Rony Jacob

A noise from an Indian

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Impact covid on daily life- Banking sector

Since 2005, the banking sector has undergone tremendous changes. Payment systems based on Aadhar were widely used. QR code scanner took the place of card readers and it much safer than card readers too. The Indian economy was in better shape to handle the Corona 19 pandemic than ever before.

Savings accounts can be opened without visiting a brick-and-mortar branch. You can open an account and verify it using your android/iPhone apps.

All the said above not much disrupted due to covid. However, other verticals faced a lot of challenges. Loans were especially problematic.

Repayment rates determine the health of public sector banks. Due to covid, repayments become scarce. As loans started to slip into nonperforming assets, the RBI had no choice but to implement the moratorium.

The banking sector heavily depends on the performance of the other industries. Many industries were under tremendous pressure due to a lack of spending and covid. This also affected the banks too. The share price of the banks didn't show the actual picture. Restructuring created fewer NPAs and the balance sheets of the banks were clean and good. The real test for the bank is in the coming days after the moratorium period when the repayment starts.

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Impact of covid in our Daily life. - Teaching.

Yesterday I talk about the impact of covid on the entertainment Industry. Today I like to discuss about another industry Teaching/learning.

Covid 19 has created big problems in various industries. Learning industries one among them. Though there is a shift has started in the industry toward e-learning a decade ago, widespread of covid accelerated it. As students and teachers can't go to school or colleges, increased the use of technological solutions like video chats, or e-learning platforms like Byjus and Khanaccademy.

My sister who is a lecturer uses Zoom meetings to teach college students. She purchased a laptop for this purpose. And she teaches from home and students learn from their homes.

Like in my sister's example, it also leads to force people to invest in infrastructures like laptops or high-speed internet connections.

Using video calls to teach students may have some disadvantages. A teacher cannot monitor every student the way she/he do in a classroom. This is especially difficult for students in schools as they tend to not sit ideal or listen to what is taught. Conducting tests also not that easy.

One of the important aspects of the college or school life is that you make friendship which lasts forever. Learning through online makes it difficult to have meaning full relationships in our life. To have such friendships we need to have physical interventions. I think this is the biggest drawback of online learning.

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What is the impact of Covid 19 on our daily life?

I have been thinking about this lately. There are many things that changed all of sudden. Certain behaviors, routines changed drastically. Travel is a prime example.

But today I would like to speak about the entertainment industry. Usually, We go and watch movies in a theatre. But covid-19 has changed this behavior completely. Now we started watching movies on a small TV screen from the luxury of our homes. Not just old TV channels but a new form of content that is streaming. I have subscribed to more than six streaming devices. A lot of people are now subscribing to streaming services. This has become a serious business in India.

Though there is a gradual adoption was happening in the past, Covid 19 accelerated its adoption.

Due to Covid people now do not have the option for relaxing by traveling or chill out with friends. Streaming services help them to relax.

Earlier new movies were released only in a theater. Now that too happens on the streaming services. This will help the movie industry to reduce losses.

The only downside I see is that movie theaters won't open and have shows regularly in the near future. So there is a chance that there may be job losses in the theater industry.

Yeah, that is pandemic or natural calamities always accelerate the death of old industries in favor of new ones.

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Restart

Lets face the fact. I have started so many blogs and i haven't sticked to any of them. I feel sorry about this. This time also I may not stick to this blog and I will discontinue it in the near future.

But it is worth that I trying I might be successful in keeping my promise in the comming days.

[ronyjacob-blog]

Hartal

Tomorrow we have our celebrational holiday- Hartal For those who don't know what hartal is it is a basic form of strike, mostly for a time period of 12 hours or 24 hours, called by political parties. It suspends the normal business and day to day life of people. Shops will not open and public transport system will not work. These strikes called for a reason usually. For tomorrow's hartal it for entry of women devotees in  Sabarimala Temple which happened due to the verdict of the supreme court of India. I don't want to have a discussion about the merit and demerit of this verdict. But I support the entry of women of all ages in all temples. Though I don't want to talk about the merit and demerits of the supreme court verdict, I want to discuss the merit and demerits of hartal like any other form of protest. As usual, hartal has merits and demerits. It first merits itself, it basically a form of protest. This can be used for register the protest of common people. But like other things, it is often misused. Constant abuse of it turned it down to be a less powerful weapon at least in Kerala. There are more than 100 hartals called by political parties in the past year itself. Due to hartal a lot of human power wasted and loss in business happens. So I am against for tomorrow's hartal.

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Evernote plus

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Androidpolice reports

Evernote has added a third tier to their subscription note taking service that fits comfortably between the free and premium options that existed before. The new option, called Evernote Plus, allows users to upload up to 1GB of notes monthly and unlocks offline access to notes on mobile devices, passcode lock, and a feature that lets you turn emails into notes. The new package will run you $2.99 a month or $24.99 per year.

Finally Evernote became more affordable to vast majority of people. For years I have been using it. Till now I havn’t had a need for the paid version. Even though now I am considering to upgrade to its paid plan.

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Crunch Report

Recently I started watching Sarah Lane's Crunch Report on Techcrunch. It is quite amazing and I recommend it for anyone who is interested in technology.

I was a vivid reader. On a typical day I spend around 3 to 5 hours just for reading and I would in fact be very happy if I were to get more time to read.

However, now I can't read as much as I did in the past since I am not able to focus. As a result, I have started to reduce the number of blogs I read. But I fear I may miss out on something very important. And I found that the easiest way to fix this is to read some weekly round ups offered by bloggers.

Sarah Lane’s report is a daily roundup of the important technological events or products released. It lasts around five to six minutes only and let me tell you, I am very happy that without spending much time I can have the all the important information.

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Net neutrality

I first heard about net neutrality in 2014, in the midst of a Netflix controversy. At that time I did not have any idea what it was. So I did some research and found what it was and I was able to distinguish between fast lane and slow lane. I am always a supporter of Net neutrality and I believe that it is the first and foremost rule of Internet, the one thing that made Internet a thriving medium for innovation.

At that time We appreciated the efforts of companies like Twitter, Facebook and others to make internet available for everyone without discrimination.(I wanted to include Google also in the list but I found out that they stand somewhat in favor of anti-net neutrality)

Their efforts have succeeded in a ruling from the FCC (Federal Communication Commission) that enforced net neutrality. That is what settled the net neutrality debate in America.

In India, there is a loud debate going on now about net neutrality.

From Wikipedia,

In recent times, the debate in India about Net Neutrality has heated up with a large scale online campaign for it, and asking people to get associated with the movement for net neutrality. Major newspapers have reported how ‘fight for net neutrality’ has 'united internet’. During the last few days, more than 600,000 e-mails and online petitions have been sent to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and Union Ministry for Communication and Information Technology 'to act against the violation of net neutrality by corporate interests’. This online petition is in response to a consultation paper on over-the-top services (OTT) and net neutrality for public feedback released by TRAI.

Wikipedia is somewhat abrupt and doesn’t talk about the internet.org or Airtel zero. For those who don’t know, internet.org, is a service initiated by Facebook to enable internet access to poor people who haven’t had the luxury of 'internet’.

Why is Facebook doing such a benevolent scheme? They want to find their fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. As Facebook growth starts stagnating they want to accelerate it by adding more people to its service. Since they have reached the ceiling in developed countries, they are moving to developing countries like India, Indonesia and other African countries. In order to reach the poor people, Facebook offers free internet. The Internet bundle by the Facebook is just a superset of Facebook and other services – most of them I haven’t even heard off – and it doesn’t have the full access to Internet, just a selection of some services.

Hindustan Times wrote this about the actual intentions of Internet.org

Mr. Zuckerberg’s ambitions become clear when, in his article, he says Internet.org is open to “all mobile operators” and “as many internet providers” as possible. Who does he not mention? Internet sites and mobile apps. Because the power to decide which of them get on Internet.org will rest with Facebook. Internet.org is not open, and despite its name, is not the Internet.

I wrote this article to just say one thing, Anti net neutrality movements by telecommunication providers in America and Internet.org, Airtel Zero in India have the same mentality. Lobbyists want to make more profit and they don’t care even if it kills the openness, innovation and accessibility.

But one question still remains, who will give the poor actual access to The Internet?

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What I prefer to see in App developers

My last post was about why I buy apps. So I think, it is better to  to explain about what I prefer to see in App developers.

Last year I bought an app called Press, it was a RSS reader. Since I read a lot, that was one of the first things I did when I bought a new phone. It was a nice, feature rich app and it was hailed as "The best RSS reader for android." In the first use itself I fall in love with the app. But later on, problems were started creeping in.

After some time of use, the app apparently stops working. The feeds fetch was not working properly. I thought the developer would fix it in their future updates. But even until now there is no update available.

I have been checking the play store time to time for its updates. What I now feel is that the developer has cheated me, as they abandoned the product.

So the first important thing I do before I buy any app is to check the frequency of their updates – whether the developer listens to his users and is he willing to fix the bugs.

We buy apps and products because of different reasons and preferences. But how do we feel if the company or developer is not providing the support to its customers when they face issues? So I believe the foremost point for a developer to be successful is to have consistency in answering the queries from their customers.

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Why I buy apps

Last week I had a conversation with one of my coworker and he was implying that his phone was not loud enough. He is using a Micromax Canvas Gold I guess, not too sure about it. His way around ‘this shortcoming’ was to install poweramp app, which amplifies the sound.

But the app is not free – users can install and try it for a month. So I asked to him to buy that if he finds it useful. But his answer was astonishing. He said that he is never going to buy it but will re install the app every time it expires.

I tried to reason with him, why he should buy the app and how it will be a help to the developer. But I failed and he hasn’t agreed to any of my arguments. These were my arguments.

First of all, l buy apps if I feel it worthy of buying. It will be a help to developer as he is spending countless number of hours to modify and improve his apps.

Most of the people don't see any difference between paid apps and free apps. Yes, some free apps are much better than their paid counter parts. But in general paid apps are better than free apps as they tend to have more features and are more polished than the free ones.

If a developer gets paid, he will definitely try to improve his apps which in turn will improve the overall efficiency of the app ecosystem. More number of developers will come into the platform and develop more applications, which is again good for the users. Thus both, the customer and the developer will benefit.

Sadly most users are not bothered about this. To them buying an app is a waste of money. I think users will buy apps only if they tried to develop atleast one app in their lifetime.

[ronyjacob-blog]

Sexy Companion Product Strategy

I wrote this post an year ago. Sometimes I feel it like a PR stund for Dexetra. Anyway I am republishing the post.

Do you remember the very first Siri’s competitor? A small android app that goes by the name Iris?

A few years ago in 2011, Apple released a brand new feature of the iPhone — Siri, a new digital personal assistant. The whole world was fascinated. Everybody watched in anticipation while waiting eagerly for a bite. However the Android world was engulfed in gloom. Without something that could stand up to Siri they would start loosing sales. So they waited in anticiaption, hoping that someone would develop an app to lift their gloom.

That is when a guy called Narayanan Babu from Dexetra created a small voice commanding app called Iris. Add to it the fact that this was build in just 8 hours in a hackathon enhanced its fame. Androidans took to Iris in a frenzy. They finally had something that could stand up to Siri.

Iris though was never a real competitor to Apple. It uses the default speech to text function to understand voice commands. Also Siri performed far better than Iris.

So why the initial hype that surrounded Iris? I would say it was the technology hype. Personal assistant technology was the gleaming symbol at the time and there was need for a personal assistant in Android. Dexetra smartly used this to their advantage. The company built around the hype and marketed Iris accordingly.

They never did have any plans for further development in it. But it acted as a launching pad for their next app, Friday, a personal diary and assistant. And more importantly, Iris helped bring in investment from huge firms like Sequoia and Qualcomm.

It is not easy for an Indian company like Dexetra to be noticed in Silicon Valley. They were not from Bangalore. They started from a small city, Cochin in Kerala. (They moved to Bangalore only later.) So they got better publicity for their company and eventually for their next app, Friday.

I would call this kind of marketing strategy — Companion Product Marketing Strategy. These kind of marketing tactics are essential when you don’t have a sexy product that can attract immediately thousands of users.

So when you don’t have an attractive product, you build a sexy product that consumes less resources that will then market your company and also generate sales for your main product. Dexetra employed both tactics. They built Iris and got publicity, mainly due to the hype created in Android by the entry of Siri in iPhone. They received good initial publicity, free of cost and even found place in leading tecnology magazines like Techcrunch, Thenextweb etc. They built a brand value to a company, attracting investment to the tune of thousands of dollars. This further helped in marketing their next product.

Benefits from the companion product strategy is that you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on initial publicity or hire a PR firm. This is helpful especially to start-ups since they tend to be low on cash at the initial stages. Most enterprise applications are not free. Offering free companion product ensure large number of customers knowing about it. These customers can then be guided to your main product, to whom it can be sold.

Lesson learned? Next time you build a non sexy product, build a sexy companion. And make you marketing life easier.

I don’t have any relationship with Dexetra. I found these facts from news papers and technology blogs.

[ronyjacob-blog]

Welcome

My name is Rony Jacob. I created this website a few years ago. After that not much has happened. I revamped the site recently and I would like to publish contents on a weekly basis. My topics of interest are technology, innovation and strategic ways to manage them.

Why am I doing that? What is the value proposition I will be giving my readers? Is this yet another WordPress blog?

Every blogger or writer who starts his/her writing career faces this question.

I am keen to change one of the fundamental problems people face on the Internet.

There is an information asymmetry between Silicon Valley and the rest of the world. (What I mean is outside US), particularly about India. Though people are eager to know more about Asian countries, they lack the means to do that. I am not saying I have complete knowledge of everything that happens in India - what people really think about the technology and how they react to them. Still I may have an edge over other people since I am residing in India and I am surrounded by actual people who buy the products.

Ben Thompson author of the blog Stratechery exactly pinpointed this:

There is an informational asymmetry between the U.S. and Asia: the latter learn from the former, but the favor is not returned, due to some combination of unawareness, laziness, and arrogance. None are flattering.

And I believe that this is not unique to foreigners, but Indians also lack the knowledge of what is really happening in India. And there are few tech columnist who do that in a meaning full way. I wish to fill the information gap.

I still have a day job at a bank, but I really want to commit a long article every week.

You can contact me [email protected] or @ronyjacob