A vertical or a line of business (LOB) is general term which often refers to a set of one or more highly related products which service a particular customer transaction or business need.

(from Wikipedia).

So basically, the telecom vertical consists of companies that serve as equipment vendors, tower operators, enterprise data sectors, handset vendors and mobile application providers.

However, at some point, the real potential for telecom omnipresence is going to kick in when the operators look at themselves as horizontals rather than verticals. Like a call centre organization that can provide support to all companies irrespective of which sector they are in. Or an IT company that can provide CRM and ERP implementations that stretches across business sectors like oil and gas, banking or insurance. This is the next phase of telecom growth – Applications and services to assist retail sector by monitoring distribution of goods through location-based services, mobile banking through USSD and secure SMSC’s, media and entertainment sectors through high broadband pipes, etc. An ideal mobile service  should also be able to plug-in to the existing CRM and ERP solutions of the client and provide information of company performance through a mobile interface.
One of my friends was in the sales organization of a large bank. Everyday, he would receive SMS-es at home from his team on their day’s performance. Then he would consolidate that into another SMS to send to his boss. That was crazy ! Why shouldn’t the ERP solutions do that automatically? (one reason, I have to admit, was that they didn’t update the system with their sales dockets till the end of the month, but that’s more a process issue)  Why aren’t mobile solutions pitched as part of the package of an IT implementation project? Why shouldn’t company executives be able to send USSD short codes to receive their company’s performance much like they do to check their prepaid balance? Hell, why shouldn’t my buddy and his team simply update th CRM system directly through an SMS/ USSD or a
I think part of this mindset is because of history where the original growth for telecom operators has always been through retail subscription rather than corporate solutions. Hence, telecom operators tend to look at the people using their services as THEIR SUBSCRIBERS rather than as looking at themselves as a conduit to provide content to other people’s customers. Take the case of Mobile services (before the GPRS, iPhone and the Nokia Ovi store era). If a subscriber wanted to download a wallpaper for their cell phone, they had to do it from the operators’ preferred VAS vendor. This was because operators asked vendors for a drastically unrealistic revenue share to access the OPERATOR’s SUBSCRIBERS. That’s like IBM asking Airtel for a 70% revenue share for allowing Airtel to bill IBM’s subscribers. Wholly unrealistic but effective till date since, it was the equivalent of a situation that these subscribers could be billed only on IBM’s Billing system.
But now, with the advent of handset apps, GPRS and 3G, it’s a matter of time before operators lose complete control of the content flowing through their “pipes”. The only (and the smartest) thing to do is to jump on this bandwagon and follow that natural course of business. Become a horizontal and support every other vertical to grow.

Update: Interesting question on Quora.

Even better, make the distribution model of  gift cards virtual like an e-topup (virtual talktime transfer in telecom businesses) . So instead of a fixed denomination/ count of cards, (say, 1000 $10 cards or 100 $100 cards) a business has a “balance” of $10,000 and can create vouchers for any denomination that they please. Basically, these companies become distributors of Amazon gift cards at no extra cost ! Plus, the businesses increase their chances of retaining customers after any major or minor snafu !

Don’t now whether they already have arrangements like this but this could really help taking on the daily deals markets. Actually, even daily deals businesses could provide similar coupons by turning their business model on their heads. But that, I will come to in another post.

Obviously, I am neither married nor a theoretician. And I’m almost 30. So it makes me an expert on the duck-run-fall to the ground-hands over your head excuses over the hail of hints coming from all around about how it’s about time I got hitched (including explanations about how my sperm count will drop after I turn 30 and how my younger cousins have already found their soul-mates, etc.)

We all need theories to explain the choice we make in life. So here’s another theory beyond I-need-my-independence theory, the no-time-for-this-shit theory and the most famous one-woman-all-my-life?-that’s-scary theory that don’t adequately encourage legal copulation.

From what I understand, there are two types of marriages:

Love marriages: Where the target/acquirer can’t “be” without the significant other in his life and really miss him/her when there’s a physical distance between them. As that famous saying goes “Don’t marry him/her with you want to be with. Marry him/her without whom you can’t be.” Or something like that. Sigh! How romantic !

Arranged marriages: Still in the same vein but a little more desperate (You can see where this is going, can’t you?) You’re lonely in general and so you start “looking out” for the Mr/Ms Right (Mrs. Right is too much of a provocation) and go home-to-home (or even coffee-shop to coffee-shop) meeting eligible soul-mates. And then, you meet the right person and in a complete cacophony of unsynchronized musical instruments, garish lighting and an a rather excessive display of the black money in your account, you “tie the knot” <insert joke about a noose to hang your personal space>

Anyways, so if these two descriptions seems apt, the fundamental basis of a satisfactory marriage is well, loneliness and desperation !

Which is also fine. If we weren’t horny or desperate, the human race would cease to exist. And we would never be exposed to the perennial Internet source of poignant yet subtle humor: “Wanna be fraaaaands?” The problem is society has demanded that this loneliness/ desperation curve then go and intersect another curve also called as “the age curve”. The age curve is an interesting curve whose slope is one year per well….year

What’s a theory without a graph of random, unsubstantiated data ? So here goes:

So typically and ideally, for men, this intersection happens around 28-29 and the gap closes by 29-3o when the “knot is tied” (interestingly, one of theses knots is around the neck ! I wonder if this is supposed to symbolize a noose or something!). But here are the other scenarios:

Now, we have people getting married off at 23-24. That’s like frickin’ pre-mature ejaculation….I mean, you’ve barely enjoyed your frickin’ foreplay (read independence, getting piss drunk at parties, free cash flow to spend on your wasteful habits, biking around, being a general bad(jack)ass) and you’ve already lost the moment.

The perfect moment (apparently) is when the foreplay is done and you both peak at the same time (read – at 30!). At this point, everyone is happy and satisfied and the whole garish scene is applauded.

Then you have people like me. Everyone is fidgeting, twiddling their thumbs, humming and hawing and basically going “It’s about time you came, didn’t you?”

The problem we face, indeed is the third scenario. People who enjoy their lives just as-is (let’s be honest, the ratios of ups-to-downs are lower in a relationship than sex). People who relish their independence and making random plans without being asked “You actually plan to go out without me? (Downer!). People who like to travel on a moment’s notice and enjoy that independence for months at a time. People who don’t like to give status updates every 1 hour which have to include “I miss you” or hear “Let’s plan something special tonight. I will make aloo parathas” or even the dreaded “And what else?”. More specifically, from the graph, when the HOD point does not intersect with the point when you get married. From there, it’s pretty much downhill. It’s like trying to shove a limp dick down the chute. You don’t wanna but you have to. And yeah, the whole low sperm count thing as well. That’s why you see a lot of people doing pretty interesting/ successful things getting married a little late (Or in the case of Hugh Hefner, on a regular basis). They are pretty obsessed about what they are doing (They called nymphos when that obsession is around sex) and basically, prefer settling down with their project and doing their partner on the side rather than settling down with their partner and doing the project on the side.

The point is this: People WILL and should be allowed to get married at different points in their life depending on their HOD (wow….Just realized, HOD = Head of Department makes this theorem very nasty…but please ignore that !) The wrong intersection of HOD and marriage may lead to a ridiculous amount of coochie-cooing and general embarrassing shit resulting in the guy wondering, later in his life, what he missed out on or well, a ridiculously low amount of coochie-cooing and general embarrassing shit resulting in the guy knowing exactly what he missed out on.

P.S. – This post, as can be inferred, is borne out of an immense frustration about people in general, mom and granny in particular, making too many comments about impending nuptials not too far in the future. If any of the above offends you, AWESOME ! That alone would be salve on this wound !

An idiot, a loser and what a dolt
Giving someone the power to destroy you
Convinced they won’t
But here lies my sanity
Part of your tombstone,
With a sanctimonious God
Reading this cold tome

This is just a moment
Of a depressed mind
Till I get up
From this faceless crime
Brush off the dust
Get on my beat
And chase my dreams
Like a bitch in heat
Excuse this shit
It’s not for the hall of fame
All it’s supposed to be
Is a paean to pain

=============================================================================

It was that time of the night that leads one day into another. It was dark and it was evil. But he hit the streets anyways. He was exhausted. The past two years had drawn him into nightmares that he could not get up from, making reality his bane and the nights his personal torturer. He could not sleep….. not with the venom that flowed through his viens. Not with this madness that was doing its thing with his brains. But tonight…….Tonight, he would hunt it down. He knew not where and he knew not what. But he felt it …. at the pit of his stomach…. the feeling that all that he could never comprehend would become clear.

The first stop was the HQ. The HQ. A stone throw away from the Regal Cinema. The place was a smoke filled chamber. You could barely make out silhouttes through the thick fogs of cocaine. All that could be heard were the screams of cheap women and the chanting of madmen. Then why here ? He did not know. He just felt it. The first step in and he felt the wind go out of his lungs. The pain was stifling. His lungs refusing to respond to his will. His head hurt as images swirled through it screaming and begging to be recognized. It was here. He knew it. The pain increased with every step he took and he gasped and wheezed as he tried to inhale the precious oxygen left in the suffocating smoke. The pain finally receded into numbness as he approached the bar. The bartender looked at him and said “Good evening sir. It’s been a long time”. “Yes. It has” the reply was short to discourage any further bantering. He took his usual tequila shot with the lick of lime and salt.
“So anything going on here nowadays?”
“Not really, sir. It’s the usual crowd and the same old things”.
He ordered another shot. Damn! What was it that kept hurting him ? Drawing him to the edge of his sanity. The drink over, he slammed the cash on the table and left. The numbness left him no track to continue on. The trail was cold here. Maybe, “it” left too.

The next stop was the Mikanos. It was another of the city’s famous nighspots. It was one of the very few discotheques that played faithfully to its trance music followers. It had been, at a time, his favorite haunt. He hadn’t returned since…….. It hit him again. The same gut-wrencing pull. His lungs. His guts. His mind. They all seemed to collapse into one big mass of agony. But no one around him saw it. Not that he would let them anyway. He tried to control his senses as people grooved to the music through the sound systems. The sound systems that made Mikanos proud. Or they were just under the control of the new variants of Extacy. Mikanos was famous for that too.
“Yo ! You want the colours of the night, man ? They make you go wild! “
The person looked familiar. The same shady glasses, the pierced lips and the dark overcoat… Was this the same person whom he had bought the stash from the last time? The last time since….
“Yo! You wanna trip or not? I could be good for a coupla hundred on the line man”.
“Do I know ya from somewhere?”
“Jeez man ! You’re a cop or something man? Fuck you. I’m outta here” and the deal was off

It was all for the better. He had been desperate to take anything to get rid of his agony. The agony that was his only hope of tracking down what he seeked. Now, all he wanted was out. Out of this pain. Out of this murderous throbbing that seemed to hit him at every part of his body. To go back to his room and sleep. Where he would probably be haunted and tormented all over again. He shook his head. The only way out of this mess was to go through it. The music tormented him. The sights. The sounds. The lights. It went on. The hammering at his stomach. His blood seeming to coagulate with his every move. He looked around but the laser lights showed him nothing.. .nothing to latch onto…nothing to believe that yes! this was what he was searching for. He was staggering…and had nothing to hold onto….his every move had to be carefully executed else he would fall…..and that was something that seldom happened to him……slowly, he moved to the exit. What was in had to surely come out. And when it did, he would catch it. And slowly twist the life out of it as it did to him. He came out trying to catch his breath.

He staggered off to the loo. For some reason, the feeling was getting worse and worse. He zipped up and went over to the basin to wash his face and hands. And he crumpled. Crashing down to the floor like a nine-pin. He crawled on the floor trying to catch his breath. With a claw-like grip, he scrambled and struggled, using the basin as a support to raise himself. And he saw it. The love. The pain. The agony. The laughter. The tears. The care and the past. THE MEMORIES . THE PERSON. His eyes never left that of the person staring at him. Through the mirror. He realized what he was looking for. And knew he would never find it again.

Credit: unwiredview.com

Ok people ! Long time since my last brain dump !

So currently I’m in Kenya and had gone a couple of weekends back to Watamu Bay. Interestingly, of the five of us, one was the Usage and Retention Head of one of my client’s competitors and the other was one of their VAS vendor employees. As all of my discussions with people from the telecom industry, the conversation veered into the business and more specifically, mobile money. Basically, from what I understood was that Safricom’s complete domination in Kenya was because of the death-grip that its mobile money product m-Pesa had on that market. First of all, Kenya is a market that all mobile-money companies salivate of competing in, given the huge uptake in this market. Add the phenomenal domination, it indeed makes it a hard market to crack (However, I understand Airtel’s low cost strategy has exploded ever since MNP has come into picture there, at the expense of Safricom predominantly).

So obviously, my slightly-sloshed brain started trying to figure out how to overcome this thing. And here was what I came up with:

1. Come up with an offer that for all subscribers migrating from Safricom’s services to yours, their entire m-Pesa balance would be substituted with your mobile money currency without any additional services.
2. State that in case of any purchases made for which m-Pesa was acceptable, your mobile money will be acceptable as well

The way it would work in the backend would be as follows:

At the point of customer acquisition

1. You would have a parallel m-Pesa account for your organization (say Yu, for example).
2. When the customer was acquired, their m-Pesa balance was transferred to your m-Pesa account and then an equivalent amount of m-currency would be transferred to their new accounts (Yu money)

At the time of purchase

1. The customer would transfer Yu money from his account to your Yu account
2. You would transfer a similar amount from your m-Pesa account to the merchant’s m-Pesa account. Yu would charge the same rate (or slightly higher if all other tariffs are competitive) to the subscriber as m-Pesa would charge you.

The main disadvantages are:

1. The initial amount they transfer has to be written off since that is entirely going into Safricom’s pocket since the credit against cash was done before the customer migrated. This can be handled by ensuring a maximum limit upto which migrating customers can match balances.
2. Most probably, the transaction will be a no-profit, no-loss scenario in case the transaction charges as per Yu match the subscriber charges that m-Pesa imposes

But the advantages?

1. Customer acquisition increasing voice, SMS, VAS and GPRS and all other sources of revenues
2. The entire transaction charges are earned as revenue in case the subscriber makes a purchase where Yu Money is accepted (obviously, Yu money will probably have to charge less to be the m-money provider of choice)
3. It’s a stop-gap arrangement that can last while Yu salesmen go out and get more and more merchants to accept their payments system. They would even have a more-or-less ready-made list of merchants since they would have the list of accounts they would be transferring payments to as part of the proposed plan

But now, that I think of it, this could even work for a third-party provider (something like a forex counter in a bank). You actually you use the app as follows:

1. Map your account on app installation
2. When you make a purchase, choose the service provider to whom you need to transfer the money to (e.g. M-Pesa, Yu money, Airtel money, etc.)
3. Enter the mobile number for the transfer.
4. Accept the transactional charges for the service.
5. Done !

Obviously, this would really really work well for a third party service provider if the mobile money market was well fragmented. Mainly because a third-party vendor would charge a higher transaction rate than if it was an intra-service provider money transfer say, Airtel Money to Airtel Money. And so, if the entire m-payment system was dominated in by one operator, say Airtel Money, it would completely lock out the third party provider. Maybe, in Kenya, it’s slightly difficult given m-Pesa’s domination. But what about a country like India? Where a Vodafone subscriber can make a purchase from an Airtel customer (the merchant in this scenario). Possible? What about an Airtel user in India comes to Kenya and makes a purchase from a m-Pesa customer ?

Obviously, there are some kinks on the pricing part. You would need a transaction charge for each permutation of transfer. Further, in what I think is an extremely unlikely scenario, what if the operators allowed cross-network transactions? That makes the entire business unlikely. Thirdly, could there be any legal issues? That was the biggest opposition in this discussion but no one could actually come up with a valid legal point. Then again, none of us were legal experts. There is only one BIG way that say someone like m-Pesa can nullify this idea. That is with slab charging i.e. for less than a million dollars worth of transactions charge KSH X. If it is more than a million dollars worth of transactions, charge KSH Y (which is more than X). Even that can be bypassed by increasing the number of m-pesa accounts you have. Actually, that would in fact hit Safricom since that would crash their ARPUs (Imagine MSISDNs doing nothing but mobile money transactions and from which there are no voice, SMS or any other kind of revenues. I don’t know for sure but maybe, even virtual SIM cards can overcome that obstacle….

What say ?

Anyways, that’s a long personal update. Now, I guess most of my friends know I’m ambivalent about religion. Really, I stand right between the atheists and the religious fanatics along the stark line of “Really people? So jobless?”.

But I love mythology. I love the stories, the characters, the morals and most importantly, the colour. But I never thought about its interpretation. I never thought of stories of Ram, Krishna, Jesus, Zeus and Hercules as an interpretation of the way people of that time actually viewed and understood culture and society. So God forbid, I definitely didn’t think about kings and management (though I still have an unread copy of Arthashastra lying in my book cupboard).

Then I saw this really interesting talk by Devdutt Patnaik (You gotta love his title – Chief Belief Officer, Future Group) at TED India

Interestingly, then CNBC TV 18 started this show called Business Sutra which was hosted by the extremely smart and the extremely cute  and the extremely classy (Yeah ! You could say she was the reason I started watching the show – huge crush ) Menaka Doshi. As usual, I ended up missing every single episode on TV but I just recently stumbled across them on Youtube. They are pretty interesting episodes. And if you don’t really get the first one or two episodes, should definitely check out the third episode onwards. I love the fact that he says that everything is based on context and how he contrasts the Western way of doing business (and thinking) with the Indian mentality. In fact, he really reminds me a lot of the speech that Kishore Biyani gave at our B-school as well. Obviously, I don’t agree with it all or that everything they talk about is extremely idealistic but nevertheless, a different perspective.

And the best part ? Menaka really pushes this discussion forward really intelligently, including debating several points with him rather than just corroborating what he says….pretty smart ! (This statement may be biased because of aforementioned statement – hey, it’s not all emotional … she also broke the Ambani spat story, so yeah! She’s smart) Makes for pretty interesting watching even if you don’t completely subscribe to it.

Start here:

Ones I found interesting:

Disclaimer: Yeah, yeah I know ! It’s mainly Hindu philosophy.

Fave statement:

“The western world is obsessed with standardization but hamaara kya – swaadanusaar hai”…his response for context about why you can’t even compare the Ramayana and the Mahabharata

Credit: Artmagick

Hilarious ! From the incomparable McSweeney’s

OK, it makes sense only if you have read the original poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (all ICSE students did!)

In Xanadu Did Kubla Khan a Stately PowerPoint Decree.
BY Mike Lacher

- – - -

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately PowerPoint decree:
For VP of Logistics, Stan
And key stakeholders of the plan
For scaling in Q3.

So ninety slides so media-rich
With animations on every switch.
And here were slides rife with sinuous clip art
Where blossomed many a stick figure with a key;
And here a line, pie, scatter, and bar chart,
Enfolding watermarked stock photography.
But oh! that massive romantic flowchart which raked
Down multiple slides athwart notes of automation!
A savage place! as convoluted and opaque
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By a manager wailing for best practices for escalation!

And from this flowchart, with ceaseless sound effects blasting,
As if the typewriter noises were everlasting,
Mighty WordArt momently was star-wiped;
And in faux-3D metallic letters was typed
Huge statements of “scale” and “ROI”
And colorful encouragements to “reach for the sky!”
And ‘mid these dynamic calls-to-action
Came a Family Circus cartoon with relevant caption.
Five questions marks with a blinds-in animation
Representing the questions the audience surely had
Then reached the answer to make them glad
That what they need is team-based innovation
And ‘mid this slide came to Kubla’s attention
Ancestral voices prophesying higher rates of client retention!

The shadow of the PowerPoint slides
Floated across the conference call
Where was heard the muffled asides
From Denver and St. Paul
It was a miracle of device,
A PowerPoint with graphics so nice!
A damsel with a laser pointer
In a vision once I saw:
It was a Senior Logistics Strategist,
And with her pointer she never missed,
Highlighting key takeaways.
Could I revive within me
Her slick presentation,
To such a deep delight ‘twould win me
That with slides and presenter notations,
I would build that PowerPoint in air,
That sunny deck! Those slides so fine!
And all who heard should see him there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His swirling text, his Aeron chair!
Snap your laptop at its joint,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of PowerPoint.

I guess brands and products are not just about delight and positive surprise. It’s about a sense of comfort in the consistency . Something like this.

I remember something that went like this:

Sex is like air…it’s not important unless you’re not getting any.

I guess that’s the nirvana for all brands