Anyways, the Tata Group decided to launch their new babies by housing the new dealership in arguably the most expensive piece of commercial real estate in India – CeeJay House in Worli. The new combined showroom for Jaguar and Land Rover looks awesome, they have been preparing for the Sunday launch all weekend long.

It occurred to me with these two new name plates added to South Bombay, all of the dealers are actually on the same stretch of road albeit with names changes along the way  - Hughes Road, Pedder Road, Annie Besant Road, etc… I’ll start the tour from the southern most dealer and imagine you are driving north towards Worli.

1. Mercedes Benz Sanghi – The original Mercedes dealer in South Bombay. On the right side of the road.

2. Porsche Centre Mumbai – Opened Nov 20, 2007. I remember the date because the opening was on my birthday. On the right side of the road.

3. BMW Navnit – This is located on the backside of Copper Chimney. On the right side of the road.

4. Jaguar – CeeJay House. On the left side of the road.

5. Land Rover – CeeJay House. On the left side of the road.

6. Rolls Royce Navnit – Ground floor of Atria Mall. The mall is pathetic but seeing a Phantom in the window is breath taking. On the right side of the road.

7. Audi Mumbai – At the base of the Worli flyover on the left side of the road.

The biggest glaring omission is the lack of a Ferrari dealer.  Other name plates such as Aston Martin, Bentley, Lamborghini and Maserati have yet to setup shop, not sure if they will.

Hope you enjoyed the virtual car ride.

I still get goose bumps when I see two clips, the one showing him doing the moonwalk during the Motown 25th anniversary special and the other is the Thriller video when he starts to sing “cause this is Thriller…”  The guy was a musical genius and sadly most of us let him down.

I’m guilty, whenever I would hear his name over the past several years the first thing that would come to mind – alleged child molester, what a freak! Now, I feel like a total jacka!@$, because when he was alive I treated him like a leper and now that he is gone – a legend.

I personally could not have helped him, but what about his friends from the past – Quincy Jones, Jesse Jackson, Ron Burkle, etc… The more I read online, the more it appears his inner circle of handlers were rotten to the core and only looking out for themselves.  It seems he had a revolving door of business managers, financial advisors and attorneys, I’m sure all were “yes” men.

The only person that should have gotten compenstated is the brains behind the acquistion of the Beatles music catalog. In 1985, MJ paid $47.5 million for ATV, which included the Beatles songs. MJ sold 50 percent of his interest to Sony for $90 million, creating a joint venture, Sony/ATV. Current estimates of the catalog’s value exceed $1 billion.

The legal battle for his kids and assets have only begun.  I’m assuming he willed his estate to his kids and hence everyone will want to take care of the kids.  The concerned parties will each have their take on why “it’s in the best interest of the kids to stay with xyz…”

Anyways, back to CNN International and remembering a living legend that is no more.

Today, if you want information on traveling to Aruba you would most likely goto Google and put in some search terms and boom a million pages to go through…oh what fun. In geek terms that is a pull search, you are pulling the information.

Several months ago I let me friends know on Facebook I was looking to travel to Dubai. I got back a bunch of tips and pointers which were helpful but I ended up falling back to a Google search. The next version of search will push the results to you. How convenient would it be if you got several ideas delivered to your email about your upcoming trip to Aruba, such as places to stay, places to eat and things to do.  Then you could aggregate the data with what your friends might  have recommended.

Another example, let’s say its time to upgrade your grocery getter and you let people know you are in the market for a “4 door sedan around USD 40k.”  You’ll most likely get 3-4 comments from friends and then maybe a service like Edmund’s or Cars.com can email you the specific information. That would be a hugh time saver and then if you needed more info you could always go back to Google and refine your search criteria.  This of course assumes these services won’t spam the hell out of you, and that is a big assumption.

The real question is whether Twitter is a part of the overall long term social search solution or just a temporary blip.

As far as GM India, all the local press keep on insisting nothing will change the Indian operations in.  Which to be honest is really sad, I think even GM India needs a shakeup and should focus on the low end car market. Bringing the Saturn brand to India and those “dent/ding free” body panels would work wonders in a city like Bombay. But, I’m sure the current concerns will be around the US operations where the bulk of the revenue comes from.

It’s been 4 years since my first post on GM, below are my previous posts on GM:

Feb 20, 2009 - http://celestri.org/2009/02/20/gms-5-year-plan/

Nov 18, 2008 - http://celestri.org/2008/11/18/gmgoodbye-motown/

June 9, 2005 - http://celestri.org/2005/06/09/whats-wrong-with-gm/

What makes Twitter different from the rest? Two big factors that are helping Twitter at the moment:

• GDP is contracting worldwide and hence there is less “stuff” happening.  This gives people more time to try new things and hence Twitter and Facebook are enjoying a “hockey stick” growth pattern. Thus, many users entering random thoughts into “the matrix” as I call it.
• The Twitter API is simple to use. The guys at Twitter have made a platform that can pull data and allow people to aggregate, repackage and reuse the content.

From a business model perspective, Twitter seems to have all 3 segments rolled into one platform.  Quick refresher course in dot.com lingo, C=consumer, B=business.  Sorry to take you back but it was the easiest way to break it down:

• B2B – Currently, there is no fee for using Twitter’s API but at some point they could charge based on how much data you want to pull and how quickly.  If you are StockTwits you would want millisecond access to the data, others might need hourly access.
• B2C – Many companies are using Twitter for customer support, press releases or to disseminate other information.
• C2C – Allows people to have an open conversation and allow people to jump in if the topic is interesting. This is where search.twitter.com comes in handy to find content.

So, how do you benefit from Twitter? That’s the beauty you can use it any which way you want and not feel confined. I know some people that tweet every waking hour and others that tweet once a week. I mainly use Twitter to share links to business articles which others might find useful.

How are people in India using Twitter?  It’s not as widespread as it should be considering over 400 million mobile users and over 8 million being added monthly. Since the founder of Twitter, @jack, designed the architecture around an SMS type usage, I’m hoping within a year the uptake will be much more as people become aware of the service.  Anyways, the people that are using Twitter in India are doing some great things for different markets.

B2B
?? – If you know of anything that is targeted for the Indian market, tweet or e-mail me

B2C
@DeskAway –  SaaS project collaboration tool. They are using it to for support, product announcements, etc…

C2C
@missmalani – According to her Twitter profile she is a Radio DJ, Party Animal and Mumbai’s Gossip Girl. In essence, she is a one person marketing machine
@gulpanag – Actress based in Bombay, tweeting about random thoughts
@deepakshenoy –  Based in Delhi. All things related to the Indian equity markets
@kaushikgala – Based in Pune. Tweets about Indian equity markets and the venture capital field
@sm63 – Based in Bombay. social networking and most recently was Twittering the IPL finals match
@pjain – Based in Delhi. technology, finance, apple, etc…

Some others that are using Twitter only for input and not following others, which is such a waste:

@Rahul Gandhi – He is following nobody, but has over 1,900 people following him. Fail.
@ShashiTharoor – Following 3 people and over 3,300 followers. Fail.

I’m surprised that no big tech exec is tweeting from Bangalore or a big Bollywood star. The CTO of Cisco, Padmasree Warrior tweets and of course everyone knows Ashton Kuther does as well.

If you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m @mrjain.

If you watch CNBC-TV18 or any other Indian financial channel they talk about all the sectors that will get a boost from the new government matter of fact. The one theme I constantly hear and read in the paper is the amount of money that will NOW go into infrastructure, all I can say is Whisky Tango Foxtrot.  Since people love to hear about the “infrastructure story” I’m going to dissect this fairy tale. This story is not new and has been around since the 1990’s when then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said

Our roads don’t have a few potholes. Our potholes have a few roads.

Since then, the only large scale national infrastructure project implemented is the Golden Quadrilateral road project.  For all that talk about national infrastructure spend there is only ONE project for about Rs. 60,000 CR (USD 12.5 billion) too show for it. Yes, I know India is fragmented and each State is almost run like a fiefdom.  The bigger issue is having the States work together, a clear example of where the whole (India) is more than the sum of its parts (States). To fund these projects the government will most likely have a Public/Private partnership,  the public piece will be financed by government bonds and the private piece is a mystery.  Many of the private parties such as Macquarie Bank, DEPFA, HypoVereinsbank and Lehman Brothers are either out of business or have significantly scaled back their infrastructure business. Of course, someone forget to tell the Indian news media about that. In the mean time, any company that has anything to do with infrastructure is the talk of the town…the ”infrastructure story” continues…

My analysis will start from a macro view of the business then talk about distribution, the “cool” factor and innovation. This post is strictly about their online business model and hence I won’t get into their Shaadi Point (aka Shaadi.com Centre) offline franchise business.

The first area is the business model, shaadi.com currently has a “walled garden” approach to member profiles. That means you need to be a paying member in order to fully utilize the website, no pay no access. Another side effect of this approach is that search engines like Google are blocked from the content. I agree that some people might not want to be searchable via Google, but that should be a choice left to the consumer.

Next up is traffic distribution deals.  If you decide to flood the internet with matrimonial profiles that means you have to look at other ways of generating revenues instead of the monthly membership fees. One way of generating revenue is via traffic distribution deals such as MySpace has with Google. There are a couple more I can think of that I’ll save for another post.

The “cool” factor. Let’s be realistic no one wants to admit they are on shaadi.com, in fact some of my cousins in the US call it shady dot com.  However, many of my single friends on social networking sites such as Facebook, Friendster and Orkut are looking for friendship either short term or long term. Shaadi.com has the brand name to make it “cool” once again. An example would be an offline event in Spain for Sindhi’s or Marwari’s and invite speakers from those communities and make it a business/personal mixer. Another option would be to leverage the film production unit People Pictures as well.

The last area I’ll cover is innovation. I have yet to see any tech related innovation coming from the People Group, the guys that run shaadi.com.  Look at Facebook, it announced last week it’s the largest photo sharing site with over 6.5 billion pictures. Did they buy a bunch of servers and throw more bandwidth at it? They probably did some of that but the heart of the photo sharing system is a home grown technology called haystack (more info on haystack). Innovation usually occurs when there is a business need to accomplish a task without throwing more money at it. But, another division within the People Group is Mauj Mobile which is responsible for mobile content to many of the top mobile carriers around the world, I can think of several ways to build synergy and innovation between the two divisions.

Overall, as more users jump onto sites such as Facebook it becomes more difficult to get the mind share of the target audience that shaadi.com so desperately needs. If not, then it will be relegated to parents using the site to find someone for their kids – not the ideal way in this age of social peer to peer communication.

But, at the local level several TV stations have invited the candidates for South Bombay to an open forum and talk about the issues.  They all spoke well and seem to understand the problems and issues that are faced by people living in Bombay.  But, I get the sense many residents of South Bombay live in a bubble and don’t have a clue what is happening in the rest of India – The Real India.  And the real India is where all the real money goes. My petty issues of better roads and high speed internet seem stupid when compared to villages in Madya Pradesh that still have issues with running water and getting more then 8 hours of electricity a day.

The 2 main issues I hear most often in regards to the elections:

1. Who should I vote for? One party will pick my left pocket and the other my right pocket.  And, there is no point in voting for an independent like Meera Sanyal since the system won’t work with her.

2. If the Congress party is elected the Sensex will zoom up. Seriously, WTF? Another attempt to play on people’s fear since many are invested. No party Congress or BJP has even talked about their economic policy so how the hell can one assume if Congress is elected the equity markets will race up.  If you haven’t noticed the Indian markets are being driven in tandem with international markets and will continue for quite some time.

Honestly, I’m glad I can’t vote in this election it’s almost like picking between dumb and dumber.

The general election will decide which candidates get elected to a 5 year term to the Lok Sabha which is the elected lower house of the Parliament of India. This is where all the action takes place, it would be similar to the US Senate.  There are a total of 543 seats up for election in the Lok Sahba.  Each one of those 543 seats are similar to a golden ticket from Willy Wonka, once elected you are set for life and decide what projects and how much of a “fee” you should receive for your district.

There are two main political parties in India, the Indian National Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party aka the BJP.  There are also many other smaller groups that end up partnering with the bigger ones to create an alliance. The biggest of these smaller parties is the Samajwadi Party.  Once a political party has a majority in the Lok Sabha, that party can decide who will be the Prime Minister. Which means the general population does not vote for a Prime Minister.

Over the past several weeks each of the political parties have released their manifesto which details what they plan to do over the next 5 years. I like about the documents because it gives a true read of what the real issues are on a national level.  It’s also depressing because when you read them you soon realize the basics – food, water, electricity and security are top of mind issues. Both Congress and BJP have promised to provide 25-35kg of rice/wheat at Rs 2-3/kg to poor people – wow!  Now that’s pandering to the people and shows what the real issue is for most Indians – food.

Congress Party Manifesto
BJP Manifesto

Over the weekend the Samajwadi Party released their manifesto and a couple of their keys points: don’t use computers to replace jobs and ban english speaking schools.  They have back tracked on what they meant but the damage is done, it’s pretty clear they don’t want to see the country move forward, status quo is fine. They said they don’t want to ban english speaking schools but rather english speaking schools should not be mandatory since they are too expensive. Logically, they should figure out how to reduce the price of english speaking schools and make it affordable. As far as computers, how do you argue with an idiot.

On a more local front, I looked at the candidates that were running for the South Bombay district and who might actually impact my daily life.  There are a total of 14 people running, no one from the BJP Party but from the Congress Party is Milind Deora. Milind has held the position since the last election in 2004. The other notable candidate is an independent named Meera Sanyal, she is currently on sabbatical from ABN-Amro where she was the country head.

One thing I don’t hear anyone talk about is a debate between various candidates. I would think at least in the major metros the top candidates would use the debate to talk about their views and challenge the other candidates. However, I get the feeling no one truly wants to be put on the spot and rather trade sound bites via the media.

For up to the minute election news check out Google’s 2009 Lok Sabha election website.

1. Register a name with a domain register.  The one I recommend and have been using for years is GoDaddy.com, if you want a .in address for India then head to registry.in. The domain name should cost around USD 10 a year. Update: GoDaddy can now can register .IN addresses for about USD 5/year.

2. Select a hosting provider.  I’ve been using GoDaddy.com for the past 4 years and have had no issues. But there are others such as Rackspace or 1and1. A yearly GoDaddy plan can be had for USD 45 a year.

3. Install WordPress. This is the critical step and the secret sauce. WordPress is an open source blogging package but also a content management system.  Thousands of companies use it for their corporate website not to mention the millions that use it for blogging.  As you can imagine this blog uses WordPress and has been for the past 5 years. Once you install WordPress you no longer have to deal with the technical details of a website from this point forward you use the WordPress GUI dashboard.

4. Pick a theme for WordPress.  A theme is what sets your website apart from others.  The beauty of WordPress is the community of developers that are creating tons on themes. Most are free and some can cost USD 100 which is cheap for a corporate website. Below are two places that have a ton of themes to pick from:

WordPress.org Themes Directory
Weblog Tools Collection

So who can benefit from this quick and cheap tutorial? Doctors, consultants, architects, jewelry stores, media professional, ad agencies, etc…the list goes on and on.

So there you have it, a quick and cheap web presence that should work for more then 80% of the people looking to create a website.