situation analysis for the scope of business plan ingenious

INGENIOUS Data, Information, Knowledge to Wisdom…

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6INGINEOUS is to compete with ignorance,Incompetence, inefficiency, ineffectivenessOf Individuals at every level to achieve Excellence in its essence of presence.

situation analysis

Here we will address:6.1 Market Summary6.11 Competition 6.2 SWOT Analysis6.3 Opportunity And Issue Analysis


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6.1 market summary

INGENIOUS will focus on lower middle class and middle middle class population for retail segment services (UDDESHYA). Our secondary target will be the established dotcom companies; Internet, mobile telephony, financial services provider companies; Placement, Education, Marketing Research consultants, whereas our tertiary target is SME’s for corporate services (UDDESHYA and NETRITVA).

Our secondary targets are corporate in need to expand to semi urban and rural market, in view of saturating or say stagnating urban market such as: Mobile telephony market has 3,97,83,531

subscriber as on 28 Feb. 2005 in country. In which 1,07,69,019 subscribers are from metros.Deloitte & Touche forecast the mobile subscriber base in India will touch 4.7 crore by the end of 2004. Following the trend CDMA subscriber base stood at 99.95 lakh. Dotcom companies, specifically B2C segment, IDC estimates that the total Indian market size forecasts, it will grow to Rs 2,340 crore by the end of 2006 with impressive CAGR of 79 percent, trend is followed by B2B sites. baazee.com, rediff.com indiatimes.com, fabmart.com , sify.com ,Indiamart.com are trend setter. Also, Internet-assisted commerce grew by around 70 percent in 2002 over 2001. Financial services and home loans account for nearly 45 percent of this particular segment. Similarly, financial service providers need to tap semi- urban and rural markets to attain their growth objectives. Such as ICICI , HDFC, ING Vashya bank etc.

Finally, SME’s that is 3.37 million in country throw a vast opportunity for management, market, business and channel development & market Intelligence.

Target Market

Middle Class Population(Maharashtra 2005-06)

Urban Rural


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Market Forecast

0

100

200

300

400

2005-06 2006-07 2007-08

Middle Class Population (India)

Rural

Urban

2005-06 2006-07 2007-08

Potential Customer Maharashtra India Maharashtra India Maharashtra India

Middle Class Population 3,16,75,843 33,63,18,751 3,22,87,187 34,28,09,703 3,29,10,329 34,94,25,930

Urban 1,38,01,156 9,34,29,348 1,40,67,527 9,52,32,535 1,43,39,030 9,70,70,523

Rural 1,78,74,678 24,28,89,402 1,82,19,660 24,75,77,168 1,85,71,299 25,23,55,407

6.11 competitionThe key element in purchase decisions made at the INGENIOUS end user level either in masses or in corporate or in government is trust in the professional reputation and reliability of the firm in whatever we do.

The competition comes in several forms:

1. Individuals who choose to rely on their personal information sources for personal and professional excellence. As it is conventional method used by majority of retail segment. Our service benefit to them is truly professional tailor made expertise in wide scope required by them to maintain their personal and professional life growing in terms of position, income and information at their doorstep through local representatives.

2. There are some large and well-known names in the market that can become our direct competitors by opting different growth strategies. Such as Dotcom companies like Naukri, Jobsahead. Timesjob, Jobstreet etc., Placement consultants like Ma Foi, Manpower consultants, Team Lease, Executive Search etc., ISP’s to retail segment like SIFY, DSL Dishnet, Reliance Infocomm, Bharti Broadband, IT Education & Training companies like NIIT, Aptech, Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation and Incubators like


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Indiaco etc. Our key advantage over these companies is real and influential penetration into different layer, strata and diversified segments, broad spectrum of services offering, Integrated value chain, business with and for social cause and customized professional training in soft skills, IT or as per specific industry requirements and constantly, moving with varying market requirements.

3. In corporate segment one most significant competition is no consulting at all, companies choosing to develop and maintain complete in house Value Chain for Channel Development, Business Intelligence, Market and Business Development, Market Research. Their own managers do this on their own, as part of their regular business functions. Our key advantage in competition with in-house development is that managers are already overloaded with responsibilities; they don’t have time for additional responsibilities in new market development or new channel development. Also, INGENIOUS can approaches alliances, vendors, and channels on confidential basis, gathering information and making initial contacts in ways that the corporate managers can’t.

4. The high-level prestige consulting companies, these are essentially generalists who take their name (brand) to SME’s and into specific areas. Their important limitation is high rates for consulting because of high overheads on their employee’s salaries and other operational expenses.

5. The fifth kind of general competitor is the local and national market research companies. These companies are formidable competitors for published market research and market forums but cannot provide the kind of consulting at deferent levels that INGENIOUS will provide.

6. Venture capitalists and Incubators can develop own channel network of banks and non banking financial organizations to extract ideas from common pool .

7. Sales representation, brokering, and deal catalysts are ad-hoc business form that will be defined in detail by specific nature of each individual case.

6.2 swot analysis

The SWOT analysis covers strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Strengths and weaknesses are generally internal attributes, which we can address by changing our business. Opportunities and threats are generally external.

Overall, the mix is exciting. We live in the age of growth, change, and business revolution .The Internet offers us opportunities and threats. We need to make our dealing with it one of our biggest strengths, to minimize our weaknesses.


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6.21 strengths

1. True expertise and high level contacts. All of our principals know this area very well with high level contacts with local and state level government officials on dominating position for influential presence in the market wherever we enter. It help us to have favorable word-of-mouth marketing, new contacts.

2. Dominance of communications technologies from a user’s point of view. We have excellent website, secure File Transfer Protocol (FTP) facilities with password protection for sending and receiving documents from clients and network associates, major bandwith, and an automatic link to training allies to help clients and channel associates come up to speed with the facilities we offer. We even hold Internet meetings with shared interface and visuals.

3. Manageable size. We don’t have to support large overheads, and our clients know that we deliver what we promise ourselves. It also allows us to make fast decisions and implementation giving us edge of proactive move in operations.

6.22 weaknesses

1. Marketing. As a group, we are good at direct sales involved in making close, but we don’t have the resources required to do much general marketing. We will depend on word of mouth first as our main form of generating leads.

2. Staff. Without the overhead of staff, we can’t leverage on people to develop documents presentations, research in detail, and fill in the blanks. We are short on support for telephones, fax, and email.

3. Brand. We are a new entity, we can be perceived as an innovative—therefore risky –choice.

6.23 opportunities

1. Internet growth. Companies are being dragged into worldwide marketing, like it or not. Growth rates are high and opportunities are obvious.

2. Domestic market growth. South and Western India are booming. Northern region is following the trend. Indian industries are anxious to join the band.

3. International market growth. Western world is offering of opportunities to India. China and other leader developing economies are also recovering. Now, it is on us how we realize those for our growth.

6.23 threats

1. The internet is threat as well as an opportunity. Our expertise is about reaching masses with information, networking information between different segments, catering


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upcoming sectors, and problems we solve are being reduced in importance by the growing availability of information.

2. The larger, branded competition is recognizing our niche. They are beginning to compete in our area, recognize our niche. We will no longer remain alone.

3. New competitors are in new markets. Particularly as the Northern region grows, competitors developing in that area will become more significant.

6.3 opportunity and issue analysis

UDDESHYA and NETRITVA services are dedicated to solve human resource social and economical problems by harnessing mix of technological proves and conventional options rather than companies such as Dotcom companies, Placement consultants, ISP’s, IT Education & Training companies and Incubators; limited to specific channel or region or services/products. This allows its services to spread among masses of different strata, layers and segments such as precision farming services to farmers, DSA’s/DST’s or/and collection centers for banking, financial, mobile telephony companies --- greatly expanding the appeal of its mass network and relevant database and information for both consumers and business buyers. We can also leverage our presence and mass network for forming tie-ups with large business houses, corporate and co-operative societies such as n-Louge Communication Pvt. Ltd., Tata/Birla/Dalmia’s, Apollo group, GCFML etc. in their endeavor of proving corporate citizenship and delivering social responsibilities.

We see no direct competition for our core activity of integrated knowledge networking market. Our analysis estimates* the Rs.317 & Rs.3363 crore market in India and Maharashtra respectively expanding at 1.93% rate naturally with population growth rate. There are many companies in near competition (for details refer topic competition on page no…..). IDC predicts that government and education will emerge on the technological horizon and BFSI will continue the run with 27% and 18% growth in SISP Svcs and IT training and education respectively.

Among the various related to implementation of plan, the issues INGENIOUS must address are:

6.31 cultural issue:

In spite of INGENIOUS effort to create awareness about the tele or/and e services (tele or/and e consultancy) concept through their specialists (Lawyers, Doctors, Career consultants, Agricultural consultants etc.), marketing team, public communication, our representatives still will find resistance to tele or e consulting .It is our representatives at consultation centers who plays a major role in explaining the concepts and making the customers (end users) comfortable with this form of consultancy. The cost and benefits of tele and e consultancy are as follows:


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Table 6.31: Cost benefit analysis for customers

Costs Benefits

Individual interaction via Tele or/and e services platform.

Marketing cost.

End user saves on travel and other outstation expenses.

Savings on specialist’s expenses.

6.32 legal issues:

Confidentiality and privacy in the transfer and storage of data is of prime concern. There exist a question mark on adequacy and accuracy of electronically transmitted data for establishing a correct evaluation for appropriate solution to end-users. If due to technical malfunction, the customer’s data is not transferred correctly or data leakage at any level may alter the evaluation of situation or case or may lead to unwanted invasion to privacy. Who will be responsible than: our representative? Data centre? Manufacture or distributor of the equipments? Or the telecommunication department (connectivity service provider). These are the important aspects to consider before venturing in the tele and/or e services project.

INGENIOUS must use software to capture pre and post consultancy details and authenticity of data should maintain through e-signature of their representatives. It also must follow some guidelines for security of data transmitted, such as Hippa standards and other such standards for maintaining data adequacy, accuracy and privacy while data transmission and storage.

6.33 technological issues:

Bandwidth plays a major role in the success of tele or e consultation. VSAT, ISDN, lease lines are the preferred connectivity between the centers but the availability on a large scale is costly

and time consuming. While connecting different centers large investment is to be incurred by way of equipments and tie up with major equipment vendors and availing network connectivity services with already established service providers may reduce costs. The cost and benefits associated with the tele or e services (network connectivity) technology platform is given in Table 6.32 as follows:


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Table 6.32: Technology Cost Effectiveness

Costs Benefits

Set up of technology Ease of use

Reliable

Quality of data transmission

Service maintenance facility

6.34 economic issues:

INGENIOUS will have a well develop and defined business modal in place and operates as a profit organization. In order to sustain current model the organization need to reap back the investment of INR (Indian National Rupee) 60 to 70 thousand made per center. Each enrolment with generates INR 99 and to break even and cover operational expenses at least 6726 enrolment per center per year is necessary. The economic aspects of tele consultancy platform are compared in Table 6.33.

Table 6.33: Economic Cost Effectiveness

Costs Benefits

Start up cost

Operating cost

Revenue retention at referring site

Revenue generation

Measuring cost and benefit INGENIOUS should either develop proprietary network for both real and virtual penetration across the country or form tie-ups with another companies having presence across the nation.


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6.35 end user satisfaction:

The efficacy of any service can be judged based on end user satisfaction.The end users of tele or e consulting and training are very diverse and include:

Parents or their kids Teachers and trainers Consultants Students Business users

Parents expect best and convenient information for their children academic excellence and tele and e consultancy should ensure that their satisfactory levels are met. Channel network will provide point of interface, data collection point and real presence to business users saving their time and effort for the same, ultimately saving their money and adding to their efficiency and effectiveness. Maintaining a panel of specialists and compensating them satisfactorily will require substantial efforts by management team, to create the required volume and manage the costs.