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 3

- Rajesh Lalwani believes that companies offering pro-biotic products in India are under-utilizing Internet in general, and social media in particular

My top-of-the-mind views: The health and wellness category is perhaps the one in which Internet in general, and social media in particular, can play a make-or-break role. The category has unique characteristics that make it a perfect fit for social media: it is an extremely high involvement category, patronized by an upwardly mobile (Internet)-savvy consumer base, and marked by frequent purchases of low ticket size products. Rajesh does a great job of identifying the gaps in how companies offering pro-biotic products are approaching the Indian market, and I see some of these gaps being filled very quickly.

- Sudhakar Ram, Founder and CMD of Mastek Ltd, looks forward to Mastek Ltd, looks forward to the third wave of Indian outsourcing

My top-of-the-mind views: Most industry insiders agree that it will be difficult to sustain the growth rates of 40-50% in the IT/ ITES sector if it stays rooted in the labor arbitrage mode. Sudhakar urges Indian IT companies to start making substantial investments in building intellectual property and creating solutions that have strategic impact and top management visibility within client organizations. Many Indian IT companies have adopted this approach of late, but with limited success. It will be interesting to see how many Indian IT/ ITES companies are able to move beyond labor arbitrage and transition to the ‘third wave’.

- Vijay Anand, founder of Proto.in, says that Indian entrepreneurs need to be more aware of their environment.

My top-of-the-mind views: Vijay gives a lot of invaluable advice in his post, including making your offering environment-proof, factoring in the negative use cases, thinking change-the-world big, and remembering that the world is a balance of chaos and equilibrium.

- Kamla Bhatt believes that a pure-play corporate blogging approach may not be successful in India

My top-of-the-mind views: Kamla believes that Indian corporates are more likely to embrace social networks than corporate blogs. I think that corporate blogs and corporate presence on social networks serve objectives that sometimes overlap but often don’t. Therefore, corporates in India will do well to use both, based on the context, the community and the nature of the conversation. Expect a longer post on this topic sometime soon.

- Atanu Dey dissects the food-versus-fuel dot-corn debate

My top-of-the-mind views: The mandated increase in the use of corn-derived ethanol as fuel in the US has led to much chest-thumping, with both camps strongly supporting their stands. Atanu Dey separates out the various issues involved in the debate in his trademark erudite style.

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, Gaurav Mishra Week 2, Palin Ningthoujam Week 2, Ranjan Varma Week 2, Rajesh Lalwani Week 3, Ranjan Varma Week 3.

Check out ‘The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption’, India’s first marketing book-as-a-blog. Subscribe to my full feed in a feed reader or by e-mail.

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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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The Idea

For a while now, Rajesh and I have been discussing how business bloggers in India don’t do enough to promote each others’ content. Out of that discussion came the idea of forming a network of influential Indian business bloggers to promote link-worthy posts from 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).

- 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 at 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 1

- Rashmi Bansal from Youth Curry interviews the young founders of CMYK Health Boutique Private Limited, operating the ‘Four Fountains’ spas

My top-of-the-mind views: Four Fountains is unique because it’s a brick and mortar startup, in a world obsessed with online and mobile. I also like the attitude of the team, their belief that they will make things work once they leave their jobs, their persistence in letting go of their first discount retail chain idea and moving on to the more marketable affordable spa idea. There are learnings in the interview for everyone who wants to become an entrepreneur.

- Namrata Balwani, Business Director, Media2Win on what ails online advertising in India

My top-of-the-mind views: My pet peeve is that agencies approach digital media with the ‘interruption marketing’ paradigm prevalent in traditional media instead of the ‘permission marketing’ mindset that is appropriate for it. I believe that digital media works well for two extreme objectives — generating leads and building communities — and for little in-between.

- Vijay Mahajan of BASIX on why the waiver of mass debt in Indian budget 2008 only benefits large farmers

My top-of-the-mind views: As I said in the Hindustan Times Young India Forum panel discussion, the big question after the Indian Budget 2008 is: where will the money to fund Mr. Chidambaram’s generous budgetary allocations, including the Rs. 60000 cr. debt relief for farmers, come from? The other big question raised in this post is: will the election-motivated debt relief package actually benefit the small farmers it is supposedly meant for?

- Manoj Dawane, Chief Executive Officer, Mauj Mobile on the future of the Indian mobile-VAS industry

My top-of-the-mind views: In future, Mobile VAS will drive not only mobile usage, but also web 2.0 usage. In fact, mobile will be one of the three dimensions of differentiation for Indian web 2.0 startups, including social networking sites.

- Venturewoods, Ashish Sinha from Pluggd, Pranav Dharma from Startup Duniya and Aditya Mishra on the Jason Calacanis “startups need workaholics” controversy.

My top-of-the-mind views: Aditya, Veer and I discussed this topic in our recent podcast with Aditya Mhatre from Indicast. We agreed that startups do need people who are totally passionate about the business and people who work for large organizations are indeed in for a culture shock if they move over to a startup. The big insight was that entrepreneurs should set an example for their teams by being passionate about the business and practicing frugality themselves.

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: Rajesh Lalwani, Ranjan Varma.

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