Creativity Versus Coding - The merger is on!

Indian IT firms’ attempts to enhance the value chain have resulted in HR rush at the gates of country's arts and design schools. With salary offers at a premium of well over 40-50%, IT firms are making a beeline to recruit students from the likes of National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Srishti School of Arts, National Institute of Design ( NID) and MIT Institute of Design. 

Compared to entry-level salaries of tech graduates at Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 3.5 lakh per annum, design students are being picked up by companies such as Microsoft, SAP Labs, TCS, Cognizant, Mindtree, Infosys, Wipro and InMobi, as well as e-commerce players such as Amazon, Myntra, and Flipkart for anywhere between Rs 4 lakh and Rs 18 lakh, depending on the institute.  Companies have just a few seconds to grab the attention of potential customers or end-users. They need to use a multi-sensorial, audio-visual kind of approach to tell their story or sell their product. People from a coding background like software engineers might find it harder to connect with their customer base as compared to design students, who have the training to connect companies with customers better. 

The demand for design students in IT outstrips the supply, which is driving up salaries. This is the price you pay for creativity, not just coding and engineering. So the biggest challenge is to find people with technology background, blended with creative or design capability.

My Take:  Even though a bit late, IT firms have realized and taken the right logical step to attract ‘Intuition, Design and Creativity’. I am sure we are now closer than before in delivering better value in the software product development space.

~ Satish Chathanath Call : 9884011654 Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in

Boxed Customer Delight – Do online shopping sites getting it right?

For every consumer ad on TV today there is almost one promoting a website business. Take sites like flipkart, jabong, fashionandyou, myntra, snapdeal, inkfruit, yebhi, caratlane and others have got just 2 big asset to showcase: 1) their own website where transactions happen 2) Packaging of the product their customer order for. Luckily they do not have multiple other customer touchpoints to spend their time, money and focus. On the other hand, unluckily, they have only these 2 touchpoints to attract, entice and retain their customers. While website is an ever-changing tech piece and  it is a stubborn marketing piece yet to reveal all of customers’ sales-push buttons... but most players are figuring it out really good to get this property working and helping trickle-sales to a flow. But how are they faring when it comes to the second asset of theirs – packaging?

This asset is special because this is the one customer touches, feels and experiences. To an extent we can say, if they bungle this up on the last mile of the 2 miles;), they will lose customers. No wonder that most of these sites are working with design experts (Indian and international names like Michael Foley) to make the final delivery of the boxed customer delight to be pure awesomeness!! Most of them are reluctantly jumping into customized packaging ideas like red based packaging for a wedding gift wrapper.  Are they succeeding in Package Branding? Time will tell... but they are extending the branding space and have put more focus on areas like costume branding of the delivery person and delivery vehicle branding. Looks like they are hungry for more sales-driving branding ideas!

~ Satish Chathanath Call : 9884011654 Mail : csadhy@yahoo.co.in