Welcome Junglee, You Got Work To Do

Junglee - Amazon India

This morning I wake up with yet another ecommerce launch and this is the much hyped entry of Amazon in India. People may like, hate or justify the current model that Junglee (Amazon) has adopted and we can all speculate on what would the future be. But as a consumer, a retailer and a user of these same ecommerce sites since over 10 years, I am saddened to see that Amazon makes a mistake that the Indian ecommerce scene has long forgotten.

The very first mobile listed on Junglee.com, a Samsung Galaxy SII is priced at Rs 28,400 on the homepage. A quote lower than what Pricebaba shows for Mumbai and given that most reputed sites are listing the SII for over Rs 30,000, this is a fantastic offer. But wait, click on the thumbnail, and then click again on the seller information page of the lowest bidder and you shall see this

Junglee Transaction

… and if you clicked Visit Seller Store instead, you will notice this only on the checkout page of a site that is at best, Web 1.0.

Charging shipping extra is fine. Charging extra for credit card transaction is ok. But after several clicks quoting me Rs 1998 as Tax is not. Lucrative advertising with hidden charges is a practice most e-retail players gave up sometime back. Amazon has work in hand to curate the experience I get on Junglee. The ‘we are a platform’ wordings hasn’t worked for eBay as an excuse to compete with the ones who are really delivering a good experience, there is no reason Junglee would be an exception!

Welcome Junglee, You Have Work To Do! 

Disclaimer: Pricebaba is my venture.

Inspirational: Babu’s Doing Extraordinary Things (Transformational Leadership In Government)

In his talk ‘In defense of the indefensible’ Srivatsa Krishna goes on to show multiple examples of Government employees / ‘Babus’ / public servants doing great work, within the same political structure that is currently hit by a new scam every week. While many around me (include me to an extent) are at loss of confidence, doubting India’s prospects and can only vent their anger of Facebook / Twitter, here is a video that raises such hope!

YouTube Link

Thanks Hari Kotian for sharing this

 

Maintaining law and order isn’t easy?

Bomb Found in Surat

I received a forward mail from a friend today, which linked to the following article criticizing the system for the serial blasts across India. Here are my views on the same.

Its hard to digest the fact that dozen’s of bombs are found in big cities, outside hospitals, busy markets and even the police station. Is it really that easy to plant a bomb? Or perhaps the biggest question, Is it really that easy to make a bomb and run a terror network?

My answer would be Yes and No. Don’t get confused, but in a nation of 1 billion people no matter how much security cams you set up, no matter how much frisking and checking you do; there would be breach of security somewhere or the other. When these terrorists can accomplish something of the scale of 9/11 in US, this is certainly no big feat.

Making these low intensity bombs aren’t too difficult (not saying that they are easy) and planting them certainly isn’t very difficult either, they fit into a school bag easily. My friend Piyansh easily passes coke bottles inside theatre’s (again not implying that he can carry bombs as well :P), all I want to say is these small bombs are somewhat easy to hide and travel with. (You can read more on Terrorist Bombs here)

A very common comparison that I draw between Internet and the material world is the Policing. If you look at any biggie on the internet, say Youtube, Facebook, eBay, Orkut etc all of them rely on the community (users) to report anything objectionable. Not that they don’t have their own checks, but then it is practically impossible to manually keep a tab on the millions of their users. Similarly even the our local police relies on the public to report suspicious activities to them. Now here is where the problem for me rises …

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