Experiential Technology: Creating the Live Experience Online

Experiential Technology: Creating the Live Experience Online 

Experiential Technology: Creating the Live Experience Online

Shoppers want an experience when they go shopping which is not so easy at the moment due to the quarantine. Shoppers are used to getting a buzz when they shop at a mall. Malls gave shoppers an all-round experience and it will take time to get back to that as quarantine restrictions slowly end.

So, e-commerce platforms have to give their customers an experience, a buzz, when shoppers browse and buy things. Obviously, new technology will play an important role in creating an innovative shopping experience with e-commerce – experiential e-commerce. Can shoppers get retail therapy with e-commerce?

It’s the same with events. How can event organizers create an experience online as you would get when you attend, say, a conference in person? Video conferencing technology helps but just doesn't feel the same as meeting in person. At a conference, influencers and attendees can take pictures and video to post online later to create a buzz around the event. But with a virtual event this is not so easy. With a music concert, its also about the anticipation you feel beforehand, the travelling with friends to the venue and so on.

The technology to achieve such an experience online is getting there but very slowly. I guess the obvious technology to get us there would be VR/AR and holograms. But can technology really re-create the same experience as attending a conference or music concert in person? ‘Experience technology’, I think, is still in its infancy but its fascinating to see it evolve.

DigitalAsian

Your digital footprint says a lot about you

Your digital footprint says a lot about you 

 

Your digital footprint says a lot about you

Your digital footprint says a lot about you. For years now, people have been on social media leaving behind data that they may have forgotten. your digital footprint is unique to you, like your digital dna.

A CV/resume may no longer be needed. Firms sometimes ask candidates to send in their LinkedIn profiles instead of a resume. As the recruitment process transforms from being a sourcing game to more of an engagement business, a number of startups are doing away with the resume culture.

At these firms, a candidate’s digital footprint is the first port of call for a recruiter. Talent acquisition/HR firms see an increase in the move away from CVs. Algorithms are used to help its companies hire the right candidates based on their digital footprint. Lots of data is online for recruiters to pickup and select their required recruits.

DigitalAsian

You Need to Improve your Customer's Online Experience Now

You Need to Improve your Customer's Online UX Now 

You Need to Improve your Customer's Online Experience Now

Does your users’ online experience matter more to your brand than their offline experience?

Nowadays, your customers are likely to first interact with your business online and maybe via a mobile device. "Your digital experience is your brand," according to Lew Cirne. Your customers’ digital experience will probably define your brand to your customers.

User experience, online and offline, is important, but as user contact will most likely be online first, your users need to have a good online experience of your business.

Obviously, your offline user experience matters also. If you are restaurant or airline then even if your customer’s online experience is great but your offline service is not then the customer may not return.

User experience (UX) online of your services will come to represent the sort of company that you are to your customer.

Brand management and brand strategy is more dependent on technology nowadays.

DigitalAsian

You Need to Boost Users First and the Money will Follow?

Scaling Up or Monetization 

You Need to Boost Users First and the Money will Follow?

Scaling Up or Monetization

A common startup dilemma is whether you use the limited funds you have to scale up or concentrate on monetization and revenue first. Is it easier to monetize a startup which has scale and traction as opposed to a startup with few customers? Ideally, a startup should do both - monetize and scale up.

All those who develop apps or platforms need to deal with how to spend their funds and whether to monetize first or to market and build up their user base. If an app or platform is gaining traction then presumably it means that users are happy with their experience.

Before most VCs invest, factors they will look at include traction – how many downloads or visitors you have – and revenues. Which is more important to a VC? Will a VC prefer to invest in a startup that is gaining traction or one that has some revenue?

Is it true that if you get users first, the money will follow?

DigitalAsian

Why you need to keep learning to be worth hiring in the future

Why you need to keep learning to be worth hiring in the future 

Why you need to keep learning to be worth hiring in the future

Opportunities for EdTech and eLearning

“The notion that we can go to college for four years and then spend that knowledge for the next 30 is over. If you want to be a lifelong employee anywhere today, you have to be a lifelong learner.” - Thomas L. Friedman expresses it very well.

Due to rapidly changing technology and disruption of industries, skills learnt in your first university degree, especially technical skills, probably won’t last you for your whole career and working life.

People need to keep reskilling and retraining to remain employable in future. This presents a huge opportunity for EdTech, eLearning and education industries. Blockchain technology, AI (Machine Learning, Deep Learning) and Data Science seem to be the latest skills that are in short supply and very much in demand.

What technology will be next?

DigitalAsian

Underused Talent

Underused Talent 

Underused Talent: India's Ethical Hacker Talent

India’s ethical hackers, who earn huge sums protecting foreign MNCs and global tech firms from cyber-attacks, are underused in India. India produces more ethical hackers (hackers who break into computer systems to expose, and not exploit, weaknesses) than anywhere else.

BugCrowd, a global hacking network, shows Indians earned the most bug bounties (rewards for exposing cybersecurity loopholes) in 2017. Facebook is just one of the companies that uses India's ethical hacker talent. Indians outnumbered all other bug hunters on HackerOne, a registry of hackers.

Most are techies in India’s IT sector whose skill set makes them qualified to crack cyber systems. But while MNCs and global tech firms increasingly use this world-class hacking talent, only a few Indian firms run bug bounty programs.

DigitalAsian

The How, When and Why of Linking Activity to Identity

The How, When and Why of Linking Activity to Identity 

The How, When and Why of Linking Activity to Identity

The big debate in India is about linking your Aadhaar card to various activities. More generally, linking activities to identity. e.g. linking your Aadhaar card to your bank account (for banking), mobile sim card (for telecom/internet services), e-commerce, travel and even possibly linking Aadhaar to your social media accounts. What activities should be linked to your identity (card)?

For a country's security what activities should be linked to your identity card? Is the digital cybersecurity infrastructure in place to effectively deal with data privacy issues? (See The Technology of Trust).

DigitalAsian

The Event Space

The Event Space 

The Event Space 

Co-working Event Venues

Co-working spaces were becoming event venues to expand their revenue streams - a good 'go to' for event organisers - before the pandemic.

Co-working spaces had proliferated in recent times and each new entrant to this space tried to add their own unique theme. Some co-working spaces come with gyms attached, with cafes and restaurants, and now, hiring out their spaces not just for startup entrepreneurs but also to event organisers.

Co-working spaces were becoming hang-out spots for everyone with events to suit all tastes. A place where ideas could be exchanged. They were not just shared offices. They are competing with regular cafes/restaurants. They are places for work AND entertainment. 

Due to co-working proliferation, these spaces need to find their own brand and unique marketing to distinguish themselves in a crowded market.

Now, with social distancing, co-working spaces will need to rebuild their attendance numbers. For event organisers they were a convenient location to host events. This event space now needs to be re-built for both event profs and entrepreneurs.

DigitalAsian

The Business of Content Creation is Evolving

The Business of Content Creation is Evolving 

The Business of Content Creation is Evolving: Content Creation Centres and Events

YouTube launched its first pop-up space in Hyderabad, India in 2017 to support a growing community of regional language and independent content creators. Set up at Ramoji Film City, the pop-up format enables an ever-growing number of local language YouTube content creators to provide better, engaging visual content across several genres.

The likes of Amazon and Netflix are spending billions on content creation for local markets such as India, even setting up production studios in partnership with producers.

Events create content: tech giants want content and they are creating centres for content creators and also hosting events for users who attend to create content (photos and video) around those events.

DigitalAsian

Still a Fan of Paperback? eBooks vs. Physical Books

Still a Fan of Paperback?  eBooks vs. Physical Books 

Still a Fan of Paperback?

eBooks   vs.   Physical Books

eBook consumers are growing in number but physical books are not obsolete yet and still have a strong fan base.

Readers may prefer to read, e.g. academic material as digital content where it may be easier to highlight and make notes with devices such as Amazon Kindle, but may still prefer to read fiction in paperback/hardback.

eBooks (and digital content generally) are becoming more versatile with augmented reality (AR) ebooks on the way and audio books gaining ground.

Magazines as digital content are also popular but, again, physical magazines are still not going away any time soon.

How long will physical books last. In future will there be a sizeable enough market to make them still worthwhile for publishers?

DigitalAsian

Reputation Systems

Reputation Systems 

Reputation Systems

Reputation systems are the new buzzwords in the DLT/Blockchain space. Allowing reputations to be measured in non-monetary terms and ported between ecosystems.

Online communities can be set with their own rules. The rules surrounding the reputations can be made by the communities themselves – what can be referred to as your own ‘programmable economic space’.

For example, you could set up a community of people who care about the environment. People, within that community who behave in an environmentally-friendly way will enhance their reputation and receive ‘credits’/tokens. This reputation might then be ported/used in another ecosystem, say for writers.

These new economy ideas may seem esoteric and a long time coming but they may be closer than you think.

Holochain and Sacred Capital are just 2 startups in this space. Creating your own online community with its own rules, being able to define your reputation, in terms other than money/finance, (‘reputational wealth’) and to then use your reputation in other communities will gain ground. The next stage is to get entrepreneurs to build their communities and reputation systems using these platforms by Sacred Capital and Holochain (so-called dApps, decentralized apps).

DigitalAsian

Privacy is Power?

Privacy is Power 

Privacy is Power?

In the digital economy, privacy is the new power.

With more and more of our lives going online, privacy has real value and power. Corporations are going after as much of our information/data as they can and it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain privacy in our lives.

Furthermore, cybersecurity is always playing catch up with innovative cyber-attacks.

Individuals need to assess the real value of their privacy. It is not possible to find out exactly all the information/data that corporations and others have on you. Is it possible to track, in future, exactly what data you give away? Is it possible to track where your data goes in the same way you can track your money, for example? Could this be done through software? Data tracking for individuals may be the need of the hour. Could blockchain be a possible solution - your data on a blockchain?

DigitalAsian

Live, Work and Play

Live, Work and Play 

Live, Work and Play

Co-living and Co-working Evolution of Sharing Real Estate

(This article was written before the pandemic. Co-living, co-working, sharing real estate and the sharing economy in general are good business models, which millions of people around the world found convenient, but now have to adapt to new rules such as social distancing.)

Co-working is a convenient way for small businesses and startups to get office space. But with the proliferation of co-working spaces, they are having to evolve to attract new clients.

Co-working spaces evolved very quickly into becoming startup accelerators and incubators. They are now also looking to attract larger companies such as SMEs and large corporates.

A corporate can put a team working on a specific project in a co-working space near their client. Then once the project is complete that co-working space is given up.

Some corporates even, with spare office space are converting them to co-working spaces.

Co-working spaces and the likes of Airbnb will be competing with each other in the residential & commercial real estate and hospitality markets. The sharing economy at work.

DigitalAsian

Lessons for Entrepreneurs and VCs

Lessons for Entrepreneurs and VCs 

Lessons for Entrepreneurs and VCs

SoftBank and their multi-billion Vision Fund, run by Masayoshi Son, have invested huge sums into the likes of Uber, WeWork, Alibaba and Slack which has disrupted the lives and economies of millions of people around the world.

When a startup had Softbank backing, it sometimes meant billions in funding, focussing mostly on growth with less emphasis on profitability. This allowed startups like Uber and WeWork to expand unbelievably fast.

On some of its investments, Softbank made billions in returns, as in the case of Alibaba. Masayoshi Son was hailed as a visionary with very long-term plans for disruptive technologies in areas such as AI, mobility, real estate (living and commercial). After his massively successful bet on Alibaba, he continued to invest big in startups that, to be fair, have changed the way we live and work in many cities across the globe. It even made good ROI on India’s Flipkart with its sale to Walmart. Softbank thought it had hit ‘alpha’ with its bets on Uber and WeWork as these companies changed our travel and work lives.

But 2019 and 2020 has proven to be difficult years for Softbank. WeWork’s IPO was called off and its CEO stepped down, IPOs of Uber and Slack have not been so buoyant. Softbank now has some less than favourable ROI figures to look at, to put it mildly – so-called ‘down rounds’.

This may impact Son’s ability to raise a second Vision Fund which was planned to be over US$100 billion. Investors in the first Vision Fund will be all the more hesitant this time around.

Critics say that investing such huge sums into startups gives them a false sense of security with money to burn, so to speak which may cause startups to think about growth at any cost rather than being self-sustaining through profits.

The unorthodox Masayoshi Son, will have to think out-of-the-box to bring back the exuberance of past years in the startup ecosystem.

When Softbank makes big investments then it needs huge ROI for the LPs in the fund to be happy. Big investments in a startup mean either even bigger investments in the next funding round (which few funds can match) or a massively successful IPO.

The fallout from Uber and WeWok for investors and entrepreneurs will probably be greater requirement for the startup team to concentrate on monetization and profitability and more governance conditions in any term sheet.

DigitalAsian