Recently a good article in economic times compared the performance of the Indian cricket team to Nokia. The used data from the 1990’s to show how Nokia’s slide had begun well in the late 90’s but the implication of that slide was felt much later. Team India on the other hand just had a 2 year stint on the top, and since then has been on a merry road to bottom. It got me thinking on an interesting topic.

Can analytics and the knowledge of analytics be applied to sports?

Technology recently has made an entry into sports. Now there are replay actions, Snicko-meter and stump cameras that give us enough insights into the cricketing action. The world of lawn tennis has the Cyclops (The line calling machine) to identify faults and other errors in the game.

But can technology be used to predict the outcome of a game or how the players are likely to perform in a particular match.

The first recorded use of analytics in sports was not surprisingly in baseball. The Major league realized the importance of understanding how past performance data could not be relied upon and they needed new technology to find potential signings and also judge the composition of the team. So every team on the major league spends millions on technology to gather data and run analytics on it to determine the strategy of the team. This is also used in future team selection and player salaries.

The other sport when analytics has made its presence felt is lawn tennis. All the four major slams (Australian, French, Wimbledon and US open) have used analytics run by IBM to generate statistics and insights. A good example of this is the dashboard between a match that shows data like the number of first serves in and the percentage points won on it. Every player is given a copy of the match analytics which has data in three forms the video, statistics and the scores. This is probably a good way to learn from a match and to apply those learning’s into a new match.

Baseball is another sport that runs the same way with analytics helping in running the team.

But as usual, the humble game of cricket has miles to go before coming close to technology adoption of either baseball or tennis. Today we use very basic data to show which team batting first wins and the average score on a particular pitch.

As I was doing some research, I came across this interesting blog post that talks about how predictive analytics could be used in a game of cricket. Again this is very basic data mining nothing compared to the smarter analytics that run the major league or the Grand slam competitions.

I think the important learning from the Australia series so far is the need for analytics in critical aspects like team selection. Currently we are using historical data to make the predictions. A good example is the selection of Dravid, Sachin and Laxman who all failed to score in four test matches. If predictive analytics would have used, I am sure none of the three would have been selected.

I think the BCCI should take a cue from baseball and invest in some analytics to drive the cricket game plan forward in the nation.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this…

Related posts:

1. Shah Rukh to sell Kolkata Knight Riders team. Anil Ambani might have his own team
2. Does Team India really need Tax waivers?
3. IPL is valued at $2bn and KKR is the richest team – Are you kidding me?

I am not sure if you have noticed, but Rediff Homepage has got a makeover. It is not a drastic one, but there are some noticeable changes. Rediff had set a precedence (in India, which no one followed :)) in 2009 when it introduced a minimalistic, ad-less homepage design, which was a sea-change from previously busy cluttered interface.

While many liked it (I was one of them), there were few who did have harsh words to say. Over last couple of years, slight tweaking has taken place with few icons changing and new sections getting introduced. However, today’s change look slightly more prominent with structure, as well as color of links changing.

What I obviously hated in the redesign was the amount of real-estate given to Shopping & Daily Deals. If you consider the total Homepage real-estate over 25% of space is given to them, while the news section (which essentially is the core of Rediff) gets much lesser space.

Rediff has also changed the structure with news headlines now showing up on the left instead of earlier right.

Given the whitewash that Indian cricket team was handed down-under, Cricket section has gone out of favour. Additionally, the link colors have changed to Navy Blue as compared to earlier standard electric blue.

For a regular visitor, it may not look like much of a change, but just the fact that Rediff is giving more importance to “e-commerce” side of things rather than its core “news” probably points to changes we may see in future…

What is your take?

Related posts:

1. Ready for Rediff group deals?
2. The Rediff revamp – How do you like it?
3. Media Monday: Yahoo’s new look and a powerful “You” campaign – Why should Rediff worry?

[Arun’s Note: One of our readers - Mr. Mukesh Gupta - has framed a wonderful post in response to an open letter written to Sachin Bansal, CEO/Founder, Flipkart.com, that we featured few days back. I think Sachin Bansal should definitely take a note of this… I am producing the post verbatim as it has appeared on his blog.]

Today, I came across an open letter written to Sachin Bansal, CEO/Founder, Flipkart.com. In this letter, the writer (Sushrut Bidwai) talks about his experience of trying to get his laptop replaced by Flipkart. He also talks about the attitude of the service staff and how they left him feeling frustrated (repeatedly).

This open letter has also induced responses from other customers of flipkart to come in the open and admit that they also had similar experiences when it came to refunds or replacements.

Now, flipkart has the following options:

1. Pretend that nothing happened and continue business as usual.
2. Take notice of the service failure, take corrective actions to ensure that this is fixed at the earliest. Then continue business-as-usual.
3. Put corrective measures in place, reach out to Sushrut and sort out his matter. Also, reach out to the others who have indicated that they went through a similar experience and sort their matter as well.

These steps can address the issue at hand. However, can Flipkart manage to use this incidence, turn it on its head into a great PR activity for itself? I think it can. The question is how? If I were in Sachin’s place, I would write an open response to this letter as below:

Dear Sushrut

First things first. I am really sorry for the harassment caused to you in your transaction with flipkart. I also know that no matter what I say or do, your 40 days of productive time will never be recovered. As a fellow entrepreneur, I understand what a difference such a time frame can have on a business.

However, I also wanted to thank you for taking the time and writing such a long and detailed letter to me. I want to let you know that I personally take responsibility for the actions of my employees and apologize to you for the bad treatment that you have received from Flipkart.

Just so that you know, your open letter has had the following effects on flipkart:

1. We have identified the reasons for this service breakdown and have put in place processes and policies to ensure that such an incident never happens again with any other customer. Thanks to you, the service levels at Flipkart will go up a couple of notches which will be appreciated by our future customers.

I would like to invite you to my office so that I can explain how we have ensured that such an experience never happens with any other customer.

Also, I would request you to address our employees on your distress during this period. I hope that this will make our employees more aware, conscious and inspire them to provide better service to our customers.

As a token of gratitude & appreciation (for having taken the time, put in the effort to bring this to our notice and helping all our future customers), I would like to offer to you one book, free of cost, delivered to your home every month, for the next 5 years. You can pick the books and we will deliver it. I know that this can not in anyway bring back the time you lost due to the issue, but hope that you will benefit from the knowledge you gain from the books.

I would also like to take this opportunity and request all our customers to continually engage with us and continue to provide us your valuable feedback. We would like you to believe that delighting you at every interaction is our only objective. Anything short of that is not expected. So, if you think, we are slipping, please provide a helping hand and let me know. I will be ever grateful to you for this help. You can reach me at (his email ID).

Looking forward to meeting Sushrut and delighting all our other customers.

Your’s

Sachin Bansal

Note: This is my way to respond to such a situation. Let’s see what action Sachin takes (or ignores).

No related posts.

Trak.in Wishes all our readers a Very Very Happy 63rd Republic Day. We should be proud of our constitution that was laid 62 years back on 26th January 1950.

Even Google is celebrating India’s Republic day with a beautiful Doodle…

I will leave you with a wonderful Patriotic Poem on this Republic Day

We Indians are very proud to celebrate Republic day
Protected by soldiers in the border who never sway
Hear me, I just have few things to say
Reading this you may decide your own way

Over the years that has past
’26th Jan is just another holiday’, I thought
With the very recent wisdom I have got
I salute the leaders who had fought

I hear the media ‘flash news’ and end up in tear
‘Will there be more news on bomb blasts?’, I fear
Horrible living in the midst of terrorism and war
Is this what the great Mahatma dreamt for?

Why blame the Politicians and Government who don’t repent
Hey! As an individual I wont relent
For the election freebies and compliments they recommend
I shall say ‘NO’ and will not bend

Let’s not watch the cricketer’s zeroes
And stay away from the Corruption bureaus
Our great Jawans have nothing but only sorrows

Pay your tax, be very brave, take the wise decision today
Don’t you wish your grand children to happily play?
We Indians are very proud to celebrate Republic day
Protected by soldiers in the border who never sway

We the youth, let’s speak the truth
Sathya Meva Jayathe!!!!

Related posts:

1. Happy Dussehra to All!
2. Happy Dussehra to All Trak.in Readers!
3. Happy Independence Day to Trak.in readers !

Arun’s Note: I have been a regular customer of Flipkart for over couple of years now and have had pleasant experiences with them in 9 out of 10 transactions I have conducted. I had one real bad experience (about a year back), when it came to refund. I did not write about it back then, as I thought it would be one-off case. However, over last few months, I have been increasingly hearing about more and more people experiencing issues with Flipkart service.

This letter was written by Sushrut Bidwai, a Nashik/Pune based Internet Entrepreneur – He details his travails with Flipkart customer service.

Hi Sachin,

Thanks for sharing your email address. This is a long letter, just want to make sure I am communicating everything. Though there is gist at bottom, if you would rather skip.

I bought a laptop and few other things in mid Oct and they were delivered in third week of Oct 2011. After using laptop for few days, I realized that it crashes a lot. I investigated the problem at my end and found that the fan stops working some times and that causes overheating and crash.

I reported this problem and talked to customer support. I was supposed to leave to Bangalore for a business trip of 10 days and hence had asked them to accelerate the process. But only on 23rd Nov, when I was already in Bangalore, I was informed that laptop will be replaced. I was also told that laptop will not be replaced, as per the guarantee, but rather I will get store credit or refund.

I asked the support agent, Mr S that I can only return the defective laptop once I reach back on 2nd Dec. He told me call *him* once I reach. I called flipkart on 2nd Dec and was told S will get back. This same thing continued for next 3-4 days. But neither S, nor any one else from flipkart support got back.

Finally next monday ie 6 or 7th Dec, I was told that reverse pickup will be arranged in next 48 hours. Nothing happened till 13th Dec. Finally I decided to publicly ask for this and then I was told reverse pickup will happen in next couple of days. Again I had to leave on a business trip to Pune, actually for a week, but I cut it short. Not having a laptop was affecting all my business really hard now.

I decided that enough is enough and now I want to be compensated. If flipkart is giving “replacement guarantee”, it has to honor it. And I decided to not co-operate for reverse pickup. The reverse pickup person banged on my door when I wasnt home, for 45-60mins causing serious discomfort to all neighbours and extreme embarrassment to me and rest of my family. We had to answer lot of question, causing further mistrust. Plus our neighours told us that he was using profanities while leaving the building against me.

Even after that, I agreed to the terms offered by flipkart. Terms were, flipkart will ship replacement laptop *immediately*, costing Rs 800 more than my purchase price and I will co-operate in reverse pickup. I had given time for delivery guys to come and pickup the laptop.

Please note that Mr J, customer support staff, told me that replacement will be shipped immediately, that is first thing tomorrow.

Delivery people did not came on given time and hence I called Mr J. He told I have to wait till they come, cancelling in effect all my plans. And if I dont do that replacement will not be shipped. I asked him that replacement was suppose to be shipped immediately, how is that dependent on everything else? He told me no, replacement will be shipped as soon as delviery guys confirmed receipt of defective laptop.

After this I completely lost trust in flipkart. I have purchased more than Rs 150,000 worth of things from flipkart.

After a couple of days, after looking at my tweets, Mr J emailed me that “Flipkart is committed to refund/replace your laptop. And new laptop will be shipped when defective one reached Bangalore warehouse”

Please note that – Mr J first told me, laptop will be shipped next day. They it will be shipped as soon as reverse pickup guys send receipt. Then he said it will be once it reached Bagnalore warehouse.

After that – I finally bought the same laptop, which flipkart told me they cant procure from any sources. I had to not only spend more money but put it on an expensive EMI which will cost me 15K more, as I did not have that kind of cash left.

Then, flipkart told me they have shipped the laptop!! I told them I already bought it. So they went ahead and added some Rs 43,000 store credits to my flipkart account!!

There is no way I can trust an organization like that. I understand this can be one of case, but there is no way you can affect some one like that and still not ready to compensate appropriately.

In a gist –
1. Flipkart guaranteed 30 day replacement, which it did not honor.
2. It never processed for 2 weeks, till I started talking about it publicly.
3. Customer staff kept giving me incorrect information, on purpose
4. All in all it wasted more than 45 days of my computing time.
5. Its delivery guy harassed me, used profanities.

I am an entrepreneur, like you. You can understand how much precious computing time is when you are about to start a new venture. I wasted an entire month. I am completely snowed under now, late with all necessary business stuff. My reputation is down the drains, as I have not been able to keep up with promises. And that’s a huge huge opportunity loss. I was supposed to move to Pune from Nasik by 10th Dec, but had to delay solely because of this laptop issue.  <was-not-in-orig>I had already signed lease agreement effective from 16th Dec, meaning I lost Rs 4500 directly because of Flipkart. </was-not-in-orig>

Tell me what I should do? Should I just take the refund and go away? Or isn’t it my duty as a consumer to make sure businesses are penalized when they do some thing like this and fight for that?

Let us know!

Related posts:

1. Flipkart Acquires Mime360 – Enters Digital Media Distribution!
2. Flipkart, Snapdeal & others issue DND notifications to users, but…
3. Flipkart Taking Over The Indian E-Commerce, One Category At A Time?

This whole week Internet has been abuzz with SOPA and PIPA. Most of the online biggies opposed these 2 acts that threaten to put an end to the way we share & express on the internet. Wikipedia went to the extent of blackening out their entire site for a period of 24 hours.

Most of us know and understand that SOPA & PIPA will bring heavy censorship on internet sharing, however, do you know the details of how these 2 acts will work?

Salman Khan of Khan Academy has made an excellent 11 minute video, that beautifully explains the nitty-gritties of these Acts and what they could end up enabling.

If you watch this video, even a school going kid will understand what SOPA and PIPA acts are all about.

SOPA & PIPA explained

[This video has been put as number of our readers requested us to put something up that could explain them these 2 acts - The above video does that job beautifully]

[via- @aparanjape]

Related posts:

1. Wikipedia’s first ever protest – To stage 24 hr blackout!
2. After Video resumes it is time for Video Interviews
3. Video viewing consumes about 60% of total mobile data traffic in India!

This is a first – Wikipedia has decided to stage a black out for entire English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC (10:30 am India time) on Wednesday, January 18.

This Wikipedia blackout is arranged in protest of proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECTIP Act (PIPA) Act. These acts are expected to put severe restrictions and harm free and open speech on Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States!

Jimmy Wales founder of Wikipedia said:

“Today Wikipedians from around the world have spoken about their opposition to this destructive legislation, this is an extraordinary action for our community to take – and while we regret having to prevent the world from having access to Wikipedia for even a second, we simply cannot ignore the fact that SOPA and PIPA endanger free speech both in the United States and abroad, and set a frightening precedent of Internet censorship for the world."

Here is Wikipedia’s Press Statement regarding the same!

2012 will probably be known for this – The fight for free, open & uncensored speech on the Internet. Globally, various countries are grappling with the same issue. The rise of Social Media sites have made it easy for anyone and everyone to easily express themselves. While some anti-social elements take advantage of it, millions of users cannot and should not suffer due to them.

I am totally and wholly in favour of this protest from Wikipedia! What about you?

Related posts:

1. ‘No TV Day’ – Will you blackout your idiot-box on Jan 29?
2. Will Nokia stage a comeback?
3. Internet population crosses 1 billion – India 7th on the list

It seems all of a sudden the government has taken frenzy of the ‘portability’ facility. Almost within a year, it has shown intention of bringing portability in telecom, banking and insurance sector.

While mobile number portability, or MNP, was rolled out as early as January 20, health insurance came into being during October 2011. And, now, if reports are to be believed, India is all set to fire-up competition in the banking sector as well, by introducing savings account number portability on certain technology-related issues being resolved.

However, if initial statistical data on MNP is anything to go by, portability has not been able to pin down erring service providers across the spectrum. The facility has proved to be quite cumbersome and time-consuming process, especially, in case of telecom industry, where applications are rejected on several grounds.

Furthermore, portability in the savings bank account could prove to be even more hassle some than the telecom sector – as the banks need to upgrade their technology, tweak its Core Banking System (CBS) and synchronize multiple digit format account numbers of varying banking institutions.

On the other hand, mobile number is a life-line of Indian telecom subscribers, which is designed to be disseminated to the subscriber’s friends and family to stay in touch with them. Thus, the importance of retaining the same mobile phone number while changing the telecom operator can not be equated with that of changing one’s bank account number (which is usually not spelled out in public).

Having said that, portability in the health insurance is much beneficial to the consumers as it promotes more competition amongst the insurance companies, and encourages customer-oriented services as well as innovative product offerings.

I think MNP and HIP are both very important, however, SAP may not be of much help to consumers, what do you think?

Related posts:

1. Savings Bank Account Number Portability coming soon !
2. Buzz: Stock market crash, 2G scam, Health Insurance Portability, Inflation & Infra bonds!
3. Mobile Number Portability pushed again???

Google offers Free access to Google+ & Youtube on O-Zone Hotspots

Google is aggressively marketing its social network Google+ in India – According to the news in Business Standard, Google has announced a new initiative that will allow users to browse Google+ for unlimited time on public Wi-Fi provider O-Zone Network Hotspots. Additionally, users will be able to browse YouTube and watch exclusive movie clips and promotions for 10 minutes each week completely free.

Obviously 10 minutes is not enough for video viewing, but this particular initiative by Google is purely for pushing Google+ platform among Mobile users. The issue is, very few users are on Google+ right now and only time will tell how successful this initiative by Google will be.

FICCI turns into a Venture Capitalist

Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry or FICCI has joined hands with US federal government agency, USAID to raise a USD 15 million VC fund called “Millennium Innovation Fund”. This fund will support, sustain and scale up local ideas and innovations that can be commercialized for India and other emerging markets.

This Millennium Innovation Fund is joined by Vijay Mahajan of BASIX and Saurabh Srivastava, a VC himself. According to Rajiv Kumar, Director General of FICCI, “This fund will try to leverage great Indian ideas, innovators and entrepreneurs or commercialize some of the great work that comes out of the many government labs”

68 Lakh Indian Mobile users could not port their Mobile Numbers

According to latest TRAI report, total of 23.2 million mobile users have opted for Mobile Number Portability. Considering the size of Indian Market, that is quite a low number. One of the reason has been Operator’s willingness to let the mobile user go from its fold. According to a news in Business Today – over 6.8 million Indian users could not port their numbers even after porting requests were made.

Although, TRAI has come out with strict guidelines to stop Operators from rejecting MNP requests on flimsy grounds, Telecom Operators seem to be paying no heed to these guidelines.

Among the Telecom Operators, Bharti Airtel has maximum number of complaints, followed by Vodafone & Idea Cellular!

India has worst bureaucracy in Asia: Report

According to report released by a prestigious consulting firm in Singapore, India fares worst in Asia when it comes to bureaucracy. It has a rating of 9.21 on the scale of 10.

Even countries like Vietnam (8.54), Indonesia (8.37) & Philippines (7.57) have much better rating than India. China has a rating of 7.11 showing much better bureaucracy than India.

Singapore was rated best country in Bureaucracy with a rating of 2.25, followed by Hong Kong (3.53), Thailand (5.25) Taiwan (5.57), Japan (5.77), South Korea (5.87) and Malaysia (5.89). [source]

No related posts.