March 24th, 2008
The Best of Indian Business Blogs: A Weekly Digest by Business Bloggers You Trust
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Quick Summary: Check out the first edition of “The Best of Indian Business Blogs”, a weekly digest by business bloggers you trust.
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
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.
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.
[…] people like Kiruba and Gaurav who are doing such stuff. Gaurav is coming up with a weekly digest - The Best of Indian Business Blogs. Hope, I make it to the list […]
Excellent job guys !! keep up the good work
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Thanks for the great information. *stumbles*
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@Shweta: Thanks for the kind words.
@Matts: Thanks for following up on the kind words with a stumble.
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Hmm, Innovative idea, I’m sure you can make it happen , Iwish you all success.
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@Debasish: Thanks for your kind words.
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