Flash Your BubbleCard To Get Discounts At A Local Shop – Loyalty Card Startup

While there is a growing craze of discounts and deals for offline retail on the web mostly around group buying sites, there are some startups trying the offline model to promote offline retailers. BubbleCards is one such startup based out of Pune.

Bubble Card is a discount card that can be flashed at an affiliate retailer to get 5-25% discount. Bubble Card is currently available in Pune and can be bought from partner retailers at Rs.50 for a 6 month validity. There are about 150 retailers accepting Bubble card now and about 500 cards have been sold till date. Each retailer is offered Rs.5 as commission for selling the card.

The best thing about Bubble Cards is that there is no hassle of swiping, collecting points etc. With most loyalty cards programs by the time one reaches redemption levels he is probably going to gift it to grandchildren or the returns are so negligible that one wouldn’t take the pain of carrying the card every time. Though the problem of not tracking / no accountability may actually become a pain for them to get organized retailers to buy into the idea.

Here’s an interview with the 23yr old founder Ashutosh Mahajan who did all this fresh out of college as a sole member in the team.

1. How much time did you take to sign up these 15o retailers?
I just passed out of engineering from Pune in 2010. But I have been working on the idea from a long time, the R&D part. I started working full time the day my college ended. At starting, I had convinced the retailers with just a sample card. I got some 100 shops in about 45 days, with others who intended to join after I launch it. But now with all the printed material/website/Facebook, the conversion ratio is 95%, which was earlier around 60-70%.

2. What revenue model are you looking at?
I charge the customer Rs.50, as an introductory price right now, which may be raised upto Rs.100-200 soon, though people say it should be >=Rs.300.

Signing up for retailer is free. I also provide certain value added services like bulk SMS, Email, promotional activities in college events, ads on print material, website, Facebook, Twitter etc.

3. Do you think 5-20% discount is good enough to attract people?
Bubble Card can be used any number of times.The card is transferable, anybody can use it. These are the key advantages. If one gets 5-20% discount every time he visits the store, on everything he spends for, his investment is covered in 1-2 deals only.

4. What if the retailer refuses to accept the card?
Till now, I have got not more than 2-3 cases of refusal, the only reason being, some new staff who was unfortunately not aware of Bubble card. For that I have put up Sodexho like stickers at every shop, which show the Bubble card discount. Also danglers, flexes, boards, posters to increase visibility.

5. How does Bubble Card really add value to the ecosystem? Retailers could give the discount even otherwise.
Retailers do give discounts, but to regular customers only, or who bargains. Bubble Card creates a platform for retailers to promote their offer. Best eg. CCD Gang Card, total failure, the only reason was they could not promote it. Signing up for Bubble Card network is always easier than investing in their own loyalty program.

Bubble Card comes in a pack like sim cards, with the logos of my affiliates on it. Along with the card, I provide a directory of member shops with their address & numbers. It’s easier for customers to locate the shops. And a customer acquisition form for database, which is another valuable source of revenue.

6. For an organized retail how is the discount accounted in the books? What is the tracking mechanism?
I have not put up any tracking mechanism yet. Once the card is sold, I have done my business. But the card has an ID, which the retailers note down for accounting, crude method. But later on, barcode is the solution.

I have got Subway, CCD giving 15% off and some multiplexes in Pune as well, which are on hold due the same problem.

Final words :
Right now I am badly stuck, totally out of funds, overloaded, demoralized by most of the people, but still it’s the belief in the idea that is driving me.You know, a typical crunch period for a startup.

So what do you think of the startup and the founder? If you are in Pune do let us know how easy/difficult it is to get a Bubble card and use it.

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Of Social Media, Branding and Why Content is ‘Feed’ for Thought!

An appropriate content strategy is the critical success factor which decides the failure or success of a brand’s social media journey. The congruence of expectations between brand and community members decides the fate of a brand’s social media exposure. Some key aspects if dealt adequately can differentiate a brand’s social media campaign. This article draws an analogy of a ‘feed’ to content that is shared with the user on a social networking channel like Twitter or Facebook.

Timing

When a kid should be fed depends on factors like waking hours of the kid, time availability of the parent, preparation time for the food and the time of the day. When an adult needs to feed oneself depends on factors like health consciousness, stress at work and exercise schedule. Likewise, in social media the timing of making a post on Facebook / LinkedIn or tweeting on Twitter, makes a lot of difference. The brands need to consider the timeline in which their target audience exists ensuring their right frame of mind to receive and absorb the message that brand wants to convey. Factors like the time required by brand to organize that content are critical. For instance, a message targeted to adults being broadcasted in rush hour may not be a good idea. The brands need to schedule their content generation tasks in backward manner, so that the right content is available for disposal at the right time.

Content Mix

Adults are self-aware or well-guided by doctors or elders in the family about the nutritious food that should be fed to the kids. As a kid grows up, his /her likings emerge and change at a different rate through stages of growth. It’s likely to change at a very fast pace in teens and possibly much slower during 40s. With the innovation in food products, the choice of food available varies extensively now, but the underlying ‘ideal’ objective remains the same, i.e. consumption of nutritious food for healthy development. Similarly, the community built around a brand needs to be provided with rich content that primarily aids the members to

• remain engaged with the community and have a ‘sense of belonging’
• become more knowledgeable about the products/services

Though, on a larger scale one might consider all community members around a brand to be uniform in nature, at micro level there exist, some subtle differences, strong enough to create a difference in expectations. The brand should recognize these differences and plan its content mix in such a manner that it satisfies majority of them, if not every individual. Though people may not be sure about what they love to be fed but almost every time you are aware of what you hate. The brands should prepare informative, helpful content for its community members, and not just adopt selling approach.

Storytelling

Most of us may remember our parents building stories around stars, moon etc and sometimes fear factor too to cajole us for eating when we were kids. As we grow up the food outlets/brands capitalize on our temptations by the way they advertise. The community members also need a convincing reason to assimilate the content bombarded at them. The brands need to acknowledge that the content they publish on their wall, does invade the News Feed (in Facebook) and Timeline (in Twitter) of the community members. Though brands might take a stand that they didn’t invite people to join the brand community, they must refrain from cluttering the community member’s territory with uninteresting content and annoy members. The storytelling approach can be followed to make a case about the content being shared by the brand. The length of the story is a crucial factor considering the diminishing attention span syndrome. Emphasis needs to be laid on message length and its tone.

Content Quantity

The quantity of food to be fed is dependent on the nutritional requirement. In order to remain healthy both over-eating and under nutrition has to be avoided. Likewise, brands should recognize that they can’t expect their community members to respond and engage with each and every post. Though brands might be successful enough to create content, it should be kept in mind how adaptive their receivers are. This may require ‘hits and trials’ and significant changes as the community evolves.

The above factors do not constitute a ‘comprehensive list’ for an effective content strategy but they are surely critical to success.

What’s your opinion?

About the Authors:

Vijayendra Haryal & Anandan Pillai are authors of the first comprehensive book on Social Media in the Indian Context titled “Social Media Simplified: Twitter, Facebook – Beyond Casual Networking”. This is listed amongst Top 10 New Releases by Odyssey [Facebook page, Twitter handle: @smsbeyond].

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Roundup: Future Group to Launch Mobile Handsets, LBS To Be Made Mandatory For Operators

Future Group owned T24 GSM Service (partnership with Tata Tele services) will soon foray into mobile handset segment. Meanwhile, following the launch of the T24 GSM mobile service across 16 telecom circles through Tata Teleservices, the Future Group is now entering Mumbai and the rest of Maharashtra.

“We are looking at entering the handset market with our own brand and would be targeting the medium to lower segment with it. Our handsets would be for the masses, pegged between Rs 3,000 and Rs 7,000,” [source].

Also see: Future Group Acquires Chaupaati Bazaar, Phone Commerce Marketplace

Location-based mobile services may be made mandatory

In a bid to make telecom networks more secure, the Department of Telecom is planning to amend telecom operator’s licences to add a number of new service rules including making it mandatory for mobile operators to offer location-based services.

Location based service is being suggested in order to enable security agencies to pinpoint the exact location of a user at any given time [source].

Reliance Broadcast, RTL Plan India TV Tie-Up

Reliance Broadcast Network Ltd. Friday said it plans to form an equal joint venture with Luxembourg-based RTL Group S.A. mainly for owning and operating television channels in India.

The joint venture will initially look to provide content and services and also plans to own and operate English, Hindi and local-language television channels in the country, the company said in a regulatory filing [source].

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Zynga Opens Gaming Studio in Bangalore, Second Largest Outside US

Zynga has announced the launch of Zynga Studio-I gaming studio in Bangalore that will develop new game mechanics, in-game features and other technology innovations for users across the globe.

Zynga opened its India office around a year back and recently announced the launch of Zynga Game Cards in Asia. The company’s India wing is credited with the development of Membase, an open source database management system, optimized for storing data behind interactive Web applications.

Zynga claims to have 20.9 million users in India and 250 million worldwide.

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Video: Hummer H2 made of marble showed in China

We’ve seen China got a BMW car that’s made of bricks, now another amazing stuff of this kind was discovered on this land. It’s Hummer H2 this time. Ok, the title isn’t exactly correct and might have mislead your imagination. This Hummer H2 isn’t a real car at all. So don’t think of cars made of stones, at lest this one, to run on roads. The size is much smaller than a real ones, as you could see clearly for the video. It’s  made of marble completely, for exhibition on a marble business fair held in Xiamen, China.

[Source: Youku]

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The Lack of “Useful” Job Portal in India [And An Idea For One].

Except for entry level jobs, the entire job search model is broken and is mostly driven by keywords – i.e. if you ever uploaded your CV in Naukri/Monster/TimesJobs, you know what I am talking about.

I still get email regarding ‘Siebel Consulting role’, though recruiters don’t care to read that I did a bit of Product Management activities for Siebel and all they “know” about a resume is the keyword it surfaces (doesn’t even matter if the resume hasn’t been updated in the recent times or not).

The job site model may not be broken from monetization perspective – though none of the job sites in India are growing at a phenomenal rate and none of them are falling either. So there is a business and there is a playground big enough for 4-5 players [plus 1 path breaking product that I am going to discuss now].

In spite of all this, we need a better job site. A much better model which does two things

a. Better targeting of applicants vis-a-vis the job description (i.e. beyond plain keywords/semantic understanding).

b. A lot better platform for product companies to access potential employees.

While existing job sites can solve the first part (to a certain extent), they will not focus so much on the second part (for them each and every customer is same, be it services companies or product companies).  Product companies’ needs are much different from services companies and they need employees with different mindset – especially when we are talking of employees beyond the entry level.

In fact, most of the job sites in India are good at entry level jobs and their popularity (among entry level) is actually inhibiting their growth in the middle-senior level jobs.
Moreover, most of the job sites have diluted their offerings as there is hardly any check on who is applying for what role. So what really happens is that you get 1,000+ responses to your job advertisement, out of which only 10 will be good enough to even look at (i.e. if you are damn lucky). This works when you can hire HR teams/consultants to go through so much of randomness, but not otherwise.

So what makes an ideal job site?

Engagement Driven.

If there is a job site that can compete with the biggies, it has to come from an engagement driven channel. By engagement, I don’t mean just Facebook. What I mean is a site where these potential employees usually hang around.

At mid-to-senior level (as well as geeks, hackers and marketers), you don’t need to push a job ad. You need to pull people. Engage with them. For content, discussion, whatever it is. And this engagement will enable job discovery. The platform needs to be engaging enough for these professionals to interact on a regular basis.

Am I referring to a very niche segment? Yes and No. I am talking about requirements of product companies (including startups) who often need rock star coders/architects/designers and most of current Indian job sites simply fail on them (the gap is largely filled by niche consulting companies).

Most of the rock stars will not publish their CV on a job site. They mostly discover their next bet via referrals, via discovery, via engagement platforms. If Google advertises its jobs on Facebook, you know what I am talking about (i.e. social engagement).

Block Google/SEO UnFriendly?

Pretty much all of job sites cry for SEO and gain quite a bit of Google love. Google, in this case brings super mediocre job seekers to the site. These seekers will apply for any job that matches their keywords. So all you get is a huge traffic on the site, minus the right intent. Good for the site ($$s), bad for the companies who advertise their jobs on the site.

Sorry.

My case of an ideal job site will have to take an anti-Google stand, maybe even block such public discovery. If not block, restrict who can apply for a job (i.e. focus more on conversion and less on irrelevant eyeballs). For instance, if a person is applying for a PHP job, should you take his StackOverFlow rank into account? That is, is there a way to find his/her’s expertise (in a subtle and consistent fashion) on a subject before he applies?

Do we need a social channel like Facebook for this? Am I talking about a Facebook app? Well, no. While a Facebook app seems a cool thing to do, you are restricting the audience and importantly, you are putting eggs in the Facebook basket. There can be a much bigger play by integrating social proof beyond Facebook.

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What’s your take on the idea so far? In the upcoming article, I will talk more about the model but do share your views on the concept.

[Image credit]

Recommended Read: What to Hire and Pay For? | Want Smart Geeks to Join Your Startup? Take Some Risk

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News Roundup: 400 Layoffs at AOL India(?), Visa and Snapdeal Enter Strategic Partnership

AOL India to Layoff 400 Employees?

AOL India will layoff 400 employees in Bangalore, as well as transition 300 more to contractors working for partners. That leaves about 200 staffers, who will work on consumer-facing products for the Indian and Asian markets.[source/unconfirmed yet]

Snapdeal And Visa Announce Partnership

Snapdeal, owned by Jasper, a leading marketing platforms company, has entered into a strategic alliance with Visa.

As part of this partnership all Visa Debit and Credit cardholders in India will enjoy various benefits on www.snapdeal.com and will additionally enjoy a free Rs.100 credit, usable against their purchase on www.snapdeal.com. The partnership is designed to provide additional benefits and convenience to the growing number of online cards users in the country and further encourage existing Snapdeal users and Visa cardholders to utilise the various programs designed for the Indian users.

Komli Media Strengthens its Leadership Team

Komli Media has announced the appointment of Jaisimha Muthegere as Vice President of Engineering and Bangalore Center Head and Gulshan Verma as Vice President and Country Head, Ad Network, India and Middle East. Jaisimha will spearhead the engineering efforts for the company globally and will lead Komli Media’s recently announced engineering center in Bangalore whereas Gulshan will lead the Ad Network business in India and its expansion in Middle East. Both will be part of Komli Media’s management team.

Vamoose, Group buying travel portal launched

TravelMartIndia, travel web portal announced that it has launched India’s first group buying portal for travel, leisure and vacation destinations. Vamoose.in’s platform has been developed and will be run by ‘EL Media’, a UK-based technology company that has built the group-buying model across the globe! Their platform is in operation in South Africa, Israel, Kenya, Russia, and now in India.

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