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|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

If you are a kid of the 1980’s or 1990’s, you would surely remember the then-breakthrough “Sony Walkman” which created a huge wave not only in India but across the world. In fact, during those days you would see every other person carrying a walkman. Sony Walkman was successful since it was the very first product in a new category – Personal Stereo. It enjoyed a dream run selling more than 40 million units in the first ten years. It also enjoyed the “First Mover Advantage” till the time; rapid technological innovations changed the entire consumer electronics industry!!

Image Source – First Mover Advantage

Being the first mover is just the initial step since it becomes essential that the X-factor is communicated well to the customers in order to take the advantage of the first-mover status. Consider the case of Tata Nano, the tag of “World’s Cheapest Car” completely backfired and its sales hit a Plateau. Customers do not want “Cheap” products, rather they want “Affordable” Products and this is where Tata Nano suffered a setback since it marketed Nano as Cheap and not an Affordable Car!!

First Mover is not only limited to Tech companies but the same also applies to real-estate Companies that innovate on their Offerings, Product Placement, Pricing Model etc. One such company is Sobha Ltd that has taken a leap forward in the residential real-estate sector with its new project Sobha Dream Acres. So, you may ask what is so special about Sobha Dream Acres? Well, Sobha Dream Acres is the first residential that is built using the Precast Technology. The primary advantages of using Precast are Quality, Speed of construction and value-for-money product.

We had an interaction with Mr. Raj Pillai, Executive director of Sobha Ltd in his office and the discussion was centered around Core values of Sobha, Exemplary focus on customer service, his journey with Sobha, Precast Technology, Pros & Cons of being the first mover in Business, Housing for all and much more…

These are the edited excerpts from of the Q&A with Mr. Raj Pillai

Note: ‘I’ in the interview refers to Mr. Pillai and ‘We’ refers to Sobha Ltd. Before we start the Q&A, let me share a quick pic of myself with Mr. Pillai (L)

Raj Pill (L), Himanshu Sheth (R)
Raj Pill (L), Himanshu Sheth (R)

Can you please share some details about key pillars of Sobha Ltd

Sobha has mainly three businesses:Real Estate, Contracts, and Manufacturing. Real Estate contributes to ~80% of our business and when you talk about Real Estate, we have two models : Luxury (Prices > 1 crore) and Ultra-Luxury (> 3 crores).

We have built upon this model for more than 20 years and we have improvised the model YOY. We always ensured that there is Backward Integration. We need to understand the core values of Sobha since that is where the seeds of the startup were sown by Founder Chairman of Sobha who has more than 40 years of experience in the Middle East which has some of the best constructions in the world.

The very first project from Sobha Ltd was in the outskirts of Bengaluru i.e. in Jakkur. Our founder had the vision that if the Quality of our construction is good and our Product is of Superior Quality, it does not matter where you are located since customers would definitely come to you!! In order to build Quality Product, Sobha has ensured that we have world-class manufacturing unit so that Quality Check & Control is in our hands. Unlike our competitors, we never encourage the Chalta Hain Attitude and aim for perfection. Our factories have world class machinery and we have invested significantly in it over a period of time. In fact, we have more than 8K skilled “certified” tradesmen (either employed with Sobha or working on contract).

There is a huge level of commitment from Sobha’s top-level management and this shows their seriousness in the business. So, these are the key qualities of Sobha and irrespective of the nature of work, all of us at Sobha abide by those qualities since that is what constitutes the Sobha Brand.

Can you shed some light on the Precast factory built by Sobha for Sobha Dream Acres?

I am sure that you would have loved the Precast factory when you visited our Sobha Dream Acres Campus. A huge amount of hard work has been put to turn our chairman Mr. Ravi Menon’s dream into Reality!! So, let’s look into the details of the Precast factory:

The factory was built in a record period of 6~8 months. We strongly believe in the 10,000-hour work-rule that is mentioned in the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

It takes roughly ten thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field.

Over the last 3 years; Sobha’s high-level management, myself and other senior managers have spent innumerable hours (~8,000) to ensure that we build a world-class Precast Factory. This is the kind of commitment you would see from all employees at Sobha Ltd. The Quality Manual of Sobha Ltd lists down on how we closely look at each & every aspect of Quality to ensure we have a Happy Customer!!!

Sobha Ltd is not only the preferred real-estate brand from consumer point-of-view but it is the most preferred employer for real-estate professionals. Below are the results from BrandX Report 2015~16

What are your views on Affordable Housing and some factors that might turn it into reality?

Affordable Housing is the new buzz-word in the Housing sector but it is the most misused word in the world. Affordable is highly relative and it is not something which is cheap.

In fact, in my opinion, Affordable is something which you are able to buy, it is technology driven and remains affordable for the entire life-cycle of the building i.e. no leakage etc. which means the minimum amount is spent on the repairs of the house.

In fact, we learnt a lot from our trip to Finland (where 6 months of the year it is snowing and hence, they have half the time to get things right) & Singapore (where you would see awesome buildings) trips and we took the positive learnings out of it.

We brought international experts onboard to set up the Precast Factory so that we are able to deliver Affordable Houses (with exceptional quality and no compromise on safety) for our customers. According to us, Sobha Dream Acres is an ideal example of affordable homes since the repeat-costs for the customers would be very low!!

What are the kind of challenges you faced to convince higher management from Sobha Ltd to use Precast Technology (for Dream Acres)?

Initially, it was very difficult to get a buy-in from the entire management team since it was a big & risky Leap forward for Sobha Ltd. There were a lot of doubts mainly w.r.t Technology & its feasibility (as well as Durability) and since we had international experts onboard, we were able to clear all the doubts lingering in the minds of our higher management.

They believed in our vision as well as conviction. In my opinion, if we have to improve the quality of the construction in our country, we need to get rid of Plastering since Precast is much more affordable and at the same time durable. You would be surprised that we use 300 million tons of cement in our country out of which 10% of it goes into Plastering. They believed in our vision and we at Sobha Ltd believe that Precast would change the entire construction (specifically residential) industry.

Can you share some details about factors that are very critical in Precast?

First, all of us need to understand that “The Quality of concrete is very important in construction and it is much more important in Precast”. I am aware of projects where other companies have put up a good plant and equipment but they compromised a lot on something termed as “Batching Plant” (this is where the concrete is batched).

In the case of Sobha Dream Acres, we got the best Batching Plant so that the construction is of very high quality. Also, since Sobha Dream Acres customers also have similar doubts about Precast; to address them we have set up one of the biggest Marketing Offices at Sobha Dream Acres. Interested customers are first given a tour of the Precast Factory to remove any doubts left about the technology.

For more information on Precast Technology, you can refer to Understand Precast Technology Series (Part-1, Part-2). To summarize, Precast is about achieving the best construction Quality in a shorter duration of time (due to an overall reduction in Slab Cycle Time) thus minimizing the overall Delivery Time. Sobha Dream Acres is definitely Ahead of Time.

What are the approximate savings you would get if Precast is used?

In terms of plain numbers, you would easily get 20~25% savings keeping in mind all the tangible & intangible benefits. But it is very important to note that the savings are not for us, but it is for the customer.

Customer gets the following savings : 1) On-Time Delivery & Sobha has been very particular about it for all the projects 2) Sobha Dream Acres is not an Affordable Home but a Tech-Home and the Life Cycle Cost on this home would be minimum.

The strength of the concrete is so high w.r.t life of the building that customer’s cost on the building is minimized (keeping leakage, seepage etc. into account).

Buying a flat in Sobha Dream Acres is like buying a high-end luxury car at the most affordable price.

How has Sobha Ltd been able to communicate the actual USP of Sobha Dream Acres to its customers?

To answer your question, I would first tell you about our other project Sobha Indraprastha and the technology used in Indraprastha. The entire construction in Indraprashta is done using ‘Self Dynamic Concrete’ and there is no external plastering in that building.

We had communicated to our customers of Indraprashta about advantages of Self Dynamic Concrete and every customer highlighted that point. So, communication is the key when newer technologies are adopted by any company.

Coming back to Sobha Dream Acres, we want our customers to know about Precast Technology since that will answer most of their queries around pricing, durability etc.

Every customer who visits Sobha Dream Acres campus is first taken for a virtual tour of our Precast Factory so that they understand the inherent benefits of Precast and customers have taken it very positively.

The entire sales team involved with Sobha Dream Acres have received training about Precast Technology so that they are able to solve Customer Queries in the shortest amount of time.

Educating the customer about Precast Technology has become primarily important for us & our team is doing really great to communicate this message!!

How important is Post-Sales Support important and what are Sobha’s methodologies to provide best Buying Experience to Sobha Dream Acres’ customers?

We have a unique model. We have a huge CRM team that does the hand-holding and ensure that the customer is excited about their dream home.

Sobha Ltd has a very interesting program called Sobha Connect where we are reaching out to all our old customers (even those you purchased a Sobha Home 15 years back) to get the prospective reference(s). Out of more than 25K Sobha customers, many of them are repeat customers and that goes to show that we are fanatic about Customer Delight

It takes a lot of courage to go back to older customers and Sobha Connect is that Bold Step taken by Sobha Ltd (since we have complete confidence in our construction.)

Most of the real-estate companies have Celebrity Brand Ambassador, why isn’t that Sobha Ltd does not have a brand ambassador?

You need to have a celebrity Brand Ambassador when you are not able to sell the core value proposition. As mentioned in the earlier point, existing Sobha Ltd customers are our brand ambassadors.

Our endeavor has always been to get our product right and our entire Sobha team is paranoid about Perfection

Though brand ambassadors help in the marketing push but in today’s time (where information spreads like fire on Social Media), if you do not have a good product even a Celebrity Brand Ambassador cannot save its fate!

Your thoughts on the Real Estate Regulatory Act Bill?

With the Real Estate Regulatory Act [RERA] Bill, adherence to standards would no longer be a choice for the builders (irrespective of whether a builder is Grade A/B/C etc.) but adherence would be a Compulsion. RERA would be an important milestone in the construction business!

Can you comment on the PM’s mission of Housing for All?

The biggest problem in India is ‘Timely Execution’. However, a technology like Precast is the way forward in order to achieve this mission. I am part of the ‘National Building Code 2016’ committee and due to PM Modi’s charisma, government officials are working on par with other officials of the world.

National Building Code would definitely be a game-changer since it would be the best document to refer if anyone needs to know about the construction industry.

In my opinion, Precast is definitely the way forward if homes have to be of Supreme quality, exceptional Durability and need to be delivered with strict deadlines.

I thank Sobha Ltd for inviting me over for the interview & Mr. Pillai for patiently answering all our questions! If you are an existing Sobha Customer or aspiring to buy a home in Sobha Dream Acres, please leave a comment in the article or share your queries to himanshu.sheth@gmail.com

|In: Blogging|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Blogging is something that I started couple of years many years back in 2004 and this blog was hosted on blogspot. Many of my readers, friends, colleagues share the question with me – What was the real motivation for starting a blog? There was no real answer in 2004~2005 since I was following the herd of early-stage bloggers and wanted to be counted in one of them 🙂 But over a period of time blogging transformed from hobby to passion and when you are passionate about something, you do it diligently and results would automatically come out!

Image Source – LinkedIn

It helped change my entire personality, my observation skills, reading habits and countless number of things. The real achievement was is I could motivate others to start blogging and connect with entrepreneurs/techies/students (and support them in whatever way I could via book reviews, app reviews, product feedback etc.) The most important decision of my personal life also has a deep-rooted connection with my blog!!

This article is not about listing my blogging achievements but to reiterate that Blogging can be a life-changer and a game-changer 🙂 Blogging, Competitive Coding, Social Media have changed the market landscape and these would much more important than ever before! If you are an engineering student and interested to get acquaintance about these traits then you should definitely attend Hello Hacker on September 24 (5:00~6:30 PM) in Bengaluru.

Hello Hacker : Listen, Learn, Connect and Execute

Hello Hacker is an event chapter to acquaint engineering students from all across Bengaluru about the following aspects:

  • Competitive level programming
  • Open Source Communities
  • Modularisation
  • Social Media & Blogging

Competitive level is now playing a crucial role in tech-hiring and this platform would answer all the lingering questions about it. There are expert speakers doers from each of these fields who would walk through their pros & cons. In a nutshell

Hello Hacker is an event to help students stay ahead of the curve, make them more employable, and get them connected with domain experts. It is intended to be a stepping stone for young minds to get acquainted with the diverse ways in which web related technologies can affect their lives.

Hello Hacker : Agenda, Speakers

The proposed topics for Hello Hacker are:

  • How Open Source communities change lives.
  • How to contribute to the open source communities.
  • How relevant is blogging in today’s world for personal growth?
  • Importance of Hacker Meets and Hackathons in students’ lives.

The speaker list is below:

Sayan Goswami (Decision Scientist, MuSigma Inc)

  • Topic of discussion – Concept of Modularisation of code.
  • Relevance – Understanding what it takes to write a good code and makes the student more employable.

Anirban Saha (Proprietor, Kolkata Bloggers)

  • Topic of discussion – Blog as a Personal Branding tool.
  • Relevance – Don’t blog to just earn money out of blogging; make it a personal branding tool & be ahead of the cut-throat competition.

Shreyas Narayan Kutty (Regional Coordinator, Mozilla Clubs)

  • Topic of discussion – Requirement of community building among programmers, open source communities and how it could be used to engineer the products of the future.
  • Relevance – To take open source to more people, encourage them to use it in their products for free with modification. It accelerates innovation.

Harishankaran K (Co-founder & CTO, HackerRank)

At HackerRank, he is responsible for the product delivery and scaling the core platform where developers from all over the world come to solve interesting challenges in different domains of Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence, Algorithms, Machine Learning, Functional Programming, etc) for fun, glory, learning, and jobs. Recruiters also turn to HackerRank in order to identify the best tech talent while saving massive amounts time in their recruitment process.

  • Topic of discussion – Insights into Competitive Level Programming.
  • Relevance – Competitive level programming & why it is required in the life of a Technocrat.

Hello Hacker : Venue, Registration

The venue for Hello Hacker is below:

JAAGA Startup, 5/1, Penthouse,6th Floor Rich Homes Apartment Richmond Road Bangalore – 560025 (Directions)

For registration, please visit Hello Hacker’s Registration Page

Hello Hacker : Team, Partners

Hello Hacker’s partners can be found here

There is an awesome team behind this initiative, details below:

Mozilla Clubs – Largest groups of Open source evangelists, Mozilla Clubs are a global network of community members that share Mozilla’s mission to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. Mozilla provides free training and resources to help clubs succeed and grow digital literacy in community spaces.

Hacker Rank – It is a company that makes a programmer discoverable to corporates ranking them evaluated on their coding skills thus adding value to the companies.

Kolkata Bloggers – It is the largest database of bloggers based in East India. In the last one year they’ve worked with TOI, NASSCOM, US Consulate General Kolkata, Facebook, International Kolkata Book Fair, Kolkata Literature Festival to name a few brands. They’ve conducted workshops in NIT Durgapur, IIT Kharagpur, St. Xaviers College Kolkata and other educational institutions.

Though I don’t fall in the student bracket, I would also be joining Hello Hacker and hope to share my thoughts on Blogging 🙂 Register for Hello Hacker and learn the Art from people who have “Been there, Done that“!!

|In: Blogging|Last Updated: | 0 Comments
Are you losing possible new sales, registrations and subscribers ?
Before you answer that question, answer this one:
Can you remember the last time you updated ‘About Me’ page ? If your answer to this question is anything other than ‘YES’, then you need this guide. Andrew Wise from Wise Startup Blog has a complete about me page guide on what Should be on your page and what Should Not.
Before you read the guide, here’s an actionable tip you can use right now

Build a Call to Action Into Your About Me Page

What’s a call to action?… If you run a blog, then your call to action should be to “subscribe” to your blog. If you are a salesperson, your readers should “call you”. If you have an ecommerce site, then you should promote your “100% satisfaction guarantee”, or whatever your promo is to encourage customers to buy.

You get it. Okay, so now implement this technique and checkout the rest of the guide or just skim the infographic below:

[Source* – Andrew Wise Blog]
If you loved the info-graphic, than you would surely enjoy the ‘Mantras’ shared by Andrew Wise on creating Killer About-Me Page
Note* : Content reproduced with Andrew Wise’s consent

|In: Blogging|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Are bloggers spending more time writing ? Do they write longer or shorter posts? Has publishing frequency changed for the typical blogger ? In an effort to identify the business blog trends of 2015, Orbit Media asked 1074 bloggers 11 questions. Feldman Creative has come up with the blog trends such as writing time, post length and publishing frequency. Below are the trends that have been identified:

  • Blog trend 1 – Bloggers are spending more time on each post
  • Blog trend 2 – Bloggers are going deeper into topics
  • Blog trend 3 – Most bloggers publish weekly or more

For more information, please refer Blog Trends – 2015

|In: Blogging|Last Updated: | 4 Comments

When I started blogging around 10+ years back, the blog was hosted on blog-spot. There was no dependency about tracking utilized web space, down-time etc. since it was all taken care by none other than Google 🙂 But when we finally decided to move from blog-post to self-hosted blog, the critical search for good hosting provider begun. There are ocean of choices when it comes to hosting a website, which makes this search even more difficult.

When we had to narrow down on the choice of hosting company, we evaluated them on the following standard parameters:

Back-end Support is the most under-rated term but that plays a very crucial role in the long-term. If the hosting provider’s website did not have a Toll-Free number or Customer-Care’s email-id mentioned in the header, we did not even consider looking at other factors. It was also very important that hosting provider has “Dedicated Team” for Indian customers.

After committing initial mistakes in selection, this blog was finally hosted on HostGator. Now, we are considering to shift to a new provider – Hosting Raja since it offers a compelling proposition. Today, we have a look at Hosting Raja & how it can be your one-stop shop for web-hosting services 🙂

Bird’s eye view of Hosting Raja

Hosting Raja is a leading and reliable web hosting provider based out of India. It offers economical & sustainable services for web-hosting & domain registration.

It is a decade old-company specialized in web-development with headquarters in Bengaluru. They claim to provide 99.9% up-time which has resulted in 1000’s of satisfied customers.

Though they provide the cheapest hosting plans, their focus is on “Quality” rather than “Quantity”. Hosting Raja promises 30 days unconditional money-back guarantee since it aims to build a customer-focused brand.

Flexible Hosting Plans

Hosting Raja offers various web-hosting services i.e. WordPress hosting, Linux Hosting, Windows Hosting, Magento hosting for e-commerce customers etc. The complete list of their service’s can be found here

Whether you are a blogger or an e-commerce company, Hosting Raja has plans that suit your budget requirements. In fact, the flexibility to seamlessly shift from one plan to another is an added advantage !!

Features included in “Premium Unlimited”, “Premium Gold” & ” “Unlimited” Plans are as follows:

For newbie’s they offer the “Starter Plan” which costs around Rs. 69/month. The “Silver Plan” mainly caters to the Start-up & SME segment which costs around Rs. 99/month. The “Gold Plan” caters to corporate clients which costs around Rs. 29/month.

Reliability  and Customer Support

Hosting Raja offers a guaranteed 99.9% up-time using High Availability or Fail Over environment. Web outage can result in heavy-losses to a company & hence, reliability & continuous up-time plays a pivotal role.

As mentioned earlier, technical support is of prime importance & Hosting Raja provides 24*7 customer support. They are available on toll-free number 1800-258-8000. Customer can also get support via chat. Support is provided in Hindi, English, Tamil, Kannada, Bengali, Telugu & other local languages.

If you do not get immediate support, you also have the flexibility of “Call-Back” where you just leave your number & Hosting Raja customer care team would get back to you.

Special Offers

Hosting Raja provides interesting offers which are hard to resist. Their hosting plans are built to suit the requirements from a small website to a large online store. You can find the complete list of offers here

Closing Comments

Hosting Raja provides range of plans to suit the needs of it’s varied clientele.  They have won Top Pick Web Hosts 2012 & Best Re-seller Hosting 2010 awards for their customer-centric approach.

Whether you are newbie blogger/Startup/corporate, Hosting Raja caters to all your web-hosting requirements!!

|In: Blogging|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Gurgaon based Visual Blogging Platform Bluegape has raised USD 600,000 from ah! Ventures, Rudy Gopalakrishnan of Fidelity & Times Internet. Barclays Capital India has been advising Bluegape & helping in getting connected with right investors. The deal has been closed on ah! Ventures’ equity investment platform, CLUBah Bluegape had earlier raised USD 184,000 in April 2015 from Rudy Gopalakrishnan & ah! Ventures. Bluegape is backed by TLabs and has received a total funding of USD 500,000 [excluding the recent round] till date.

Long form of content is dying in this mobile era where users have a very short attention span. Bluegape is giving users a platform to create and consume content in a visual format. Currently Bluegape has over 15 Million+ unique visitors every month and around 100,000+ posts are getting created on the platform every month.

bluegape-team

Sahil Baghla, Co-Founder & CEO, Bluegape said

Our vision is to make communication of ideas and knowledge very easy. On Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat we are connected to our close group of friends and they are like your private social identity. Bluegape, on the other hand will be your public social identity which is about self-expression with the world. Bluegape will be A Social Profile You Can Be Proud Of.

The startup was founded in August 2011 by Sahil Baghla & Ayush Varshney [Company has pivoted from Merchandise Business to Visual Blogging Platform in January 2015]. Both the founders are IIT-Kanpur alumni.

Ayush Varshney, Co-Founder & CTO added

We will use the money on technology and for expanding our engineering team. The existing investors have lead the round which is a very good sign that we are on the right track.

People are doing amazing stuff at Bluegape like their niche fashion blog, on feminism, on celebrity fan-clubs or Individual bloggers

Abhijeet Kumar, Co-founder of ah! ventures said

In today’s inter-connected, plugged-in world, nothing is more fast-paced than technology. It constantly evolves to meet our ever-increasing need to stay connected. Technology has enabled the world to shrink into a global village where everybody is connected to one another through one platform or the other. Bluegape is a social media disruptor, it’s the black swan. Sahil and Ayush have created the future of social media.

Within a short span, Bluegape has seen traction of over 15 unique million visitors each month and growing, which is the proof of the platform and reflects the dedication of the team in delivering a world class product out of India. CLUB ah! is proud to be associated with Bluegape in its quest to success.

CLUB ah!, an angel network of over 450 investors, including some of the renowned angels and early stage VCs represent the maturity of Indian early stage investment ecosystem. Started in 2012, the CLUB ah! platform boasts of over 2000+ startups, 450+ seed/angel investors and over 60 VC’s & institutional investors. It also has an impact investment network and a mentor network to assist startups in their growth and expansion. Till date CLUB ah! has invested close to USD 6 Million across 15 startups including Bluegape.

Talking about the transaction, Harshad Lahoti, Founder & CEO, ah! ventures said

Some may wonder whether the valuations for some of these new tech companies are exaggerated, but, exaggerated or not, they are reinventing some of the most basic structures of human interaction and for those looking for the next Facebook or LinkedIn, Bluegape is the answer. Social media platforms have a cyclic process, you have to be constantly innovating to stay relevant to the audience.

Bluegape by all virtue is very innovative in its approach and will soon become the new normal. Visual blogging is a new concept and by the traction that we see on the portal, we believe this will be the next big social interactive platform. The Bluegape team has a clear vision to disrupt the existing social interaction landscape. For an investor, the pedigree of the team and idea are critical. In Bluegape, investors can find disruptive growth and a team committed to deliver.

ah! Ventures is in the final stages of closing 2 more deals in the coming weeks.

About Bluegape

Bluegape is world’s first visual blogging platform. The biggest promise of internet was democratization of ideas and knowledge. Everyone has some knowledge or learning to give back. Visual Blogging is a great way to express yourself in this fast moving world of short attention span.

About ah! ventures

ah! Ventures is a startup focused growth catalyst that brings together promising businesses and investors by creating wealth creation opportunities for both. ah!’s unique model serves investors, entrepreneurs and enablers through a unique blend of customized services, skill and industry & domain experience.

About CLUB ah!

CLUB ah! is India’s first full-spectrum startup investment network and platform comprising of over 500 investors, including some of the renowned angels and early-stage VC’s which represent the maturity of Indian early-stage ecosystem. Setup in 2012, the CLUB ah! Platform today has over 2500+ startups, 450+ seed/angel investors and over 60 VC’s & institutional investors. CLUB ah! has till date invested close to INR 36 crores in over 15 startups spread across varied industries and domains.

|In: Blogging|Last Updated:

Has the “Youtube Offline” advertisement caught your attention? But with the improving internet speed & increasing broadband penetration, “Buffering” would sooner/later be history 🙂 With Telecom companies entering into tug-of-war over “Pricing” in order to woo customers, it is definitely happy time for us !!!

This would also mean that in future, customers can view their favorite videos without/with least amount of buffering [contrast to this advertisement :)]. This would definitely give a huge boost to companies or start-ups that provide On-Demand TV.

Few weeks back, we had a meetup with start-up named Lukup that wants to create a dent in the “On Demand TV” market that is still at a very nascent stage in India but the points discussed above could definitely turn out to be a winner for Lukup. It is a video streaming service offering licensed Indian & international content

Today, we do a walk-through of Lukup’s product called Lukup Player which we personally experienced during the “Blogger’s brain-storming” session.

Click on Image to enlarge

DSCN0396

Lukup Player

Lukup Player is a connected device from Bengaluru based start-up Lukup Media that aims to provide India’s first On-Demand TV service. Using the Lukup Player, consumers will also be able to stream content on more than one screen or devices like TV, tablets, phones etc. The best part is that the “Synchronization” is maintained between the connected devices to ensure better viewing experience.

Setting up the Lukup Player was a very easy task. The player supports multiple options for connectivity i.e. Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth that ensures that consumers can view high-quality videos using HDMI input & at the same time, broadcast content using WiFi/Bluetooth.

Features of the Lukup Player

  1. The Lukup Player is easy to set up. Works with your home broadband or WiFi connection.
  2. Personalize your TV experience by creating your profile. You have the option of linking your social network to your profile.
  3. Swipe on the Lukup Player’s touch screen to navigate content on the TV.
  4. Use applications on the Lukup Player to search for content, browse the TV guide and much more.
  5. With the TV guide, choose from a list of on-demand video, audio and broadcast TV channels.

  6. From the context menu for any content title, you can select a screen or device to stream to.
  7. Content is available as pay per view titles or as monthly subscription channels. Subscribe from the context menu.
  8. Stream content to TVs using WiFi and to music systems and headsets using Bluetooth, all at the same time.
  9. Record live TV channels on your unlimited cloud storage drive which starts with 500 GB free storage.
  10. Use the media Storage application to browse and view recorded content anywhere, on any device.

  11. Use the Planning application to view reminders, recording schedules and receive notifications.
  12. Social Integration & Screen synchronization.
  13. Use the Lukup Player as a WiFi hotspot that you can connect your mobile phones, tablets and PC to access the internet.
  14. Play Interactive Games.

Pricing, Variants & Availability

The Lukup player is available in two variants – Lukup player S [without WiFi & multi-screen connectivity] and Lukup Player X [with WiFi & multi-screen]. Lukup Player runs on a 1.7 GHz processor & is loaded with 1 GB of RAM. It has a micro USB port for charging. Lukup Player is exclusively available on Amazon where Lukup Player X is available for Rs. 12,660. As stated in Lukup Player Requirements page:

The Lukup Player requires a single connection to bring TV, interactive content and internet access to homes. A minimum of 2 Mbps for a single screen home and a minimum of 4 Mbps for multi-screen home is recommended.

Instead of using a broadband modem, wireless router and set top box separately, you can just use the Lukup Player that combines all the functions.

Some of the content is package-based, so users can subscribe for fixed amounts each month. There is also a pay-per-view model. We tried playing a couple of movies during the meet-up where Lukup Player X was up for display & we were able to watch HD movies [with some hitches due to WiFi issue at the venue]. Lukup Player X is definitely suited when viewers want to view HD content.

Road Ahead

Piracy is one of the major challenges that is creating a huge challenge for digital media companies. How can we forget that we get the pirated CD/DVD’s being sold openly on roadside(s) the very next day after a movie is released !!! However, Lukup’s Pay Per View [PPV] can provide an answer to curb piracy if it is able to provide digital content at reasonable price !!! As per recent report, Lukup Media is looking to expand its Over-The-Top [OTT] services by acquiring Multi-System Operator [MSO] & Internet Service Provider [ISP] licenses.

Lukup Media has also signed a deal with Widevine for integrating DRM solution. Widevine’s DRM solution provides the capability to license, distribute and protect playback of content on any consumer device. Now Lukup can provide access of protected content to its customers. The content including movies, music and television shows can be accessed to any device even in congested networks [Source – CableQuest]

Lukup Media also encourages developers to use their platform to develop apps for Lukup Player & if you are an Android developer, you should not miss this video.

Closing Thoughts

There has been news that many on-demand media streaming companies have announced to enter India which is the fastest growing market [due to increasing broadband & internet penetration].

Lukup Media has a first-mover advantage & given the interesting features in Lukup Player, it would click with cost-sensitive Indian consumers!!!

[Image Source – Lukup]

[Thanks to Neeva Tiwari from Lukup for the Blogger Invite :)]