another road

be healthy

Immunologists are always in demand. Here is a lowdown

on how to pursue the evergreen subject

Good news for rice lovers: Don’t abstain

but apply the 1:1 ratio to your meal

and enjoy the veggies

24 pages | Monday | october 24, 2011

retro starDirector Chaitanya had the time of his life while in college, directing plays and smuggling liquor into the hostel

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vol: 2 | no: 32

Education Express i t ' s y o u r l i f e !

Digi marketing evangelists

Through Digital Vidya, Kapil Nakra and Pradeep Chopra bring to the study table their expertise on online marketing, which is sure to change the way you blog, tweet and post on social networks | 14-15

IN PAGE DOWN

A recent ASSOCHAM study found that Indian companies are spending over `1,200 crore — about 30-40 per cent of their marketing budget — on digital

media. Internet is transforming the way goods are marketed across the globe. Many firms — young and old — are spending on an average of `2-50 lakh annually on social marketing campaigns. They hire social media managers to make the brand vis-ible, study consumer behaviour and even launch new products on popular websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn. Despite the fact that only about eight crore people use the Net in In-dia — 8.5 per cent of the total population, the low cost of an online campaign cou-pled with higher visibility among young-sters has forced companies to firm up their online presence, particularly in the social networking websites.

This explosion in social media market-ing has opened a new avenue for marke-teers — professionals and aspirants. Such a niche field requires a certain kind of specialisation, which Delhi-based Digital Vidya hopes to equip you with.

The academyDigital Vidya was set up in November 2009 by serial entre-preneurs (more on that later)

Pradeep Chopra and Kapil Na-kra with an initial investment of `5 lakh. “This is a new field. There’s no formal education. The medium is also evolving fast. New platforms are replac-ing existing ones rapidly. A case in point is Google+ — it logged 50 million users within days of launch. Also many Indians are online these days — around 10 per cent of Linke-dIn users are Indians. So I’m sure people can identify with our curriculum,” says 34-year-old Chopra.

What is digital marketingDigital marketing is not limited to social media. It comprises search engine optimisation (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), display advertising, email marketing and mobile marketing.

Get trainedDigital Vidya conducts two kinds of work-shops — public (open to anyone) and cor-porate. The two-day public workshop fo-cuses on social media marketing. It costs `15,000 but for the next two months, you can avail it at a discounted price of `9,500. Corporate workshops will be on any area

The New Indian ExpressMONDAY, October 24, 2011

cover storyTwitter’s web platform only accounts for a quarter of its users. Seventy five per cent use third-party apps

edex

M

[ digital vidya ]

Nithya Calebc h e n n a i

ore than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news, posts, notes, photo albums, etc) is shared every month on Facebook

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Marketeers, gear up for the soCial Media avalaNChe

indian firms are increasing their web presence. They require executives who know the internet inside out, don’t mind spending long hours on

social networks, chatting with customers and can use the medium

to the company’s advantage

Pradeep Chopra

Where tweets and posts have helpedPresenting a few success stories of digital marketing

Ching’s seCret: The FMCG brand probably has one of the most engaging communities on Facebook — it has more than eight lakh people. The firm spends a major part of its marketing budget on social networks and YouTube. Kapil Nakra believes the brand has been able to catch the customer's eye because “even the MD and senior manag-ers post comments and engage with the clients”

taxspanner: When the finance sector was considered ill-suited for digital marketing came a firm that decided to use the Net to engage with customers, promote e-filing of taxes and also for some market research. Visit http://www.taxspanner.com for a personal assessment

Devesh Mishra: An innocuous YouTube posting resulted in a windfall for taxi driver-turned-entrepreneur Devesh Mishra. In 2008, two of Mishra's Swiss clients posted his video on YouTube and within two months he began earning `50,000 a month! He dreamt of buying a Toyota Innova. Not only did the Varanasi-based Mishra achieve it but also started a travel agency

Imaging: M Arivarasu

The New Indian ExpressMONDAY, October 24, 2011

cover storyhe first video was uploaded on YouTube on April 23, 2005. Called Me at the zoo, it was shot by Yakov Lapitsky at the San Diego Zoo

TOracle’s Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Epstein, was headhunted for the position via his LinkedIn profile

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get in touchMail your contributions

and feedback to: edex@newindianexpress.com

under digital marketing. The duration depends on the requirements of the specific organisation.

Chopra and Nakra use a lot of case studies, videos and interesting exer-cises to explain concepts. The duo has held over 75 workshops across India, Singapore and Malaysia and trained nearly 6,000 people. They have also cre-ated a marketing course for an Indian corporate to be used in their training programmes. On an average, 20-35 peo-ple attend a workshop. The team also held a day long session at BITS Pilani’s Goa campus in early August.

Who can participateDigital Vidya’s workshops are mainly targeted at marketing professionals, PROs, product managers, web manag-ers, senior executives, entrepreneurs and content teams. While most of the workshops are conducted by either Chopra or Nakra, occasionally they call in external trainers. Twitter ex-perts Shrinath Navghane and Nikhil Kumar Verma have chaired a few ses-sions. Digital Vidya presently employs 10 people.

What do you learnParticipants are taught about the sig-nificance of social/digital media for marketing, how to strategise, plan and execute campaigns successfully and become a pro. “The workshop was very informative and interactive. The train-ers answered all our questions in detail and made the concept clear,” says 26-year-old Akshat Mathur, senior plan-ning manager, Madison India. “Since I am with a digital marketing agency, I need to have a basic understanding of how the medium works. After the work-shop, I’m able to convince our clients to invest in online marketing.”

Jiveshdeep Singh Sandhu, deputy manager-marketing, Toyota, who has over 10 years of experience in the field, found a positive difference after he be-gan implementing the tips he picked up at a Digital Vidya workshop in 2010. “The practical insights they offered was great. Earlier we were not engag-ing with the customers in the best pos-sible manner. After the workshop, we revised the content we post on our so-cial pages. This significantly improved our level of interactions with our cus-tomers,” he says.

Qualities of a good marketeerThe only way to excel in marketing, says Nakra, is to “participate as a peer, focus on the target groups’ needs rath-er than your business objectives, be authentic, disciplined with your post-ings on social networks and focus on engagement more than acquisition”.

ChallengesAs it is a relatively new field — only two-three years old, people are skepti-cal and new performance metrics need to be evolved. “Connecting business objectives with the needs of the target group is a must to create an engag-ing community. Businesses currently are focusing only on community size (fans, follows etc). But community size

without engagement does not produce results. Companies need to understand this,” says Nakra.

RemunerationFreshers with good writing skills can earn `15,000 monthly. Veterans can hope to earn as high as `1 lakh per month. But how does one find employ-ment? “Jobs sites are the best places. At the same time, before listing your resume, update and expand your pres-ence on social media networks. This will definitely help you to understand the medium,” says Nakra.

dvBytesIn April, Chopra and Nakra set up dv-Bytes. It offers social media marketing services and caters to FMCG, e-com-merce, tech and entertainment sectors. The income generated from this ven-ture is used to fund Digital Vidya.

While the forecast is bright for social media managers, at the moment the field is in its infancy. Just 5 per cent of the ads are digital. Brand building is still largely done on other media. “Only few internet-based businesses exclu-sively use the digital world. However, contribution of the digital for building and promoting a brand is increasing given the number of people present on this medium,” says Chopra.

The duo’s future plans include ex-panding the workshops to new geogra-phies, continuously increasing custom-er delight and scaling up dvBytes ■

— nithya@newindianexpress.com

Know the trainersPradeep Chopra and Kapil Nakra graduated in BTech from IIT-Delhi (1995-1999). While Chopra worked in TCS for a year, Nakra was with Kizna, a Japanese start-up before the entrepreneur bug bit the duo. In 2000, they started Whizlabs Software. “My only aim then was to start something different. Luckily the change in the exam pattern of Sun Microsystems helped us become a leader in the IT prep domain,” says Chopra.

In fact Whizlabs proved to be the foundation for their foray into internet market-ing. “This is where we learned all our digital skills. We were forced to sell our products online,” recalls Chopra. “Since no one was buying our e-learning programme for Java certification, we posted it online. It was picked up by various discussion forums and the product started selling. Even now 95 per cent of our revenue is generated outside India purely through online marketing,” adds 33-year-old Nakra.

Whizlabs was so successful that they could sign on top clients like CISCO without even meeting them. In 2004, Whizlabs was given the ‘Most Innovative IT company’ award by NASSCOM. Last year it earned around $0.4 million.

The successful use of online marketing for Whi-zlabs convinced the two that this is the future and they decided to specialise in it — all of their ventures are related to digital and social marketing.

Early this year, during the ICC Cricket World Cup, they launched the world’s first social network for cricket, Soch.la. Chopra describes it as “a place where people have fun with each other around a sport”. The website has over 3,000 members. Despite a successful launch, the duo is planning to rebrand Soch.la in order to attract a wider audience.

They also founded OM Careers and OMLogic Consulting. Both specialise in online marketing — Careers works as a network-ing-cum-training platform and Logic offers marketing services.

Despite contrasting working styles — Chopra is more into the details and Nakra prefers to look at the overall picture — the two have stuck on since college. “We were friends in college and our desires matched. We also have a mutual respect for each other’s calibre and that’s why we decided to do something together,” says Nakra ■

The Digital Vidya team

Kapil Nakra