This one was the “WHOA!!!” moment of my life. On Saturday, mine was the only section to have lectures. We were informed at the end of lecture that a session was organized by Prof. Prasad where a NITIE alumni was going to come to guide us about the NITIE’s special project- “Hamara Dhanda”.
Let me first tell you about “Hamara Dhanda”. NITIE has a unique way of identifying entrepreneurial abilities in students. A group of 4-5 students have to form a company and continue to run it successfully. Aim is to produce at least 3-4 ideas which are new and can be taken forward by experienced people once the group passes out. It gives the students exposure to company internals, how it is built, the actual implementation of the theories learnt in the lectures.
Secondly, I would like mention the way I organize my music collection. I have around 8+GB of music ( 99% Hindi) which I have divided into multiple folders of around 500-600 MB each. The reason for selecting 500-600MB is that it should fit into a CD. It also means that I don’t store songs in movie-folder/ artists-folder format which usually people do. I use the library to search/play my songs. But I don’t use file name as search criteria. I have edited all the song information in my music library to have correct names of songs, artists and albums i.e. movie names. This makes it much more cleaner and easier for me to search songs. But every time editing songs like that it not easy. Also, there is no one web site where one can search all the Bollywood songs. Yes, there is Google, but it provides results to lyrics/reviews/movies/illegal song download. There is no one site where I could go, search the name of the song and I get all the information about the song, right from Album name, singers, composer, year of the song to lyricist and if possible lyrics itself. I liked the feature provided by last.fm like song stats, comparing your music tastes with others, song data correction. I felt like making a similar site dedicated to Bollywood + Marathi songs where one can search by song name/artist name/movie name and he could get the information needed. Since Hindi songs is a huge data, I also thought of having a Wikipedia type of model where people would contribute to the Music database. i even thought of having a software which would allow you update the album information including the album cover art (Have you seen the ITunes album art view??) Only problem with this was revenue. One way of generating the revenues is a tie-up with music company where we could direct our user to buy the song. But how many Indians buy music??? Advertising is one more option but requires a good user base and it will take some time. Also, I was doubtful as how many people would actually like to see such site. I mean till that day I hardly found anyone who had faced problems like me in searching music. Hence I never really went ahead with the idea, even though I kept contemplating about the same when I was in Netcore.
So coming back to the original topic, Nikhil Kulakarni (from IM-10 I think) had come to tell us about his ideas which could interest us, and those who like it can carry it ahead with the “Hamara Dhanda” program. He invested initial few minutes in explaining why something like “Hamara Dhanda” is as important to us as “committees” if not more important. When he started his presentation, I was thinking whether I should tell my group about my idea about the Music Database. His first slide/idea came to the screen, and what you know, it was the same as what I was thinking!!! I was totally frozen for a second, could not believe what I was seeing on the screen. I told Nikhil about the co-incidence. The idea was discussed with other guys in the class, but most were not convinced that one would like to have such a site, they thought that Google is enough to find sites which might give you such information. Fair enough, I feared the same. I did put forward the idea to my “Hamara Dhanda” group mates, but unfortunately even they didn’t feel that it could be a successful idea :(
I guess I will try to go ahead on my own to check the feasibility analysis of this idea. Wait and watch ;)
Do reply your thoughts on the same.
Let me first tell you about “Hamara Dhanda”. NITIE has a unique way of identifying entrepreneurial abilities in students. A group of 4-5 students have to form a company and continue to run it successfully. Aim is to produce at least 3-4 ideas which are new and can be taken forward by experienced people once the group passes out. It gives the students exposure to company internals, how it is built, the actual implementation of the theories learnt in the lectures.
Secondly, I would like mention the way I organize my music collection. I have around 8+GB of music ( 99% Hindi) which I have divided into multiple folders of around 500-600 MB each. The reason for selecting 500-600MB is that it should fit into a CD. It also means that I don’t store songs in movie-folder/ artists-folder format which usually people do. I use the library to search/play my songs. But I don’t use file name as search criteria. I have edited all the song information in my music library to have correct names of songs, artists and albums i.e. movie names. This makes it much more cleaner and easier for me to search songs. But every time editing songs like that it not easy. Also, there is no one web site where one can search all the Bollywood songs. Yes, there is Google, but it provides results to lyrics/reviews/movies/illegal song download. There is no one site where I could go, search the name of the song and I get all the information about the song, right from Album name, singers, composer, year of the song to lyricist and if possible lyrics itself. I liked the feature provided by last.fm like song stats, comparing your music tastes with others, song data correction. I felt like making a similar site dedicated to Bollywood + Marathi songs where one can search by song name/artist name/movie name and he could get the information needed. Since Hindi songs is a huge data, I also thought of having a Wikipedia type of model where people would contribute to the Music database. i even thought of having a software which would allow you update the album information including the album cover art (Have you seen the ITunes album art view??) Only problem with this was revenue. One way of generating the revenues is a tie-up with music company where we could direct our user to buy the song. But how many Indians buy music??? Advertising is one more option but requires a good user base and it will take some time. Also, I was doubtful as how many people would actually like to see such site. I mean till that day I hardly found anyone who had faced problems like me in searching music. Hence I never really went ahead with the idea, even though I kept contemplating about the same when I was in Netcore.
So coming back to the original topic, Nikhil Kulakarni (from IM-10 I think) had come to tell us about his ideas which could interest us, and those who like it can carry it ahead with the “Hamara Dhanda” program. He invested initial few minutes in explaining why something like “Hamara Dhanda” is as important to us as “committees” if not more important. When he started his presentation, I was thinking whether I should tell my group about my idea about the Music Database. His first slide/idea came to the screen, and what you know, it was the same as what I was thinking!!! I was totally frozen for a second, could not believe what I was seeing on the screen. I told Nikhil about the co-incidence. The idea was discussed with other guys in the class, but most were not convinced that one would like to have such a site, they thought that Google is enough to find sites which might give you such information. Fair enough, I feared the same. I did put forward the idea to my “Hamara Dhanda” group mates, but unfortunately even they didn’t feel that it could be a successful idea :(
I guess I will try to go ahead on my own to check the feasibility analysis of this idea. Wait and watch ;)
Do reply your thoughts on the same.
Comments
This 'Hamara Dhanda' sounds like a good idea - I think encouraging entrepreneurial spirit is the biggest learning a bschool can provide. MICA actually has a complete program - MICA EDC for the same :)
Anyway, coming to your idea - If you are serious about it - you can start by a secondary research by finding about any similar sites currently available and more importantly how well they are doing in terms of Page Views(PVs) and Unique Users(UUs) (These are the metrics used to measure the websites). Freely available site for this data is Alexa - you can also try getting ComScore data.
Monetization of website needs to be well thought out - advertisers will come in only if your PVs and UUs are competitive enough. Most Importantly, before you go ahead - just try and assess if there is a genuine 'need' for such a site. You can also measure it through proxy methods like search hits for songs on Google etc.
Enough Gyan :)
I will consider your suggestions and do a little more research. As for the "genuine need" point, you are absolutely right. Recently, we had one more session on entreprunership, where the speaker told us that Entrepreuners in India usually tend to use the inside-out approach, where they have an idea try to sell it which takes longer to be accpeted in market whereas in other places it is a outside to inside approach, where they find out what people want and then use innovative solutions for that.
My two pennies.....
There is always need of information. So I personally believe that anything hosted on the web will serve some nor the other information need.
On revenue model, in India internet advertising is not really a good business. Of course, working in Netcore you would know how to maximize conversion ratios. Alternatively, there is always google to answer any question. For all you know, your site medium of discovery would also be google. The question is how do you position yourself differently as compared to google. I came across a site called kosmix.com.This site is a VERTICAL search engine and hence I was really more comfortable using it. It has made itself a differentiable.
Also, do think of how to segment, target and position yourself and if you play around with just segmentation, you will find a niche where you can address ur business ideas.
When i saw ur post, i felt the same "AHA" moment you must have felt when u saw the imdb slide while Nikhil was presenting.
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