Many people around are already into starting up on their own - fresh with new ideas, unmatchable energy and all pumped up to bring in the next big thing. But what does it really take to start up? Do you have it in you? Is this a wise and well thought off decision? How do decide all that. How do you know that the decision you have made is for the right reasons?

A very interesting and thorough flowchart that should help you streamline your decision making process.

For weeks now, all major finance portals have been full of articles on Groupon, how it has been losing out on market share to Living Social and other upcoming daily deals providers and how the investors are losing their sleep over the turn of events. The much awaited Groupon IPO was being delayed, and there were rumors that it may even be cancelled owing to the dismal performance by the daily deal pioneer. But amidst all speculations and negativities around Andrew Mason, the CEO of Groupon, he still managed to finally pull off the IPO that has been marked as the biggest the tech industry has ever seen since Google’s. So what does it mean for Groupon? And more importantly, what does it mean for the people who are buying in the stocks?

Read the rest of this post »

After Flipkart, its Infibeam’s turn to launch its very own in-house courier/delivery service - Infibeam Logistics. Infibeam, one of the prominent online retailers, has just launched its last-mile delivery channel for products customers are placing orders for online. The service seems to be just a soft-release/pilot test right now, with operations restricted to Delhi-NCR region, but it seems that the company is seriously looking into this particular aspect of logistics. They are trying to widen the last-mile delivery network by hiring more delivery agents, and there are plans to expand to other cities in India starting with major hubs like Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Ahmedabad.

The service will be catering to both aspects of last-mile physical support – delivery as well as payment collection from users who had opted for the Cash-on-Delivery option. Flipkart had introduced the in-house service some time back, and it has been really good for them – both for logistics, as well as creating a buzz given the uniformed delivery agents. The ads that you see in Delhi metro, on Airport and in movie theatres is also circling around this theme.

Read the rest of this post »

It’s a digital world, where everything ranging from intelligence to love is found online. So the growth online advertising spend has been seeing globally shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody. US, which has been leading the online-advertising-spend market has been seeing a growth rate of more than 20% year-on-year and it does not seem likely to see a slump in the chart anytime soon. If analysts are to be believed, and I think they are correct, total online ad spend by 2015 will be hovering close to the $50-billion mark. So, with time at hand, and nothing better to do, I decided to read up on how the world of online-advertising is slithering its way to the $50-billion line.

Search engines, something that will always be attributed to the accelerant to online-advertising continues to be the major source, and companies more-than-ever are showing interest in getting their ads featured on the search results page of major search engines like Google and Yahoo! Banner ads as well, despite being marked ‘soon-to-be-dead’ by analysts, continue to grow strong – and major ad networks are attributing to a significant share of the total ad-impressions served. What is noteworthy here is the dominance of Video advertising as the fastest growing format.

Read the rest of this post »