Book Review: The Mouse Charmers

     Title:          The Mouse Charmers

     Author:      Anuradha Goyal

     Publisher:  Random House India

     ISBN:         978-8-184-00492-2

     MRP:          Rs 299/-

It would be hard to pinpoint one because I enjoyed reading this book for several reasons. This is not the kind of book you can skim through or read while munching or waiting for someone in a noisy café; rather, it is more of a repository and knowledge bank on the online industry in India with several charts and case studies. Needless to mention, the author has done a commendable job! Also, being an entrepreneur myself (I run an online company) I enjoyed every bit of this book!

This book talks about ‘Mouse Charmers’ and the title is very apt for the theme as it is about the various entrepreneurs who made it big with dot com companies or in electronic business world. The author has taken into consideration only the B2C e-companies dividing them into three categories, viz,

• Commerce   
• Content
• Connectors

The Commerce section includes studies on the online giants like Flipkart (aka Big Daddy), MakeMyTrip (travel), BigBasket (Groceries) and CaratLane (jewelery). The Content section includes cases on sites that do not sell physical goods but provide and sell abstract content. The studies included are on Zomato (food review), Games2win (online gaming), Images Bazaar (digital images) and Chai with Lakshmi (interviews and chat content). The third and the last section- Connectors consist of studies on portals that connect customers in some way like Shaadi.com (matrimonial portal), Rang De (microcredit), Common Floor (real-estate) and our very own, IndiBlogger that has given me this awesome book for review!

Each story or case study has been well explained in terms of business models and various factors like capital, technology etc. The author also sheds light on lesser known facts, like not many of us know that Flipkart’s founders initially wanted to start a price comparison site but ended up changing the face of Indian e-commerce! The tables and data along with statistics provided make this book a delight to read. The language is simple and flowing and the categorization provides a well defined overview of the Indian e-commerce industry.

Another thing the author observes is the presence of few women entrepreneurs (Glass Ceiling of Digital World/page-319). She says she came across only three women founders (not women employees) out of all the ones she spoke to for this book and two were in the content based businesses.

Did you know?

• CaratLane has one lakh solitaire diamonds and more than 2,000 designs!
• Shaadi.com has 350 million views per month!
• Flipkart’s A/B architecture allows 20-25 experiments to go on simult.!
• Zomato operates across 11 countries and 35 cities!
• IndiBlogger has more than 35,000 blogs listed!
• South India leads in e-commerce biz.
• Lakshmi Rebecca won the international ‘Manthan Award’ for digital initiatives for Chai with Lakshmi!

And there are many more awesome facts about the ever expanding market of Indian online retail that will astonish you no end! Get a copy, you won’t regret.

Has India managed well in the times of recession?

The global recession is perhaps the most used, or rather misused word today, being quoted by everyone from semi-literate laymen to the ‘hyper-literate’ pundits of financial world alike. There is no dearth of theories, explanations, figures of losses, forecasts for short and long durations, advices, fears, hopes, bail-out packages, job cuts; anything we could think of that is even remotely connected with the recession. The point here is not the technical details, figures or analyses of the situation; they are plenty everywhere. It is the spirit of India and its instinct of survival in this scenario that is the subject.

To start with, the present recession can be considered a classic example of what is known as the ‘butterfly effect’*, or ‘domino effect’**. Briefly saying, the origin of this crisis lies in the greed of realtors in USA who started sub-prime lending, i.e. lending to the borrowers with dubious capabilities of repayments who then resorted to sub-lending the loans. This chain ultimately lead to gigantic bad debts and swallowed the multi-billion dollar US housing-finance giants like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Their collapse in turn triggered fall of other big investors who suffered losses in real estate investments, finally causing a panic in the financial markets, resulting in heavy selling and pull out of money and consequential free fall of share indices. The reaction grew only worse and spread to other parts of the world. The end result was free fall of global markets, shrinking or total collapse of many a business entities and massive job-cuts all over the world.

While there have been doomsday predictions every where equating the present crisis with the worst ones in the history, comparatively India has managed and fared well, so far. That India is insulated from the global crisis is nobody’s case. There have been visible effects of the global slowdown. But certainly the effect here is much less than the macabre scenario of financial markets that is projected in the more developed nations.

 The fall in the GDP growth rate and loss of jobs has not been as heavy as was initially feared, although the share market indices have since fallen steeply. In some cases, there have even been pretty good fresh investments and job-inductions.

When the USA and Europe look frightened of the future, an average Indian does not seem to be so badly hit. Things are still moving, albeit at a slower rate. The reason is not far to seek. Indians are known the world around for their perseverance and capability to adapt. Another factor is the Indians’ somewhat emotional and social approach in every sphere of life, business included. This explains our way of dealing with the present crisis, with far less lay-offs than anywhere else.

But a rather least noticed fact is that in our country a very major part of population is in fact NOT involved with the investments in share markets, realty or other such financial activities, but is still largely dependent upon the informal trading at local level, say in the small time markets nearby the living places for daily needs- local fruit, vegetable or grocery shop, milk vendor, domestic and other personal services etc, due to lower earning and living standards, and partly because of a conservative approach towards money. These are market systems which are somewhat insulated from the large scale formal financial network of national level, which is affected harder by the global crisis. It is this second level informal social trading system which is still holding strong like a steel framework that keeps us going even in face of the worst global financial crisis.

[* Metaphorically, a butterfly fluttering its wing in one part of the world could possibly trigger a hurricane in another part of the world.

** One event triggers a spate of similar events that propagates like a wave going long distances.]

 

 I wrote this for my college magazine :D