Deepak Panigrahy
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Category Archives: General

Google & InMobi

Posted on by Posted in Advertisement, Africa, Apple, Bay Area, Business, China, Entrepreneurship, Events, General, Google, IIT, India, Indian Economy, Inspiration, iPhone, IPL, ISB, Management, Marketing, Sales, Success, US Economy, USA, Views Leave a comment

Today, as I was reading through the article about InMobi, an Indian startup that has been consistently getting rave reviews in the market. I have been always been a huge fan of Young Turks and that is one thing which has always inspired and motivated me through thick and thin lines of my career and I am sure it will continue to do so. I take this opportunity to thank CNBC TV18 for such an amazing program. But this article is not about CNBC TV18, it is about InMobi.

Till early this year, I don’t know why but I never heard about this startup at all. But with this article, I was refreshed about my memory of InMobi when I first heard about it in January. As I browsed through their website today, it was a great feeling. Time is changing and so does the tides have started to flow from the reverse direction. Gone were those days when the market was driven from developed countries like USA. I was not fortunate to be in the Silicon Valley because I still pity on those people who go for monotonous jobs in the Silicon Valley but I can definitely fortunate to be at a place where markets are being driven today and I see that happening more often from hereon. This whole thing is exciting and being an aspiring Entrepreneur, I do look forward to jumping into this sea sometime soon. InMobi is a classic example of what I am talking about, Naveen Tiwari – an IIT graduate going for his MBA at Harvard Business School and then returning back after a brief stint to drive a business from India.

Let us take a look at the Mobile Advertising industry and InMobi today in this post.

InMobi:

  • InMobi started as Mkhoj. I remember using it occasionally earlier but I rarely used Internet on mobile phones those days. What amazed me with InMobi was not only they were smart to tap into an opportunity but also re-built their whole business from scratch even after Mkhoj. I have always believed that Entrepreneurs should always be smart to tap opportunities in the market and should not resist change and that is what defines leadership. Leaders don’t talk about existing systems and processes but they talk about how the system can be challenged for the good. Resisting change is not the sign of growth and prosperity. In my view, InMobi led this aspect by a perfect example.
  • The 60:40 revenue model is very exciting. Basically, InMobi connects the advertisers and publisher. Naveen mentioned in his interview that if $100 comes from the advertiser, InMobi gives $60 to the publisher, keeping $40 within itself. According to me, before hearing to this numbers, I never believed that a high share as much as 40% could be made this way. There are lot of players who are into advertising domains and the most common of them are the ones who divert traffic to certain blogs. But honestly speaking, I never heard of anyone mentioning as high percentage of share as 40% earlier. Kudos to the InMobi team for pulling this through.
  • The Management team of InMobi comes from varied backgrounds like MBAs, BTechs from top class schools like IITs, ISB, XLRI, HBS and XLRI to name a few. This makes the team very strong. I am not surprised why such a team should not get funded and especialy when they are doing so good.
  • InMobi has given companies like Google run for its money. InMobi is in over 140 countries in the world today serving ads to over 200 million users uniquely every month across the globe. In Japan and Europe, it is number 2. In United States where we have entered about 7-8 months ago, it is number 3 or number 4 in the market.  Isn’t it really interesting? Yes it is.
  • Naveen already talked about acquisitions and according to him, InMobi will be acquiring its first company in 3-4 months. Amazing work and my prediction is that they might either buy someone in the US or China/Korea. Why US? Because by buying in US, InMobi can give the open war with Google and Apple in the market. With Google buying AdMob and Apple buying Quattro Wireless, it will be a very good competition to watch for when an Indian company declaring big on the US shores. Why China/Korea? Because InMobi has expansion plans in these areas because of obvious big user space. Acquiring a company in China/Korea can give InMobi quick access to its vast market.
  • For people interested in this space, I would strongly recommend to go through some of the case studies of InMobi. Some of the case studies are quite appealing. I have a personal experience of their presence with Reebok T-Shirt ad during IPL and I quite enjoyed it. Going through the other case studies could give very nice perspectives.

Lets now come to the Mobile Advertising space, in general. I know that there is a lot of buzz in the air for mobile startups. With official launch of 3G in India, the whole VC industry and Entrepreneurs are going ga-ga over it. Even one of my own initiatives, might go that way in future but as of now, I am closely watching this space. One more addition to this space, would be tablets. Android and Apple are going to have an awesome time of their life. The curiosity to explore this space has made me to buy a 3G phone and have also, recently ordered iPad 2 for my own person experiments. More on the personal front, sometime later but lets try to put some interesting facts that I collected while reading through the consumer and market trend reports of InMobi. Kindly remember these facts are directly taken from the reports of InMobi website and I hold no guarantee of correctness of data.

  • Informa Telecoms & Media estimates that the global mobile data services market , including mobile advertising, was worth
    U.S. $224 billion in 2010. Over the next four years the market will increase to U.S. $340 billion in 2014.
  • 15 emerging countries – China, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Russia, Poland and Ukraine – offer substantial investment opportunities for the telecom and advertising industries due to the sheer volume of mobile subscriptions in these markets, and continuing mobile penetration. It is not surprising to note that 30% of mobile data services revenues were generated by these 15 countries in 2010. So, what do you feel is driving these revenues in these countries? Obviously, the low cost feature-rich mobile phones. Visit India and watch any person, to day there might be more mobile phones in India than the toilets.
  • According to Informa, the mobile phone subscriber market of India and China alone will be around 734 million in 2014 from 334 million in 2010.
  • Informa also quotes that the global mobile advertising revenues will rise from $3.5 Bn in 2010 to $24 Bn by 2015, with Asia Pacific contributing to 31% of the share, led by India and China.
  • InMobi research gives very impressive signals on usage of mobile advertisements by consumers when they get free apps or 10% discount on their phone bill. A significant number of consumers might also be attracted to personalized ads. At the same time, consumers have been found to have less attention to free and useful ads.
  • Comfort level of consumers with the mobile advertisements is one of the biggest strong findings in the InMobi research. People seem to be very comfortable rather being apprehensive.
  • InMobi grew by 21% from December, 2010 to March, 2011 giving strong signals of global rise in mobile advertising industry.
  • The Key driver of markets now is the smartphones, which in itself grew by 34%.
  • Android took over as the most used OS over iPone OS. Nokia OS still continues to lead the market share but Android and iPhone are closing on it. The recent Nokia-Microsoft Partnership is a clear example of worries of Nokia losing its mobile platform share rapidly.
  • Android and Apple are clear favorites in the OS platform in both Europe and US while Apple is the largest manufacturer of mobile phones in both US and Europe. The market of US is primarily driven by smartphones where the growth is as high as 50% in the 90 days with Apple growing the most due to its tie-up with Verizon.

Personally, overall, I feel mobile advertising space is going to be a very interesting space to look forward to. I feel more and more Indian companies are going to give US companies a run for its money in future. Its the time for India and we are stepping into a golden era. More companies like InMobi are going to start from emerging markets to penetrate later into developed markets of US, Japan and Europe. I see a brand new Silicon Valley being built but this time, we will be in the driver seat. I would love to see the next “Black Swan” of this world happening from India and I hope to be part of this amazing event.

References:

  1. CNBC TV18 Naveen’s Interview on Young Turks – http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/check-out-who-is-giving-googlerun-for-its-money_537155.html
  2. InMobi Company – http://www.inmobi.com/
  3. InMobi Research – http://www.inmobi.com/research/
  4. InMobi Company – http://www.inmobi.com/company/
  5. InMobi Blog – http://www.inmobi.com/inmobiblog/

Welcome to deepakpanigrahy.com

Posted on by Posted in General, Personal

Welcome to my new domain and a brand new look to the website. Having bought a domain, for the very first time, I go online on my hosting space. From hereon, we will be more regular. We will cover variety of topics, ranging from personal, business, leadership and many more. I hope to get your continuous support and assistance as like I enjoyed with my wordpress blog. We will also discuss some of the plugins and CMS that I explored while working on activating my own website.

Once again, I take this opportunity to welcome you all.

Quantity vs Quality

Posted on by Posted in General, Personal, Views Leave a comment

A known tussle all over. All of us everyday in some form or the another ask this question: Quantity vs Quality. Let me put few of them to you here:

  • My job profile is not good but they are paying me handsome. Quality vs Quantity.
  • At grocery store, the quality of food may not be good but they are offering me a discount.
  • I may not have genuine friends around but I boast of 2000+ friends on facebook.
  • Hire IITians though there may be better candidates from some general college.
  • Company xyz boasts of xxx number of employees but with no job satisfaction amongst the employees.

These are very general circumstances with no boundary to the list. I am sure once we start looking around us, we will see a lot of such circumstances around. Personally, I have experienced some of them. In fact, I have been a victim of quantity over quality and the quantity always won the war of quantity vs quality in my case till I refused to allow it win anymore. I can say that I have been decently successful in my motive. But time and again, quantity tries to empower quality. It tried once again when I tried attempting “post a day” campaign of wordpress. But I realized that my time does not allow me write daily and if I could fall into the trap again.

I apologize but I have decided to pull out of the campaign of “post a day”. And my reason is simple. I would like to continue writing and try to put my views in more concrete way rather than copy pasting some random information. Th idea of this blog is to share my thoughts and not put any global information that is available. I would like to generate genuine interest in my readers and I am happy if I could trigger a thought into my readers and compel them to think about the happening sin their surroundings. We are the generation of 21st century and let us drive the notion of free speech. Let quality win over quantity.

So, today when you go back from reading this post, please ask yourself how many times and what are the things where you have let quantity won over quality. I, strongly, urge you to break this barrier of  life and follow quality over quantity. Please subscribe to the feeds to continue reading this blog because I am no more attached to “post a day” campaign. I assure you that I will continue to keep utmost personal and spread my thoughts through you.

    Funny Office Signs

    Posted on by Posted in Advertisement, Friends, Fun, General, Others Leave a comment

    I am going to keep this post short and crisp. I returned from my trip today and I am extremely tired. but as I have committed to one post a day, I am trying to pass a nice website that one of my colleagues, Roshan, shared with me today. Personally, I enjoyed going through the page and I hope you would like it too :-) Some of the posters are really very sarcastic and one should be careful of using them.

    http://www.pdffun.com/

    Enjoy :-)

    Disclaimer: The link provided above is just for fun and I have no responsibility of developing or in relationship with anyone reproducing the same in the office premises.

    Creative Work vs. Reactive Work

    Posted on by Posted in General, Google Talk, Life, Personal, Twitter, Views Leave a comment

    Today, one of my friend, Anjali Gupta, posted a link to an article on twitter. I loved it so much that I could not resist myself from posting the a short note on it here on my blog. I am sure all of us somewhere deep down the line, will feel the same if we sit down to analyze our own life. The scenario is:

    At the beginning of the day, faced with an overflowing inbox, a list of messages on your voicemail, and the to-do list from your last meeting, it’s tempting to want to “clear the decks” before you start on your own most important work. By the time you finally settle down to your own work, it could be mid-afternoon, when your energy has dipped and it’s hard to focus on anything properly. “Oh well, maybe tomorrow will be better,” you tell yourself. But when tomorrow comes round there’s another pile of emails, phone messages, and to-do list items. If you carry on like this you will spend most of your time on reactive work, responding to incoming demands and answering questions framed by other people.

    So sounds familiar? Do you feel the same way what I felt when I read the article? I am sure most of us surely do. Honestly, I have found Internet, mobile phones, emails very annoying sometimes as I prepare myself for my next goal in hand. Forutnately, I have been able to bring these activites a hell lot down in last few months. No more online on gtalk, no more chit-chatting. Trying very hard to concentrate on my goal because that is the biggest priority of my life.

    The author cites the only solution to the issue at hand is: begin the day with creative work on my own top priorities.

    Some of the key strategies that the author cites to make the change are:

    1. Creative work first, reactive work second.
    2. Tune out distractions.
    3. Make exceptions for VIPs.
    4. Be really efficient at reactive work.

    I will, strongly, recommend all of you to go through this article in your free time if you are serious about your life and have a meaningful life.

    Reality of Today

    Posted on by Posted in General, Inspiration, Life, Love, Personal Leave a comment

    Recently, I got an email from one of my friends and it really touched me. This post is going to be a question for all of us out here busy to make our marks in our own way without realizing how we might be affecting others life. I hope you will like the story as much as I did.

    A woman came home from work late, tired and irritated, to find her 5-year old son waiting for her at the door.

    SON: ‘Mummy, may I ask you a question?’

    MUM: ‘Yeah sure, what it is?’ replied the woman.

    SON: ‘Mummy, how much do you make an hour?’

    MUM: ‘That’s none of your business. Why do you ask such a thing?’ the woman said angrily.

    SON: ‘I just want to know. Please tell me, how much do you make an hour?’

    MUM: ‘If you must know, I make  $20 an hour.’

    SON: ‘Oh,’ the little boy replied, with his head down..

    SON: “Mummy, may I please borrow $5?”

    The mother was furious, ‘If the only reason you asked that is so you can borrow some money to buy a silly toy or some other nonsense, then you march yourself straight to your room and go to bed. Think about why you are being so selfish. I don’t work hard everyday for such childish frivolities. ‘

    The little boy quietly went to his room and shut the door…

    The woman sat down and started to get even angrier about the little boy’s questions. How dare he ask such questions only to get some money?

    After about an hour or so, the woman had calmed down , and started to think:

    Maybe there was something he really needed to buy with that $5 and he really didn’t ask for money very often.The woman went to the door of the little boy’s room and opened the door.

    ‘Are you asleep, son?’ She asked.
    ‘No Mummy, I’m awake,’ replied the boy

    ‘I’ve been thinking, maybe I was too hard on you earlier’ said the woman. ‘It’s been a long day and I took out my aggravation on you. Here’s the $5 you asked for.’

    The little boy sat straight up, smiling. ‘Oh, thank you Mummy!’ he yelled. Then, reaching under his pillow he pulled out some crumpled up bills.

    The woman saw that the boy already had money, started to get angry again.

    The little boy slowly counted out his money, and then looked up at his mother.

    ‘Why do you want more money if you already have some?’ the mother grumbled.

    ‘Because I didn’t have enough, but now I do,’ the little boy replied.

    ‘Mummy, I have $20 now. Can I buy an hour of your time? Please come home early tomorrow.
    I would like to have dinner with you.’

    The mother was crushed. She put her arms around her little son, and she begged for his forgiveness.

    In short, It’s just a short reminder to all of you working so hard in life. We should not let time slip through our fingers without having spent some time with those who really matter to us, those close to our hearts. Do remember to share that $20 worth of your time with someone you love.

    If we die tomorrow, the company that we are working for could easily replace us in a matter of hours. But the family & friends we leave behind will feel the loss for the rest of their lives.

    Last 2 weeks

    Posted on by Posted in Events, Friends, Fun, General, Life, My Tours, Others, Personal, Surgery Leave a comment

    Well, I have been traveling a lot last couple of weeks. Started from Bangalore on 26th April and Returned back yesterday.
    There were a lot of train journeys, in fact all of them were quite tiring.
    I started off from Bangalore by Rajdhani Express to Delhi for a friend’s marriage, which was on 28th April. I caught the train with just few minutes in hand. Due to my crunch timing, I got asthma attack and unfortunately with no medicine, I had to bear it throughout my train journey. It took around 34 hrs to reach Delhi by Bangalore by the fastest running long distance train of the country.
    Even though I had my side upper berth confirmed, I had to exchange it for an old man to take up a still higher berth in the AC 3-tier coach.
    I reached Delhi on 28th morning and then, straightaway head to Modi Nagar, some 30 odd kms from Meerut. The arrangements were good but I needed good sleep so that I could stay awake in the night. After some initial ceremonies, I straight away came to the hotel and collapsed. After a sound sleep of 5 hrs, I started for the marriage. The hotel arrangement was really good and very relaxing and of course, I needed it the most especially after the tiring train journey.
    Garg, as I call him, and often known as Mr. Bean of our class was not ready at all. I have seen so many marriages where the groom used to be the limelight much before the marriage but it was really calm and quiet here. He took just about 20 min to get ready and I helped him out there and we were ready for the pooja before proceeding ahead.
    After the finish of the rituals, we started to the temple on the horse. Each time cracker burnt, the horse gets disturbed and so does our Bean. To some extent, I felt he got scared that he asked me not to light the crackers.
    Well, after seeking the blessings, we started off to the marriage place, which was about 1 km from the home. After so many dances along the road by the friends and relatives, we reached the marriage venue at about 9pm in the night. Everything was good here except the band walking with us. He was pathetic with the choice of the songs. Additionally, I did not like the idea of flaunting money every now and then while dancing (this is a personal opinion). Every time money was flaunted, some street children used to compete with the badn people to take that 10 rupee note.
    Well, the marriage venue was a farm house and Sonam’s family was too huge but at the same time kind heart ed and great to hold the marriage so lavishly. The food items were in plenty and everything from pizzas to rice, dal, juices, fruits, everything was available in plenty. I stayed close to Garg as he was almost alone after we reached there. It was almost around 12 am when the JayMala happened and I can tell you, it was one of the best I have seen till date. Revolving Platform added to the charm.
    After a flurry of photographs, the dinner happened around 1.30 am.
    The marriage ceremony started at around 2.30 am but by then, almost everyone had left the arena except close people like us and families. Now, though I like dancing, I could not make much out of the occassion basically I was down before I reached there, as mentioned earlier but I must say that I missed some golden chance to flirt with the sisters of Sonam (Sorry Bhabhi, did not mean to be -ve) but honestly, all of them were equally beautiful and smart. But I promise I will make the most next time on my visit.
    The ceremony ended at around 6am and we came back to home. After grahapravesh, I came back to the hotel and took off in an hour. I planned to start with Garg’s Mausi as they were also about to come to New Delhi to catch the train, though we had a time difference of around 4 hrs. Now, that was the toughest period for me. I will keep this marriage close to my hear due to two reasons: Uncle’s love and kindness to make me a part of their family each time cousins are called upon for every ritual and also Aunty’s lunch and gift during return time.
    My toughest time was in the station as not having slept and passing around 5 hrs, was a very tough task. I really struggled for those 5 hrs. I skipped the lunch so that it does not worsen my situation. The moment I boarded the train. ate my lunch and just slept. In fact, the TTE woke me up to verify the ticket and he immediately saw me off seeing my RED eyes probably.
    Anyways, this journey from New Delhi to Bhubaneswar, I just slept and slept like a hell. The next day I reached home.
    Now, here is the second part of the story. I got my tooth operated on Saturday and had to live on liquid for 2 days then.
    The pain is still there but it was an important one. So, now I am without my wisdom tooth on both sides but I hope my wisdom does not leave me at least for couple of years so that I can get the thing I want badly in my life.
    Well, I am back now to Bangalore and joined office. Have some work to do and catch on my pending tasks soon so as not to lose the momentum. All in all, I end this post wishing the newly wed couple Abhinav and Sonam a very great happy married life. And Sonam, feel free to touch base me for anything about Abhinav. I know almost everything.

    The surgery

    Posted on by Posted in General, Others, Personal, Surgery Leave a comment

    This was my first surgery of life. I know I have a hell lot of abnormailites. My teeth come slanted instead of developing straight. I have a lot of in-flesh developments all thorughout my body, very similar to the some peope having the extra finger on their hand (Remeber Hrithik Roshan). My hair design on head is different and so does a hell lof things. I don’t like crowd and in general, people and I believe its true vice-versa too. I am too much into relationships too and I don’t believe in them also to some extent.

    Anyways, this post is about the operation that I went through on Saturday. The surgery lasted for almost 1hr and the doctor literallly drilled into my teeth as if like drilling the wall to nail. Hell lot of blood and severe pain, which I am having still. The x-rays actaully showed that my lower 8th tooth on both sides developed slanted, thus, developing into the bones and pushong the nearby tooth. The doctor removed the left hand side one on Saturday and wanted to do the same on the other side after 15 days, but I am skipping it for the time being as I will be returning to Bangalor this Sunday and will probably undergo the second operation after my GMAT.

    But the real question that comes to my mind is : Am I so abnormal that I don’t get anything that I want without suffering?

    Whatever be the case, my work is to struggle and work hard and turn all this unfavorable circumstances into favorable ones, which I am sure I can.

    Merry Christmas

    Posted on by Posted in Christmas, Dreams, Fun, General, New Year, Personal, Wish 2 Comments

    Wish you all my readers a very Merry Christmas.

    I am bit upset as I can’t stand to the fact of the difference in the Christmas last year and this year. But still I expect the next coming year will bring and give me everything that I am looking for.

    Just a simple request to Santa: As of now, I am in terrible state, feeling very low in my life. The whole life is in a rot but in no way, I am going to give up. I have been never been so bad to others. I have always tried to be nice and helpful to others but circumstances have made them something different. Please give me a chance to live my life and I promise that it just won’t be good for me but also for a whole lot bunch of people around.

    And guys, do watch out for my new year resolutions which I am determined to follow being having made up my mind to do so for the first time in my life.

    — Deepak