Although I have not yet started utilizing the full potential, I can see this adding a lot of value to gaming bloggers.
Would like to see your comments about the same on my blog.

“you can view this as both – a good or a bad trend. A good trend because all these portals are getting the TV-movie audience online, in other words, introducing them to the online world. A bad trend because, it’d be difficult for startups and small players to match up to these tactics”

Let me see if I understand the point, as your saying that I missed it . You are saying (and I para-phrase), that it is difficult for a startup to match up to mass-market reach that the bigger players can perform. They bring the first-time users online. However, what are they doing to retain that same first-time user? Eventually, he will find out about alternative B which is packaged and marketed differently.

Again, I agree with you, yes 100% – the first-time user will definitely go to the big player who advertises like crazy. However, my argument is that this is *not* a bad thing. I would also like to support the comment from Naren, web2.0 products are designed to grow virally – so don’t have to press the panic button when your competitor goes mass-market. Focus on the product and the market fit.

Indyarocks will continue to grow organically, if they sustain the current growth trend (on Alexa) I can see them catching up within 6 months. In other words, bigAdda’s huge marketing spend advantage has been negated in a span of 9 – 12 months. Not bad for a startup. However, catching up to orkut is a whole different ball game.

I am going out on a limb here and making several weak assumptions. For example, BigAdda’s growth (on Alexa) remains linear for a while. Also, they don’t do anything directly to innovate for their own product and Kalyan manages to continue to innovate and maintain his USP. Based on these assumptions, I know our arguments are a lot closer to aligning.

Also, as someone who is in the web space, I know that I am already biased towards startups.

The real focal point for startup sustainability, is the health of the Internet eco-system in India. This is what could make the difference between a startup success story and an also ran. I would really like StartupDunia to consider that, perhaps I am requesting you to highlight it in its own post (I promise you I said please first ).

The serious sustainable advantage that bigAdda has over any other startup are the deep pockets of big daddy Reliance which allows it to keep chugging along. Rajesh Sawhney (CEO, RE) said it best “Patient Capital”. That capital gives them to time to figure out what is working and what isn’t.

I have plenty of research on the AdSpends and E-commerce in the US and in India, while we all are aware of the differences in the ad spends in the two countries. I’d like to highlight that the difference is well over a multiple of 100x. In other words, for a startup starting out here in India, the same effort will yield very little in cash in the early stages. Whereas in the US, the same effort could yield $300k a month, which is considered a reasonable target to meet within 12 mos conservatively.

As Ram Charan (chief advisor to companies like GE) says it doesn’t matter if you are running the biggest business in the world or a shoe shop round the corner – your businesses ability to stay alive is directly correlated to its ability to generate cash. Cash flows are the oxygen supply. So, if your unable to raise funds the PE way – you are always going to be one step closer to hitting a wall than your competitor who is funded (or backed).

In brief, the best advice an Entrepreneur like me can get is to first learn how to raise money. The other good advice is to learn how to spend it wisely to allow my product to get the same runway the bigger guys have. Third good advice is to delay -serious- mass marketing spend until and unless I am sure that my USP is sharp enough to retain a significant percentage of eyeballs that such a marketing campaign will generate.

Having said that, I am pretty sure that BigAdda is also considering a similar Roadmap (no, this is not an informed opinion). They are probably hunkered down right now trying to figure out what is selling and what isn’t and how they can do more of the former. That definitely makes them a formidable competitor. However, if other Entreprenuers pick up on the same idea and allow themselves to get that same runway in place the paisa/muscle edge is narrowed allowing for the innovation angle to make a bigger impact.

its a very interesting discussion that u have started ,after reading about indyarocks and your comments i thought i should add my views to this interesting topic-should web 2.0 companies market in traditional media.
well lets start off with some successful internet companies in the world
goggle,youtube, craigs list,myspace,facebook etc have never ever advertised any where in traditional media nor did they spend any mad money on ads till date.Its only India we are seeing huge ad spends by web2.o companies and social networking sites.during the dot com bust only the comapneies which relied on ads to market them selves have bitten the dust.despite seeing this many companies in India are following the same route and iam pretty sure that they too will suffer the same fate.
even orkut for that matter grew virally even in India and never ever did any traditional media ads .
when some product/service is supposed to grow virally ,it has to grow virally and not any other way,even a rupee spent other wise is nothing but waste of money.orkut took 3 yrs to gain decent traction even in India and now look where it is,i dont believe it is just becuase it is a google company or because they spent any huge money on ads-i feel it was because it had hit the right cord at the right time.
My strong feeling is that indyarocks should never ever get in to the game of traditional marketing the way others are doing,but rather grow the way it is growing now,because i would like to see at least one Indian start up do the right thing in the right way.

Santosh, I agree 100 % – no questions asked.

However, I think you missed the point.

Let me try to explain a bit better – say the online Indian population is about 30 million users. Say that by viral marketing and word-of-mouth, IndyaRocks gets 90-100% of the market share. At the same time, there’s a huge chunk of the Indian population, which is not yet online. The TV-movie going audience. To bring this audience online, you will have to resort to a conventional marketing medium, which very few startups would be able to afford.

Also, keep in mind that out of the currently online Indian population, the average joe online Indian user is not as savvy as you and me. We’d be able to easily say which is a better product – BigAdda or IndyaRocks. Others may not be able to tell or worse, may not care.

A lot of the common users are still greatly influenced by bollywood, cricket etc..A marketing gimmick involving bollywood / cricket celebrities may not attract users like you or me, but it may attract a lot of non-tech-savvy users. And folks like you and me are the minority here.

so, when I talk about the muscle-paisa factor for bigadda-zapak, I imply that they have the means to reach out to the average joe user as compared to small startups.

Contentsutra had an interesting post on this a few weeks back:
http://www.contentsutra.com/entry/419-tv-ad-time-for-web-telco-isp-and-handset-manufacturers/

you can view this as both – a good or a bad trend. A good trend because all these portals are getting the TV-movie audience online, in other words, introducing them to the online world.
A bad trend because, it’d be difficult for startups and small players to match up to these tactics

I really want you to address the issue of paisa/muscle better . I’ll make an attempt here. The Arrington Interview you posted earlier said quite clearly – “I look at entrepreneurs as, in a sense, modern-day pirates”.

Wait a minute, Pirates, aren’t they the guys who don’t play by the rules, have fast boats and sneak up right behind you? Indeed, the biggest competitive advantage startups have is stealth, speed and lack of convention. This has allowed for some spectacular successes in the US.

Here in India it appears as if the rules are warped, at first. When BigAdda launched with massive marketing spend to back it up, many felt that the other resource-starved networks were going to get slammed. I have to ask, does the comment on Paisa and muscle reflect the same line of thinking?

I won’t deny that reaching out to the Mass Market the conventional way helps. The real issue is that the solution that a startup puts out needs to be significantly innovative/unique to allow for word of mouth and viral marketing to drive awareness and make a serious impact. Huge Marketing spend is hardly a sustainable edge. Being able to innovate consistently and rapidly definitely is.

Going by the 6mo Alexa statistics it looks like Kalyan might just have hit upon the right initial USP for Indyarocks. I’m also pretty sure that IndyaRocks has been reaching out to the audience through targeted Marketing. Above all – IndyaRocks has also been able to retain that traffic and attention. Could Kalyan be the quintessential pirate in quickly recognizing and moving fast to capitalize on an important trend? Having said that, I understand that IndyaRocks has a lot of catching up to do.

I guess my point is that we could all be a lot more encouraging and optimistic. Budding Entrepreneurs should not have to fear a big behemoth stepping in. Instead they should actively seek out strong defenses in USP’s and IP. We need to encourage that line of thinking and I’d always look forward to hearing more on such efforts on startup dunia.

Thank you for the reply, I got to say that your blog is shaping up pretty well.

- Santosh

I agree with what you say — they’ll definitely be taking on zapak with this move. it’d be interesting to see how things shape up – after all, zapak has some serious paisa and muscle behind it.