The speakers for the conclave were leaders from the online services industry who addressed the various functional aspects of such services like change in business models, content protection issues, interaction between suppliers and end users, etc.
The conclave was held in two sessions- the first session was themed ‘Online Services- Prospects and Challenges’ while the post-tea session was titled ‘Online Services- The Way Ahead’. The speakers for both the sessions were business leaders who are at the helm of operations for leading providers of online services. They bought onto the dais experiences from across different functions including marketing, e-commerce, promotion, strategy, operations, communication and marketplace development.
The conclave started with the lighting of the traditional lamp and was flagged by Prof. M.L. Singla, Senior Faculty at FMS, who gave the welcome speech for the event and in his inaugural speech quoted Mr. Mukesh Ambani, “Let us not call IT Information Technology but Indian Talent”. The Guest of Honor for the session, Mr. Mahendra Swarup, Chairman and Chief Mentor, Smile Interactive Group and former MD and CEO of Times Internet Limited (indiatimes), focused mainly on the avenues for entrepreneurial ventures in the online services industry that requires little capital compared to other startups. “Knowledge creates long-term value and helps in wealth creation” was the culminating remark of the speech by Mr. Swarup, himself and alumnus of FMS and an industry luminary with corporate exposure of over 29 years. Mr. Manish Aggarwal, VP, Marketing and head e-Commerce, rediff.com weighing the spectrum of the current needs of customers said, “Consumers, today, have become promiscuous and are spoilt for choice”. Mr. Hitesh Oberoi, Co-founder and Director at Info Edge Media (the owner of websites like naukri.com, 99acres.com and jeevansathi.com), spoke on building online service businesses by personalizing services to enhance user experience with live instances of their implementation in his organization. In an interactive discussion, he suggested, “Productize as far as possible for scale and scale a standardized service”.
The second session started with a presentation on ‘Software and Services- The Next Wave’ by Mr. Radhesh Balakrishnan, Director, Platform Strategy at Microsoft Corporation (India). The speaker said, “Software and services are no longer on different platforms per se” and elucidated Microsoft’s adventure to tie-up with a large chunk of SME clusters in India. Google India Head for Online Sales and Operations, Mr. Thomas Arnold, gave a brief history of Google from a garage start-up to the proponents of one of the most successful business models of all online services companies.
The next speaker came from a background of diverse industries ranging from Deutsche Bank to ESPN Star Sports. Mr. I.M. Swaminathan, Director- Communications and Community Products at Yahoo! India, shared insights on the promotion of UGC (User Generated Content) to get into the social circle of the customers and thus gain currency by means of viral marketing. The esteemed speaker said, “Recognition, affiliation, esteem & reputation, influence, achievement and financial benefits drive users to contribute through UGC”. It was left to Mr. Ambareesh Murthy, Director- Marketplace Development, eBay India, to delve into the rules of marketing in the web sphere. According to Mr. Murthy, “All the rules of offline marketing- segmentation of the customers, choice of a segment and relevance of one’s product/service to that segment- are applicable to Internet marketing too. Citing various marketing campaigns of eBay in India, Mr. Murthy drove home the fact that viral and buzz marketing are cheap and viable means to achieve fair publicity.
The event concluded with the announcement of winners for eXpressIT (an Inter b-School Paper Presentation contest on e-Retailing) and CrackIT (a series of online Inter B-School Quiz Competitions) that saw participation from over 130 Management Institutes across the length and breadth of the country.