Restarting OrangeGlass - With Education Focus In Budget '11

It has been nearly 1.5 years since this blog last saw a post and many significant developments have happened in the tech, media and business world since. A case in point is the strong growth of Twitter and its increased usage, at least in the tech, media and startup world. No wonder then, that a lot of people (including myself) are more active 'tweeters' than they are bloggers. That perhaps explains the lack of activity on this blog. (And I can hopefully get away with that excuse?)

On a more serious note, the advantage of Twitter is perhaps is its disadvantage as well. While it works great for sharing short, quick opinions and resources that one comes across, it doesn't work so well to share more detailed views. You can be as creative as you want to limit what you have to say to 140 characters, but there's a totally different pleasure in writing a detailed and a more 'thought-through' blog post running into a few hundred words or even more. Also, Twitter is a lot more dynamic with the timeline changing by the minute, sometimes even by the second and it becomes difficult to keep a track of what you have shared and the discussions around it. People do retweet and add their comments some times, but those don't add as much value as comments on a well-written blog post. Also, a blog and blog labels with the blog help in much better archiving than by searching through hash tags on Twitter.

(Note to myself: With all said and written(?), now please be regular in posting henceforth.)

Developments In Education Space In India

Over the last 2 years, I have spent a significant amount of my time in the education space in India and we are surely going through very interesting times. Developments like the CAT turning into a computer-based test in 2009 (and the 'fiasco' that ensued), the extension of CCE by the CBSE into lower classes will no doubt lead to increased use of technology.Considering that there are nearly 2,500 entrance exams in India and most of them expected to turn into online/computer-based tests soon and even schools and colleges adopting technology for learning and assessment, there's surely a large opportunity in this space.

On the other hand , the focus creating a large talent pool to meet the growing human resource demands of various industries has led to an strong thrust on vocational skills development. So much so that a unique public-private partnership, National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) has been set up with a corpus now of Rs. 15,000 crore to produce 150 mn skilled workers by 2022 in 21 sectors as diverse as Construction, Automobiles to Food Processing, Gems & Jewelery to Travel & Tourism.



To get a better sense of NSDC's vision and plans, here is presentation by Yuvaraj Gadala shared at the NASSCOM Product Conclave held in Bangalore last year. (This was part of session on 'Funding From Govt/Quasi Govt Sources' held at the Product Conclave and I was part of the organizing team for this session. Thanks Indus for the opportunity! More about this on Indus's blog)

NSDC at NASSCOM Product Conclave 2010

View more presentations from Indus Khaitan

Highlights Related To Education From Budget 2011

Interestingly, skill development seems to be a major area of focus in the announcements related to education made by the Finance Minister in his budget speech. NSDC seems to well on course to reach its target of skilling 150 mn people by 2022. In fact, the Finance Minister expects that this target will be met two years in advance. He has allocated an additional Rs. 500 crore to the NSDC for the coming year. NSDC also seems to be moving quite fast in disbursing funds having already sanctioned 26 projects worth Rs. 658 crore and these projects alone are expected to train 40 mn people over next 10 years. What's also interesting is that of the 20,000 people trained in FY 2010-11, 75% have found placements. One would have expected these numbers, those of number of people trained and those of placed to be higher, but I am sure these will surely look better over time.

Here are some key points related to education from the FM's speech -

• Total Allocation To Education
• Rs. 52,057 crore | Up 24% from previous year's allocation
• Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan(SSA) - centrally sponsored scheme to provide free and compulsory education to children in age groups 6-14
• Allocation of Rs. 21,000 crore to Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan(SSA) | Increase of 40% over previous allocation of Rs. 15,000 crore
• National Knowledge Network - connecting education institutes through optical fiber backbone
• NKN will connect 1500 institutes of higher learning. 190 institutes will be linked during 2011, connectivity to all institutes by Mar 2012
• Link to the NKN Website - http://www.nkn.in/
• Scholarships for SC/ST students in classes ninth and tenth
• Special grants to certain education institutes
• Focus on Skill Development
• Additional funds of Rs. 500 crore for National Skill Development Corpn (NSDC) for next year (NSDC has a corpus of Rs. 15,000 crore)
• NSDC to achieve its mandate of skilling 150 mn workforce two year ahead of stipulated target of 2022
• NSDC has sanctioned 26 projects worth Rs. 658 crore, these projects are expected to train 40 mn people over next 10 years
• Of the 20,000 people trained in FY 2010-11, 75% have found placements

Excerpts from the Finance Minister's speech with items related to education -

India Budget 2011 Education Excerpts

India To Have 3rd Largest Internet Userbase By 2013

"The number of people online around the world will grow more than 45 per cent to 2.2 billion users by 2013 and Asia will continue to be the biggest Internet growth engine.

"... India will be the third largest internet user base by 2013 with China and the US taking the first two spots, respectively," technology and market research firm Forrester Research said in a report.

From a Forrester Research report. Via Contentsutra from the PTI piece.

Like most forecasts, this one also has to be taken with a pinch of salt. When it comes to internet usage in India, I believe we have already spent way too much salt by now, with most of the forecasts and estimates not turning out as expected. Worse still, there are already enough people fighting for what appears to be, as of yet, a small pie and claiming all kinds of numbers when the measurement metrics and not very clear. Anyway, that's for another blog post another time. While the numbers may not be as turn out exactly as forecasted or as estimated, there is not denying that there is growth, albeit slowly and there is a huge opportunity waiting to come good. A few years in the context of an entire industry is a short time, and hope there are enough people around to make the most of the opportunity.

Truth About Youth - An MTV Study

Not yet. Turns out MTV is not going out of business because of every Tom, Mark and Steve and Chad turning into a content generator or building platforms for user generated content. A series of studies and research by MTV compiled into a book The State Of Cool, confirms mostly what is common knowledge and some insights into trends on youth culture, their usage of internet and mobile.

The State of Cool, a book published by MTV’s Insight Studio has a statistic that should set minds at ease only 1% of young visitors to user generated content sites actually upload anything fresh and original. 10% or less actively participate and leave comments, while 90% are passive spectators.

Ah, what about the Pareto Principle then? But 1% is way too less.

The importance of catching ‘em young is almost a cliché , but MTV states the market is more lucrative than ever before: youth across India spend up to Rs 9 billion in pocket money every day. A good deal of it on mobile phones and related services. Two years is the utility expectancy of a cell phone for 63% of young Indians; 57% of youth across Asia state that they’d like to replace their MP3 players with a music enabled mobile. The eagerness to add ringtones, music and games is good news for promoters of value added services.

No wonder every youth brand is chasing the youth these days. And their pockets are only going to swell in the days to come.

Indian youth are obsessive about keeping in touch, of which social networking is a huge component . 59% visit sites like MySpace almost every time they are online (see I-Generation ). India lags behind only Brazil in this sphere. As many as 69% of young Indians use these sites to chat with existing friends. 57% consider it an avenue to meet new people. It’s a de facto art gallery for 49% who share pictures. In India , Brazil and China, exclusively online friends beat close friends by a huge margin.

What Indian youth add to their mobile phones?

















What Indians use the internet most for?



















What Indians use the mobile most for?


















Source: This Economic Times article.

PS. Recommended reading - Chasing Cool.

Natural Born Clickers - More Clicks Not Equal To Better Brand Building

Findings from a new study by Starcom, Tacoda and comScore’ suggest “the click is dead” as go-to measurement of effectiveness for brand-building display advertising campaigns .

..The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks. While many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation currency, the study shows that heavy clickers are not representative of the general public.

Further preliminary Starcom data suggests no correlation between display ad clicks and brand metrics, and show no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked. The research presentation suggests that when digital campaigns have a branding objective, optimizing for high click rates does not necessarily improve campaign performance.

The study only bring to light the problem faced by marketers(if they are aware of it, that is) and the agencies helping them. action being tracked and metrics clearly defined, using the medium for purposes of brand-building and brand loyalty is a problem waiting to be solved.

More on the study here.

Poor Use Yahoo!, Rich Use Google

Wtf, you say? That's the best thing about studies. Like this one by Hitwise.