Making Sense of Business

Get your basics straight, and the rest will follow... this is one of the major take-aways from my b-school learning. And this statement applies to anything thats about business and business acumen.

For most enterprises, the prime business question is not about where to get the money from, or the day to day running of business. The question is, how do the entrepreneurs want to see their business grow; in what direction?

This question is crucial because it defines a lot of things, and clears a lot of clutter from one's head.

What is it that you really want your business to be? Volume driven or Value Driven? What is the precise definition of the customer you want to cater to? Simple, basic questions pertaining to who, why, and how. Thats it.

But more often than not, the entrepreneurs don't get the answers to these questions straight in their heads. From the very start, their ideas are not clear about what they really want to create.

And I dont blame them. The world is full of opportunities. And an enthusiastic entrepreneur would always want to make use of every opportunity even if it remotely helps his business. The opportunity might be a new concept/product/pricing/market... anything...

And in this flight of enthisiasm and excitement, they take up these opportunities which might not necessarily be helpful in achieving their final goal.. And few years down the line, you might find that the business has grown, but its scattered across all directions.

However, there's one reason why basics go a little haywire in the process of growing a business for which the entrepreneur needs to be given the benefit of the doubt.

When a business starts, the entrepreneur looks desperately for revenue. There's no better satisfaction than money coming into the business. How it comes, whether its "in-line-with-the-strategic-objectives-of-business" is immaterial. Better toplines are the start of making a business profitable. And in this gamut of achieving financial sustainability, certain objectives go haywire.

Although this cannot serve as an alibi for any entrepreneur for long. Once financial stability is increased, I believe one should always look back, and think of what one really wanted to build, and to what extent has that been achievable.

Numbers towards the end of the day speak a true picture of business. And as long as an entrepreneur is looking at the numbers closely, I doubt he would face troubles in the future. Re-visiting the basics every once in a while is the key to keeping oneself grounded, and in line with reality.

In the end, all I know is that looking back and reflecting on one's actions and looking at numbers are the 2 best ways of keeping one in harmony with one's own business.

Make hay while the country messages

Throw your head a few months back… there was this ‘new 7 wonders of the world program’ that had hit the scene in India asking every single Indian citizen to vote for the Taj Mahal. Every galli ka kutta with the slightest iota of patriotism was asked to vote for his nation. Every single liner on the ‘motherland’ and ‘bhaarat maata’ was being hurled by the radio, news channels, and the likes. The media was in a rampage with all the TV channels giving consistent flashy ‘ticker ads’ to vote for the Taj Mahal literally begging us to save our ‘heritage’. All you had to do was to type in a message and send it to those 4 digit numbers so that even you could be a part of ‘making history’…

And thus began probably one of the biggest agglomerated marketing effort by the media houses of India. Now before I go ahead and make you realize how we were duped by the media houses and how we quite stupidly helped them make money while we satisfied our conscience by voting for the Taj, let me give you some background on some technicalities of the voting system.

Firstly, the voting system was majorly accepted through sms and an online voting system. There was unlimited number of votes that any person could cast. Thus scientifically the voting system is void completely. Also, the voting system has large dependencies on access to cell phone service or the internet. And lastly, the decision HAD to be skewed since every country doesn’t have the same population size. Surely you don’t expect Indians to vote for the Christ Redeemer in Brazil…! I mean this one is a no brainier… we’re the second largest population in the world; we had to win! Even if 1/10^th of the Indian population cast a vote it would be equivalent to the entire population of Brazil! And given the amount of cell phone proliferation that has happened in the recent times, I don’t think India was at a disadvantage by having a very low internet penetration. And lastly, the entire campaign of the new 7 wonders was a complete private initiative without any international organization backing. In fact, UNESCO issued a statement saying that they were not involved in any way in the ‘new 7 wonders’ campaign.

However, the media houses took this opportunity and turned it completely into a business opportunity. Here’s how. Every news channel has a dedicated sms number for all its services. For instance Star TV has its own private number, 7827. So when Star News urges to cast a vote for the Taj, it would give the number 7827. CNN-IBN might have its own, Zee News its own etc. etc… Each of these 4 digit numbers are provided by cellular service providers like Bharti-Airtel and BSNL to the media houses. So whenever you send a message to these 4-digit numbers you’re charged Rs.3 per message. Out of the 3 rupees, 1 rupee goes to the service provider and the remainder 2 rupees to the owner of the number (the media houses in this case).

Imagine a country with a population of more than 1.1 billion with a high cell phone penetration rate casting votes on these 4 digit numbers. Just think of the revenues the media houses might have raked in just by urging bumbling nitwits like us to cast votes using their numbers.

Was it really a question of preserving the ‘heritage’ and maintaining integrity and all that sentimental crap or was it a pure business opportunity? Your take…