Of Rocketing Growth And The Real Slim Shady of India Internet Space

Ashish Sinha did an interesting post (Rocket Internet in India: What’s the Big Deal?) on pluggd.in on Jabong’s growth and their team/execution. I know not much about the team or quality to vouch but I am definitely amazed by what they have been able to do with their traffic. It just sky rocketed right through flipkart traffic. Ashish too has wondered whether to use alexa, compete etc. Most are close and relative trends mostly are correct.

Having closely observed relative traffic to all these sites through multiple public data sources, it is pretty clear that Jabong today is getting more traffic than Flipkart (around 250K  mark – with Flipkart relative number being less than 200K) i.e., as of today not even a month ago. That is what is so amazing about this rocketing venture from Rocket Internet.

Ecommerce India and Google Trends

(Graph from Google Trends: Interesting tit-bit – try region as India & watch for the tricks from Flipkart & Infibeam in 2009)

Now watch carefully for the patterns.

• Infibeam is flat.
• Infibeam and Myntra aren’t growing enough compared to their competitors.
• Myntra had some traffic back in 2009 and went flat for next 1.5 years.
• Flipkart did its rocketing in Oct 2011 when they started advertising on TV and then on a good upward projectile.
• Flipkart grew rapidly in 2009 (anyone remember the front page keywords ) traffic peaked from Oct 2009 till April 2010 [The Panda raid].
• Someone please investigate what causes the projectile growth & peak for homeshop18 ?
• If you looked at India only growth – Flipkart probably got significant India traffic only with TV ads & not before.

The most gaping fact of the entire graph - Jabong got all the traffic that flipkart took 6 months to build from TV in the last 2 months. Wow!

The TV ad is great. Indians love drama, don’t we? And that has probably got more likes and mental note than the creative & cheerful ads of flipkart (they were cute but still not there yet for India). Sadly enough, Myntra hasn’t been able to get even a small bump in its traffic all these days with Crores poured into TV campaign.

So was it the awesome TV ad? Of course not. As someone rightly commented on pluggd.in post – its probably the effect of aggressive email marketing (call it spam). There are many others who have done that in India – fashionandyou, crazeal etc.

Either way, today, Jabong leads in the market share of visitors in retail ecommerce.

What are the other Internet sites who advertise on TV? All the listing sites – so let us see where they stand – olx, quickr, sulekha.. You will be in for a surprise.

Classified vs. Ecommerce Traffic in India

• Quikr.com has almost double the traffic as OLX.in and even Flipkart.com
• If you check the estimates from Google Ad Planner (which are actually very close to real numbers from what I know) – quickr has 9% penetration in India while Flipkart has 4.3%

So all the listing sites are quite ahead of Flipkart & Jabong in capturing visitors. Want to know who the big guy is – it isn’t any of the travel portals or songs.pk and not even espncricinfo.com with all the IPL heat!

Will the real slim shady please stand up?

Babylon: The Real Slim Shady of India Internet?

Babylon.com – the translation software!

Now, of course that’s shady. It is a whopping 12% of India traffic as reported by Google. Any marketers in the readers would now connect why Babylon.com is the 2nd or 3rd popular source in their Organic Traffic in analytics

[Guest article contributed by Jyothirmayee, Founder of Hiveminds.in. Reproduced from her blog post.]

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Smartphone Report: Women spend 4X the amount of time men spend on Instant Messaging applications.

In India, women spend the same amount of time on their smartphones as compared to men. However, there are sharp contrasts in how they use their phones.

• Men spend 50 percent more time browsing the web on their smartphones than women.
• Women spend 3 hours more on calls every month as compared to men.
• Women spend 4 times the amount of time men spend on Instant Messaging (Chat) applications.
• Men experiment more with apps – they install, on an average, 16 applications in a month compared to just 11 by women.

Smartphone Activity: The Gender Divide

As far as calls & messaging is concerned, women spend nearly 20 hours a month on calls and messaging which is almost 33 percent more than time spent by men on the same activity. Also, incoming and outgoing calls both last longer among women.

In terms of web browsing, men spend 50% more time browsing on their smartphones than women. The average number of websites visited by men is 20 in a month compared to just 14 among women. However, women prefer social sites more than men as 43 percent of web pages visited by women are social networking sites, compared to just 32 percent for men.

WhatsApp?

Surprisingly, women use online apps substantially higher compared to men, driven mainly by chat apps such as WhatsApp Messenger (which women use three times as much as men), Google Talk and Nimbuzz.

- Men however, don’t mind asking for directions on their smartphones, accessing the Google Maps app more than women (45% vs 32%).

- For both men and women around 20 percent of all apps installed are online apps.

Online App Usage in India - The Gender Divide

- Important links: Coverage of Mobile Internet in India | Nielsen Report.

Another report by Google: Indian Smartphone users are more active than the American counterparts [Google Survey Report]

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GMIC 2012: Using Social Media to Help Society

Late this morning, the GMIC main stage hosted what I’m pretty sure is going to be my favorite discussion of the conference: the one where they focus on doing good, not making money. GMIC’s David Song hosted an all-star panel of people who have been involved in several major internet social campaigns over the past year: angel investor Xue Manzi, filmmaker Fan Lixin (director of Last Train Home), and “Free Lunch” founder and journalist Deng Fei.

Fan Lixin pointed out early on that the internet offers a lot of opportunities for filmmakers. Mobile devices allow basically anyone to be a director and the internet allows people to broadcast their creations to the masses at the touch of a button. At the same time, he said, from the perspective of a professional filmmaker, it provides new distribution channels and promotional opportunities that filmmakers can have more direct control over. It also allows for new forms of expression, like “mini-docs” — short documentary films about social issues designed specifically for an internet audience. Fan said this is a very powerful way of communicating because people tend to understand and empathize with the plight of people in impoverished areas when they can see those people.

Deng Fei spoke about how helpful weibo microblogging technology was in promoting his “Free Lunch” program, allowing information to spread quickly and virally and allowing people to participate in the project easily from their own homes and offices.

The star of the show was Xue Manzi, though, who spoke forcefully about how important projects like “Free Lunch” and his anti-kidnapping weibo campaign are. “This is one of the most meaningful things to happen on weibo,” he said, arguing that campaigns like this, in combination with new media, have created a new civil society in China. “This is the great power of weibo,” he said.

He pointed out that his own weibo account — which has over two million followers — is popular not because of him, but rather because of the people he cares about. “I’m not a singer or an actor,” he said, but he’s able to amass followers because they want to participate in solving the problems his anti-kidnapping campaign addresses, and helping the people Xue writes about (like the parents of kidnapped children).

Xue championed social media and online activism as a way to get real results. In addition to Free Lunch and the anti-kidnapping campaign, he noted that the pressure and campaigning on weibo were largely responsible for the Beijing government giving in and agreeing to publicly release PM2.5 data about the most harmful particles in air pollution, which is a serious problem in Beijing. Getting the government to release data on PM2.5 will allow Beijingers to make better decisions about when they need to wear a mask, and should make a real difference in improving public health in a city where cancer rates are rising at alarmingly rapid rates.

The panel was unfortunately quite brief, or at least it seemed that way — perhaps everyone was in a rush to get to lunch. But I’m very happy to see that in addition to all the talk about user numbers and business models, GMIC has dedicated some time to the issue that really matters: how all this new technology affects people.

This post is part of our coverage of GMIC 2012.

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Phewtick Matchmakes People Through Gamification and LBS (And a Lot More)

Japanese startup, Phewtick, is the pitch that has caught my attention – and confused me the most – this morning at the G-Startup pitches here at the GMIC 2012 event in Beijing. It’s wacky. So wacky that the idea is kinda brave and refreshing. It’s a combination of a lot of stuff: location-based service, matchmaking, gamification, and mobile. The purpose of Phewtick is ultimately helping users to meet new people. Let me attempt to explain how it works in one paragraph.

The Phewtick app allows users to meet new people. Users are ranked according to points. These points are earned based on playing mini games with the folks you meet in reality. So say when two people meet, they can scan each other’s QR code which will trigger a mini game that allows those two users to play and earn points. The points are useful. Every 1,000 points is equivalent to $1 which can be claimed via Paypal. Another way to earn points is to visit stores, and interact with so-called “local advertisements.” So if a user pops by a store at a specific time the users are able to claim and earn the points. Phewtick will take a cut of the points earned as revenue for themselves.

Users are recommended to each other based on the following:

1. Your requests in terms of schedule, location, and mood
2. Your profile information on Facebook – age, hometown, education, career, mutual friends, and common interests
3. Your location information automatically analyzed by the background location technology

It’s fascinating and at the same time mindblowing how Phewtick is trying to piece everything together. It is ambitious but wacky and has certainly caught my eye. The manner in which it tries to connect people together is refreshing too. You can find out more on its FAQ page here and also check out demo below too:

(Video link on YouTube for mobile readers)

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HalfBrick, Maker of Fruit Ninja, and its Future Plans in China

This is part of our coverage of the 2012 Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) in Beijing. See our interviews and reports from the event here.

HalfBrick Studios’ Fruit Ninja has been really hot since slicing its way into the Chinese market last year. It has since made it to over 100 web and third party stores, such as AppChina and Wan Dou Jia, and is pre-installed in over 90 Android brands across five Chinese operators. According to iDreamSky, whom HalfBrick is working with in conquering the Chinese market, out of every two smartphone users, there will be one Fruit Ninja installed on their handset. It is also the top paid game on China Mobile’s Android gamebase stores, the top game in the iTunes app store for 72 weeks in China, and the top Android game on over 60 Android stores in China.

What’s coming up next for HalfBrick in China?

They’re looking to release Fruit Ninja version 1.8 on Android and iTunes, with more characters and elements of the game coming at the end of the month. Users can also expect the release of Jetpack Joyride version 1.3 on iTunes, and a Fruit Ninja Puss in Boots version update in the second quarter of 2012. In the third quarter of 2012, there will also be Jetpack Joyride for Android and the release of the Chinese language version of Age of Zombies.

HalfBrick, is also hoping to bring its Jetpack Joyride success into China, like how they did for Fruit Ninja. It is looking to increase the distribution and making the game accessible for the entire family. There will be full gameplay and licensing support as well.

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Facebook App Center breaks down mobile platform barriers for developers

Facebook announces cross-platform App Center where developers can start listing their applications.

Earlier today, tech giant Facebook announced another piece of news which is shaping the mobile industry: their brand new Facebook App Center, a new place for people to find social apps, and it will be available in the coming weeks. Facebook too calls out to all developers to ‘start preparing today’, and to submit their apps to the App Center to make sure that they can make it in time for the launch.

The most interesting thing about the App Center is that it will be the first ever app store that will be available across all devices. Today, you could own an Android device and an iPad but soon with the App Center, you need to only purchase your app once and be able to use it on both devices. Some questions which immediately comes to mind: what about paid apps? Whether or not Facebook will monetize this and how they do it will remain an interesting issue for the community. Take Draw Something for example, while Facebook benefit from people playing and using Facebook Connect, they are still the point of sales. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Another question which comes to mind too is that how will the App Center affect the overall performance of Facebook, especially its mobile app which loads very slow. Facebook would have to be extra careful about how the App Center performs on mobile. Perhaps that was the reason behind the acquisition of Instagram and Glancee in a month to beef up their mobile team, ensuring a smooth integration of the App Center.

Other than that, the social giant definitely has much more information on the users of their apps and because of this, Facebook has the potential to develop a more accurate app recommendation engine and solve the problem of app discovery. Not only could Facebook recommend apps based on your demographics and interests, it could also recommend them to you based on how much you previously liked the games that some of your friends liked. This could add a whole new dimension to app discovery – all completely exclusive to the Facebook platform.

Finally, as the IPO of Facebook draws near, this timely announcement will definitely push up its valuation. For more details on the App Center, do check out https://developers.facebook.com/docs/appcenter/

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Facebook App Center breaks down mobile platform barriers for developers

Facebook announces cross-platform App Center where developers can start listing their applications.

Earlier today, tech giant Facebook announced another piece of news which is shaping the mobile industry: their brand new Facebook App Center, a new place for people to find social apps, and it will be available in the coming weeks. Facebook too calls out to all developers to ‘start preparing today’, and to submit their apps to the App Center to make sure that they can make it in time for the launch.

The most interesting thing about the App Center is that it will be the first ever app store that will be available across all devices. Today, you could own an Android device and an iPad but soon with the App Center, you need to only purchase your app once and be able to use it on both devices. Some questions which immediately comes to mind: what about paid apps? Whether or not Facebook will monetize this and how they do it will remain an interesting issue for the community. Take Draw Something for example, while Facebook benefit from people playing and using Facebook Connect, they are still the point of sales. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Another question which comes to mind too is that how will the App Center affect the overall performance of Facebook, especially its mobile app which loads very slow. Facebook would have to be extra careful about how the App Center performs on mobile. Perhaps that was the reason behind the acquisition of Instagram and Glancee in a month to beef up their mobile team, ensuring a smooth integration of the App Center.

Other than that, the social giant definitely has much more information on the users of their apps and because of this, Facebook has the potential to develop a more accurate app recommendation engine and solve the problem of app discovery. Not only could Facebook recommend apps based on your demographics and interests, it could also recommend them to you based on how much you previously liked the games that some of your friends liked. This could add a whole new dimension to app discovery – all completely exclusive to the Facebook platform.

Finally, as the IPO of Facebook draws near, this timely announcement will definitely push up its valuation. For more details on the App Center, do check out https://developers.facebook.com/docs/appcenter/

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