Wandering alone in Karnataka - Part 1: The Start

Hi Guys,

It has been sometime since I took a break and went somewhere on a trip. After a few failed plans, I decided to go on a Solo Trip somewhere. But the question was where to. My first instinct was to go somewhere north of Delhi. Then after some pondering and considering the low budget in mind, I switched over to Karnataka which some of my friends had been insisting me to visit. Karnataka has so many places spread over, so again I had to circle down upon a few.

Taking clues from the trip we had planned (and cancelled) last December to Badami and Gokarna, I thought of expanding the list. I wanted to loop in Jog falls and Hampi. After doing all research over the internet, the final list was completely different considering all the travel options I had. The final plan was to spend some time extensively in Hampi before moving to Udupi and covering a couple of places en-route.  I had made bookings just a month earlier and to my surprise, I got confirmed train tickets for all the places. Guess, due to monsoon the tourism at all the places are at a very low.

Day 1 – Jul 30, 2016

I had dumped all the necessary things into one trekking rucksack, thanks to my roommate who lent it for the trip. The first leg was to Hampi any my plan was to take Lalbagh Express to Bangalore and then catch Hampi express from there. It was pouring in Bangalore and the city was all over in the news. Two hours into the journey, rain started lashing and it was becoming gloomy. The train started to slow down. The stop over time between the two trains was a mere 25 minutes, but my hope was that the stop over time was 1 hour if I get down at Bangalore Cantonment station. Luckily the train picked up pace was on time (happened to be the only train that arrived on time at destination in the entire trip).

Hampi Express also arrived on time at Bangalore and the train was filled with a layer of water. Passengers carrying heavy luggage were facing a tough time. I fell asleep soon and got up at around 6.45 am ready to get down.

Day 2 – Jul 31, 2016

The train was just chugging into Guntakal station to my horror. We should have reached here by 4.45 am. So, I got back and fell asleep again cursing my bad luck. Finally, the train reached Hospet (now called Hosapete) by around 9.00 am, a delay of 1 hr 50 mins. I went outside and lot of Auto Rickshaws were calling out passengers for Hampi which is 14 kms away from the station. Ignoring the Auto drivers, I waited to catch a Bus to Hampi.

Hampi - A view of Virupaksha temple

After waiting for 15 minutes, an Auto driver approached me again and said he will take me to Hampi for 100 bucks as he had go back there. I was OK with 100 Rs for a 14 km trip. So, I got in and as we started off and went half a km, a bus with signboard ‘Hampi’ was heading to the Railway station. Still, I was content with the Auto. The driver's name was Rama Li and he was saying this is Off Season in Hampi and most of the guest houses would be empty. If you come directly, you can get one for Rs. 450-600 which otherwise goes for double in peak seasons.

I had booked in ‘Laxmi Heritage Homes’ based on reviews in TripAdvisor. After getting a few deals on ClearTrip, the cost of room came to almost Rs. 600 per night. The place is not as comfortable as a hotel room, but it is good enough for a nice stay. The owners of the place are really hospitable and make your stay good. My observation was that it is mostly foreigners who stay up at these guest houses. If you are looking for a full-fledged comfortable Hotel, you need to stay at Hospet and travel to Hampi which will take around 30 minutes. After getting ready at around 11 am, I headed to Mango Tree Restaurant for Breakfast (only good restaurant inside Hampi) and was all set to start the exploration.

To be continued...

To read Part 2, click here (Exploring Hampi)

To read Part 3, click here (Reminiscence of Vijayanagar Kingdom)

To read Part 4, click here (Hampi - Dudhsgar - Margao - Murdeswar)

Happy Reading!!!

Indian Startups - When Business Ideas are imitable...

Hi Guys,

There was a nice little pamphlet in today’s newspaper that was an advertisement for a new intra-city logistics service started in Chennai. I was wondering how many similar services have been launched in the past one year. I can remember seeing advertisements of at least two similar players.

Almost all the new start-ups in India have been facing the same issue – Imitations. During my MBA, 0ne of my professors concluded his Strategy course saying,

‘Strategy is something that will differentiate your business from competitors providing superior Value Proposition to Customers over a sustainable period of time’

In short, if a Competitor can imitate your strategy, then it is not a strategy in itself.

For starting a business, Ideation is important. You have a good idea which can get customers and make money – Investors will pump in money. But today, I guess it is enough if you can take someone’s existing idea and pitch in quoting less competition in the field and enter into a direct cost war with your competitor.

Eternally, the companies says that acquiring a customer is important. It is all about deals, cashbacks, acquisitions and sales at any cost. But, I am not finding any of the companies providing superior service to the customer, creating relationship and making efforts to retain the customer.

If you look at any of the newer business areas that has emerged, you can find a minimum of at least two players or sometimes as big as ten players trying to catch the pie. You have Ola-Uber fiercely competing and providing deep discounts to customers and big incentives to drivers. If you consider any of the aggregator services – let it be Food Aggregators (FoodPanda, Zomato, Swiggy, etc), Grocery Aggregators (Big Basket, Grofers, PepperTap, etc), Hotel Aggregators (Oyo, Zo, GoIbibo, etc), the strategies have been more or less similar. One players enters the business. A few imitations are born. The discount war begins. Cash burns and you end up in a Catch-22 situation.

One of the key lessons taught in Strategy is that reducing your price is that last thing you need to do and that too when all other cards are exhausted. Most of these players seem to have only one card with them and that is the Pricing. Sometimes, I do wonder if these players are too myopic and are not thinking out of the box to attract and retain customers.

It remains pretty much the same with the big Daddys out there – Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal. But, one significant thing I find in ecommerce business is that these players are trying something to retain the customers. From my personal experience, Amazon has been trying to provide a great customer service and by treating customer as the king, they are making significant improvement in the market share.

Ultimately, I do wonder if many of the founders really have the passion to become the next big thing. Most of the Investor’s money goes into filling the pockets of founders (as remuneration) and to Customers as cashbacks and discounts (You know, it has been ages since I paid my Phone bill fully – Thanks to PayTm and Freecharge).

Happy Reading!

Has the Smart Phone Industry Matured?

Hi Guys,

Long back, I had written a post on how Samsung was losing its plot in India in the Smart Phone segment. In this post, I try to find out the way the Indian Smart Phone Industry is panning out and how different players are fighting it out.

Has the Smart Phone Industry matured?

Large Displays, Better RAMs, Better Resolution, More Megapixels… This is how brands are differentiating. Even the flagships have concepts like Force Touch, Iris Scanner which are not really great innovations. Today any smartphone in the range of Rs. 10000 has a good screen, decent camera and a big display. And brands matter less and less. So many Chinese brands are coming in. Nubia, Meizu, PhiComm, Coolpad… These are some of the brands that came in last year and had a decent crowd going for it. Reliability has not been a big question mark as the OEM tends to be the same player. The newsmakers have been fast shifting… From Motorola to Xiaomi to OnePlus to Asus in a span of 2 years.

Flagships are not really attention seekers anymore. Who would spend 40000 bucks on a phone when a 10000 bucks phone has 75% of those features. Apple thought it could extract its brand premium and priced 6S at a whopping price of Rs. 62000. Only to realize that Indians value their money and had to reduce price by nearly 15% overnight.

Do UIs Matter?

With majority of phone makers coming out with their own UI like MIUI (Xiaomi), Zen UI (Asus), Oxygen OI (OnePlus), does it really matter to the end user? Some of the UIs are pretty different, but none difficult to manage. The interface remains pretty much the same. And it doesn’t seem to be a key feature that impacts Buying Behaviour. Before OnePlus Two came out, CyanogenMed (which was used in Oneplus One) was highly critical and said OnePlus Two would fail because there was no Cyanogen. OnePlus said Oxygen UI is the best UI that is available today. But, no one bothered about the UI. No one either criticized or praised Oxygen UI.

I just wonder why many companies donot stick to the stock UI like Motorola. It is less complicated, straight forward to use and people find it good. So, why spend lot of R&D on a UI which is really not different?

Less Choice is better?

There is a concept in Behavioural Economics which states that lesser the choice, better the proposition. More the choice, people tend to get away or become confused. Most of the companies had a very good sales in the first generation – Motorala (Moto E, Moto G, Moto X), Xiaomi (Mi3, Redmi 1S), One Plus One and Asus Zenfone. Once these phones started coming out with more and more models, people started getting confused and the sales started dipping.

Any new Game Changers?

One of the key requirements of users these days is better batteries. But if you raise the capacity, the phone becomes heavy. What we need is an innovative technology that could provide better powerful batteries. I don’t think any of the existing companies are looking to solve this. The solution could come in from a new player who specializes in manufacturing batteries (someone like Panasonic or maybe Tesla or a new kid in the block).

Apart from that, most of the innovations claimed by companies are really not Game Changers. And again they are easily imitable in nature. The Industry looks to have hit a plateau where larger display, more MPs and better resolution are available with everyone and are affordable too.

Worldwide too, it doesn’t seem vastly different with Apple gorging up 94% of the Smartphone profits despite selling less than a third of the smart phones. The remaining players fight for the 6%. Apple has been able to play with its brand name, replacements and stature. But, not sure how long it would convince people to buy Apple, just because it is Apple…

It appears to have lot of parallels with the PC industry. Effectively, it looks like a field where everyone around looks the same and you got to sell more, spend less to make more profits…

Happy Reading!