An introduction to crowdsourcing

An introduction to crowd sourcing

Crowd sourcing refers to a process of obtaining work or funding from a large group of people in an online setting. It is an innovative approach to use a large group of people for their skills, ideas and participation to generate content of connected masses to use the Internet and social media as a platform. The main idea of crowd sourcing is to inspire connected people to source funds for various reasons, causes, objectives and goals.

Interestingly, the concept of crowd funding is growing its popularity among the active online community for various causes such as natural disasters, education support to under privileged, social impact, even to venture own start-ups or micro finance institutions.To develop a better understanding let us look at few examples in the recent times that have highlighted how more and more people are getting connected to respond or react to a particular cause in real time in the Indian community:

 The 16 December 2012 gang rape case in Delhi when millions came on road.
 Mygov.in, an initiative of the Prime Minister’s Office, for citizens to engage directly with the government.
 The inception of an entire political party AAP is the results of crowd sourcing.

So, we are getting in to a connected world that will make or break the society if this huge platform of crowd sourcing is not used sensitively.

The Evaluation of Crowd sourcing and how it becomes a viable option for small time entrepreneurs:
How many of us go to railway station to buy tickets or to a travel agent for our flight bookings anymore. Gone are those days of queuing for hours, rather, we do things like that in just few clicks on the internet from the comfort of home or while on the move. At the end of the day, time is money.

This would have not been possible without a big picture and awareness about what the technology can deliver? The credit goes to the big pictures that were born and emerged from the young, ambitious entrepreneurship spirits from the first wave of e-commerce businesses which resulted into today’s big companies like MakeMyTrip, Yatra, Naukri, Shaadi.com, Snapdeal, Flipkart, and the list of such once a small time entrepreneurs goes on and on who have now matured and created a trend for the next wave of start-ups serving enterprises. This is a very healthy trend that is taking the shining India to global market with rapid expansion.

The evaluation of crowd funding
I read with great interest about a market research study which showed that only 20% of Indian population is active online user and yet they are the second highest registered Facebook users.
I wonder this data will be far more interesting when that 20% will rise to higher percentage of online user like 50% or so. The number will reach to a half a billion young, energetic, and well informed active internet players. This will certainly make a huge impact on social issues, politics and in the economy.

In a study conducted by the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) 2014, India ranked as the fastest growing and the third largest start-up ecosystem in the world. Off course, we are still quite behind and miles to go as the number of start-ups tapping the stock markets has remained low.

Regardless, when we look at the evaluation of crowd funding, it is not a fairly new concept as we have seen since our independence there were many businesses that has explore the opportunity of crowd funding through creative projects. The Reliance industries have raised the capital from thousands of its small investors, and I recollect one of the greatest movies by Shyam Benegal “Manthan” which showed the impact of small contributions from a large number of people.

In an interview with Economic Times (June, 2015), Varun Sheth the founder and chief executive at Ketto.org, an online crowd funding platform for social causes estimates the size of the global crowd funding market to be in the region of $16 billion and is confident of India’s place in it.
So, What’s In It For Small Time Entrepreneurs:

In a recent interview with Business Standard, Rangan Varadan Founder & CEO, MicroGraam states that Crowd sourcing of fund finding greater acceptability now as he is seeing more interest by wealth advisory firms and financial institutions to invest in MicroGraam and expecting the loan portfolio to grow to Rs 50 crore next year, as compared to Rs 12 crore in the past year.(Business Standard, April 2015).

Although the concept of crowd funding is in developing stage in India compared to large markets like the US, China and the UK, but the viability for small time entrepreneurs in this popular trend of crowd sourcing is huge mainly in the wake of emergence of social media as a key platform for such activities. According to the Economic Times (24 June, 2015), Capital market regulator SEBI is expected to come out soon with crowd-funding norms to help young entrepreneurs and small groups of people to raise funds.

This norm would be a welcome step and a promising avenue for small time entrepreneurs as this particular regulatory framework has the following restrictions:  The business entities that are already established and listed on an exchange will not be allowed to raise funds through crowd funding.
 The business with existence for four years or more would not be allowed to participate in crowd funding activities.

 The real estate and Financial Services businesses would be restricted from tapping the crowd funding avenue.
 Any business group with turnover of more than Rs 25 crore will be barred from raising funds through crowd funding.

Thus, this will reduce the market complexity and competition from the established business groups and indeed will provide some promising opportunities for small time entrepreneurs to raise more early-stage funds that are needed to fill the gap and support the ecosystem.

Fortunately, this is the time of Young Indian entrepreneurs where we are seeing the favourable market dynamics and we are leading with big picture and momentum on the Indian start-up ecosystem.

The crowd sourcing success on the internet :

After weeks of research in the area of crowd funding- an emerging trend in India, I have come across some fascinating facts that further strengthens the belief that entrepreneurs not constrained to 5-7 year payback windows anymore, rather, they can pursue models with high creativity, democratized invention, and positive externalities in society. Thus, it would be interesting to look at some successful stories that created a huge impact in this space.

Catapooolt –
Catapooolt is founded by Satish Kataria in July 2013 who has more than 14 years of strategic management experience. Satish had a strong vision of enabling much better consumer engagement with project creators.

The Success of Catapooolt:
 It helped raise an upcoming feature film ‘Cut-Throat’ an amount of INR 10.20 lakhs, which is still today the record of highest amount raised for a project on any crowd funding platform.
 Catapooolt is the official crowd funding supporters for AAP that has contributed to its success during the initial stages of AAP campaigns to spread awareness about the party.
 Catapooolt has more than 3,000 registered users within a short span of 2years and is expected to garner strong traction as we unveil series of innovations with respect to the model.

Reference: Jubin Mehta, Your Story, 08th April, 2015,

Helpost -
Amol Goel is the founder of the Chandigarh-based startup Helpost . Helpost is an online network that aims at connecting people seeking help with those who can provide help. Goel describes that the idea came from his real life experience when he was looking for a plumber and tried all the available resourced from Google to Just dial with unproductive results.

The Success of Helpost: 

 Helpost managed to reach out to two lakh people through their help initiatives, all while still working in their pilot phase.
 They are now present in 35 cities across 17 countries.
 Helpost received seed funding of $250,000 and is in talks with another investor for another $5 million.
 Helpost now has a team of about 150 people, with its headquarters in Delhi housing 25. They are now working to launch an app. Reference: Mehek Chawla, ET Bureau, 8th June, 2015. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/know-how-indian-startup-helpost-is-crowd-sourcing-help-ranging-from-accounting-to-plumbing/articleshow/47583213.cms accessed on 12/07/2015).

WitWorks –

WitWorks was founded by the partnership of three IIT Kharagpur graduates which was launched in 2013. Basically, Witworks picks up the innovative and productive ideas shared by the registered or interested community and then decide on the best 3 ideas to implement. In order to keep the community connected with the projects, WitWorks shares 5% of the final sales with the product’s designer.

The Success of WitWorks :
 Within 1 year it has a 1,000-strong community that helps the founders to pick up the best viable projects.
 One of the ideas has already been turned into a product. Rewind — a simple device that keeps earphones from getting tangled. The founders realized that this common problem had not been solved yet.
 The young firm is targeting Rs 2 crore in revenue this fiscal and is in talks with angel investors to raise funds.

The Crowd funding business model:
1. Donation model – In this model, individuals make a financial contribution to a project without any expectations of financial benefits.

2. Lending model – In this, the investor will loan money to the project with the expectation of being repaid under the terms and conditions agreed.

3. Investment model - The investor receives an equity stake in the project. Conclusion There is no doubt that crowd funding is rapidly being looked upon as a serious way of raising funds for startups and new businesses. An efficient crowd funding system can really play the role of catalyst in bringing the startup ideas into reality.

Conclusion :

There is no doubt that crowd funding is rapidly being looked upon as a serious way of raising funds for startups and new businesses. An efficient crowd funding system can really play the role of catalyst in bringing the startup ideas into reality.

My Role at Kotak- The incredible learning so far

Job Title	Campaign Manager
Designation	Manager
Function	Marketing/ Business Development
Department	Tele Sales/ Kotak Direct Channel (Upsell)
Reporting To (Title)	Chief Manager- Upsell /Persistency
Superior’s Superior (Title)	Head – Business Development

Principal Accountabilities
Accountability	Supporting Actions
Customer Engagement & Adoption	q Campaign management & communication q Campaign tracking to ensure that the results are scalable & improve with every campaign executed q Use of analytics & advisory to find the right target segment for the right product q Use of customer profiling to ensure that the campaigns directed follow the N = 1 paradigm q Monitoring various cohorts of users to ensure that the usage & login behaviour doesn’t go below a particular threshold for a user
Revenue giving customer	q Evolving the customer up the adoption curve to start generating revenue giving customers.

Relationships (If Applicable)
Internal	Frequency	Nature
·         Chief Manager– Business Development ·         Head – Revenue & Customer Engagement ·         Function Heads	Daily Monthly/ As required	Product Developments / Strategic Alliances & Issues / Innovations / Business as usual
External	Frequency	Nature
·         Vendors: Transaction services providers, analytics provider	Regularly / As required	Projects / Strategic Alliances & Issues / Innovations / Business as usual

MY KRA

1. Campaign management
1. To execute campaigns for cross-sell, across different campaigns (Anniversary, Birthday, Foreclosure, and Orphan database). To ensure micro segmentation to improve campaign effectiveness
2. Campaign tracking
1. To monitor the performance of every campaign executed across mediums & the results generated by the same
2. Analysis of campaign success & failure parameters requires to be documented to ensure the learnings are incorporated in future campaigns
3. Analytics & customer profiling:      

 To identify the ‘inactive base’ based on pre-defined triggers & provide inputs to the customer engagement team for activation

Areas of Impact      

A.    Customer profiling:

Targeting the entire existing Kotak customer base through micro-segmentation

B.     Campaign management:

Executing multiple levels of campaigns to identify needs of consumer & cater to them.

Campaign Observation & Learning:

The customers on any internet portal have an activity span that dips if there are no triggers given to them. Executing multiple campaigns provides that input to customer to help them remain active.

Organizational Context :

What are the specific aspects of the job that provide a challenge to the jobholder in the context of the Telesales/Kotak Direct Unit/Zone?)

Data base is very crucial in Telesales channel. Understanding and analyzing the data base is as important as understanding the sales funnel. It is a cost to the company but the optimum utilization of the same is the one of the core responsibilities of the various campaigns that we run at Kotak Life Telesales. Any missed data could be a prospective customer.  Hence, Profiling of the database is also very important.

Customer Profiling and customized campaign to tap the targeted segment:

1. Anniversary Calling Campaign :

In this campaign we call from Non-NDNC (National Do Not Call) line to the customers and start the calls by congratulating the customers for completing 5years with Kotak Life. This is an in-force customer base who have been consistent with their premiums and hence are better database. Thus, the campaigns are more customized & targeted messages are delivered keeping the prospective customers in mind.

The challenge

In this campaign the telecallers are not allowed to solicit anything as per the IRDA guidelines.

 Solution:

To address this issue my responsibility is to think about various initiatives that are implemented on a regular basis such as email campaigns, presentation calls, face to face sales presentation and telesales pitch are designed to create a need of the insurance and investment & empower them to make financial decisions through the platform. The campaign is based on the customer data linked on Kotak Life system – e.g. an understanding of customer profile can by analysing the login pattern, usage, payment pattern, demographics, source of acquisition etc.

2. Birthday Calling  :

In the Birthday campaign, on a daily basis we have certain amount of customers whom we would call to wish him and along with it we would request for a quick appointment so that we can provide the customer a small gesture along with the premium certificates of his existing plan.

The challenge

Being the special day for the customer he/she may already have planned the day and an end to end pitching on the very first call has often lead to postponement or not interested. So, presentation has been a big challenge in the context of Telesales in this particular scenario.

Solution:

To overcome these scenario a face to face campaign was suggested by me in January 2014 with a different approach by the telesales team.  In this campaign, the telecaller would wish the customer and ask for a brief appointment to provide some special service related to the existing Kotak Insurance policy. The aim of this campaign was to increase the meet ratio as it has been observed that the more number of meetings results into more presentation and ultimately sales closure.

Thus, the Service manager/ RM goes with a small Birthday card to the customer.  Just like anniversary campaign, once the SM/RM is reached – we take feedback and again approach for a new plan as a special product on this special day.

Basically again these are existing telesales customers and we are approaching them in a different way. So the idea is to increase the customer meet ratio and then track the meet vs closure ratio.  It is therefore, crucial not to talk about a new plan or sales before meeting the customer.

3. The End to End pitching

The Telesales unit mostly call on database like

NTU (Not Taken Up) Database: We call these customers whose policies were not issued in the past for pending cheque bounce, pending documents, medical declined etc.

Foreclose Database: These are the customers who might have paid for 6 months or 1year and then stopped paying premiums. As a result, the policies are foreclosed and we pitch them for new plan.

Orphan Database: Wherein the policies were sourced 5-6 years ago and the related SM is no more in the system.

KD : Kotak Direct Base

TS: These are Telesales base customer.

After knowing the various campaigns’ at Kotak Life Telesales/ KD department, it would be interesting to have a quick look on month on month performance data as under :

May2014 Analysis

TS	Orphan	KD	Stale Cheque	NTU
10.3%	6.2%	5.9%	6.2%	7.9%
23.4%	23.0%	29.1%	20.2%	23.5%
33.7%	29.3%	35.0%	26.5%	31.5%
66.3%	70.7%	65.0%	73.5%	68.5%

June 2014 Analysis

TS	Orphan	KD	Stale Cheque	NTU
8.2%	4.4%	5.3%	7.4%	5.5%
24.9%	23.4%	24.1%	18.8%	22.0%
33.1%	27.8%	29.3%	26.2%	27.5%
66.9%	72.2%	70.7%	73.8%	72.5%

July 2014 Analysis

TS	Orphan	KD	Stale Cheque	NTU	Annivarsary Data
2.7%	2.0%	3.3%	2.6%	2.3%	14.2%
24.5%	21.7%	28.9%	18.4%	20.7%	41.8%
27.2%	23.7%	32.3%	21.0%	23.0%	56.0%
72.8%	76.3%	67.7%	79.0%	77.0%	44.0%

Summary:

The above figures of past 3 month’s analysis show that all the campaigns have resulted into a better productivity on month on month basis. This has given me an opportunity to engage with various business departments to understand their requirements and convert the business requirements through various campaign initiatives.

Apart from the Benchmarking & publishing campaign results my role responsibility also include the following key business parameters to track the performance of the campaigns across customer segments and telesales channel:

·         Productivity

·         Lead generation (End to End)

·         Lead Generation (Service to sales)

·         Issuance and Throughput %