The online bus industry has the hard task of converting bus operators , which have traditionally been late adapters of technology, into online suppliers of inventory. They have accomplished this by building a ground up network of sales agents and a robust technology platform, letting the bus operators also share their call centre and booking platform for online bookings.

A bus traveler in India can now look forward to searching and booking a bus ticket online, selecting his seats and getting his booking ID as a text message onto his mobile phone, in a matter of minutes. Travelyaari, for example, guarantees 100% available bus inventory – so every seat on the website is available and ready to be booked.

Here’s to better value to the Indian bus traveler (and to higher valuations of course!)

Airtel has over 1250 apps supporting various platforms in this app store. The success of the Store lies in the ease with which developers across the world can develop, publish and promote programs and applications through a single portal cutting across all platforms.

Are app development companies listening?

On this occasion the battle is a bit more mainstream with a great piece from WSJ about the different practices within China between Search heavyweights Baidu and Google. Aside from a slight digression to cover some of the localisation techniques adopted by Chinese sites such as TaoBao and TenCent IM, the article delves into the product range and local implementations of both Baidu and Google within China. The article implies quite strongly that Google is the main innovator while Baidu applies a more functional approach dedicated to the Chinese audience.

But Baidu also is an example of how many Chinese technology companies manage to outfox foreign competitors by tailoring existing technologies to China’s growing and fast-changing market. While that may not earn them respect as global innovators, their understanding of the Chinese consumer has allowed many of them to beat bigger foreign rivals at their own game in China, home to the world’s largest number of Internet users.

Definitely worth a read…

Google plans to participate on a 50:50 basis with MTNL, which is a state owned, publicly listed corporate providing fixed line, mobile (2G/3G), ISP and digital TV provider. What is interesting is that the government is going to auction two blocks of the BWA/WiMAX spectrum in each circle while reserving one for BSNL or MTNL (which are both state-owned). By partnering with MTNL, Google might benefit due to the circles allotted to MTNL, which will include Delhi, Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Thane, which are all urban, highly developed regions.

Social Media has been the buzzword in the travel industry in recent years and many travel companies, including Cebu Pacific, now promotes their services  via this channel. What remain unclear however, for many, is the ROI on these channels. In fact many companies currently do not measure their ROI from social media. Most are still experimenting and testing waters on the effectiveness as well as finding ways to monetize this channel.

It will definitely be interesting to know how many of those who started on social media are now using social media as their main communication channel with the consumers, as well as measure the effectiveness.

As a report compiled by PwC (Price WaterHouse Coopers) shows, for the Quarter ending on 30th September 2009 Search Engine Marketing (PPC) has grown while Displays ads have fallen.

As this Digital Media article confirms..

… the expenditure in the general display advertising market fell by 5% quarter on quarter and year on year. With separate Eyeblaster research showing Australians are among the least likely to click on general display advertising in the world, it appears that marketers may be looking to search, which grew by 12%, for more effective campaigns.

This is quite a significant milestone, and Search Engine Marketing is likely to continue making in-roads into Online Advertising as Advertising Agencies and Companies realise and recognise the power of Search in supporting brand campaigns and converting ROI.

China never fails to amaze me with the number of “copycat” websites adapting successful business model in the US for use in China. Was reading this article on TechCrunch on Tudou.com – aiming to be the YouTube in China. Tudou is one of two companies left fighting it out to be the YouTube of China (the other company is YouKu). Both burning through hundreds of millions between them trying to find what YouTube still hasn’t: A way for online advertising to pay for video’s outrageous broadband costs.

Just last week, Tudou won a deal to be the online video channel for China Mobile. So far video can only run on high-end phones and much of China can’t even get 2G access, let alone 3G. However, Tudou is optimistic about the future as China Mobile is investing some 58 million RMB to build out 3G infrastructure in China. China Mobile is also planning video-subscription plans that offer unlimited uploading and downloading of video for the equivalent of 75 cents a month – that makes it very affordable for the masses to upload and download videos – throwing the floodgate of user generate video in China wide open.

In addition, they foresee the changing of technology as Taiwan chip company MTK is developing chipsets that allow very low-end phones the ability to download and upload video – this means that even with a low-end handset, consumers would be able to view video on their mobile phone.  And lastly, in China people are replacing their handsets roughly every nine months. That means all of these changes could ripple out faster than if they required, day, a PC upgrade cycle to complete.

Tudou sees mobile video starting to take off in 2010, growing rapidly in 2011, and in 2012 generating enough actual revenues to equal what it makes in traditional online advertising. In the mean time, content being king, the company is running around Asia doing content deals to add professionally produced, non-pirated content to the 30 million pieces of video inventory Tudou has already. The company is also producing a ton of original content and reality TV shows for its website.

Being curious, I went over to Tudou.com to try out its services on my 100 Mbps line and the video content download experience have been very slow (maybe because Tudou’s server is in China and optimize for use in China). Guess there will still be a need to invest in their video hosting servers if they were to target audiences outside China. I had yet had the chance to test out the services in China to see if the download experience is the same….any feedback on their video download experience in China would be great.

Friendster has launched virtual gifts and the Friendster Gift Shop in Malaysia, which represents  the first in a series of upcoming products the social network will roll out to better monetise its global user base. The virtual gifts and the Friendster Gift Shop products will use the new Friendster Wallet allowing for its users to buy and send gifts to one another. The gift shop initially launches in Malaysia and will be rolled out within weeks throughout SE Asia and globally.

Earlier, Friendster has partnered with MOL AccessPortal Berhad (MOL) for the company to power a prepaid payments platform for Friendster’s 115 million users globally. The introduction of this payment platform, through its stored value Friendster Wallet system, is a critical step towards the social networking giant’s ability to monetise its global user base. Friendster Wallet credit is stored as currency called Friendster Coins and can be spent throughout Friendster’s site for goods and services. It will give Friendster the ability to develop other revenue streams surrounding virtual goods, gifts and games.

This initiatives is  somewhat similar to Facebook – which rolled out its virtual currency earlier whereby consumers can make use of Facebook credit to purchase and send gifts, even in the real-world. I guess it will only be a matter of time for Friendster to also roll this out to the real world. It would really be interesting to see whether consumers would adopt this new form of currencies to make their purchases.

There are a slew of hotel review websites in India. Tripadvisor leads the pack, but there are quite a few others – Raahi.com, Indianhotelreview.com and oktatabyebye.com.

The website generate a decent amount of traffic, but rue the fact that not enough people leave back comments. They point out the fact that Indians are more worried about basic amenities while a hotel review would tend to focus on a few addons which were liked by the reviewers. Lack of a personal PC could also be a reason, given that the cybercafe still remains the an important point of contact with the internet.

The cultural diversity of India means that reviews written by one set of people might not be relevant for another. A Bengali might not mind the meat market closeby but it might drive a vegetarian up the wall.

A few of these Indian websites report exceedingly negative comments – users do not bother when all goes well, but mess with their coffee or their Air conditioning and expect a long rant on one or more of these websites. Hotels beware – the online Indian hotel guest is here to stay. Though the business might be small for now, as with a lot of other models based on India’s growing online penetration and volume, its potential is not in doubt.

On a lighter note, click here to see an ingenious display of using the ubiquity of Google search for self promotion.

India’s WiMAX subscribers are expected to touch about 60 million by 2014. It is expected to grow faster in a country like India – with a low fixed line pentration in a large country. The opportunity is expected to be very valuable, with all major telecom players in the bidding race. The government aims to earn a minimum of $350 million from this auction, which is the reserve price.

Google has had an interest in India’s mobile, broadband and VASP space for some time, with some active lobbying being done by Google with the TRAI over matters of future policy – see here.  India has a far greater number of mobile users than internet subscribers. Because of this, search engines like Google as well as any company wanting to grab a share of this large and lucrative pie would want a piece of the WiMAX spectrum.