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An Open Letter to Myntra and Flipkart.

I am writing this letter to the giants of e-commerce in India : Myntra and Flipkart, and hope my message will reach them. To start with and being very frank, I am not a die hard fan of Myntra.com, neither did I browse this website for anything, forget ordering and never even downloaded its mobile app. It was fine by me when Myntra applied this app-only model and transferred all their business on mobile because I never even cared about checking out merchandise online. But I use Flipkart.com alot, I love their interface, ease of finding specs of any product and their speed of delivering products.

Now the thing that irks me is that Flipkart too has adopted this model and is not allowing users to browse stuff on mobile browser. Here's a scenario: A user wants to know the best price of a new phone which he/she wants to buy. User uses the quickest way to search anything that is Google, finds Flipkart's link on top of first page thanks to SEO, clicks on it and blahhhhh..... What comes next is the most irritating thing for that user : We are now available only on Mobile App, please go to the frigging play store, download our app and then we will show you the best price. Thank You!!

Are you frigging kidding me?? Just to have a price quote, you want us to first install your app, spend 6.53 Mb of our internet pack, install a cache collecting junkyard in our phones and then regularly update that app for so called bug fixes and improvements? This is India boss, here a large chunk of population is still stuck with feature phones and many people don't have privilege to buy iphones so they opt for budget segment smartphones. Thats why likes of Micromax and Xiaomi are doing so well here. So please don't waste their memory and money.

I don't know why Flipkart is forcing users to do something. Either they want to be called Hitler of e-commerce segment or even after being valued at $15.5 billion, they are having a budget crunch due to declining inflation. Sigh!! :/ o_o

I don't know how much you are going to save by shutting down your website but in my opinion you can never bring ease and comfort of browsing products on website to an app. What do you think people do in offices when their boss is not around?? They just make this sound: click click click. Myntra reported that it generates 70% of its orders from mobile app. Wow thats cool right. If Myntra's website boasted of sales and exclusive offers only for its mobile app then what users were supposed to do? Due to our ever increasing appetite for discounts and freebies, we humans can do anything, even browse on website and place order via app. Got my point smart people?

Today I read this news that Myntra's sales dipped by 10% in app-only mode and I was so happy after reading this news. I literally cried.... (Itni khushi) I hope this trend continues and maybe by God's grace these knuckleheads would realise their mistake and revive their website.
Little kid has already ruined user experience and big daddy is about to do the same so I hope they wake up before their doom!!

No regards from:
An irritated user!!

03:35
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UBER Inc. : Above and Beyond... Seriously???

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Does Uber cabs really justify its name and fulfill all its promises? Well we are not so sure about that.
A startup which provides ridesharing and taxi services established around mid 2009 has grown pretty big in nick of time. They boast of providing safe taxi rides for everyone at affordable prices and have operations in nearly 45 country and 200 cities.

But why am I writing about uber and whats the real deal that brought uber to limelight?? Well the company wont like the answer and surely doesn't want to boast about that. They tell their customers that we are present in 45 countries but do they ever tell them about the number of countries in which lawsuits are filed against them?? Naehhh, never.

Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Philippines, Poland, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, its home country United States and now India; all these countries have registered cases against the taxi giant for one reason or another.

Travis Kalanick and Garett Camp, the founders of uber inc. are riding high on top of the world and are among the richest people walking on earth right now. The idea of developing an app for providing hassle free and easy access to taxis looks brilliant. Just a single click of the button and you can get a ride, its that easy. They use your location to send their drivers nearest to you, use that cab to go wherever you want to, pay online and its done. Everything looks so easy and perfect so why so many countries and people are opposing this service? They don't want good for passengers?

Well I will try to explain what went wrong with uber and their business model. For the starters, a US$ 18.2 billion dollars worth of company doesn't have a call center for complaints of the riders and consumer redressal. If you will try to find a phone number, then you will get it of another company which is listed with similar name. They are so advanced and into the future that they only believe in email communications. Well I wonder if uber's CEO uses a phone or telepathy? We all know about the cost cutting measures which every company adopts to reduce their bills and burden on their pockets but uber is out of that league too...They don't want any bills at all.

Their so called disruptive business model which allows them not to own cars but still provide taxi service is an eyesore for other cab providers. They are expanding so quickly just because of this. It takes less than a day to become an uber taxi driver in India. Any taxi driver who is having a valid driving license and owns a car can apply for the job. You can go to www.uber.com and see for yourself, even apply for the job if you wish to do so.

The recent Delhi rape case by one of the uber's driver could have been avoided if uber had done its best to ensure safety for the women riders. Oh, how can I forget this fact that safety was uber's top priority but still a crime like this took place in the capital of India. This shows the double standards of the so called uber!! If they had carried out background checks correctly, they would have found that the driver was penalised for the sexual assault case in 2011 as well. Its all ifs, buts, apologies now for the company, but for the girl its unbearable agony for the rest of her life. Nobody can understand her pain and sufferings, what she went through and how she gonna deal with it.

Moreover tracking their drivers and locating them by using a mere app installed in the iphones and not using GPS adds another glitter to their ever increasing mistakes. Way back in U.S. uber is having a strong policy on background checks and only allows drivers having 7 years of clean slate to drive for the company but they didn't made this a compulsory policy for rest of the countries.

Well Delhi government has banned uber from operating in the city and in my opinion the ban shall not be removed until and unless uber comes up with a fool proof verification system. Also I will not be surprised if other states follow the footsteps of Delhi.

The problem lies in the thinking of people, their business models and greed to be on top of the world by showing double or triple digits growth figures. Also these angel investors and business tycoons pour so much money into startups and raise their valuations to new heights. This hinders the rational thinking of policy makers who then works for the sake of these investors only. Till now uber is a privately owned company but going with the pace of its expansion plans and reckless policies, an IPO is not very far away. Lets see how much good general public will get by investing in their shares.

Learning from the incidents and life of the victims shall not be considered an option everytime. Afterall human beings are not test subjects who will help in perfecting a business model for the sake of tech giants like Uber.

03:06
4 Comments

All about Android and how it changed the Mobile World!!

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As the Google Inc. revealed its new lineup of Nexus devices, it also raised the curtains from the next iteration of its android operating system that is Android Lollipop.
But before I talk about Google's new big thing, let me unravel the secrets of Android for my readers.
For those who don't know, Android is Google's operating system for smartphones, smart watches and tablets which stormed the world around October 2008 and changed the dynamics of the handset market. Its launch marked the beginning of destruction of operating systems like symbian of Nokia and Bada of Samsung and i forgot to mention Blackberry as well.

After first android smartphone landed in the market, former CEO and founder of Apple Inc. late Mr. Steve Jobs sued Google and android for copying Apple's ios and infringing nearly 20 of its patents. According to Steve, Google broke the trust and friendship by stealing what was Apple's most priced possessions! In the book Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs famously said "...I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."

Many people might not be knowing this fact but android was not created by Google. In 2005 Google bought android startup from Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears and Chris White.
In 2006 Google's chairman Eric Schmidt joined Apple's Board, in January 2007 first iphone was launched and as I mentioned earlier in 2008 first android phone was launched.
So by going by the list of events we can tell who cheated whom.

By releasing android as an open source software, Google started a proxy war against Apple by giving manufacturers a weapon to fight the sophisticated, powerful and mighty ios.
There are many factors which led to success of android and being an open source linux operating system is one of them. By doing this, google got hold on the most valuable treasure of digital age that is User Data!!
Google now releases 1 or 2 updates of android yearly and it recently launched the much hyped Android L which is now called as Android5.0 Lollipop.
Android Lollipop is the 12th iteration of the operating system.
Do you know Google follows a strict naming policy? Names of all the versions of android are kept on desserts maintaining an alphabetical order... Let me do a quick recap on the version history of android for my readers:

Alpha
Beta
Cupcake
Donut
Eclair
Froyo
Gingerbread
Honeycomb
Ice Cream Sandwich
Jellybean
KitKat
Lollipop

Android Lollipop

With the announcement of Nexus 6 smartphone and Nexus 9 tablet, Gooogle also announced android lollipop. This year's nexus 6 will be manufactured by Motorola and nexus 9 by htc.
All the nexus series of smartphones are first in line to get an update for android lollipop followed by motorola devices and android one smartphones. By the way Android One is a project by google in which it tied up with different hardware manufacturers to produce low end smartphones having decent specifications recommended by google. Google also promised all the android one buyers with timely updates to the latest software updates and great user experience.
Karbonn, Micromax and Spice were the first to launch android one smartphones and later many companies joined the One bandwagon!!
By doing this google would have more control in the market which is already dominated by Samsung, Sony and other players.

At last to sum things up, android is responsible for the destruction of giants like Nokia and Blackberry who once were the kings of smartphone market, irked Apple and led to a war between Apple, Samsung and others on patent infringements but in any case provided users or 'aam aadmi' with plethora of options to chose from.
It ended the monoply of a few and also brought worlds closer by providing a platform for greater connectivity options and on the go services. What Microsoft once did for the Personal Computer industry, Google's Android did it for the smartphone market.
For me smartphones are now neccessity of generation next and android surely brought the best for all of us!!

By:
Bharat Khurana

07:21
4 Comments

My First Post!!

01:28
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An Open Letter to Myntra and Flipkart.

UBER Inc. : Above and Beyond... Seriously???

All about Android and how it changed the Mobile World!!

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