An experiment in light expression

Via SiliconIndia, a good piece of news for a country and corporate sector reeling under power cuts, too many sloppy and sinister politicians, a decrepit intelligence and counter terrorism system, a general sense of lawlessness on the streets and physical infrastructure which is still best described as ‘crumbling’. Apparently for CEOs India continues to be the second best investment bet after China.
However, I continue to believe that there is a mistaken notion is that as long as Manufacturing and Services and such continue to grow India does not have to worry and that it is poised to keep the halo and global branding it has acquired and retained especially in the 21st century. However, I do believe that unless India invests in its human capital and in the quality of life which affects people at an everyday level, India will lose its competitive edge to countries which are able to attract and retain the best talent that India has to offer.

The other day I was musing over why mobile operators in India have not yet integrated text/image/voice ads with the basic voice calls, SMS/MMS or atleast with value added services? I started wondering how the more mature European market is doing on this front.

In my search I stumbled upon this interesting interview with Marko Ahtisaari who heads User Experience and Branding for BLYK, the first ad-supported Mobile Virtual Network Operator operating out of the UK and other European countries. BLYK targets 16-24 year olds and provides free SMS and voice minutes for end users in return for watching ads. So it sounds like an ad-driven model is beginning to take off globally.

The interview highlights some interesting experience aspects of an ad-based mobile service. I liked Marko’ answer to the last question: “We founded Blyk because we felt strongly that for mobile advertising to take off, you needed a company with the capabilities of an operator, but the ethos of a media company. And we think it’s important to work within existing patterns of behavior.”

I wonder what the future of mobile advertising has in store for us - Hollywood has been feeding us images of inter-planetary communication through videophone - what contextual ads will you see when you get a call at 3 am from a wrong number versus at 8 am from a tele-marketer versus an SMS at 11 pm from the cute girl across the lounge?
This could be a space for interesting innovations - if the content and context are well understood by markets and advertisers - otherwise the ads might just have a run in with future spam filters.

The Economic times reported the results of an interesting CEO survey.
CEOs believe that Mumbai and Bangalore are India’s cities of the future while Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore (in that order) are India’s most investor friendly cities at the moment.

Patna and Guwahati were perceived to be the most investor - unfriendly cities.

The rankings relatively make sense to me - Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore are arguably the  Indian cities most geared and oriented towards global business and global competition. They still retain a strong vernacular flavor but their human resource base has become fairly international and the quality of corporate goods and services continues to improve (despite the absolutely shoddy infrastructure, especially in Bangalore).

However, I also believe that atleast for Bangalore the rising costs, increasing crime, political instability, slipshod infrastructure and absurd and nonsensical rules (like the curfew at 11:30 pm and the ban on dance floors) have made it quite unattractive for the creative class that Richard Florida keeps talking about. If all the interesting people that made Bangalore what it is leave it or become uninteresting, dull and mediocre then I would imagine that Bangalore will quickly lose the branding it has projected to the international business community.

Plus, it would be a darned boring place to live, notwithstanding the mostly congenial weather!
Or maybe its just that I’m recovering from my Mumbai weekend hangover - but more on that in another post.