Redefining Customer Acquisition Cost in Open Network.

 

Whenever a new product or service is launched in the market, the product manager often plans for triggers like incentives, free samples and so on to act as a catalyst to stimulate product trials. When ecommerce companies launched their service, they took this idea to its next level. With a platform, based on proprietary protocol, the incentives became a tool not just to stimulate trials, but also to build a committed userbase of significant magnitude that it will be practically impossible for many competing platforms to evolve resulting in few walled gardens in each domain who eventually not in the best interest of the industry and economy.

Towards building these walled gardens, the early entrants blew billions of dollars. This was neither charity nor helping the merchants to establish themselves in the digital space. But with the idea of stifling competition which will help them to extract return on this investment through monopolistic / oligopolistic practices like rent- seeking.

This is not just an Indian phenomenon, but seen all around the around the world and the world is worried. The developed countries like USA and EU are attempting to address the challenges of this market concentration through regulation. America Innovation and Choice Online Act in USA and Digital Market Act of EU are attempts in this direction. The UK has also a bill (Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill)  under consideration by the parliament.

We in India have now taken a bold step in resolving this conundrum through the power of technology and markets with enabling policy support. It is in this direction that ONDC has been established with a mandate to democratize commerce. In first two years since the ONDC was was incorporated, it has managed o achieve a merchant base of 450,000 with a daily transaction level of more than 250,000 transactions at less than one tenth of the cost of the other ecommerce players blew up in the same time period after they launched. 

More importantly, this removal of the stranglehold by the platform providers is ensuring that these efforts, initiatives and incentives are also from the collective of sellers, brand owners and buyer and seller NPs and not from the select group of platform providers who use this as a tool for market share concentration and not to help to expand the market. The participation is wide spread ranging from multinational giants like Google, Meta, HUL , ITC, McDonald, Dominos to Philanthropic Organizations like BMGF and Wadhwani Foundation, Government Departments like Agriculture, Fisheries, MSME etc . Each of these entities are figuring out and rolling out innovative interventions to help broad-basing of the market with participation from big and small enterprises alike. Advertisement and hoardings with “Buyer App”-agnostic ONDC QR codes is another powerful idea in the hands of merchants and brands.

Clickable PDFs and social media post taking the reader directly to the product to place and order and make a payment is an interesting innovation that agencies like SFAC have already attempted with demonstrable outcome. Many direct marketing companies are now evolving interesting solutions around this idea.

On the other hand, with ONDC enabling every catalogable products and services to be available in the network, diverse enterprises with large digital consumer base like media organizations, fintech etc. are also developing strategies to offer related products and services to their clients. Each of them with their loyalties primarily to their customers, will find innovative means (may be drawing the power of AI and ML) to help their customers what is relevant for them more. Foray into ONDC network by medial giant Dainik Jagran is a case in point which many others have initiated.

If you let your imagination run wild, you will be surprised at the possibilities for innovation exploding on your face which in the current platform centric model is unthinkable. Let me dare you to be innovative in this new paradigm.

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.” Gloria Steinem

 

Who is your Mentor ?

 

Mentor is a person who can make a significant impact on your career or on your company, drawing on the expertise and experience that person has. Whom you choose as or who gets thrusted upon you to play a mentorship role can be a game changer for you.

It will be fun and also useful to be aware of the nuances with respect to mentor and mentorship to help you choose and benefit from mentors. The role of the mentor is not standard or same in all context. There are different roles that a mentor can play.

The mentor could bring superior subject matter expertise to help you to solve a problem or guide you through corporate web. For example, if you are trying raise funds for your new venture and if you have no prior experience in this, a mentor who may have had extensive exposure as a venture capitalist can be a great help in dealing with multiple service providers and to get the best possible deal. Or if you are considering organisation wide computerisation, someone who have lived through this transformation could help you to be ready for challenges on the way.

The mentor could offer references and endorsements with people of influence and relevance for your growth through his/her network. For example, when you are raising funds, some one who have dealt multiple investors and have had the experience to understand the agenda of the diverse players could help you to refine your investment pitch and may even give reference to different investors.

The mentor could be someone could act as a sounding board for your ideas and provide a philosophical foundation for your initiatives and decisions.  For example, someone who has had good experience in guiding organisational growth could help you in your process of developing alternate growth strategies, evaluating them and make a choice.

While a good mentor may be a mix of all, very often the larger focus may be in a few roles based on their comfort and your priorities.  A genuine mentor with appropriate experience and right intention can make a big difference to you and your company. They can add significant value in helping you to evolve strategies, guide your team, select better tools, turbocharge your marketing and magnify your public relation. Therefore. it will be great for any company to have a mentorship program established as it can contribute to its overall development through development and retention of good managers.

While we give due attention when working with a mentor there is another important dimension, we should be conscious of when choosing and or working with a mentor.

Ideally a mentor would be a person who has achieved certain stature and/ or position that he plays the role of a mentor as a giver and not a taker. Let us go a little deeper on the difference between giver and taker. The giver is a person who has more to give to the mentee. They are self-confident and will work with you to bring the best out of you and also not try to usurp the credit for your achievement, but help you to grow in your role. They will spent time to understand your context, the opportunities available, challenges you face, the strategies your following and proposing and identify your weaknesses and will give you considered advice. They will help you to track progress and act as a sounding board to help you to continuously refine your way forardy

The takers are those who act or pretend to act as your mentor, primarily to enhance their agenda. They will manage to make you doubt yourself and make it look like you are surviving on their ideas. The worst is when often they have nothing really to offer. They are too impatient to understand your context, your challenges, your option and their merits and weaknesses.  They will ask you about all your thoughts and make general comments and motherhood statements with no real value addition and at best may keep goading you to up your aspirations with no suggestions or input or support to make it happen. If you end up succeeding, they will go around announcing to the whole world that your success is courtesy their idea.

You have to be mindful of such people when you choose your mentors independent of their stature and position so that you don’t end up with the latter category. Very often they are in this position because they are better at managing their environment and more than willing to sell their souls for a price. For them end justifies the means with ‘end’ defined as maximising personal agenda. They are too happy to live off the hard work of the doers and smart in edging out the doers in due course like the pirates. (Read this post https://rollingstone-revelations.blogspot.com/2012/05/some-people-all-time-humour.html for a light hearted depiction of such mentors)

Sometimes they are thrusted upon you as advisors, or consultants or directors with you having no choice. Then you will have to have your strategy to protect you from them or manage them and may be the  support of another genuine mentor who will help you in your attempt for self-preservation.

C’est la vie!

“A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself.” Oprah Winfrey – Host, Producer, Author & Philanthropist