India has typically relied upon global companies for its online needs, other than Shopping, News and now Travel. And the same is true for social networks with probably Orkut being the most widely used site currently. But the last few months have seen more than a few social networks targeting the Indian market entirely and I am going to write my thoughts on those and their pluses and minuses.

By far, Orkut is the most popular social networking site in India right now. It’s difficult to meet any Indian internet user aged below 35 years who hasn’t heard of Orkut and don’t have an account. This is the first social network that I really used because most of my friends were on the site. The beauty of the site lies in its clean and simple interface, even when it lags behind in the features. Scraps, Connections (Friends), Community form the core of the site. People flock to Orkut because it helps them to keep in touch with their friends and finding new friends and dating is just subtle and incidental.

Verdict: Impressed. The challenge in front of them will be to keep the site clean, when the others are adding a lot many features. Of course, they will lose out on the fact that it’s more ‘global’ and not that ‘Indian’. 

Jhoom! is one of the first social software targeting Indian market completely, unlike Orkut. It has most of the features that the popular sites like MySpace has (minus the excessive customizations that MySpace offers). It has blogs, groups, forums, photo albums, blogrolls, polls, avatars, back-of-the-house administration tools and are adding many more features in the coming days.

Pros: Feature rich, Focused Target market

Cons: Primitive Design and UI, Overload of features that needs more thought

Verdict: Good beginning but needs more clarity in thought and expression. Marketing has to be more than just the one-time iPod contest which happened when the site opened to general public.

I got my invite to minglebox a couple of days back and logged into the site then. The idea is very similar to Jhoom! The difference is in the design and the UI. I dont know much about the founders and can’t comment convincingly on the new features but it looks that these will compete on the design and marketing.

Pros: Feature rich, Focused Target market, Cleaner UI

Cons: Still in private Beta and doesn’t offer anything new so far. I don’t have a strong reason to use this site and not Jhoom or Yaari (described below)

Verdict: Good beginning but they will have a tough time getting into the market with existing players offering exactly the same service.

Yaari! is the 3rd social network, after Jhoom and Minglebox, that has a very similar offering. It’s not public yet but a release is expected soon. The differentiator will again be the design, UI and marketing.

Pros: Feature rich, Focused Target Market, Product Blog that is being updated by the founders. Domain name – it’s a beautiful domain name for the market it is catering.

Cons: Late entry to the market, as compared to Jhoom and Minglebox.

Verdict: They stand a chance as much as Jhoom or Minglebox. The fact that they have maintained a product blog and are trying to involve the users and show them the roadmap makes them a little more transparent. I also get a positive feeling about their marketing because of the same reason.

Fropper isn’t exactly a social network by definition but it comes close to catering to the same market that the other sites are targeting. It’s inspired by the ’old school of thought’ where users are charged for even the basic use of site and has over a million registered users, as claimed.

Pros: It’s backed up by the same guys who run Shaadi.com and has built some good intelligence to keep the users interested. The day I signed up, I got buzzed by many girls and the number of buzzes decreased drastically with time. Reason: the daily email that they send to every member with the list of last few users who joined the site. I was impressed by the fact that the email they sent out to me had all girls and I assume that the email that goes to the females has all males. Now, that’s definitely a good way to get people visit the site again. When I signed on to the site after a month later, I got buzzed again in similar capacity. So, I believe that they have more intelligence than just the ‘Newest Members’ logic. They also have a lot more marketing moolah which is evident from the fact that I have seen their ads in the radio and televisions already.

Cons: They charge users a fee for the basic use of the site, like contacting users with a custom message. This is so ‘old school’. They also brand themselves as just a dating site and not a socializing site, which will create problems with adoption and repeat-traffic, once there is a decent alternative

Verdict: Unless they change their business model, the site will keep losing its members to the other networks who provide the same services at no cost. Not impressive, overall!

To summarize – Orkut.com is the most impressive social network in the Indian market current
ly. With the arrival of Jhoom, Minglebox and Yaari – Orkut is most certain to lose out on its market share as the other 3 will capitalize on their Indian presence and more ‘Indianized’ marketing. It’s very difficult to choose one over the other amongst Yaari, Jhoom and Minglebox currently – the one with the better clarity, UI, marketing and passion will win. I wont give much of a chance to Fropper despite its marketing muscle – any site that can’t think of making money other than charging their users for the basic use, when others are giving it for free does not even deserve to win.

My recommendation for the existing and new players in this market will be to give some more thoughts on what the Indian audience will require. Here is what I believe:

1. A site that presents themselves as a dating site will not be very successful. Indians are still a bit conservative when it comes to finding dates through Internet – dating has to be made incidental with emphasis on ‘socialization’
2. I will not join any social network because I want to write a blog or I want to upload photos in album. If writing blog was my primary purpose, I would have chosen WordPress.com or Blogger. So, blogging is an important part but that shouldn’t be highlighted a lot. The emphasis has to be on providing tools to interact with friends and finding friends based on common interests. Think why Orkut scraps are so widely used. A blog wouldn’t be as popular.
3. Don’t overload the site with features. It’s good to provide features but not at the cost of trying to become a one-stop site with all the features. Historically, the applications with a more focused user base have been more successful. Don’t try to be everything for everybody. If you give me a few features, I will likely use those more than the cumulative use of all the features in a site overladen with features.
4. Work on the design and UI – please please pay more attention on the design and UI. Almost all the sites have the potential to do much better here.
5. It’s not easy to maintain your lead in this market. Any new player can come and displace you from your position if you stop innovating – Friendster lost to MySpace for the exact same reasons.

May the best team win! I, sure, will be keeping an eye on this market.

Disclaimer: Tekriti is involved in the implementation of Jhoom! but the above post does not hold any bias for / against anybody to the best of my effort.

(Photo Credit: Review Journal)

It was a long discussion when I asked what is meant by market-value, how do I know what I deserve, etc. and the entire discussion had a profound impact on me. That is a philosophy that we have tried to follow at Tekriti too – most of the times knowingly and sometimes unknowingly. We have always tried to pay people what their market value is (most of the times, a little more than that) and pushing people continuously to increase their market value. That has resulted in people getting salary hikes many times a year and in big percentages – something which is not that common in many places. But then compensation decisions are the most difficult decision any entrepreneur has to make and, generally speaking, is one of the thing that everybody hates to do. I am no exception there, and have looked at multiple resumes in the past months and have also interacted with people from different backgrounds and experience – including people working at Tekriti and at other places. I think that I am in a position to compile my general thoughts on compensation and on why people are paid what they are paid. Most of this is common knowledge, of course.

• Experience / Education and Background: When I joined Microsoft after my graduation, I was offered a salary equivalent to a few people who had work experience of a couple of years. The difference was that of education and background. The company thought that even though I may not be as productive as the other person with more experience in the first few months but I had the capability to ’come up to speed’ in a shorter span of time. At the same time, there were people who had a Masters degree in Computer Science and they joined at a salary higher than mine. And we all joined at the same level. So, yes, we all hate it when it happens – but if we logically think, that is how it is and it makes sense too. Your education and degrees play a big role in deciding your ‘market value’ and hence compensation. It has a bigger role when you are starting your career. Like it or hate it, somebody from Tier 1 school / college is believed to be more valuable by the companies and is likely to be offered more compensation than somebody from a Tier 2 / 3 institute. Don’t get me wrong – this is by no means a reflection of the fact that the Tier 1 person will always keep performing better in their career but a good start is almost always justified by the output they produce.

• There is a range of salaries in the same positions and the ranges overlap: Typically, companies have a salary range for different positions. For example – the salary for a person at level X (eg: Software Engineer, Business Analyst) can have a lower limit of 100 units and an upper limit of 130 units while the salary for a person at level X+1 (eg: Senior Software Engineer, Senior Business Analyst) can vary between 120 units and 150 units. The multipler of units vary with companies and countries but the idea remains the same. So, there is a possibility that a person at level X+1 is making less than another person at level X - for a short duration of time. And this is also why 2 people at the same positions have different salaries. This is something I have personally seen at Microsoft, and at Sapient and I know that happens in all the different companies when I talked to my friends in those companies. 

• Medium term output potential: I wish I had a better term to describe this. The point here is, as I mentioned above briefly, that people are not paid for their output as soon as they join. They are typically paid for how productive they will be in the next few months, on an average. So, it’s possible that when somebody joins – that person might be drawing more than what an already existing person makes but then the expectation is that the new person will be much more productive in the coming months. That is why you see people with higher salaries when they join but aren’t as productive then. How else would you justify occasional higher salaries of a person with lesser years of experience than somebody with more years behind them?

• Keeping our compensation confidential is for our own benefit: This is a highly debatable topic. Every organization stresses on the fact that compensations are supposed to be kept confidential. And there is a reason behind this. This is a very touchy topic and, even though the differences can be explained, people don’t want to talk about it to avoid any unhealthy competition. This is something Microsoft was able to manage better than most other companies I know of. I remember that I used to be offended when somebody asked me my salary then. Apart from my parents and a few other family members, nobody knew my salary then. Contrary to that, I see people telling their salaries even in the public forums and social networking sites – which is one of the most insane things I have witnessed.

There are many other factors like “Working smart vs working hard”, “Relation of promotion with compensation” that I can talk about but the above points looks more important to me.

In a nutshell, from what I have learnt so far in my career is that, constantly comparing our salaries with others have the potential to cause more distress than good. The compensation decision cannot be totally objective and anything subjective can be mostly made controversial. The point is how much trust do we have in the company management. If we do, we trust them for a fair compensation as well and if we don’t, there is no point in working for the organization.