First impressions of China..

Yesterday I traveled by all forms of transportation that could possibly be, except the ship. Went till Hong Kong in flight, then from there in bus till, china Border, then a small taxi till one central place, then metro train to finally reach my hotel. 

If you are traveling in China, one thing you shold keep in mind, here people dont know English. It is so different as soon as you cross border, in HongKong where most poeple speak English and in China no one does. Even almost all the boards are in Chinese. Thankfully we had the hotel name written in Chinese, and we were showing that around to people to ask the way. 

Ofcourse everyone told me this other thing that in China even for non vegetarian people food is a problem, and trust me it is. Here yesterday we were trying to glance though the McDonalds menu, and the only thing that seemed veg there was this item which was marked Cheese Burger. Because every where it was, ham burger, fish fillet burger, chicken burger, but this was the only one which which seemed vegetarian. But then it was beef, I just realized that when anything is not written it means it has meat... so the only thing was remaining was potato fries and corn.

But then we found this great thing in China, you get amazing fruits. Water melon, guavas and strawberries. You get loads of them and quite cheap and they are much better than what we get in India.

So far it has been fun... kind of adventure. Plan to go to some street market here today, lets see how it goes.

Plan to post some pictures soon.

Ad for Kick boxing..

Saw this "kinky" Ad for kick boxing.

Interview with Taxi Driver..

Heavy traffic to airport and I thought why not get to know the taxi driver better. So the coversation that we had. 

(Intially I thought I will note it down while he speaks, but then I have seen that people get scared as soon as I get out my diary, so now I have just come to aiport and typing this in before I forget. )

Where are you from?

Not from Bangalore Sir, you know Udipi, yes I am from village close to that.

How did you get in to this taxi business?

Earlier I was in ICICI prudential as agent, then since this new airport have taken the taxi. Something you have to do na to get money.

How much do you earn?

About 10 thousand sir, and I end up spending about 3-4 thousand.

Is there no employment in your village, why you coming to Bangalore?

No Sir, all good facilities in village, just come to see, see the big city 

What your future plans, do you want to continue taxi?

we have chicken farm in village, and "supari" farm, it runs good, so I go back to village after two years.

Are you married?

No Sir, 

Will you get married here in Bangalore?

Marriage elders sir, city girl, chicken farm does not adjust, girl from my community.

Are all the facilities good in your village, school, medical and so on?

Facilities all good sir, good school, earlier no teachers now lot of teachers.

Do you have water problem in your place?

No water problem sir, lot of water, near the sea , so lot of water in borewell.

Do you have any ambition in life?

Yes sir, I want to go in to politics, My father also in gram panchayat, I was leader in college. So I want to go ahead in there, but not now, after marriage after two three years.

Do you use pesticides in your farm?

(He did not understand pesticides)

Do you use some "dawa" for the "kidas" in the farm?

DDT sir, yes sir, DDT everyone use. If we dont use DDT then lot of "kidas"

Do you stay alone in Bangalore?

No sir, with four people from my village.

Are all of them taxi drivers?

No some in restaurant, some private company, like that.

Do lot of poeple come out of village and dont go back there?

No sir, after marriage, difficult to live in bangalore, minimum expense 8 thousand, not possible sir, good job stay in Bangalore, Most go back village for marriage and stay there only.

There is a pause and then he himself starts saying,

"Three of my classmates in Army sir, two in Kashmir, one in Gujarat. Army means lot of value sir, some problem is there, but lot of value."

How did they go in army?

Got seleted from colege sir, they will come to take.

You did not get selected?

I also, but parents did not allow, only son sir, so difficulty. I wanted to go then, but then I came to Bangalore

Do you learn English at school?

Yes sir, for five years, can read and understand little bit. But in village no Hindi only for three years. that is bad, because hindi you need sir, specially if you go to north India, very few in village know hindi.

By the time I am done with this many questions, airport has come. And then he asks me, 

Where are you from?

"Baroda", I say, (I thought he would not know where baroda is)

"Irfan Pathan, Yusuf Pathan, sir... that place.." 

"Yes" I say

"Cricket lot of interst sir, Dhoni very lucky captain" he says...

 

And then we depart, 

Cricket truly unites India I think.. :)

Will they tell your story?

"

Great marketers of the future will not be measured by how well they tell stories to their audience, but rather by how well their audience tells stories about them

"

I got this line from this blog, and isnt it so true?

Forget about marketing, similar concept also applies to real life. It is never about how many people you know or how many friends you make, but always about how many friends who can vouch and talk ernestly about you and how many of them can stand for you. Most times I feel that "Good Will" is the greatest force that you can possess. 

Related Posts: 

Envelope Story

Taking the first step

Lessons of 2008

This post should have come earlier, but in many ways my new year has started in Feb and I am still in process of wishing people happy new year. 

These are some of the things which I learnt or I should say realized in last year... not like rocket science or anything but still felt like penning them down.

Take Decisions: Lot of times in last year I spent time delaying making decisions, worrying and wondering what if I make the in correct decisions, how it is going to affect and all, but then when you in the constant state of going hence and forth and  it drains so much of your energy. So I realized it is always good to take decisions, instead of dilly-dallying it, you may take a wrong decisions but it is ok. At least you would be clear in your mind and would be able to concentrate on other things. 

Giving 100%: It is such a simple thing right, but most times I have realized is that I dont do it. Most times in job or otherwise I just sit almost like waiting for something to happen, and then would start working. But then these days now I just keep telling myself give 100% or just get out and take a break and do something else.  Even though I dont believe that there is anything like 100% because every time I give in my best effort I always realize that I could have done better, and also I keep realizing that I could do more, and am beginning to believe that we have infinite energy to make and do things if we ever want to do it.

Don’t think : "Thinking" not in the terms of thinking of solution to problems, but thinking as in terms of "what if". I spend so much time doing it, that it is not funny. Someone sent me in the email the other day, "Jo pata nahi hai, uske bare me sochne ka koi matlab nahi hai, aur jo pata hai, uske baare me sochne ka koi faida nahi hai."(What you dont know there is no point in thinking about it and what you know, there is no advantage in thinking about it).  And it is so true, I guess you have to constantly tell yourself to be in present and not keep dwelling in either past or future. 

Of course it is not that all these things are new to me, I have probably known them ever since, but then it is still just that I don’t apply these that much and now that am going to put little more effort in putting all these in place. :)

Traveling Endlessly

This year for me has kind of started with a bang, I dont think there was ever a time when I had traveled so much.  Since start of this year, I have traveled to 10 different cities, I remember that I was in Banglaore on 31st night spending new year at platform (were a part of the Tata Jagriti yatra then) and even after coming from the yatra, had been for one marketing trip and then for a friends wedding at coimbatore.

The entire month was filled up with waking early in mornings, waking up late at nights, traveled by flight, train and bus,  an average of only about 5 hours of sleep everyday, almost running all the time, not having time to eat, hence eating at odd times and odd places, not having time to check, reply to emails. 

When you look back at the month, so many memories/images come back, the month passed by in a jiffy, but it kind of memories make you feel as if it was worth a lifetime. Now that feb looks little free, I plan to blog in detail. Already some of the more serious blogs are in pipeline and would be posted soon. 

Page3 Stuff

The other day one of my journalist friends wanted me to go and cover one of the page3 parties on behalf of her. She was supposed to go and write about that, but then she had some personal emergency, and she asked me if I could go and just check out.

I went there in my normal jeans and kurta, but then when I went there the place looked kind of out of world. I have never been to such parties before, and everyone was like so polished and  artificial. There was hardly any man who was not in suit, and if at all there was any guy with the jeans, then he was like majorly hep-shep, with long hair and atleast couple of pierceing somewhere on the face. Everything looked so clean from outside, and I did not even talk to anyone, did not even shake hands, wondering if dust from my hands might spoil those nice suits. And ofcourse all women were also very expensively dressed.  There was this wiping of hands with tissue with each and every bite of food that you take, the size of starters were like very small, and waiters running left and right trying to ensure that everyone had atleast something to eat or drink.

The feeling was weird, but it was fun observing people. But then twenty minutes or so I got bored, because things seemed kind of repetitive. I just left wondering if I ever go this rich will I be attending these kind of Page3?

Taking the first step

The other day I was reading Seth Godin, and one thing that he said really struck me.

He said, look at your outbox and see how many mails that you sent out were the replies to incoming mails and how many were self initiatied emails. This could give you an indications of how time do you send in "reaction" as to "action". 

Ofcourse this does  not apply to everyone, but still i found this simple analysis very powerful.

So many times we just end up in life just waiting for something to happen and reacting and not acting. How many times we wait for some other person to start conversation, go over to adjacent cube to start talking instead of letting time go, in a gathering waiting to be forced to come forward to share the experience rather than volunteering, waiting for life to happen instead of making it happen.

Now whenever I reply to email, I have become little concious, wondering if I could have initiated that or should I start some similar conversation with some other person.

Cheers.

Happy Monday.

Tata Jagriti Yatra comes to an end..

11Jan, 8am, as soon as the train landed up in to the Mumbai central the yatra had ended. The journey across India for 18 days, through humidit of trivendrum to chilling cold from Lucknow to Delhi came to the end.

Initially I had thought that I would blog about each and every day of the yatra, but then after the first days things got so hectic that there was no time to blog, and I did not even realize where the 19 days disappeared. 

I am going to blog about the yatra in coming days, about the things I had seen and people whom I met, things that struck me and so on. 

 

Now as I settle down in to my original life style, I cant seem to forget the train. Train had started looking like home,  and somehow I never wanted that thing to end. Telling good bye to everyone that day on mumbai central seemed so difficult, I just felt as if I had know these people for ages, even though 3 weeks back we were strangers. (I just knew 2 people of the 400 people who where there on train)

I learnt so many subtle things during the trip, things which I would not even realize. For one I remember first few days, everyone had their own set of things, tooth pastes, slippers, and so on, and as days went by people started sharing things like tooth pastes, soaps, lunch and dinner plates, chappels, sometimes even towels. 

I learned to sleep on the platform, well there is nothing much to learn there, but then, now I know that i can survive on the platform and use the railway waiting rooms for taking bath. I have never been fussy in life about luxurious but this trip even took things little further. 

Also more than anything, it is just a new refreshing look at life. We just get caught in office/work/gym/class kind environment and sometimes we can never get the chance to look at ourselves properly, and we just fail to appreciate certain things, and there is always a hand to hold,when I  meet different people from marketing,  people do tend to treat me in certain way, and expect certain things and behavior from me because they know I am a tech marketing corporate world.

But in train it was completely different. People from different backgrounds and it is good to talk to people and then try to figure out what kind of person different perceive you as. Like how much better you can speak Hindi and not Hinglish. And then you discover so many things about youself, things that you never noticed or seen before. There are so many things that different people can teach and things and small things that touch you and give you a entirely different perspective to things. 

I have come back all energetic and refreshed, with number of things that I want to do in my life. More importantly I have made great friends some of them I am sure will remain for a long time to come.

Now that I am typing this from my marketing conferences, strange kind of hangover is there, it seems like a very plesant dream.  It was like someone picked me up from your comfortable home/office setting and placed me in carnival with 350 different people, totally different way of life, and then dropped me back all of sudden back to my orginal life with loads of distinct memories, smells, sounds even though now they seem so distant. But then  constant scraps in facebook remind me that it was not a dream.

--

Goli

Related Reads:

Getting the wrong books.

Tata Jagriti Yatra

Dabawallahas...

In the evening in a small inauguration ceremony we had a small lecture on dabbawallahs..
Everyone I guess knows about the dabbawallahs or has at least heard about this system. But many few of us know the finer details.
Dabbawallah system started way back in 1890 during the British time. It so happened, that one of the Parsi banker did not want to eat outside food for his lunch because of two reasons, one that his bank balance was rapidly going down and next his doctor fees was rapidly going up. So he hired a personal servant who would go to his home in afternoon and bring his lunch cooked by his wife.
Now Avaji bacchi (I have to verify this name as I could not hear it properly and net connection is too slow to verify) saw this and thought that it was a good market need and that there should be loads of people like the Parsi Banker. So he started the Dabba service and one of the most initial dabbawallas were farmers who practically did not have any work for half the year.
Today that humble beginning has grown tremendously and has survived for about 118 years and one the most primary reasons for it surviving is according to Manish is that all the Dabbawallas are stake holders. Manish high lights some of the key achievements of this system.

1. There are about 450 dabbawallahs in Mumbai
2. Their yearly revenue is about 10Million.
3. And most importantly in all 118 years this institution has not gone for a strike even once :) :).

Manish Tripathi then says that, "Over the years working with this system I have learnt one important lesson, I am going to share the secret of this success with you. And my secret about this is that it is very difficult to manage the educated people"

He explaines, "If I have Karsanbhai dabbawalla and an IIM graduate with me and I ask them to deliver one dabba from Andheri to Dadar. By the time I tell Dadar Karsanbhai would already be running to deliver the box while IIM graduate would be asking hundreds of question as to the best method of doing it and reason for doing it and so on"He then says that 85% of dabbawallas are thumps up i.e they cannot read and write. Then he puts this all important lesson, "I am not saying that you should hire uneducated people. All I am saying is that you should hire suitably educated people. If you need graduate and you hire post graduate then all he/she would do is to go to naukri.com and look for a better job”

Manish finished his talk by giving the important lesson that most important thing in entrepreneurship is to solve the problems. And if you are committed to solving the problem money and everything will automatically follow.
Manish did not use any great poems or great lines to give his talk and it was not pre-prepared talk. It was straight from the heart and what he had learnt over the years, very simple and straightforward, I guess very much reflecting the culture of Dabbawallahs.

Lijjat Papad : Working from home

I guess everyone would remember the ad of Lijjat Papads that used to come on Door Darshan, I remember that it had this tagline of “Khai Jao, Khilae Jao Lijjat Papad”.
Over years Lijjat papad has remained the symbol of women strength. Started way back in 1959 by seven women with the capital of 80 rupees, today it has grown to about 40 branches engaging about 42 thousand ladies.
The organization structure is very simple. Each department is independent, and manages its own profit and loss. The quality is maintained by a central trust. All the raw materials are procured by the central trust and Aata is mixed in each center. Every morning women come and collect their “Aata mixture” and go home, make and dry papads and return them next day morning to get new “Aata mixture”. They get paid fixed amount per kg, which is about 20 rupees a kg of work. There is not restriction to joining, any women can go and start making papads straightaway after signing and promising to abide by the pledge which states that “work is worship and they would not cheat”. All the decisions are taken by the women internally. There are no men involved in this organization.
And the best thing about this organization is that women get to work from home, that ways they can take care of their family and kids and also contribute economically to the family. This is the best part about this organization. Four ladies of Lijjat Papad had come, and one of them being Jyoti Naik. They did not use any MBA words, neither did talk like revenue targets or how they want to grow. They were very simple. From them it just seemed that one simple mantra of Lijjat Papad is “Papad”, that is what they focus on, nothing more. These women don’t care about the competition, about market ups and downs, they just believe that if they make good tasty papads, at whatever small scale that they can, they would be able to sell them.
Of course you may argue that 42 branches in about 40 years is not such a speedy progress, but then for what they stand for and the system that they have created is really amazing. The idea being to empower women, and now they do lot of other side activities, like teaching women, training them to make other stuff such as pickles etc. I guess it is a great example of how women can come together and create something as big as this.

Tata Jagriti Yatra

For the next 18 days, I am going on the journey of India. I am part of this travel called Tata Jagriti Yatra and I would be traveling through 18 different places in next 18 days to go and visit various social entrepreneurs who have made it big in social sector and initiating a change. We would visit places like Aravind eye hospital, Barefoot college, Anand and many more. We start from Mumbai, then to trivendrum, kanyakumari, Chennai, pondicheery, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Bubneshwar, Jamshedpur, Lucknow, Delhi, Ajmer, Anand and then back to Mumbai.

I am really looking forward to this trip and I always wanted to visit places like Aravind eye hospital and bare foot college. Also we are going to be about 300 people in a train, a special train, staying on train for next 18 days, so everything looks exciting.

The format of trip is mostly to travel at night and visit one of the places during the day time. The purpose of visit is to understand their business model and figure out how each of these have made it big in their own fields. Idea is to learn, and I guess there is no better way to learn than traveling.

The complete list of places that we visit is available here www.jagritiyatra.com,

So I guess my blog coming days is going to be filled with details about this trip, assuming I get a change to blog on train. Most of the blogs will not have pictures as it is simply not possible to upload pictures when you are traveling, so guess would do that when I get to Bangalore

Getting the "wrong books"

Yesterday I had been to crossword to redeem one gift voucher that I had got long time back. I bought couple of books and then then as always I wrote my name on the book along with the date. 

For some reason yesterday, this simple activity made me travel 15 years back, when I was in school, and it used to be such a great thrill every year at the start of the school term to sit and write the names on new books that we used to get and what a thrill it used to be. That was the time to discard the old torn books (I have never been that organized kind of guy and my books by the end of the year were most often or not in atleast two parts), and fashion the new ones. 

I remember one such incident, I think I was in class five or something. And as every year we used to get the list of the books to buy, along with our report card for the next year. This time around, I had decided take money from parents and go and buy the books for myself, instead of waiting for parents to take off the time of their busy schedule to get them. Parents generally never hurried to get the books early, mostly they went just about a day before the school was supposed to be reopened. 

So this time around, I struggled hard and got money from parents and got the books for myself very much earlier then the school was supposed to start. And I spent rest of the vacation writing my name on the books slowly, after painfully selecting the pen that I wanted to use, and then trying to look for interesting pictured newspapers which I could use to cover the books, and so on. Finally the day came when my school started, and  to my surprise I found that the some of the books that I had got were incorrect. To my horror I had got the books which were not supposed to be of my syllabus, of some different grade. In the evening when I told this to my parents, they were upset, and we immediately went to the bookshop, but since I had put my name on the books with all kinds of pens, shopkeeper would not exchange it for the new books. My father had to buy another set of books for me, and he requested the shopkeeper to keep the "wrong books" and try to sell them even at half price to get some money back.

I dont remember my parents being very angry with me or something neither do I remember getting any punishment, just the instruction that from here on we were supposed to write names on  our books with pencil and not with pens. I dont even remember if my father got any money for those "wrong books", but I am sure that he made have made endless trips to the shop to check if the books were sold.  

I even remember that every year we used to get this number of notebooks that we need for the year.  Starting for english classwork, to english homework, to english composition to english grammar, different notebooks for different things. We used to need about 20 such notebooks, and then father used to sit and analyze and ask me  to use the same notebook for composition and grammar and do the partition in middle and so on. In our school they used to allow partition in the middle of notebook,  if the subject belonged to same teacher. So parents used to patiently sit and look at teachers and subjects and try to optimize the number of notebooks and reduce them to 15 or something, which I was never keen on, but convicing me with various kinds of reasons. 

When I think about it right now, I understand how much struggle it was for parents to save money for the start of year, for our books, notebooks, uniforms etc. Probably that was the most difficult times. And sometimes as kids, we were so adamant to make life difficult for them.  But they just went through all that, never making us realize the struggle they had to go through day in and day out. 

I owe so much to my parents for what and where I am today. 

Waynad Trip

Last weekend we went for a trip to Waynad as a part of my company offsite.  This was my first time to Kerala, and really Kerala has the flavour of its own.

We did not do much of the "tourist activity", one of our office collegues had found his nice home stay, and we ended up spending lot of time there. This guy who owned this home stay, had like this huge plantation to himself, which had a small pond of its own and lots and lots of coffee plantation. here are some of the pictures of that trip.

One of the best thing that I remember about this trip was doing pranayam, I just picked up the spot amid the plantation, and air was so fresh, and it was morning and lot of mist.  I know it sounds like a very boring thing to do, but I really liked the feeling of just closing down the eyes and breathing deeply, it just felt very blissful. 

Here are the pics.

On the way to home stay.... plantations

The below pictures are of the place we stayed.  

Below is the morning photograph of rose, with lot of mist it was lovely. 

Coffee beans... 

Fine balance....

I just finished reading this book from "Rohinton Mistry" called Fine Balance.

Very few books have touched me so much as this book. This book is a story about four individuals, bought together by fate, trying to wriggle out of the endless circle of poverty, uncertainty of life, during the time of Emergency (1975)

After RK Narayan, and out of my limited reading habit, this is the best of fiction that I have read till now.

More than that I learnt so many things about Indian history and about the time of emergency that I never read in history books.

Highly recommended read.

The concept of Getting "Out"

Most of the games that we played as kid, had this concept of getting "out". Remember the time when I used to dread during hide and seek, and never wanted to get out. Getting "out" meant you are not good  enough, it meant kind of punishment. Also in many cases "out" meant staying outside for rest of the game while others played. I used to hate the games period in my school because most guys would play cricket, and me not being that good always ended up sitting half the time on the bench.  And I hardly know of any of my friends/siblings who did not hate getting out. Infact just to prove that we were "notout" fights used to spring between the best of buddies. 

But you have ever wondered why this concept is there. Is it to make us competitive? Is it to prepare everyone for the race that children would face as they grow up?

This was the question that was asked in one of the Games workshop organized by Dream a Dream. And I really found it interesting, because all the games we learnt in the workshop did not have the concept of getting "out". They were just fun games. 

Let me describe one game, The name of game is "Simon Says"

In this game everyone stands.  There is one conductor of the game. So if the conductor says, "Simon says dance", then everyone has to dance, if conductor says "Simon says run" everyone has to run. But if the conductor just says "run" you dont have to run, because simon did not say to run. In short you have to follow anything what 'Simon says' and nothing else.

If you are caught doing the wrong thing, you then you  have to come out in the center and conduct the game. 

Not you may aruge that this game also have a concept of getting "out". But I just found that there was suble different. In this game "out" did not mean punishment, it only meant that it was more fun. Because even I wanted to be a conductor and make people do weird things. Say like, "Simon says, pick your nose".. :).  

So when I played the game I could see that most participants did not want to get "out" because they did not want to be seen as "dumb", but at the same time, most of them did not mind getting "out", because they were having loads of fun conducting the game. 

The idea of workshop was to play games with children and yet not to make some children feel left out. All the games were woven around this idea. And I really liked the workshop not only because I had fun, but also because I really found this entire idea very thought provoking.

Dream a Dream has a document which describes all such kind of games that you can play with children, you can read it here. 

 

Email Forwards and 49-O

It has become a fashion since the Mumbai attacks to keep sending forwards, especially provocative forwards. And I don’t know what the rationale behind it is; probably it is perceived that if you are on internet and you don’t take part in any of these useless forwards then you don’t care enough.

I don’t have anything against forward, but I am against forwards which are not authentic and provocative, without any rationale whatsoever.

One of the most irritating forwards that I have received is regarding article 49-O, 

The email goes like this, and funnily I have these emails about two times every day and it goes like this.

"

Did you know that there is a system in our constitution, as per the

1969 act, in section

"49-O" that a person can go to the polling booth, confirm his

identity, get his finger

marked and convey the presiding election officer that he doesn't want

to vote anyone!

Yes such a feature is available, but obviously these seemingly

notorious leaders have

never disclosed it. This is called "49-O".

Why should you go and say "I VOTE NOBODY"... because, in a ward, if a

candidate wins,

say by 123 votes, and that particular ward has received "49-O" votes

more than 123, then

that polling will be cancelled and will have to be re-polled. Not only

that, but the

candidature of the contestants will be removed and they cannot contest

the re-polling,

since people had already expressed their decision on them. This would

bring fear into

parties and hence look for genuine candidates for their parties for

election. This would

change the way, of our whole political system... it is seemingly

surprising why the

election commission has not revealed such a feature to the public....

this is a wonderful weapon against corrupt parties in India... show

your power,

expressing your desire not to vote for anybody, is even more powerful

than voting... so

don't miss your chance. So either vote, or vote not to vote (vote

49-O)."

What irritates me is that people dont even care to verify the contents before forwarding.

Did quite a bit of research to find that there is something called 49-o, which says that you may choose not to vote and inform your decision to electoral office. But that’s about it. Nothing like what is there in forwards.  I found a very useful thread on this here,

http://www.indianofficer.com/forums/indian-polity/1220-article-49-o-right-say-no.html

Also a nice write up came up in DNA as well

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1211098

Another very useful and informative blog.

http://www.upperstall.com/blogs/punjab-da-puttar/49-o-not-the-answer/

So I was wondering what is the use of the 49-O clause? And from what I understand it is in a way only to pressurize political parties to field better candidates. 

So request to all to not to forward this email or for the matter of fact any email, without verifying the contents. Because you might end up spreading wrong information. 

Cheers.

Be Born Everyday

Read this lines on Pritesh's blog,  and I absolutely loved them, hence reposting here.  (He saw it on TV,  did not know such useful stuff comes on TV :) )

“Be born everyday
Aaj rockstar kal pilot
And who knows what the day after
Kabhi kisi anjan station par utar ke dekho
Kabhi kisi gumnam shahar ka ticket katao
Dusri ki galtiyo se kya seekhna, make your own mistakes yaar
Never resemble your passport photo for more than three months
Har subah shock your reflection
Explore
Bachpan ke kya kuch nahi banana chahte the
Why not today?
Be born everyday”

So what will you be today?

The Envelop Story

Well, in one of the marketing conference, and one of the speakers told this interesting story which i really liked, Ofcourse it is related to marketing, but probably you can apply this to real life.

"

There was a certain airline company say HiFly airlines, which used to consume about 1 million of envelops every year. They used envelops to communicate to customers their tickets, offers, new flight informations, frequent flyer programs and so on etc. At start of each year they used to float a tender, asking for proposals (pricing) from envelop companies for that years quantities,  and then as it happens the contract goes to lowest bidder.

So this was just a pure price game, there was not much of options for the envelop companies other than to put the best possible deal they could afford and hope for the best.

But one envelop company tried to do it differently. They approached the HiFly airlines and said that they would like to do research on the envelop usage in their company. They wanted to find out, for what purposes the envelop were used, how many people respond back, sizes of envelops used  and so on. Envelop company told HiFly that it was just some extra work that they were willing to do purely from research point of view. The airline people did not find any problem in this, and they allowed the research to be done.

In course of research the Envelop company found the following,

1. Most of the envelops that went out were for  frequent flyer program, and offers for free flights. 

2. About 80% of the people never opened those envelops.

Considering this observations the Envelop company suggest to airlines that for frequent flyer they should be designed differently. They should  be windowed envelops, and top of envelop should be printed like this,

You are 

[3] (Through the window)

Flights away from getting a free flight (something as in below picture)

Apart from this the envelop company gave quite a few other suggestions as to how to make envelops more attractive, and more tempting for people to see it.

Airline company really liked these suggestions and on trial run, they really found out that it substantially increased their responses to their otherwise mostly unread envelops.

After this Airline company got rid of the tender process. They joined hands with the this particular envelop company, to provide them with envelops and to also do frequent analysis on their usage and suggest changes.

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I really liked this story, because most times, we dont take initiatives or do more work, not because we dont want it, but most times  because uncertainity clouds us. But sometimes I guess we have to do stuff, with genuine interest, and without bothering about rewards,

rewards come, maybe little later but they do. 

Do you want a Barren Bangalore?

Sunday, I went for this rally organized by Hasiru Usiru, protesting against the Bangalore authorities cutting trees and trees and more trees in bangalore for road widening and for Bangalore railway metro. It was really great to see so many people who came out on Sunday morning for the protest.

Ofcourse this is a debatable topic and many do feel that there is no other solution to Bangalore traffic, other than widening the roads and reducing the  green cover. Lot of people even have been skeptical if the protest is worth it. And if enough research has been done on the alternate solutions.

But being in Hasiru Usiru mailing list for quite some time, and knowing some of the people who are behind it, I have no doubt about their competency. Hasiru Usiru has done numerous studies and have made varioius reports, both of the ineffectiveness of widening of roads in long run and also on alternative solutions. You can read lot of stuff about this on their website. I wonder though how things are in other cities, if they are facing the same issues.

One another thing great about this protest was that, they ensured that there was no litter. There were no banners which were thrown here and there and also ensured that the regular traffic does not get disturbed.  

Anyways, for now, I will just put down some pictures and really good posters that people came up with on that day.

This guy carried the kid all throughout the walk which was for more than one hour


This sign board is so apt, when you sit to think about it. 

Finally when everyone gathered at the Town Hall

It was great to see quite a number of children join in for the walk

Very cute...

One of hte most innovative banners that I saw.. :)

Another good one

And then finally this really cute kid who was there all throughout shouting and carrying the banner all along her neck, and in the end of protest decided to take little rest.  Really cute...

Related Posts/Links:

Save Bangalore : Road Widening is least intelligent solution

How Effective is Saving Paper?

Protecting Pune Roots: The Tree Act