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online courses on How To Start Your Own Dot Com Company - Ground Rules -
Rule 20. A startup is an experiment |
Launching a Web site is just the start of an experiment in
the chaotic, ever changing world of Web commerce, where business strategies
come and go, where the lingo morphs from one day to the next, and where the
possibilities for growth appear limitless. That's the excitement and the
challenge.
To run a startup, you've got to thrive on experimentation,
a willingness to take risks and forge new, untested strategies. Of course,
none of this will happen unless you take your idea and run with it. Ideas are
a dime a dozen. Whoever acts on it is the winner.
The publishing house, Bennet, Coleman & Company Ltd. has
hived off its Internet business into a separate entity
Indiatimes.com.
The strategy is simple. Indiatimes.com will host 20-25 vertical portals
(vortals) that will cover every interesting topic under the sun. Classifieds
and broking will follow later.
It also plans to come up with a finance portal for which it
has entered into a 60:40 joint venture with Citicorp. This will be a business to
consumer (B2C), a consumer to consumer (C2C) and a business to business (B2B)
portal providing financial solutions ranging from personal finance, auto and
home finance to short-term loans and even as an exchange for financial products.
BCCL's gameplan is to go all out to capitalize on its core strength – its
ability to leverage content to attract advertising revenues.
Yahoo, one of the first dot-coms to aggressively search for
global markets plans to sweep the market in India too. It is one of the few
global portals that has got personalization down to a fine art. Its entire
business model is built to keep a large audience happy by providing them what
they consider relevant information and services and then magnetizing this for
their advertisers.
Though Yahoo will bring with it a strong financial backing,
an understanding of the Internet industry from a mature market and an
international brand name that is well recognized in India, it cannot afford to
be complacent. There's no predicting how its Indian experience will turn out to
be.
As part of its strategy Yahoo plans to:
·
Localize content and brand through partnerships as it
realizes that local language content is a necessity if they want to be one up on
their competitors here.
·
Look for distribution partners, like cellular companies.
·
Bring in their most popular features like communication
tools, instant messenger tools, club and communication message boards.
·
Focus on the larger urban markets initially.
·
Develop e-commerce after online advertising.
The reason behind the success of Amazon.com is that it is not
just a bookstore. Positioned as the world's leading retailer, selling CDs,
electronics, toys, electronic greeting cards, facilitating auctions and much
more, it is forever willing to experiment. It has come up with ‘purchase circles,' which
allow you to see what products are popular at schools and companies.
