You think you are fast enough. Try beating Google Instant.

Google today announced a new feature which they call “Google Instant” & it focuses on giving search results even before a user has finished typing the search query. So even before a user types a query & hits enter he/she will be able to see search results on the search page & it will help them narrow their search.

Users now looking at the suggested results can adapt their search & find exactly what they are looking for much faster. But to me it seems like a natural extension of the “search suggest drop down list” feature provided by Google way back on its search engine. What Google now doing is that it is fetching the search results for the top items in its search suggest drop down list & showing it upfront.

Having said that, we can no way steal the credit from Google of making search faster & more efficient.

Google claims that with this new feature users can save 2-5 seconds on every search.




Google Instant is not available on mobiles right now but Google is planning to release it soon on mobiles as well. And mobile space is the place where this neat feature can do wonders. It’s always tiring to type long search queries on mobile & with this feature it will be damn easy to search on mobiles.

Gmail Priority Inbox – What an idea sir jee

There comes a breath of relief for intense email users, receiving hundreds of emails in single day, with the launch of Gmail Priority Inbox. With Priority Inbox, Google has built up a system which intelligently figures out & categorizes emails into ‘important’ category & puts them at the top for user’s immediate attention.

Please also have a look at this wonderful video created by them which explains the functionality in a very layman's language.

And the best thing about this useful feature is its simplicity. It’s just a one click process to activate it on your account & the user doesn’t need to teach Gmail anything or set up any rules. It automatically start working based on a number of criteria like

§  How frequently one open, read or respond to a message from a given sender

§  How often one read a message with certain keywords

§  Or whether one responds to messages if the mail is not directly marked to you but to a group etc.

So as this system keeps on learning with time based on user’s behavior towards his/her emails it keeps on getting better with time.

Along with the automated system Google also takes inputs from the user where he/she can manually upgrade a message to ‘important’ category or downgrade a message to normal & this is recorded in the system for future categorization.

I’m using this service for more than a week now & it is brilliant. Almost 98% of the times the service seems to be working for me. At times I saw some promotional or group mails from some websites/forums getting in the ‘important’ section and I couldn’t know the reason behind it. But that’s ok. Once I manually mark them unimportant they never appear there again.

But what worries me is what if I get used to this system & some person whom I’ve kicked out of ‘important’ category sent me an urgent message which needs my immediate attention. Will Gmail systems will be smart enough to figure that out from its content & overwrite my previous actions thus putting into my priority inbox.

The funny part is that assuming other email service providers introduce similar functionality & it becomes a norm then we might see rise of a new group of MEO Consultants (Mail Engine Optimization) J where they advice corporate on how to write emails with important keywords, subject lines etc. to get place into the priority boxes of its users.

 I think solutions like these should inspire the proud engineers & product managers around the world to solve world’s most challenging problems with easy & intuitive solutions.

Advent of Ecommerce Era in India

Recently IRCTC has created a lot of buzz in news. Thanks to the total makeover they did to their website including new business lines like flight booking, hotel booking & tour package booking. The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC) is a public sector company set up and fully owned by the Ministry of Railways. Can’t believe that a govt. run company can be credited with words like efficiency & professionalism then let the numbers speak for themselves.

-          Out of total Rs. 9000 crores worth of transactions seen by Indian Ecommerce Industry in financial  year 2009, IRCTC had a major pie with total transactions worth Rs. 3500 crores which is meaty 39%.

-       On an average IRCTC get 0.2 million unique visitors every day with total of 5.5 million hits per day.

-       More than 1.5 lakh tickets(including I-tickets) are booked everyday on IRCTC out of which 1500 are airline tickets at present. IRCTC is making Rs. 50 lakhs per day alone from flight ticket booking.

-       Every day, around 8000 I-Tickets are sent to around 200 of India’s biggest cities daily in specially crafted envelopes.

Around 80% of total E-commerce market is captured by travel portals like IRCTC, MakeMyTrip & Yatra. Keeping aside all these rosy figures about IRCTC let’s talk about pure play online shopping in India which has annual transactions value worth Rs. 1300 crores in financial year 2009. Major players in this space are Rediff Shopping, EBay India, and Indiatimes.com. Currently India has around 8m online shoppers.

According to a recent study by IMRB International on Indian online shoppers

Top 6 reasons given by shoppers in buying through Internet	Rank
Saves time & Effort	1
Convenience of shopping at home	2
Wide variety / range of products are available	3
Good discounts / lower prices	4
Get detailed information of the product	5
You can compare various models / brands	6

As I see the current industry, there are few powerful forces in the Indian Shopping space which cannot be ignored by any company who is planning its Ecommerce operations in near future.

1.      Young Brigade

a.      Today’s youth have high disposable income & large appetite for leisure & entertainment.

b.      Also 48% of parents agree that their children play a major role in decisions about household     purchases and what brands to buy. Hence this is a major target group for Ecommerce companies.

2.      Empowered Women

a.      More of the women are getting educated & joining workforce. Also women really enjoys shopping and it’s a great stress buster for them.

b.      In all classes, women do & make most of the shopping decisions. 85% of the time women have upper hand in making purchasing decisions in India.

3.      Rising Non-Metro Aspirations

a.      Tier II, tier III & rural area accounts for more than half the total market for TV sets, mobile phones, fans, pressure cookers, bicycles, washing soaps etc.

b.      People in these areas have high aspirations but limited reach of big brands & designer products creates a supply gap.

4.      New Age categories

a.      Ethnic, traditional & customizable product category is fast catching people’s attention.

b.      Beauty & health products along with natural & organic food category are fast catching Indian consumer’s attention.

5.      Emerging Technology

a.      With more than 500+ million Indian population having mobile phones, mobiles have become a much powerful tool than just a communication device. Cheap GPRS internet connections on mobile along with safe & secure mobile payment methods is giving a big push to m-commerce as well.

b.      Social shopping is another trend which is catching user’s attention. 

Looking at the current trends and a lot of new start ups like Flipkart, Infibeam, GoIbibo getting into this promising business, this space is really worth to watch out for.