Himanshu Gupta's blog

On Indian Readership Survey and analysing niche magazines as a media vehicle

The latest round of IRS (Indian Readership Survey) results are in recently. At the outset, these survey figures try to give an idea of how many and what category of readers read a particular magazine, newspaper or listen to a particular FM radio channel. Millions and millions of rupees are spent out of marketing departments based on these readership surveys. But what is the ground reality? What is the ROI? and what is the way forward?

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Background

If you're a marketer, obviously you need some kind of barometer to judge whether the monies that you've spent or running advertisement spots on TV, newspapers, magazines or online has worked for you or not. But since it's almost impossible to measure that whether every single person who's watched the latest advertisement for Toyota Corolla during latest FIFA world cup has been positively influence by the advertisement or not, Everyone from the marketers to media agencies have decided to spend money based on an approximate estimation of number of people who watched the advertisement; thereby believing that

If a person has watched my ad --> He/she is more likely to buy the product.

However, in reality, it hardly happens. The person might simply also

1. Skip: Not see the advertisement even though he flipped through the newspaper

2. Dislike: hate the advertisement - hence, deciding against buying your brand.

3. Ignore: be uninterested in the advertisement and ignore it

4. Irrelevant: not be the target consumer for the brand being advertised. A married man is out of marriage market, and hence is unmoved by matrimonial advertisements. (Yes, it is true)

Still this game of pouring billions of dollars into advertising continues. Why? Because there is no sure-shot way of measuring the ROI. Yes, some of you might try to argue that Digital is the panacea of all these evils but at the end of the day.. it also has its limitations. Also, just because something can be measured better does not make it better impact medium. Would you like watching the latest round of FIFA matches / IPL matches on your 42 inch HDTV or a tiny youtube screen on your laptop? 

 

What is the reality like?

Since I'm currently working in the Indian Media & Entertainment industry, I'm much more aware of inner workings of the industry. IRS conducted by MRUC (Media Research & User council) surveys close to 250,000 readers and tries to find out about their lifestyle, their household habits, and the kind of publications, magazines and media channels they consume. 

This is what the IRS mainly aims to measure:

However, the survey faces three sets of problems:

 Survey respondents

Reaching out to the Affluents: IRS survey is close to 50-60 pages long and takes about 4-5 hours to fill on a conservative side. Now, I doubt the possibility of too many working affluent Indians willing to spend 5-6 hours with a market researcher just to finish a survey which is not going to help his/her life at all. In lower income households, it can be assumed that goodies worth Rs. 50-60 ($1 -$2) might act an incentive to sit through a tortuous survey, but about people who are Senior executives, CEOs, etc.  it's an even more difficult task.

Niche Publications and magazines

Almost 90% of niche magazines in India have opted out of IRS. The reasons are not difficult to understand:

Competition In the short run, it is very difficult to dislodge the market leader who gets the lions share of Advertising spends. So, for example, Times of India get the highest amount of money in Mumbai and combined with its excellent marketing, it generally ends up getting more readers also. Hence, Smaller newspapers like Indian Express, etc. suffer since their readership figures are relatively lower and hence are hammered for rates. Similarly, in case of magazines, a possibility of lower readership figures in future readership figures signals doom in terms of its rates with advertisers.

Short term profitability focus Most of the niche lifestyle magazines in India claim to print 5-10 times of their actual print run. Seriously, I'm not joking! So, even though most of them actually print 15000-30000 copies, they generally claim to print in excess of 1 lakh copies. Why? Because most of the niche titles in India are licensed titles from their parent principals . So, in case if the foreign owners of the title (e.g. let's say Maxim or Harper's Bazaar principals) decide to withdraw title from the Indian market or want to license their title to some other player in Indian market, all the investments made by the local partner would go down the drain. Hence, the orientation of Indian partner shifts to short term profitability where instead of investing in brand, they're focussed on profitability from the day one of operations.

Conde' Nast India Group (the only foreign magazine group which has 100% parent ownership and no licensing arrangement) tried to play this game slightly differently by claiming to get their publications Vogue and GQ audited by KPMG. But again, even they didn't opt for getting validated by IRS. Hence, I somehow refuse to believe their circulation number of 50000 and 30000 for Vogue and GQ respectively; since these circulation figures might be simply for the peak months such as October or December only.

Clients and Media Agencies

Commissions The media agencies earn their revenues by getting a 15% cut from the client spends. So, for them, any kind of advertising spend is good as long as they can justify it to the client. Even though none of the niche magazines get covered in IRS, relevance of their content and context to certain product categories means it acts as a good brand building and imagery vehicle for few specific set of audiences. Hence, media agencies and clients take calls on niche magazines based on their own judgements. Hence, the discrediting of IRS as an audience measurement currency gets complete.

 

What is the Future

IRS is the only currency as of now in India for measuring audiences in case of print. Hence, it would continue to prevail. However, it can not be an excuse for lazy marketers and media agencies who don't want to go to the actual ground market to understand consumer pulse but just want to look at some excel sheet figures to figure out consumer demand.

However, as newer medium evolve and audiences consume their media through various platforms such as mobile, web, tablets, and televisions etc. a pure print readership survey would lose its significance even more especially in case of high focussed mediums as niche magazines. However, the good thing is that digital is slightly more measurable and hence, 10-15 years down the line, I believe the readership surveys would become a completely different kind of animal - becoming more of psychographic and user behaviour analysis oriented in terms of how readers interact with content, brands. As far as Niche magazines are concerned.. I believe they'd reside more and more on iPads and Android tablets of the world while their print existence would become a thing of luxury targeting a slightly older age group of readers.

Producer-Distributor vs Multiplex standoff in India

I've been trying to write at one more blog so as to follow Media and Culture happenings more closely. Here's one of my posts there on the recent multiplexes vs producers standoff in Hindi commercial cinema industry:

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Producer-Distributor vs Multiplex standoff in India

All ye Hindi movie buffs out there, it is time to rejoice as the over two months long standoff between movie producers/distributors vs the 7 exhibitor chains(multiplex chains) has ended.

For those unaware of full proceedings, the issue goes like this: India has roughly 11,000 screens out of which around 800 screens are multiplex screens. However, the revenue share is highly skewed in favour of multiplexes which generate around 50% of overall theatrical revenues. As Vanita Kohli’s article in Business Standard puts it:

According to Prakash Chafalkar of The Multiplex Association of India, of the 11,394 screens in the country, 800-odd are part of multiplex chains. They sell tickets at anywhere between Rs 120-150 against the all-India average of Rs 30-50. Overall, theatre revenues accounted for 76 per cent (or Rs 9,700 crore) of the Rs 12,600 crore that Indian films made in 2008. According to Kapur, multiplexes bring in 55-60 per cent of a film’s theatre revenues, while the remainder comes from the 10,500-odd single screens.

Hence, the producers-distributors want a bigger share of revenue-share pie from the multiplexes now. Now, it’s a known fact the Mumbai territory brings in the highest amount of revenues for industry. But in Maharasthra, due to Government waiver, multiplex chains save all of the 45% entertainment tax — which goes into their pockets only. From the rest of 55% money, the revenues used to be split in the ratio of 48% for first week, 40% for second week and less than 35% for third week.[These ratios are valid all across India, not just for Maharashtra]. The reason for the standoff was that producers-distributors now wanted 50-50 revenue share for all the weeks.

In an analysis done on 18th April, IndianTelevision tried to gauge the financial impact of a long running standoff on both the parties. It estimated a loss of Rs. 850-900 million for the industry in case the strike lasted for over a month. Well.. the losses should turn out to be biggger now.

In a further analysis on 30th May, they tried to analyse both parties’ stands, jotting down pros and cons of their currents stands and ramifications of any potential reconciliation efforts. From the movie industry front, folks were more or less united with Aamir  Khan even going upto the extent of asking his fans to avoid his own movie “Raakh”, which was being released in single screen theatres.

But now, finally, the issue has been settled. “The final agreement with multiplex owners will give producers a 50% share of box office takings in the first week, 42.5% in the second and 37.5% in the third, with the final week yielding 30%. The settlement also allows for a 2.5% swing either way in the event the films make above Rs17.5 crore or less than Rs10 crore. In case of the latter, the films are released with at least 500 prints. ”(source: Mint)

Some people have been left over voicing over three other equally important concerns of the industry. First of these issues is Accounts settlement. Ideally, the producer should get his share of money within a week or two of the ticket sales, but multiplex chains usually take 2-3 months sometimes taking upto 7-8 months for settlements. So, even though as the Indian Media and Entertainment industry tries to scale up to global standards, the business practices still confirm to Unorganized sector behaviour.

The other issue is control over release strategy of movies. Since each print usually costs Rs. 60,000 to the distributor, Distributors usually want to release movies only in select locations so as to maximize their revenues. So, for e.g. release a movie in Cinemax Versova and Fame Lokhandawala but not in Mulund. But this would hurt the theatrical collections of buyer multiplex chain for its Mulund location.. Hence, the standard practice is to have buffet approach — either the producer/distributor has to agree to provide copies to all the screen of Exhibitor chain, or face zero presence in that chain. But then, in heat of the moment and mounting losses, probably no one bothered to discuss nitty gritties. [For more on these issues, you can listen to the podcasts attached to these articles on Mint (1 and 2).]

The final issue concerns with the quoted amount of theatrical revenues itself.

The real issue is not what the share distribution of the pie is, the real issue is what exactly the pie *is*. Many producers and distributors quote inflated collection figures in trade papers which are very different than what is actually being indicated by the multiplex collection feeds. This is not to speak of internal squabbles between the producers and distributors themselves once its time to split the presumed overflows. [via IBOS]

As far as my personal opinion is concerned, I personally don’t have a stand on this issue, except for the fact that single-screen theatres(which in turn, means small towns and villages also) have been totally ignored out of this discussion, as if they don’t matter -- a space which has resulted in rise of Bhojpuri and Regional Cinema. Also, the amount of disorganization in industry is appalling and leads to loss of scale in terms of revenue potential and production qualities. After all, everybody in industry is here to entertain people and make money.. and if despite all these no-settlements or settlements, the industry continues to make pathetic movies and deliever flops after flops, the audiences will hardly care for them.

Do Pigs really fly(Have Blogs entered into Indian Legal System)?

In what must be a first of its kind of incident in Indian legal history, a blog has been cited by High Court as part of its analysis of the case. Since its launch in October 2007, TVS "Flame" model has been in controversy with Bajaj Auto claiming that the technology used in Bike infringes upon the Bajaj's patented DTSi technology.

In a recent hearing of the case by Madras High court, the judge cited references from the blog post of Sai Deepak, a law student at Rajiv Gandhi School of IP Law, IIT Kharagpur as part of its analysis of the case. The verdict till now seems to be slightly absurd with TVS allowed to manufacture the bike but not allowed to sell it (To do what? put bikes in Museums??). But nonetheless, the whole incident brings Indian legal system and power of blogs into a new light. Till now, the general opinion has been that blogs, wikipedia and other such user generated stuff is not believable. In fact, Bajaj Auto has indeed tried to contend that the hight court should not use a blogger's analysis for judging the case:

"Counsel for Bajaj argued today that the high court had relied on a blog by an IIT student to decide the controversial issue..."

To which the guy Sai Deepak himself has replied on the blog:

"As for the genuine,valid and well-intentioned queries raised by some of our readers regarding the wisdom of the Madras HC in relying on a blog post, one understands where they are coming from because this was the first question that crossed my mind. However, i would think that the blog post performed a more corollarial/paraphernalial role rather than being the central piece; i say this because the Court, after having perused the materials and arguments submitted by both the parties, must have felt the need for literature which breaks down the issues involved in a lucid unbiased manner without watering down the intricacies. In short, the Court was probably looking for something which clearly summarises the techno-legalities of the case and that,in my opinion, is precisely how the Court percieved the blog post. This is reflected in its observation that "the article does not conflict with the facts of the case". So only after going through the material submitted did the Court refer to the post to put things in perspective in an uncluttered fashion.To that extent, i think the reference is justified."

"As for the other factor- credentials of the author/forum- my honest answer would be that instead of taking a blanket stand that "blogs are reliable" or "blogs arent reliable", every piece of document must be weighed and judged on its own merits with a pinch of salt.If the twin fundamentals evidentiary principles of relevance and admissibility are satisfied and the content of the document serves the purpose for which it is adduced, which is to assist the Court in taking an informed stand, one doesnt see why such document must not be referred to."

But the question I've in my mind is: How on earth did the judge got the reference of this blog? And do Indian judges read blogs for that matter? So, now what happens to the general perception of Indian legal system being a crawling elephant? And what happens to livelihood of Firangi-authors, and India-born-but-writing-for-firangis-only-authors who like to enlighten us to the-other-side-of-India at every other podium, that it'll take 300 years to solve the present cases only in Indian courts, and that India is a loser? I think they'll take this as an exception and go back to their India's growth bashing.

On Life and self

On Absence from blogging

Since I haven't posted here for a long long time in the last year, may be I'll talk about myself in this post. And even though I'm so much of a self-centric guy, I hardly can think of something interesting to say about myself. And yet, once in a while when I meet old friends, realization remains strong that spark of wit remains unfazed.

When I initially started blogging, it was a revelation in terms of being able to express myself, an anger waiting to burst out. Hence, so many posts about freedom, liberty and screwed economic policies of Indian Government. But there comes a time, when you get bored and want to move on. Yes, I know some would lament that what's the point on moving on when old things themselves have not been achieved.. but anger can simmer only for so much time. I still follow some news regularly, but the spirit of debating and questioning everything is lacking right now. Hence, the lack of posts.

On MBA

I have always been interested in understanding lives of people. So nuggets of eccentricities, culture specific behaviours and messages, sociological studies interested me. Hence, I joined MICA last year for a 2 year MBA in Marketing Communications. I'm not sure how much have i learned or improved, or in these recessionary times, whether I'll get a job with enough salary that I'll be able to pay my loan and yet live a comfortable life. But then correctness of decisions can be fully realized in hindsight only.. so no judgements for now.

On Friends and Family

I've always been fortunate enough to have great friends -- always having at least one friend with me to ride me through all crises. MICA added totally new dimensions to this and I learned some things for the first time about relationships in the last year.

My family stopped to give advices and road maps to life to me after I cleared IITJEE and went to my engineering college.. but a painful realization bothers me every now and then -- In midst of my job and career, I haven't been able to give them enough time.

On Death

Last week, my good friend and previous room mate Subash Reddy died in a road accident. I and couple of other friends rushed him to hospital post the accident but he couldn't be saved. Death is something we always banish to background, and it makes the ultimate confrontation even more difficult. Last week was very difficult for me.. but may be I'll start thinking death as a permanent reality rather than a post-retirement phenomenon.

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So, that's it for now. I desperately want to post something here, but have been running out of ideas, inspirations and thoughts. Anyone with criticism/inspirations/suggestions is always welcome.

Guess what? The biggest music company in India is a Telecom operator

An interesting development happened this month in India's music industry. Music Bharti, the music related arm of Bharti -- the biggest telecom operator in India, became the biggest music company in India by revenues.

As I see it, it signifies following things:

1) Piracy is definitely killing the traditional music business comapnies like Saregama, HMV, Sony-BMG etc. Bharti does not incur any distribution cost like these labels have to incure on making their music CDs and cassettes present in music shops across India.

2) Being the biggest telecom company in India with over 70 million users, Bharti has the biggest one-to-one distribution network in India. This coupled with aggressive marketing, Indians tendency to splurge on their mobiles with hello-tunes, ringtones, caller tunes and what not, has opened up a totally legal way of making money from music.

As Chris Anderson talked about this in his book The Long Tail, the marginal cost of adding another song to its library is zero for Bharti, and it results in virtually unlimited choice to its users. For a music buyer, the chances of a song being available with Bharti Airtel would be higher compared to finding it in a neighborhood music shop.

However, from the personal ideation point of view, I'm slightly perplexed why Bharti is not using the recommendation system to get people's satisfaction levels with their downloads. Though it can be argued the tracks which get downloaded most, or put as caller tuned most number of times directly signify the choice of consumers as a whole. However, it misses the personal recommendation feature suited to individual tastes, which Amazon or Netflix deploy. I also think that Bharti can put the whole catalog of its music online and allow users to download any song of their choice to their phones.

One important point that is missed in the headline is about the profits. Bharti still has to license its music from the record labels, and that would cost money. Now, as I know it, the power has been with telecom companies when it comes to content developers of games and applications. However, with music contracts, I don't know as of now. But it can be argued that when even the multiplex owners have more power over the movie revenues in India(cause of the ongoing fight between multiplex owners and Hindi commercial cinema industry), then consolidated telecom firms would definitely have more power over the music companies. So, the ground has shifted for the music companies.

In US, it was Apple with its iTunes. In India, it's Telecom companies that are calling the shots. Where would the music companies go to find their profits?

Update: The folks at Medianama have done some calculations and asked industry people to do the maths of money split-up between telecom operators, platform owners and content owners/aggregators. In case you're interested, do read the links.

Finding the Recession resistant market in India

Huff.. It's been long time since I've posted here.

Anyways, with all this talk of recession going on and how it's going to impact India, let's look at two sectors.

The steller growth phase has continued for Telecommunications sector in India with over 20 mn users being added in last two months. So, even though ARPU(Average Revenue per user) remains at rather low levels of $5/month, the healthy margins of 40% and a healthy topline growth has meant that the sector continues to grow.

Another sunrise sector, Media seems to have been hit, but not so badly. Although Reliance ADAG's BIG had to shelve its plans of launching more than 20 channels, the other major media spendings do not seem to have stopped with the GEC channel Real being launched successfully, and IPL being even a bigger success compared to last year. However, this year's IRS data seem to suggest that the readership for most of english language media haven't gone up significantly. This can be on account of purchasing power of SEC A, B segments(relatively well to do groups in Urban India) going down, but it can be also due to increased competition in lucrative territories. But overall, the trend of overall reader base going up in recent quarters seems to have been arrested this time for the english print media. 

However, the regional language print media seem to have grown during this period. As many newspapers have recently reported, there has been almost no impact of recession on Rural India. Hence, my theory of surviving recession in India.

Even though I do not have geography-wise addition data for the telecom sector, I'm hypothesizing that it's the rural markets growth engine that is powering the Indian Economy during this recession. So, the sectors which depend more on Rural economy are going to perform better relative to sectors which are totally dependent on exports or demand from urban India only. So, Real estate behemoths like DLF, Unitech which are totally dependent on urban demand have suffered, while the FMCG players with large portions of their demand coming from rural areas have continued to grow.

Probably, I'll try to sift through more data and update this post in next few days to confirm my hypothesis. Also, I think it would be an interesting study to do a similar comparison for China too. 

Since we are on the Urban-vs-Rural growth engine topic, a very insightful series of articles(I & II) were written by Rama Bijarpurkar few months ago on Rural markets in India. Although, she's not analyzed impact of these markets on India's growth, she has tried to prove that Rural markets are not all that independent from the Urban markets, and our classifications for Rural consumers might be misplaced.

Indian Government goes full throttle after Dawood: Gets his facebook and orkut profile delisted

This is a fictional newspaper kind of article I've written for one of my friends humour groups. Post your comments on it.

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Indian Government goes full throttle after Dawood: Gets his facebook and orkut profile delisted

Himanshu Gupta

Dec 07, 08

In a swift turn of events, Indian Government has sprung into action after the recent Mumbai attacks, and has started with strict actions against one of the alleged perpetrators of attacks -- Dawood Abrahim -- by getting his orkut and facebook profile delisted. As per a top intelligence expert, the action is supposed to highly demoralize Dawood Abrahim and his gang. Due to this action, the gang's members would not be able to get birthday reminders of Dawood's "happy budday!!" -- leading to utter frustration, confusion and infightings in the gang. Most importantly, Dawood would have to rewrite his whole "About me" section in which he had written - "Come on! Come on! Aaaaah".

When asked about how they identified Dawood's profile, the Information and Broadcasting minister present at conference pointed out that a plain search for 'Dawood from Karachi' would give out Dawood's profile; and so far along, this is how they've been trying to get him extradited from Pakistan for all these years.

Meanwhile, Ravan Kaane, the leading politician who considered Mumbai Attacks as an opportunity to gain the CM position in Maharashtra has lashed out against this action saying that you can't even trust Mahendra Dhoni now, leading to speculations that Mr. Ravan Kaane was trying to become captain of Maharashtra cricket team.

In a related event, Human Rights groups have vehemently criticized the Indian Government's recent action of profile deletion of Dawood by taking a rally in front of TV stations of India TV across the country. One poster cried - "It's murder of an identity without verifying whose profile it was. Indian Government can't deny an innocent person his right to Happy budday scraps".

For the benefit of our readers, we are carrying an sms poll in our pages today. You can vote whether it's fair to delete a person's facebook or orkut profile when he might be a suspected terrorist, or should we wait like all these years and allow the terrorists to roam unfettered on our motherland.

When the Telegraph follows Mamta dee

This editorial piece in The Telegraph made me wonder whether even leading newspapers in India have succumbed to the tendency of leaving logic to the heavens:

The editorial says:

"The recent attacks on Christians in Orissa and Karnataka and the rise of Hindu and Muslim fundamentalism are examples of movements that run counter to India’s rich history and praxis of cultural diversity. It is somewhat apt that together with the news of violence against Christians has come the news that the Roman Catholic Church in India will have its first woman saint when Sister Alphonsa is canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 12. This is a special honour for India, more so because it goes to a woman. Not too many people, outside a select circle, know of Sister Alphonsa, who died at the age of 36 after a life of terrible physical suffering. This only goes to show that she carried out her piety away from the limelight and she sought her solace from her God rather than from public acclaim. The sense of sacrifice and selflessness that she brought to her life are the hallmarks of holiness of all the religions associated with Indian culture." [..]

"In 2007, her canonization was authorized after a one-year-old boy, born with a physical disability, began to walk a day after he was taken to Sister Alphonsa’s grave. This was taken as a miracle, the performance of which is essential for a person’s canonization. These are the necessary details that underline the significance of the canonization for Indian society. It demonstrates that the work of Christian missionaries, contrary to what some Hindu fundamentalists are propagating, were integral to Indian society, and posed no threat whatsoever."

I don't understand how canonization of Sister Alphonsa is a moment of pride for all Indians. The editorial would have been fine to me if it just treated Sister Alphonsa as one more example of dedicated Christian missionary worker who helped poor Indians, and hence espoused secularism and social work. But why should an act of 'supposed miracle' underline the significance of canonization for Indian society, when all rational logic would point out that no such miracles ever happen - at most they are cases of faith healing, or just a probabilistic chance. Is the Telegraph not paying its editors well? or, have the last remaining intellectuals decided to leave bengal after Mamta dee's recent grand victory over all reason and logic?

Most biased and simplistic analysis of Indian education industry

Based on my observation of booming education industry in India, I propose the following business model framework for any entrepreneur interested in this industry:

Open any kind of school - Kindergarten, Nursery, High school, Engineering, Medical or MBA. Price its fees very high compared to local existing Government and private schools. Since there already exists a pent-up demand for education in India not being fulfilled by existing market, students will definitely join, or middle class parents clamouring for big-life dreams will forcefully send their children to fulfill their own dreams which they couldn't achieve themselves. Teachers are one of the worst paid jobs in India and hardly get any respect from society, hence they'll join the school for money -- leaving Government and low-paying private schools in shambles. It's alright even if your institute does not have proper licenses or approval of AICTE, some under-the-table-cash would do, or the cries of middle class parents to the court would get you a temporary injunction. Remember power's law always, which is -- "Power is the Law".

Now, since the fees is very high, three sets of students will join. One will comprise of sons and daughters of rich Indians who've made their money from black-economy in India by evading taxes and corruption. These kids will hardly care about education and will live a happy-go-f**king life within a closed cluster of each other, while the rest of poor lot looks on at fair-skinned chicas and lusts on hopefully. After finishing their education, these kids get into best jobs on the basis of their excellent communication skills and their high-class networks or contacts. Or, their parents help them open some business that helps them make loads and loads of money based on strong growth of Indian Economy for past 10 years.

The other set will comprise children of middle class Indians. Middle class Indians who've toiled hard all their life and still haven't been able to save enough to let their children get spoiled. They'll take loans to fund their kids' studies and will put enough pressure on them, so that they cram all the subjects properly and get good grades in class. In case of higher education, such as MBA, the kid will take an educational loan himself, will slog hard for two years as he has to land on a good job after 2 years. If male, he risks losing prestige in society and circle of friends, if he lands on a low-paying job. If female, she risks being married to a traditional-caste based match as soon as she graduates; hence she gives her education her best shot so that she's able to escape the confines of her parents and her social relations as long as she can.

The third lot, i.e. the poor continue to live their wretched lives with no access to clean water, hygiene, electricity and sometimes roads. They have the clout of numbers, and hence the kids of richest of their tribe get entry to all the elite institutions through Reservations and continue to rule their tribes.

The manager running Educational Business school need not worry about any of above complexities, as the Indian Economy is anyways on a high, and therefore based on past records of students getting good grades/placments, students keep joining as they have no other better choice.

In the end, it becomes a safe business model... just like a Real Estate boom based business model in all Indian cities. And so, the system drags on.. with more mediocre education being provided, and brilliant students made brilliant by their self-efforts and hard work. Money flows on, Life goes on.

Why did Google launch Chrome and Android

As this BusinessWeek article points out, as consumers spend more and more time with their mobiles rather than spending it online, Google faced a threat to its core business model i.e. showing advertisements to consumers while surfing for information. Since the display space in case of a mobile phone is much constricted compared to a desktop, it allowed google to show fewer ads and thus make less money.

Google responded to it by launching its own mobile operating platform known as Android. Today, let's say if you're a developer for symbian(OS used in Nokia handsets), you're locked into making applications for particualr handsets makers only. For e.g. the application made by you won't run on Sony Ericsson handsets.

An analogical example would be - let's say if you're a developer who makes games for Sony playstation. Now, your games wouldn't run on Microsoft XBOX consoles or Nintendo consoles since the platform compatibility isn't there. Also, whenever Sony changes its console version from PlayStation2 to PlayStation3, your software (the game) runs the risk of market extinction as consumers will shift to newer age gaming consoles. But if all gaming consoles software becomes open source and common across all players in the market, then even if Sony shifts from PlayStation2 to PlayStation3, your game will still run on XBOX or Nintendo giving you more flexibility with regards to time and investment. This should result in better games for consumers and more revenue for game developers.

Hence, Android opens up the playing field for mobile app developers. In fact, one of the major reasons behind launching "Chrome" might be just that - the existing browsers weren't too friendly with mobile OS platforms. Even though iPhone tried to redefine mobile internet surfing experience, I think Google couldn't trust Apple enough(Which technical major or record label does). Hence, Google's strategy would be to use the added display space of Chrome installed on an Android OS handset, which in turn would be used to garner more search revenue advertising.

Still remaining Microsoft supporters, anyone?