in their cap”. Just like the glass, the menu card was also shown in a very geeky manner in an IE window [picture below]:

I had a chat with the shop owner and he told that “They came out with this strategy mainly to get customer’s confidence” and as Google & Microsoft are household names[no matter you use them or not, but you definitely know them] using them ignites a spark in the customer’s mind. This trust indirectly builds the Gogola brand.

This is a lesson from a small time shop owner on “How a product can become a brand, sometimes by smartly re-modeling an existing brand“.

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Posted in Brand Building, Google, Microsoft, Miscellaneous, Personal | 3 Comments

About the author

Hey, Welcome to Himanshu's blog. Himanshu is a engineer, blogger, startupper & an aspiring entrepreneur from Bangalore, India. To know more about him, please visit this page.

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