All Posts by Himanshu Sheth

|In: Infographic|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

We’re all familiar with games, right? From board games to video games to card games, there’s a little luck and a little skill involved in winning—but with winning comes rewards, too [even if it’s just gloating power for a few hours]. Companies have long evolved an approach to gaming with ensuring or enhancing customer loyalty.

Image Source – Gamification

Airlines are the best example – Earn miles and you can earn flights or other types of rewards. So the more you spend with that particular airline, the more you earn, and the better you feel about your purchases. That is called gamification of the buying experience.

And gamification isn’t just about rewards; boosting the gameable aspects of your customer service also has a feel-good aspect. Gamification also allows you to think differently about what rewards you want to use. So what’s the process and how can you boost the gaming in your process? The graphics below explains the same

Click To Enlarge


The Benefits of Creating an Entertaining Customer Experience With Gamification

Via Salesforce

 

|In: Entrepreneurship|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

ALC India, has announced the second Batch for ‘Transforming India Initiative’ [TII], a unique 2-year social entrepreneurship programme. The programme is open for anyone with a graduate degree: Start-up enthusiasts, Corporate professionals who nurture entrepreneurial aspirations and Young professionals who want to make an impact for the country.

The 2-year programme has been designed to give in-depth entrepreneurial experience and practical knowledge of how to run a social venture before the candidates start their own ventures. After completion of the programme, each individual will receive incubation and funding support for a period of 6 years to set up a profitable social enterprise. TII is supported by the NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission and is offered in partnership with the prestigious Institute of Rural Management Anand [IRMA].

The first batch of the program witnessed enthusiastic response from 418 candidates from across India. ALC India selected 10 candidates after much deliberation and with a rigorous screening process. The current batch includes people who were earlier working in eminent corporates, start-up founders, educational and environmental enthusiast, etc. and wanted to start up their own enterprise that would tackle pressing social concerns.

ALC India is a 12-year old social enterprise that has been incubating companies belonging to the economically marginalized. Last year, it was recognized by the NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission as an established incubation centre and received scale-up support of INR 10 crores to incubate social enterprises, including support to the Transforming India Initiative [TII].

Since, its inception in 2005, ALC India has impacted 65,000 households in 17 States through 300 Projects. The organization has helped people in the unorganized sector build sustainable livelihoods and double their incomes. ALC India helps incubate enterprises that the communities own – typically cooperatives or producer companies and develops their technical, managerial and entrepreneurial skills, as they move up in the value chain from just being a producer to an entrepreneur.

Speaking about the success of Transforming India Initiative, Krishnagopal Grandhi, CEO, ALC India said

In the current economic scenario, entrepreneurs are key to job creation, at the same time they need to evolve solutions that can address the most pressing challenges facing the country today. With the Transforming India Initiative, we are looking for talented youngsters who have the passion and grit to become social entrepreneurs. We will support them with not just education and practical understanding but also with incubation support to set up their enterprises after completing the programme.

USPs of the Transformation India Initiative [TII]

TII is a comprehensive 2-year programme that will equip the fellows to establish profitable social enterprises. Setting it apart from other academic and incubation programmes, TII is designed to enable the fellow students to first understand the developmental challenges of the country. It enables you to develop an entrepreneurial solution, test and evolve the design and establish an enduring enterprise rather than expect to have an innovative idea at the beginning of the programme itself. TII’s uniqueness lies in the integration of academics & incubation. Some of its notable USPs are:

  • 6-month facilitated learning module certified by the Institute of Rural Management, Anand [IRMA], including practitioner interactions and reflection workshops
  • 18-month experiential learning module certified by the Development Management Institute Patna, where the fellows will work directly with the founders of social enterprises
  • End-to-end incubation support, including seed funding for setting up an enterprise for select entrepreneurs, as decided on merit by the independent committee, will receive a financial grant totaling INR 30 Lakhs as seed fund for their social ventures
  • Each individual will be placed with an enterprise in their preferred sector and be paired with a successful social entrepreneur as a mentor who is aligned to their interests and aspirations.
  • Fellows will be placed with an already existing social enterprise, where they will work directly with the CEO to solve five key organizational challenges and accelerate the enterprise growth.
  • ALC India provides access to seed fund of INR 40 Crores, Incubation Space of 20,000 sq.ft, over 30 Industry Experts, and 350 partners for the initiative.

Who is it for?

The first cohort had individuals coming from across India with different background and experiences: Corporate professionals, Fresh graduates, Start-up founders, Educational and Environmental enthusiast.

A graduate degree is a minimum requirement to apply for the programme. Graduates from any discipline or professionals with work experience are eligible to apply for this programme. Interested people of any age group are encouraged to apply and their experience will be taken into account when they are placed with an enterprise during the experiential learning module.

The Pioneering Cohort [2017 Batch]

The pioneering cohort of 10 individuals joined Transforming India Initiative’s Social Entrepreneurship Programme in October 2017. The cohort comes from the age group of 21 – 29 years from across India with diverse interest in the social space: Education, Health, finance, Agriculture, Livelihoods & Policy. Over the course, they have developed skills, mindsets and knowledge required to lead and establish a responsible social-enterprise.

Application Process

Each applicant will go through a four-step process that involves Online Application, Psychometric & Aptitude Test, Telephonic Interview and a 2-day direct Assessment. Interested candidates can know more about the programme and apply, on or before April 26th 2018 by visiting ACL TII Website. For any queries, they can send an email to TII Admissions.

About ALC India

ALC India is a Hyderabad-based social enterprise established in 2005 to work with economically marginalised communities who battle great odds to eke out fragile livelihoods. To such producers, ALC offer professional services that they can use to turn the odds in their favour and build livelihoods that are more certain, rewarding, and sustainable. The enterprises incubated of women farmers, tribals and weavers have together done business of more than Rs. 70 crores in the last few years, employing more than 80 rural youth and supporting the livelihoods of more than 21,000 women.

|In: Mobile|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Phonup, a joint venture between Franchise India and Phonup Italy, launched its first store in Karnataka, Bengaluru. The store will be a ‘one-stop-destination’ for all mobile phone solutions. Phonup, offers the widest range of new and certified pre-owned smartphones and tablets from leading brands such as Apple iPhone, Samsung, Xiaomi Mi, OnePlus, Motorola, Lenovo, etc., under one roof.

Image Source – PhonUp

A pre-owned smartphone is a smartphone less to dispose. Extending the life cycle of a device involves environmental care in terms of emissions and energy necessary for disposal. For these reasons, Phonup is committed to improving the sustainability of the high-tech frontier, both for the collection and re-use.

Driven by the philosophy of high quality and precision, every pre-owned phone from Phonup goes through extensive 40+ quality checks before being rolled out to the customers. Phonup is here to revolutionize pre-owned mobile phone market in India. The company provides umbrella solutions for mid and high-end mobile handsets across pan-India. Further, every smartphone offered from Phonup comes with 12 months of warranty. The phones for repair, gets handpicked from customer’s home.

Gerardo Taglianetti, CEO, Phonup Italy, said

The mobile repair market in India is largely unorganized and people find it hard to get reliable repairing solutions at an affordable cost. Phonup will be a game changer in this category offering process driven, world class repair to the Indian customers and additional services like extended warranty packages, accessories, repairs and technical training.

Sanjeev Arora, COO, Phonup India, said

At Phonup, it is our endeavor to enable our customers with trust and transparency and our first retail store here is a step towards the same. Our objective is to provide customers with a platform to buy pre-owned mobile handsets that are not only affordable but also offer a warranty of 12 months which is equivalent to a completely new piece.

Phonup also offers special packages that help in gauging the overall health of your smartphones and tablets.

Gaurav Marya, Chairman, Franchise India, further added

We are very happy to launch Phonup’s first experience store in Karnataka. We believe Bengaluru being a technology hub will be a great fit for the brand and our offerings. We are sure to challenge and add value to the existing pre-owned phones and mobile repair market in the region.

Just in a few months of its launch, Phonup is currently on a fast expansion mode across India via the franchisee model. A Franchisee can opt to have a Unit, Kiosk or Multi Brand Franchisee. Swan Enterprises is the master franchise in Bengaluru, which is expected to have about 120 franchise stores in the next couple of years.

About Phonup

Phonup is a joint venture between Franchise India and Phonup Italy and based on the idea of providing people with world class repairing of smartphones at affordable prices. Founded on the principles of trust and transparency it offers wide range of services to the phone owners such as extended warranty, a comprehensive health check among others. It also offers the widest range of phones and tablets to users to buy from. It is expanding its roots in India via the franchisee model. For more information, please visit Phonup India

|In: Mobile|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Truecaller has announced that it has reached over 100 million active users who use the app on a daily basis. In less than a year, the app has leapfrogged from 100 million monthly active users [MAUs] to 100 million Daily Active Users [DAUs], and is growing faster than ever.

In a company blog post Alan Mamedi, CEO & Co-founder shared a letter to express his delight on the milestone

It was so big, in fact, that Truecaller is pleased and excited to announce that we now have more than 100 million daily active users using our app for their daily communication. There are only a handful of mobile-only services that impact as many users each and every day, and we are humbled to be able to join this exclusive group.

We could never have predicted that Truecaller would become a resource for women’s safety in many countries; or that it would be used for e-commerce and courier services around the globe to facilitate the difficult last mile of delivery, or allow more people to experience a data-only product in offline mode. Truecaller is more than just an app on your phone, it has aided in bridging the digital divide between the urban and growing semi-urban/rural markets in India, and has even enabled more African businesses to accept online payment.

The world has come a long way

From people mostly using Nokia and BlackBerry phones years ago, to a wide array of Androids and Apples, technology is constantly evolving around us and the world of communication has come a long way. The cost of both mobile phones and data continues to plunge, which allows more and more people to come online with just their phone.

In emerging markets, Truecaller is seeing the importance of smartphones in peoples’ daily lives. It’s their primary gateway to the internet, their connection with family and friends, people abroad, and increasingly their main banking and finance tool. Smartphones and Truecaller have become indispensable in the lives of our 100 million daily users.

Making your communication safe and efficient

With technology evolving, Truecaller has also come a massively long way since the day we founded the company. From simple beginnings as a Caller ID and spam blocking app, to a full-fledged communications platform with calling, SMS, Flash Messages and payment services.

|In: startups|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Ebix, Inc., a leading international supplier of On-Demand software and e-commerce services to the insurance, financial, e-governance and healthcare industries, has entered into an agreement to acquire a majority stake in India based Smartclass Educational Services Private Limited [Smartclass], a leading e-learning Company engaged in the business of education services, development of education products, and implementation of education solutions for K-12 Schools.

Image Source – Ebix

Ebix expects the acquisition to be immediately accretive to its earnings and forecasts up to $0.20 in increased Diluted EPS, once the acquisition is fully integrated over the next 6 months. Under the terms of the agreement, Ebix will pay up to $8 million in cash for its stake in SmartClass.

Smartclass is one of India’s leading e-learning companies catering to the fast-growing K-12 education sector in India. With staff strength of approximately 500 employees out of a total of 1000 staff, dedicated to research & development and customer engagement, the Company caters to accredited school education through rich media like 2-D, 3-D, Virtual reality animation etc. Smartclass’s 500-strong sales and marketing staff across the country has helped create a strong growth trajectory, in terms of top line and reach for the Company.

Smartclass today has a customer base encompassing thousands of classrooms, paying for Smartclass e-learning products and services in an on-demand subscription basis. Smartclass will be tightly integrated into Ebix’s Education and e-learning initiatives in India and is seen as one of the many steps, that Ebix intends to take with an intent to invest up to $100 million in the sector.

Robin Raina, Ebix Chairman, President & CEO  said

The e-learning business model is typically asset lite and caters well to strong recurring operating margins, once the customer aggregation crosses the threshold levels. We have been eyeing India’s fast-growing e-learning sector for many years now, fueled by education being one of the highest spending areas traditionally for an Indian median household.

Towards that extent, we have earmarked a $100 million amount for investment in India’s e-learning sector and the acquisition of Smartclass is a logical first step for Ebix to establish its presence in the country’s e-learning markets.

A few years back, we started investing in the healthcare e-learning sector through our Indian subsidiary acquiring Birmingham based Oakstone LLC. Any business-like e-learning where you can create an asset and sell it thousands of times, has strong possibilities of generating strong operating margins and cash flows.

When you consider the strong focus that the Indian Government has put on investing in the e-learning sector in the recent budget, the present nascent state of the country’s education infrastructure, and the fast growth that high tech companies like Smartclass have experienced in India, the decision to take up a strong position in the country’s e-learning markets became an easy one for Ebix.

Divya Lal, Smartclass Chief Executive Officer said

We are very excited by the possibilities of growth, geographical reach and financial strength that this investment from Ebix brings to Smartclass. We look forward to becoming a part of the Ebix family and replicating Ebix’s international success over the last two decades, to build upon our existing strengths and take a leadership place in India’s e-learning industry.

About Ebix, Inc.

With 50+ offices across 5 continents, Ebix, Inc., endeavors to provide On-Demand software and E-commerce services to the insurance, financial, e-learning and healthcare industries. In the Insurance sector, the Company’s main focus is to develop and deploy a wide variety of insurance and reinsurance exchanges on an on-demand basis, while also, providing Software-as-a-Service enterprise solutions in the area of CRM, front-end & back-end systems, outsourced administrative and risk compliance, across the world. For more information, please visit Ebix and EbixCash.

|In: Business|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

The sudden exit of Martin Sorrell from WPP is quit a news. He worked for the world’s largest advertising company. Now the challenge lies with the board to search for a solution after Martin Sorrell resigns from WPP

Image Source – WPP

Martin Sorrell was responsible for making the company from a wire shopping basket manufacturer to a company that has more than 2 Lakh employees. No doubt the man is irreplaceable, and the new CEO will have to review the WPP’s strategy. The company was already facing struggle of declining ad spending, consultant’s competition in digital work, and the web giants risk of eliminating the middle men. The new CEO will also have to arrange the assets across the holding company which is one of the toughest jobs considering the current fragmented federation of businesses.

It was revealed that a probe had happened by the company, where the CEO was accused of being involved in the offences like personal misconduct and misuse of company assets. Just 2 weeks after the probe, Sorrel had resigned. The board was all set to declare the findings. Though he refutes all the blames, but as per WPP, the enquiry was complete. The company refused to share more details.

The new executive chairman till the new CEO comes is Chairman Roberto Quarta. The joint chief operating officers squad includes the highly accomplished names of Mark Read, the head of WPP agency Wunderman and Andrew Scott, WPP’s corporate development director. Their job will be to lead the business, develop strategy and optimize its portfolio.

The company had no issues with Sorrell’s fat paycheck till he performed. He is said to have earned more than 200 million pounds in the last five years of his service to the company. He was enjoying performance-related bonus package. But later the board observed that Sorrell was not performing the way he did. The shares lost a third of their value as compared to the past year, which was ahead if we observe the rival figures.

As per the business news, the data management unit of WPP Kantar has been going negative. Its revenue growth has underachieved the group average. It can be sold for as much as 3.5 billion pounds or $5 billion if they plan to decrease the debt. Also, in case the return cash is planned to be given to the shareholders, the same can be sold.

The WPP chief was quite a name in the ad industry who had also got knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II. Britain’s longest-serving CEOs in the recent times, who made regular public presence and talked about issues like Brexit and Donald Trump’s trade wars and the rise of Facebook Inc. and Google etc., got involved in the aggressive controversy enjoying a fat remuneration especially when the company wasn’t doing so well financially.

Martin shared that the current disruption was causing too much unwanted pressure on the business. He also said that in the interest of the company and clients, it was “best for me to step aside”. He also pointed out that WPP has faced difficult storms in the past.

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Nazara Technologies Limited and Royal Challengers Sports Private Limited [Royal Challengers Bangalore] have come together to launch their second mobile cricket game RCB Epic Cricket. RCB Epic Cricket is a 3D realistic and simulative game for fans featuring multiplayer mode that allows users to play versus other players across India. In this game, play as Virat Kohli, AB De Villiers along with team sensation Safaraz Khan and rule the pitch.

Image Source – Nazara

Nazara has exclusive mobile gaming rights for a multiyear partnership with Royal Challengers Bangalore to license the intellectual property for curation of freemium games.  HP has come on board as the title sponsor for the official game, RCB Epic Cricket. It has been integrated in the game in the form of jersey branding, billboards, real estate branding, user interface branding and much more. HP is one of the key sponsor brands for RCB for the 11th edition of T20 Season.

Last year, the RCB Star Cricket game rose quickly through the charts and had even reached the No.1 top free games spot on Google Play within few days of its launch. While the peak engagement was during T20, more than 54% of the engagement happened post the T20 season during the rest of the year.

Amrit Thomas, Chairman of Royal Challengers Bangalore, said

Over years, RCB has become more a lifestyle brand than just a cricket team. RCB has immensely transcended the experience of fan engagement. Fans connect with the team across multiple touch points on digital platforms. We strive to give them a seamless and more personalized experience for the love and support they have shown for the team.

Manish Agarwal, CEO, Nazara Games, said

We are thrilled to announce the launch of our new muliti- player game RCB Epic Cricket with Royal Challengers Bangalore. It feels great to work with a team which is always eager to push new boundaries whether it is ‘play along’ aspect within the stadium or hall of fame on social media.

RCB fans are in for a treat this year with exciting merchandise to be won within the multiplayer launched in the game. We have also printed a QR code on all the tickets sold at the RCB stadium for them to have an interactive experience while watching the game.

RCB Epic Cricket is currently designed to be played in three modes – Multiplayer Mode, Live Events and Career Mode. The unique part about the game is its multiplayer system which enables the player to create your own RCB Dream Team and play against an opposing team [RCB Dream Team] in a turn based multiplayer match along with elements of strategy. The player can compete on– Daily, Weekly and Monthly Leader-boards to win plenty of original RCB merchandise.

The Live Events enables the player to play real time matches of RCB during the T20 Season. This mode gives the players a chance to help RCB defeat their rival teams. The players can compete in these Live events to win existing RCB merchandises.

The Career mode, on the other hand, will enable the player to play as their favourite RCB stars. To begin with you can step into the shoes of ace cricketer and RCB Captain, Virat Kohli. This mode offers the cricket fans to face 7 bold Teams on-field that have been simulated from T20. This mode also has other cricketing heavyweights such as Yuzvendra Singh Chahal and AB de Villiers. The game is available for download on Google Play Store for android devices and is expected to be available for iOS by mid-April 2018.

RCB Epic Cricket for Android can be downloaded from here

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 1 Comment

In the advent of the shift towards evaluating performances through ‘Continuous Feedback’, Cyber Managers Software Services [CMSS] [earlier coverage here] has now enabled ‘e-Nhancer – the performance management platform’ with the Continuous Feedback capabilities.

The essence of e-Nhancer’s continuous feedback system is to provide a platform for employees to critique work related activities of their co-workers on real time basis. To facilitate quick feedback, e-Nhancer provides easy access on all major touch points like HR portals, Communication platforms and intranet social workplace available on Mobile or desktop.

According to Godwin Pinto, Business Head Mobility at CMSS, said

Keeping feedback simple and accessible is our primary focus in making e-Nhancer continuous. The roadmap for e-Nhancer with continuous feedback have many more features and they are under development.

In addition to KRA/Goal Settings, Cyclic Review, Ratings the core features of e-Nhancer continuous feedback are:

  1. Give/Seek Feedback – You can choose to give feedback to other employees or seek feedback from your colleagues for any work-related activity. You can record your feedback with voice, video or photographs, and tag them with KRA’s.
  1. Groups – A feature similar to Whatsapp, structured for continuous feedback, allows feedback within a group, either to individuals in a group or to the entire group.
  1. 360 degree feedback/Survey – Employees can conduct a 360 degree feedback/survey to seek perception/opinion of others.
  1. Meeting Calendar Synchronization – e-Nhancer can sync with meeting calendar to seek feedback on meetings which could help in understanding the effectiveness of meetings.
  1. Employee recognition – You can choose to give your appreciation badges to team members for their exceptional performances.
  1. Gamification – Appreciation Badges, Leaderboard, Badge Level Limits are some of the employee engagement aspects that have been added to increase engagement with the platform and promote continuous feedback.
  1. Team Health Monitoring – e-Nhancer comes with AI extensions that allow Managers/Admin to view the sentiments of groups/teams/locations/organization, etc. thus foreseeing, when intervention may be required.

Provider of ‘totally integrated solutions’ in the areas of Software Products, Application Engineering and Professional Service, CMSS is pioneering in creating technology solutions in the Human Resource Domain. The company last year launched Chatbot by the name H-SHARP, designed specifically for Human Resource industry which can make human-like natural conversation with the support of AI, NLP, and Machine Learning [ML].