The Idea

The basic idea is simple: we form a network of five to ten influential Indian business bloggers to promote link-worthy posts from other Indian business bloggers in the form of a weekly digest published on our respective blogs.

The People

The present members in our network are (in alphabetical order):-

- Gaurav Mishra, that is, yours truly, is a marketer and a social media enthusiast (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Gautam Ghosh is an HR professional and a veteran business blogger (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Kiruba Shankar is India’s original A-list blogger and podcaster and a regular speaker at technology conferences (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Palin Ningthoujam is a public relations professional and the founder of India PR Blog (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Rajesh Lalwani is the founder of social media agency Blogworks (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Ranjan Varma is the writer of personal finance online weekly Personal Finance 2.01 (e-Book, Blog, Facebook and Twitter).

- VeerChand Bothra is the organizer of Mumbai Mobile Mondays and head of business development at MyToday (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

The Process

Over the week, we share posts between each other, and select a set of 3-5 posts to highlight. The posts can include all business-related topics including marketing, advertising, public relations, human resource management, finance, and entrepreneurship. The idea is to not link to each others’ posts, unless one of us has written a real gem.

Every Monday, all of us link to the same set of posts, with our own unique perspectives on them. By linking to the same posts together, we maximize the benefit we pass on to the linked blogs, both in terms of traffic and Google juice. By providing our multiple unique perspective on the posts, we hope to kick off conversations around these posts in the Indian business blogging community.

The Best of Indian Business Blogs: Weekly Digest 2

- Kamla Bhatt interviews ITwoFS’s Karthik Srinivasan on plagiarism in Indian film music

My top-of-the-mind views: While the Indian music industry is very vocal about piracy, it’s especially silent on the issue of plagiarism. ITwoFs (for IIFS, or Inspired Indian Film Songs), whose tag line is ‘Chronicles of Plagiarism in Indian Film Music’, is a website by communications professional Karthik Srinivasan devoted to exposing over 500+ instances of such ‘inspirations’ by Indian film musicians. Kamla does a great interview to bring out Karthik’s range of knowledge about music. Karthik, by the way, also writes a fascinating 100 word review blog at MilliBlog.

- Maninder points out that the Idea Rocks India’s MSN microsite is a wrong idea

My top-of-the-mind views: Idea Cellular is promoting ‘Idea Rocks India’ as India’s ‘first online singing contest’, but instead of creating their own website, they have hosted the contets on an MSN microsite. Maninder points out several reasons why the brand, and the property, are being shortchanged in this execution. To, me, this is another example of how agencies and brand managers do not benefit from the digital medium in spite of spending money on it, because they approach it from a mass media paradigm.

- Kartik Varma, co-founder of iTrust.in, writes a three part series on startup financing in India at Pluggd.in: part 1, part 2, part 3.

My top-of-the-mind views: Kartik uses his experience in raising funding for iTrust.in to give some valuable insights on how much capital to raise in the first round, how to calculate the valuation of your startup, and how to read through the various clauses on a term sheet. I have been tracking the Indian startup scene for a while now because I want to start one of my own, and Kartik ’s series tells me that there is still much about running a startup that I don’t quite understand.

- Mayank Bidawatka, Head of Marketing at RedBus.in writes a guest post on Pluggd.in to demystify SEO and SEM concepts for startups.

My top-of-the-mind views: Mayank’s post will serve as a great starting point for a startup trying to build online presence. I totally agree with Mayank that SEM is more important to kick start your web presence initially, while SEO is more important over the long term. Therefore, even as I fine-tune the SEO for my new project ‘The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption’, I have started a Google AdWords campaign to give it the initial push.

- Sudipto Majumdar, CTO of Zapak, outlines the rise of gaming cafes in India and Sashi Reddi, founder of FXLabs Studios, predicts that 2008 will be the breakout year for the Indian gaming business.

My top-of-the-mind views: I haven’t really tracked the Indian gaming industry so far, except pushing for a brand-centric business model for mobile advergaming, but Sudipto’s and Sashi’s posts have triggered enough interest in me to start a separate gaming category on this blog.

Your Turn Now

We have done our part by starting the conversation. Now, it’s your turn to carry on the conversation by commenting on these posts, linking to these posts in your own blogs, giving us feedback on our idea and execution, or suggesting more posts for our next week’s digest.

Also see: Gaurav Mishra Week 1, Rajesh Lalwani Week 1, Ranjan Varma Week 1, Palin Ningthoujam Week 2, Ranjan Varma Week 2.

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At yesterday’s Mobile Monday Mumbai session, as I watched Jump Games CEO Salil Bhargava present a case for mobile advergaming, I kept asking myself why it didn’t (yet) make sense for Indian marketers.

Later, as Salil was joined by Anant Rangaswami from Campaign India magazine and Nidhi Taparia from Tata Indicom for a panel discussion moderated by VeerChand Bothra from Netcore Solutions, I actually asked them –

So, why exactly should mobile advergaming become an essential part of my media plan?

As I expected, the discussion quickly turned to how marketers expect too much from digital media.

However, since I think of myself as a digital media evangelist — I want mobile/ online advertising to work — I told myself to not think about all the reasons mobile advergaming won’t work for me and instead think about the set of conditions under which it would work for me.

The basic problem with the present developer-centric (or operator-centric, but certainly not brand-centric) business model for mobile advergaming is that all the risks are borne by the brand. The developer gets a development fees and the operator gets a hosting fee — but nobody gives the brand a commitment on downloads and plays.

I would love to do an advergame (or ten) if the developer and the operator are willing to share the risk of “what if nobody downloads/ plays the game?” with me. The developer develops a new game for me, the operator hosts it and promotes it aggressively and I only pay on the basis of downloads and plays. If nobody downloads/ plays the game, I don’t lose out — and why should I? — but if 500000 users download the game, I’m happy to pay up and the developer and the operator make a killing. This is basically a cost-per-action (CPA) model for advergames — it has worked elsewhere and there’s no reason it won’t work for advergames.

So, are there any takers for my brand-centric business model for mobile advergaming?

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