The news of Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba entering the Indian online retail market has been raising many eyebrows and interests. The company is expected to launch Tmall, its business-to-consumer website, in India in the coming 6 months. Alibaba already has investments in Indian ecommerce firms Paytm and Snapdeal. It is the largest shareholder of Paytm’s parent company One97 Communications, with an investment of USD 680mn. Reportedly, the Paytm marketplace will be transformed into Tmall. Eyeing an opportunity in Alibaba’s Indian debut is India-based conglomerate Future Group, which runs retail chains like Big Bazaar, Food Bazaar, Central et cetera. Future Group recently bought space on Paytm’s website to sell Big Bazaar products, under a partnership signed by the duo.
Future Group is expected to be one of the major retailers on the Tmall site. The company earlier had an exclusive selling contract with US-based ecommerce firm Amazon.com. The deal came to an end following disagreements over payments and discounts. However, the much anticipated alliance between Future Group and Alibaba may have to face difficulties since India has not yet showed a green signal to foreign investors wanting to invest in inventory model businesses. The Indian ecommerce market is one of the fastest growing markets in the world. It is expected to grow from USD 11bn in 2013 to USD 137bn by 2020. This growth will be further accelerated by Alibaba’s entry. Competition between the current market leader Amazon and Alibaba will place Indian ecommerce into a new phase. Amazon recently made announcements of investing USD 3bn in the Indian market. According to Paytm’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Vijay Shekhar Sharma, within a year, India will see Alibaba and Amazon, both foreign players, dominating its ecommerce industry. Finally...it looks like Google has somebody to compete in the online advertising platform. Facebook (FB) alike all activities of the social media world is taking over as a video giant too. That’s some bad news for the former as most of its revenues currently flow in from the ad-sense part. The fresh numbers in the online ad world is out and the numbers just don’t seem to stop rising high for Facebook. According to the latest research findings from the online advertising segment of videos; Facebook today gets around 4 billion views on a daily basis, this is calculated to be higher by 4 times than what it was in the bygone year. Great News for Online Publishers too: It is happening at last, a sort of monopolized holding of the online advertising business is slipping out from Google as Facebook is turning things stronger for itself. Online publishing companies like Buzzfeed, Mic and others have experienced the change within a short span of things. During the initial stage in April 2015; Buzzfeed had around 500 million video views coming from Facebook alone. Similarly, Mic with its collection of 8 videos saw a massive viewership of around 33 million within a period of 2 months. Looks like FB is turning a natural choice for advertisers: According to the research studies, FB is turning as a better, more effective medium for online advertisers. It is found to be running for the #1 spot in the video campaigning activity and is more likely to overtake YOUTUBE in the coming years. 87% of the media executives asked in the US said that they were soon planning to campaign through a video on Facebook by the end of this year. This percentage is 24 times higher than what it was in the last year. Dispirit the numbers it shouldn’t be forgotten that Google still holds the mantle in the online advertising business. This is because it has a strong well-established revenue base with the all important copyright policy which is stronger than all the online media platforms. Although the fact that marketers from around the globe looking to publish their business through video advertising cannot be sidelined and the growing trends indicate revenue hike for Facebook as a video advertising medium which is happening slowly but steady for sure. Recent research studies have indicated that 81% of the startups (small and medium businesses) SMBs regularly have their presence on social platforms in order to grow in their respective business industries. Findings further spill that 94% of these business units using social media do so for the marketing purposes. Apart from this, the study carried by world’s largest professional socializing platform “LinkedIn” has also calculated the growth percentages of ‘hyper growth’ companies. These are concerns that express a notable raise in their profits on a constant year on year basis. Of the hyper growth companies using social media platforms; 91% use social media for creating general awareness about their brand all around and whereas, 82% of these companies found fresh leads hence growing their business constantly. Social media platforms have seriously raised the standards of new found companies as one third of such concerns have at least doubled their spending for activities on social media. This is very encouraging news for social media platforms as they are certain to capture massive database regarding latest trendy businesses. Social platforms provide utmost value to the new small and medium business units as it is too hard for them to market their brand, win clients and retain them for a longer period. However, they are able to complete this process with effective social media assistance. Going by the shares, Facebook seems to top the chart with 25 million businesses having their active pages on the social platform and more than 1 million advertisers. Twitter for its part in its attempt to reach for smaller advertisers has expanded its self-promotional platform in Canada, Ireland and UK. LinkedIn had recently contracted with a renowned market research firm in order to survey the results. Not all who surveyed from the 998 SMBs used the professional platform on the Internet. It is essential to know the yardsticks for businesses: companies having revenues between $1 million and $9.9 million are segmented under as “small businesses” category and those posting revenues from $10 million and $49.9 million are termed as “medium businesses”. According to reputed research firm survey in recruitment industry 93% of the total 1,855 surveyed hiring in the year 2014 was done using the social media platforms. Hence, power of social media in the hiring industry is established, companies irrespective of their industrial backgrounds are utilizing these platforms as it simple and have a direct reach. Moreover, experts in the human resource industry all over the globe admit that hiring through social media improves the candidate quality by 44% as compared to the traditional recruiting process. The old style hiring techniques includes telephone screening and filtering resumes on the bases of the skills and experience mentioned on the CVs. Placements through social media platforms not only indicate the professional side of the candidate but it also provides an idea about the culture fit and the lifestyle which is handy in employee engagement and retention rates. Global trends shaping up the recruitment industry in 2015 Let us now glance through few points on how recruiters can use social media platforms for perfect candidate selection Know the potential candidate’s lifestyle and cultural fit: Social media profiles provide information that is more important and uncommon. It enables recruiters to judge the person’s personal life, friend circle and the activities s/he likes when they are not working. All of this is not possible while using the traditional hiring techniques as they only provide limited exposure. At times of an on the edge case, the recruiters jump on to LinkedIn.com world’s largest professional networking platform. This scrutiny enables them to make up a decision by going through the profile and knowing how well-versed involved is the person into the related industry. LinkedIn is the first and the most cross-checked social networking site for hiring purpose followed by Facebook and Twitter. Utilize social media platforms to put through your business values and motto: In order to have a popular branded company it is first important to build a well-known powerful social identity in the social platforms. The modern method of socially connecting to the potential workforce allows companies to talk through their business nature and the values they follow in their field. This not only helps companies to create a good image in the business competitive world but also enhances the jobseekers knowledge about the job market and the ways companies go through their hiring processes. Have a direct approach to the candidate: Human resource experts still feel that hiring departments of several companies are using the social media platforms in a very primary manner. Today most of the companies have their personalized pages on social websites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, regular news about developments happening in the business is reported on these pages along with the workforce requirements. HR personals of these companies (mainly IT firms) complete the recruitment process just by posting the requirements as a tweet or Facebook feed. However, the involvements of job portals is seen as an effective factor as these also market the job positions on social pages in order to avail an optimal reach. Hence, social media platforms today have proved to be handy for both jobseekers and employers. Products like Baby and Pregnancy monitors, heartbeat indicators and 3D trackers will be a success. With the days of IOT (Internet of Things) shining brighter every technology is upgraded and reintroduced as a body wearable. Initially, it started with Google’s wearable Glasses which quite surprising ended as a blender for the company. Today, Smartwatches are the talk around the tech world and every technology company is coming out with its product at a very competitive price tag. Hence, one can declare that we are the generation that first got introduced to the wearable technology. If the developments are to be considered, techies truly believe that all of these are just a beginning stroke of a massive wearable industry that is yet to mushroom. Going a step forward, there are something called SMART CLOTHING and BODY SENSORS which are projected to be the ‘everything of wearable industry’ in the coming years. E-textiles of worth around $26 million are estimated to be in use by the end of 2016 according to a survey report by Garner. It also projects that 50% of the buyers considering a purchase of smart wristband will switch and go for a smartwatch. In fact, the segment of smart clothing and body sensors isn’t naive as sports people and health freaks have been using sensor laden sportswear, tees, shorts and wristbands for a while now, it’s just that the market for these smart products is about to expand worldwide. The shipment of tech embedded garments was around 1, 40, 000 units in 2013, the same is estimated to have leap touching 10.2 million units by the finish of 2020. Both smart garments and body sensors are set to be the ultimate piece of computer that anybody would wear in order to get an array of stuffs. The body sensor gadgets will have a mild business of around 1.7 million until 2017 but will witness a leap and go beyond 3.1 billion by the end of 2020. There are several research studies that address the smart wearables market especially the embedded garments and body sensors by segregating them into different application markets, devices through which they will be utilized, world regions in which they will be used and the proportion in which they will be used. The basic motto of developers is to blend fashion with technologies and create a new age of wearables wherein smart clothing ranges and body fitting sensors will lead the way within the following half a decade. “DOES MY COMPANY REQUIRE A BLOG PAGE?” this is standard question asked by most of the business people running big or small enterprises. With all the experience in the social media marketing profile any expert would straight away post a YES for the question. Posting constant blogs related to the business industry is the best investment of time and energy that is possible. It is the best way through which one can market the business. Moreover, as per the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) rules; regular content posting will help in improving the website ranking on the search result page give rise to brand awareness and drive traffic to the otherwise mild website. There are several case studies about renowned brands getting to the apex of the game that prove as a support for the prediction. Hence, every business irrespective of business nature, size and investment need to have and update their BLOG PAGE for better, FASTER results. When is the right time to start? There’s no better time than NOW, if you haven’t been blogging your business content start with it right away. It comes up to almost nothing as an effort when compared to the tedious meetings and the massive capital that you put into the business. By dedicating a day or two weekly you can post important developments from within your industry and relate it to your company. This kind of posting on the blog page has serious benefits which may not be witnessed immediately but is surely a long term advantage. What to blog about? (Popular Question) Actually the possibilities are endless. Be aware to cover-up all of your industry news (big or small), talk about them, express your views and ask for opinions too. You can also form a group and discuss the subjects to be written on. Surfing through the net, visiting competitor’s blog pages can help in framing topics for the blogs; but remember to put forth a unique form of content that sounds high quality and natural that talks your mind. Be careful and use the blog space in the most productive manner possible. A professionally written blog can do many good things for the business as it speaks up about your company and its works the other way round if the quality is not at par or the blog posting is done on an irregular basis. Hence, the editorial team in the company needs to sit down and chalk out plans well in advance for a smooth effective flow of content. Therefore, plan a blog section on your website and start bombarding the write-ups on a routine manner to lift up your business and be a frontier in the industry. More than 5.5k healthcare and fitness apps available globally Healthcare industry has been constantly assisted to develop by the involvement of technology. With the passage of time there have been tremendous developments in the healthcare products and services-medicines which were once cited as rare and impossible are in current available at a click of the mouse. Above all with the evolution of Internet and its availability on mobile phones, the world has become a tiny place to live in. all of us must have heard about online applications and must also be utilizing them. Healthcare sector too has the facility of such applications which help their users to keep a complete check on the health records. There are more than 5.5 thousand apps which belong to the healthcare sector alone. So, it is needless to mention that one can have all details of a human body and its working using these highly advanced applications spelling out different information of the body in real time. - Market Research Results on Mobile Healthcare Apps: Using smartphones has made many things possible which were once seen as tedious, similarly keeping track of one’s health was also a tough task as the person needed to visit a doctor, go through time consuming and stressful processes (health check-ups) all this can be altered now by utilizing applications from the mobile phones. Within a matter of minutes you can know anything that is going wrong in your body. According to a market research, by 2015 end there will be about 500million users of these mobile healthcare applications from all over the globe. US stand as the largest user of these apps as it is amongst the ones using these applications since their initial stages. A record indicates that around 2010 there were about 9-10% of the country’s population using these fitness and healthcare apps on smartphones. There are top IT companies indulged into the creation and provision of these useful apps enabling wellbeing of billions in all corner of the world. Details are out that this phase is just the start for the industry, both the service providers and customers are well aware of the fact that a big portion of the future for healthcare includes smartphones too. Though the expectations are high, the mHealth on smartphones is still nascent; it already covers a whopping $718 million business. This figure is too small as compared to the $7 trillion global healthcare industry; it very well indicates the exponential enhancement that it is getting ready for. - Future Numbers for mHealthcare Apps Most research sources on the subject talk of the industry reaching a mammoth $400 billion mark by 2016 end. Whereas on the other hand; there is a sensible argument against the presumption. It is only left to time to show if the mobile application industry for healthcare attends the whopping revenue benchmark. Good Leaders are not the ones who tell, they are the ones who DO-this is often heard around when the discussion is wandering around GOOD LEADERSHIP. In Henry Ford’s words, a good leader is the one “who finds remedies rather than talking of the faults.” The present day is the time of technologies, speed and latest innovations. Something new is coming up every day and thus the trends which was a success yesterday is not that important today. Therefore, employees need to learn on a daily basis and inculcate the learning process without a halt. However, a serious problem that the business world is facing right at this moment is the scarcity of leaders. People with qualifications are in plenty but the ones who have the leadership qualities (or the abilities to learn them quick) are countable. So, refer some leadership study to know what does it take to become a leader? What are the things which past great leaders had that are special. The ones who tell that leaders are born are lying; there are some extra special aspects of life which will need to focus upon to turn into a watch able leader (in whatever you do). For simplified understanding, I have jotted down these into 5 sections. Hence, let’s scan through the 5 FAB QUALITITES OF LEADERSHIP and try imbibing them. Accept RESPONSIBILTIES (yours and others too): The first quality you need to adapt is to accept your responsibilities. You are answerable for each of your actions and also for those whom you lead. Accountability is the close synonym for leadership in the professional world. You just can’t jump the gun at times of crises or allot the tough tasks to the team, you need to get into the details of everything and plan out a strategy. Taking onus as a leader is also helping the confidence of the team members and in turn there can be an outcome which is above all expectations. Stay HUNGRY…always: Wisdom is fuel for any leader, always stay hungry to learn new things. As a good leader you must be always ready for inputs and suggestions. Keeping the work/process simplified is the best way to go about. See that you always stay informed about things. Also remember that though you are the leader, you need not be the core driving force of the entire ship; there must be (will be) other associates who would do an equally fair job; learn to assist them when required. As a leader you also need to constantly upgrading your networks so as to fall back on the resources whenever the conditions demand. Respond with Courage: A leader needs to be courageous-their thought process requires being bigger and unlike what the rest of the world thinks. You mustn’t be afraid of taking the path that is usually avoided by others; risk is always a part of leading something. There is always scope for trial and error basis; however appropriate planning and timely actions most often saves the day for leaders as there are glorious outcomes. You should keep one thing in mind- not everyone is a leader and a leader is never like the rest. Be Positive, ALWAYS LOOK FOR THE BEST: Maintaining a positive attitude is always a MUST for any leader. As an initiator, you should always look to create opportunities rather than to wait for them to happen. Whatever the situation maybe; as a leader you should most often see the greener side and continue to encourage the team members. This “NEVER GIVE-UP” attitude is a strong booster for all the participants in the group. Never get BOSSY: The world has very well understood that an autocratic method of doing things is history now. Therefore, ordering is not going to work in fact, it will only result in ego clashes and get things on the wrong side. There is an open door policy which is popularly adapted in all sectors irrespective of the size of the organization. There are several processes to supervise employee performances using which heads of the department and the controlling chief come to a performance appraisal conclusion. Hence alike everything on earth leadership qualities too require a revamping according to the changing time frame and the leaders adapting these changes continue to stay at their helm for a longer duration. Amazon.in has announced its newest online platform “Kirana Now”, which will be its express delivery service with the help of partnering the local grocers all over India and getting them listed online. This project in fact is a long period planning one which was in pipeline for a while; the first reports regarding the idea surfaced in January this year and now things seem to be moving at a greater pace. The platform is first planned to be started on a trial basis in Bangalore and then it will spread to other regions of the country within regular time intervals. The core idea of the company behind working on something like this is indicated to provide maximum convenience to customers even as they are shopping for their daily requirements. This system of online ordering for groceries using their computers, tabs and mobile phones will save them loads of time and energy as they do not have to plan their grocery buying schedules separately. What’s KIRANA NOW? Kirana Now is an Indian initiative as to bring in the most local online grocery market and get even the smallest vendor listed. Through this, the local baniyas (Indian term for grocers) can upload their catalogs online and receive the order thereby. The orders placed will be delivered within an hour or two as it will be the nearest grocery shop and the delivery process will be taken care largely by Amazon.in with assistance from the vendor and third-party logistic support. However, the idea of taking grocery shopping online is not an original thought by Amazon as the Indian grocery industry has certain players already who have a notable turnover on the same path. Thus, the e-commerce giant is trying to enter an industry which is already in function yet it will try and bring some innovation in order to snatch the market share. Grofer and Big Basket are two major names under this business category. It also consists of smaller names like Zopnow.com, Shopveg, Freshndaily and a few more. The Junglee idea worked like crazy: Amazon’s Junglee.com started as a price comparison website for several products but soon it also entered into offering listing space to small office spaces sellers in a total of seven cities in India. This listing service in the real estate space worked extremely well as it has earned record breaking sign-ups. Jeff Bezo’s plan to turn even the smallest business category online was quite clear during his recent visit to India where he met and supported Mr. Narendra Modi’s dream of digital India. No wonder, the declaration of a whopping $2 billion by the Amazon boss is coming alive. |