We are a nation of consumers
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If we really wanted to be remarkable in our lives, we would choose to take an alternate, less-trodden, hard path away from this cycle.
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Recent Posts
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General
Qurtaba takes their Urdu App to Kindle
I love what Qurtaba are doing in a niche area of Urdu Language. Although their start was from Nan-Map for which they now have an iPhone App.There love for Urdu language related apps has been flourishing in recent months. Most of their apps are doing very well on app store, some impressive numbers for their popular Urdu apps are as follows.
Urdu Writer: 10K downloads in 3 months – average 200 downloads…
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Featured Startup General
Food Connection Pakistan
I happened to be in Quetta on a business trip last month with no idea of where to dine alone. Being a typical Lahoriite, a die-hard food lover, it matters to me that I try the best food of the place I visit. So this is where FCPakistan came to my rescue. I simply logged in, typed in my desired specifications and got atleast 5 suggestions.
The listing included their opening times, specific facilities like ease for physically disabled customers, credit card acceptance, smoking areas, take away facility, whether valet parking was available or not, and even directions to get there! What more could you want.
Although that was the…
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Featured Startup General
FourQuants.com Jawwad Farid’s new venture
If you have any thing to do with entrepreneurship, its impossible you have not come across Jawwad Farid either in person or in virtual world of his blogs and judging different events realting to startups in Pakistan. He is also the author of Reboot which we reviewed a while back.
Jawwad has been writing on Finance, Risk and Treasury for some time now on learning corporate finance.
I guess that has lead to FourQuants.com. FourQuants helps people understand concepts related to finance. Following topics are mentioned in about us section of the website
- Risk management
- Derivatives products
- Option pricing models
- Basel and capital adequacy regulation
- Financial modeling
- Treasury
…
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Coffee Session General Marketing/Adv
OLX Pakistan Investing heavily in advertisement
OLX is a global online retailer and auction site. They have an impressive footprint in a little less than 100 countries, each with their own specific domain (like .pk for Pakistan and .in for India).
In Pakistan they have been operating under olx.com.pk for some time with people using it to sell things online.
Recently they have started advertising heavily on Television, a medium seldom used by online businesses previously. The ads (two of which have appeared ) are witty and fun to watch.
The most important factor of these adds is that they are being advertised on media which previously none of our online businesses have used.
Most of…
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General
TiE, All Asia Business Plan Competition
Round 1 of TiE is about to reach its completion on 22nd of Jan, 2012 at Marriott, Islamabad in which ten teams will participate. Four teams will be shortlisted for the level 2. I also had the opportunity to participate in TiE All Asia Business Plan Competition 2012 along with my team members in the first few stages of level 1. Although we didn’t have the chance to go beyond stage1 but just participating helped us understand our own idea better and to polish our proposed technique along with development of a solid business plan. TiE all Asia Business Plan Competition provides a platform for generation and development of new…
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Announcements General Mobile Apps Software & I.T.
TenPearls Launches Multi-Platform Mobile Apps for Dawn Media Group
TenPearls has announced the successful delivery of mobile apps for Dawn.com on multiple platforms, including Apple iOS (iPad and iPhone), Android and Symbian (Nokia). The mobile apps have received great feedback from the users from around the world. It may be worth mentioning here that DAWN.COM is the #1 English News website from Pakistan averaging over 16 million page views a month, and 3.1 million unique visitors from around the world.
More details can be accessed at mobile apps for Dawn Media Group by TenPearls.
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General
Second Pakistan Blog Awards by CIO Faces severe criticism
CIO Pakistan started blog awards last year. Its is a good sign when some one takes initiative and starts some thing new. However its also difficult to introduce this into an already budding field of new media in Pakistan. Last years (or two years back now since its 2012) Awards were initiated so as it is expected it faced initial growing up pains. It always takes time for such thing to wins the trust of the community. And bloggers are one of the most hard people to win over, most of these are rebels in their own rights people who have started blogging to show the world their opinion…
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Featured Startup General
Do We Vote : A great statistical tool by PakReport.org
Pakreport.org a tool which was instrumental in gathering statistics during the massive flooding in Pakistan, has created another study/stats gathering tool for our electoral activities. Interestingly its called do we vote
With political scene in Pakistan heating up it provides very valuable information to party supporters and their leaders. A quick look at it shows the all known facts that people in rural areas take their voting more seriously than all of us supposedly educated and enlightened urban population.
Pakreport.org was an initiative launched by Faisal Chohan of BrightSpyre during the floods, the effort enabled people on the ground to send sms (the most spread out communication medium in country)…
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Featured Startup General
Stay for the work not the perks
This is a revelation that came to me when I recently quit my comfy corporate job for the second time. If you are below 40 and some one asks you about how is your job going and your answer is not in tune of “I like my job because I love the work”.
You need to pause and asses your career, last time I answered this question my answer was “I like the job, because the benefits are good”, and that made me think (offcourse there were other factors as well). But if you are doing a job in which to satisfy your own self you have to look at…
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11:27 am
Great find Osama. I think we should take an alternate path away from this cycle even if we DON’T care about how remarkable we are, as this lifestyle is an insult to our intelligence
I stopped watching TV totally 6 years ago for the very reason. The internet is good enough for information, and DVDs are all you need for the same kind of entertainment that TV gives you – minus the ads.
These days, I’m trying to teach my son about how McDonalds was fooling my generation by giving them toys with Happy Meal (TM) and making their experience at their play place a happy one, so that when they grow up, they’ll head to McDs with their kids because they used to have a happy time there when THEY were kids and so on. This is standard stuff Marketing 101 stuff, but it is still painful to see this consumer culture thrust upon us like that.
My son now grasps the idea that ads are made to fool and force us into buying stuff so that the manufacturers can make profit – for a 5 year old. We need to undo all that brainwashing, and make sure it is not passed on to the next generations.
11:45 am
“Fool and force us?” C’mon…. stereotyping ALL people and corporations into being evil consumers is a bit ignorant in my opinion. I hardly think getting a toy with a Happy Meal should be outlawed immediately. Marketing can be used for evil, but it can be used for good aspects as well. Most importantly, YOU are the one that needs to make the CHOICE when you see an ad. The ad doesn’t make the choice for you.
2:20 pm
I never said that ALL people and corporations are evil consumers… its the corporations that are evil and the people/consumers that are the victims of that evil
Of course I have to stereotype and exaggerate in order to get the point through to a 5 year old! That’s the only way! Isn’t that the way Cartoon Network ads have brainwashed them to think? …that ALL kids who eat a certain chewing gum can fly/turn into super-heros etc. etc.?
I never said a Happy Meal should be OUTLAWED, but when all a kid knows is that a happy meal gets them a toy, that is what he’ll NAG me for, and then, I can either buy him one and make him … happy … or I can NOT buy it for him and instead, try to explain it to him why I’m making that CHOICE. Guess what’s easier to do? Guess what is part of the curriculum in most marketing courses?
Yes, the ad doesn’t make the choice for me – because I don’t let it influence my decisions… but can I stop the neurons inside the brain of my child from making countless unnecessary circuits when he is exposed to a zillion ads per day?
If I had the choice, would I deliberately show him a few hundred ads per day so that he may make “informed decisions” about things he does not need but WANTS to purchase?
This is precisely what kids are being exposed to… training them as the next generation of consumers.
Sure, like guns, marketing can be used for both evil and good.
http://www.newdream.org/kids/facts.php
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1701833
2:21 pm
Wait, wait, wait, you mean the gum that I chew doesn’t make me into a super hero??? Tell me it isn’t so!!!
In all seriousness, I apologize if my comments were viewed as an attack, as I didn’t mean it that way. You definitely bring up some great points–thank you!