Geo Marketing : Relevance in today's world!

I have a problem. I want to create a furniture shop in Delhi. Delhi is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest metropolis by population in India. It has more than 12.25 million inhabitants and 15.9 million residents in the National Capital Region.

Where should I choose the location of my shop ? Which location will be least distance from the supplier's office ? Where could I get enough customers to buy furnitures from me ? Do they have the purchasing power to buy expensive furniture ? Are people willing to travel large distance for buying furniture ? Are the surrounding shops selling same stuff ? Will it be better if I plan my shop near newly constructed societies/homes ?

Answering these questions will involve lots of research work. Collection of customer related data involving demographic and socio-economic details is required. Maybe, it can involve going door-to-door to survey residents and hope they answer correctly. It will involve time and hence will be an expensive proposition. Suppose, I get the results with me. Now what ? I have the analysis in the tabular format. What if, I change it into visual expression. Yes, I create a digital map of Delhi and superimpose the customer data. I get the type of purchasing patterns, the region-wise distribution of customers over the map. Hence, I can easily make out the regions in Delhi where customers are spending most on furniture over the years. Of course, use of software and important details like location of customer drives the results. Over the digital map, I can approximate the street location which can be the most 'valueable' for me.

This was a case of application of Geo-Marketing to the catchment area identification, proper demographic analysis and socio-economic analysis. As a general term, Geomarketing is the integration of Geographical intelligence into all marketing aspects including sales and distribution. See telecom industry, where players are constantly reducing their margins to retain customers. How can they earn profits with decreasing ARPUs (Average Revenue per User)? Certainly, they bank on Value Added Services which can be different for each circles of their operations. Players present in the South, need to analyze customer data accordingly and relate to the local connect to increase belongingness. They can use Geo-marketing methods to filter their customers, create optimized promotional campaigns and save redundant costs.

Cycle again; with a difference

Sach is Life !!!!

Indian media is now a days flooded with the endless memoirs on sachin and his journey through the 20 Yrs in the international cricket. So, much has been written, that people are now struggling to find words to write about him. But in the millions of words printed and read, the phenomena called Sachin Tendulkar is yet to be covered holistically.
Growing up in an era which fortunately coincided with the evolution of sachin from a child prodigy to the player carrying hopes of billions of people. Never a single human has carried so much expectations on his shoulders. Although a very mediocre player, i was a cricket enthusiast from beginning ( Helped form the fact that my dad is also a big fan..). Childhood memories are still fresh with the moments where sachin . almost unknowingly entered in our lives

Here i want to share some of such moments in my life related to the “God of Cricket”
1. Burgulars in House : It was one of my very fond moment of sachin tendulkar. Being a middle class family we used to live in a rented house. It was India’s Tour to New-Zealand, new cable connection and match start at 2:30 Am in morning. So, one fine night me and dad was watching a match in a clod north Indian morning, when the guy called sachin tendulkar start smashing bowlers all around the park as he might be swatting away mosquitoes. Me, being a child cant help my emotions but the surprising part was that dad was also shouting at the top of his voice. Mummy, as accustomed, put pillow over ears and tried to sleep. Next morning the landlord aunty ask my mom “ Bhabhijee kal aapke ghar mein chor aa gaye the kya.. subah subah bahut halla ho raha tha.... hearing this mummy laughed and laughed because now
she knows who were the burgulars !!!

2. Speech in the school: We have some crazy house systems in my school. So, it was my turn to conduct the assembly in the coming week. I have to give an opening speech and i was woefully nervous !!.. A day before assembly , sachin blasted an Australian attack for back to back hundreds in desert , and the next day i produced the story by including the elements of determination and talent. That was my best assembly ever , with people clapping at the end of the speech, and i was silently thanking to sachin to save my soul.

3. Boy goes missing : 137 made in the second test in Chennai against Pakistan, was one of the most painful moment in my life. I was following the match from the beginning. Lost hopes about india winning during the stary of the day, got dumstruck by the batting prowess of a genius and felt helpless as hell, to see 3 lower order players wasting a gem of the innings. I was so frustrated, that i took my bicycle and went to a nearby park, and started crying. I cried for about 2hours ( albeit in breaks..). When i reached back in my colony, 2-3 boys told that my parents are worries and looking for me, where the boy had gone missing. Aah ! those were not the days of mobile phones and internets ....

4. “sachin hai kya” : This is the most repeated line i have heard in all these years watching cricket. Everytime when india is batting and you tell someone score , this is the inevitable question. Even if india are 8 wickets down still people will ask this question. As they are assured by jawans protecting the border, they tend to feel comfortable while sachin is guarding crease. In a country of so dissimilarities, he keeps all of us unite in happiness, grief and prayers. With all the vagaries of caste, religion, regionalism, i think a crtical review is required how he has kept this country united as one.

5. First Time i lost bet: There are some characters in ramayan, who were famous only because lord rama had given them nirvana. Henry olonga, is not a demon by any way, but he was definitely slaughtered in the desterts of sharjah by a little genius , we all know as sachin tendulkar. A match prior he dismissed sachin tendulkar with a freaky short ball, and celebrated a lot, doing war-like dance. I was watching the match with my friend, and he told me that this bowler’s career would be ruined by sachin. He was proved right a couple of days later when he thrashed him all over the park. May be the career was not ruined in the literal sense, but by then i had lost my first bet.

6. Bunking my School : After a historic Test series , india and austraila was playing a ODI in Kanpur , and i just cant resist myself from going out there, being living in Kanpur. So, in lunch time , me and my friend made a plan, talked about some emergency in home and bunked school and head straight towards the greenpark. And boy, sachin made it worth the effort. Sixes of Warne, Bevan and Lehman keep hitting the stands on a regular basics. All in all he hit 11 sixes as we keep the count by breaking a cold drink bottle each time ... In the evening i told dad about it, and he said why hadn’t you told me i would have taken a break from office.

7. India-Pakistan Matches: India –Pakistan matches were used to be a demo-war for all of us. It was 2003 World cup, India’s Last League game against the arch rivals Pakistan. Dad was ready from the morning, doing all sort of prayers and tricks. Agarbatti in front of television and devotional songs may sound a bit weird but believe me it was the case. Pakistan on back of saeed anwar had put a stiff target of 272. There was a silent nervousness in the house. Mummy who relatively doesn’t show much of the interest was also watching the match very interestingly. Shoaib akhtar came charging up, banged a short one, and it disappeared over the point boundary. The rest is history !!! , and one more thing i could remember is the wonderful food cooked by mummy that time.

8. IMT Public Going Crazy: This is one of the most recent moment in my life. Australia amassed a total of 349, virtually impossible to chase. By chance, my parents also came to visit that day. So, i and dad was watching match in Mess. Sehwag and yuvraj were gone , but still sachin was looking in a good nick. But since, there is little hope, i came back to room with mummy ans started chatting with her. Meanwhile i had opened live scores on cricinfo in the Laptop. Suddenly sachin went berserk, a Six... another one...a boundary.... i said to mummy you rest and i rushed towards the mess. Well the scene was completely changed in mess. There was a considerable crowd now in mess, watching very anxiously . Sachin was on for something special and he started to bamboozle all of us by his master class batting. Suddenly some people started banging table.. some dishes with spoon and the ambience changed in a moment. Everybody started shouting “sachin, sachin...” and the breathtaking strokeplay matched up to every cry. Ironically, it was another heartbreaking loss, but when my father came out , he said that i never expected MBA Students to be so cricket crazy. This is what Sachin can do mere mortals.

Decade of You , me and us !!

Yesterday, i found one of my very old friend online on Gmail. We were used to study together during my school days ( till class 10th). During the conversation, she suddenly said , do you remember how little we used to talk. I replied back that , we do not have mobiles that time. otherwise we could have played SMS-SMS, missed calls and other stupid games. At that moment i realised the giant leap which India has taken in last 10 years. I bet if we rewind the clocks down the years you will almost feel that it was altogether a different world 10 years ago in India.
Although, i am not old enough to write a memoir, but this decade has been a real fast forward. 1999-2000 was a different ball game altogether. Although , a new millennium was round the corner, cell phones were still a luxury ( now every rickshaw wala has one in the pocket..), bikes started to dominate the scooter market, dot com bubble was still inflating and India had started to shine..So, then what does this decade stand for !!

This decade in my view stands for the expression. The expression of youths , their wish to announce them on the world's stage has completely change the face of the nation. Their energy has propelled india from the category of developing country to the emerging nations. Increasing employment opportunities , good quality of education led by IITs and IIMs , and an liberalising culture had made the youth confident to take on the world. Now they do not doubt their capabilities, neither they consider themselves inferior to anyone.

Apart from that, this was the decade of me , you and all of us. Independent and yet interconnected!!.. we have facebooks to share our emotions, orkut to be interconnected and last but the most powerful tool in the pocket, the ubiquitous cell phone. I got my first cell phone in my 2nd year of college, joined orkut in 2006 and ventured into facebook few months ago, and i feel that how come i was alive without them. Malls and PVR's are the talk of the town and if i will tell my mom that i spent 200 bucks for a movie that it would be a nice 3o minutes "Gyan Session". This power of youth and interconnectivity was even saluted by Time magazine while declaring the personality of year in 2006 ( It was "You" ). The independent and ambitious girls had finally started to rub their shoulders against the males ( and some beating them also !!!..).

But there is also fillip side of it also. Life has become easy and relations had become very complex. Now relations start on mail, flourish on mobile and end on facebook. The human touch is so missing !!!. We as a generation is so busy in calculations ... what is my career growth, how much i should earn, which job i should switch too.. . so, the relationships always take the back seat. We are so afraid of responsibilities. Everyone will champion the case of live-in but very handful will be willing to commit and be responsible. We could be chatting online for hours but doesn’t even care to move to the next room to have some chat. Every thing is so 'e' in nature but still human beings start from "h". We still have the same organs as we have earlier , the same heart not a microchip.

We are fortunate to be in a country ,which despite all its deficiencies , practice democracy and freedom of speech. The power of expression had propelled us in a new era, but as the old cliché goes "with great power comes the great responsibilities". Today’s youth have to be responsible so that they can help india getting its judicious picture in the world scene !!

I knew it!

Guys, can't help it! I knew today was the all important cricket match between India and Australia. But, driven by my past experiences I had stopped taking cricket matches seriously. Umpteenth time I have witnessed India losing from a winning position. The heartache has been that the margin of runs were in single digits. The heart attack has been that Australia has the feat of defeating India in close encounters most number of times. Do you know that they defeated us by 1 run in WC 1987 and WC 1992 ?

Today's match was a cult classic. 351 to chase, no motivation to watch second innings for me. Previous memories still afresh! I have hardly missed a match from 1993 till 2006. It was then that a phenomenon called Dhoni gripped the nervous strings all by himself and began to steer us to victory all by himself. He was instrumental in instilling that 'go for kill' attitude in the team. He took burden from Sachin's shoulders and soon we could see a transformation in the side.

The Dhoni bubble burst aided by the non-stop play schedule. Fantastic players like Yuvraj and Raina hogged the limelight. But still, none of them had the spark to carry the team to victory single-handedly. I know many will object, but I have seen these players perishing on the doorsteps of victory when the onus was exclusively on them. The master blaster Sachin has always asserted the vintage class supremacy time and again. Dhoni though, has come close to matching the tag of 'One Man Army'.

It was one such day, when Tendulkar again, decided to make this match his own. He played straight drive, pull, chip, square-cut, flick and that 'running down the crease inside out' shot. Everything was going right. The God had revisited. He completed the century and pursued for another. It was time for dinner.

The Mess, a packed house accommodating 300 people at once. Two 29 inch flat TVs on two sides. Hardly a spare seat to sit. The crowd howling "Sachin... Sachin...." at every ball. The old phenomena was back. Spectacular shots delivering boundaries at astoundingly quick intervals is no mean task. Ricky Ponting could be seen crouching on his knees, helpless in front of 'God'. We know God helps those who helps themselves. Yes, the team was required to steer itself towards the target. Sachin left the 22 yards, may be a rush of blood instigated by the power play enforced him. By then, he had scored 175 odd runs. What more do one expect ?

There were 4 wickets left and 19 runs to score off 17 balls. But the old disease grappled our batsmen and we lost it by 3 runs. The match was memorable because it livened up memories of the 'old' Tendulkar though the unchanging habit of losing close matches did hurt.