Economic Times talks about Crowdsourcing Landscape in India.

1. WWW.ECONOMICTIMES.COM Special Feature Crowd-sourcing 15
When a Crowd is Company
The public is a fount of resources, skills and ideas. More and more companies are tapping this via the Internet to
solve business problems. Crowd sourcing is cheap and efficient, and is fast gaining scale, reports Bhanu Pande
Independent
Fund Raising New Technologies
FILMS: Onir Anirban raised PROCTER &
Platforms
one-third of the `3 crore
GAMBLE, US: They are the online interface
budget for his film ‘I Am’
A new peptide between companies, especially
through social-networking
technology small ones, and the ‘crowd’. Some
sites. Also, platforms like Film
developed by a small crowd-sourcing platforms in India
Interactor and Kickstarter
French cosmetics
enable public financing
company was picked
up by P&G from its ekjaa.org
MICROFINANCE: Milaap, crowd-sourcing site, Enables grants and loans to social
MicroGraam and Rang De enterprises and NGOs
Develop+Connect.
bring together lenders
Thus was launched
and borrowers for small
Olay Regenerist 99tests.com
livelihood loans
Testers locate bugs and judge user
experience for softwares and websites
ideaken.com
Architectural Inputs Intermediates between those who seek
innovation and those who want to solve
BANGALORE
INTERNATIONAL jademagnet.com
CENTRE: An upcoming Design, web and marketing solutions
cultural hub in the city,
plans to ask architects
across the globe to give onebillionminds.com
suggestions on its `100 Problem solving in science, technology,
crore building on a crowd- design, business or social innovation
sourcing platform
brandpotion.com
Develop products, re-imagine brands and
create innovative advertising
hoonur.com
New Products Professionals and businesses from
entertainment, TV, media and advertising
can promote and share their services
ARINDAM
milap.org, rangde.org
micrograam.org
Connect people who want to donate or
lend to the poor with borrowers
Advertising
talenthouse.com
HERO MOTOCORP: filminteractor.com
Public can upload Kickstarter.com
PEPSICO FOODS: The Mastana Mango flavour their videos on Fund-raising for performing arts,
for its Lay’s brand of potato chips came from a heromotocorp.com for including films
public contest that, according to the company, its ongoing ‘hum mein
drew 1.3 million responses hai hero’ campaign
Design
DELL, US: From its crowd-sourcing site, ideastorm.
com, came the idea to provide a USB 3.0 port on all
HAPPIEST MINDS: Ashok
Soota’s new IT venture got its logo
INKFRUIT: The garment
maker constantly solicits
SAMSUNG: Tweets from people
suggest ideas for artworks, which are
talking
its computers, a common charger for devices, and
anti-glare on screens
from crowd-sourcing platform T-shirt designs on its then drawn using design apps in its
Galaxy Note phone, and advertised
heads
Jade Magnet website
More than 50% of the
ideas for our new
n 2010, when India’s cen- microfinance sector, with online …For Working struggling with payments. They for thousands to contribute towards ru- products and
I
tral bank decided to cre- platforms like Milaap, Rang De and need to figure out the best way to ral development. “We should also look at innovation came from
ate a symbol for the rupee, MicroGraam connecting people
Professionals… accept payments from vendors and this model from the perspective of people here (its own crowd-
instead of asking a design who want to lend or donate for small, As more enterprises take some of distribute it to providers.” who are interested in doing something
house, it asked, well, eve- livelihood loans with those who their work online, it’s opening up Srivastava says a mature online for the benefit of the poor in India, but sourcing website)
ryone. The Reserve Bank need them. freelance opportunities for certain presence is needed for crowd- are not sure how,” says Varadan. “Until RAJU KONDURU
of India invited the public skill sets: visual artists, software sourcing to be effective. “Internet recently, the only option they had was Head, P&G’s innovation centre
to post their designs on its website. It testers, web and marketing profes- penetration in India, as well as speed to donate to charity.” In films, crowd-
received 3,000 designs, from which it What’s In It For SMEs… sionals, copywriters and actors, and bandwidth, is still not very high, sourcing is promoting independent films.
in Bangalore
chose the design of Udaya Kumar, an For small- and medium-sized enter- among others. though this is changing,” he says. For example, in 2009, Onir raised one-
IIT student. prises (SMEs), lower costs, without Deepti Goel, for instance, has Paul says 23% of the 500,000 active third of the `3 crore budget of his last film
While that was a rare outreach by a corresponding drop in quality, is earned about $7,000 (about ` 3.5 contractors of Elance, a US-based ‘I Am’ using Facebook and other social- Crowd-sourcing in
a government arm, it’s a routine a major incentive to crowd-source. lakh) by designing logos and doing platform that has facilitated pro- networking sites. “Hundreds of people India is currently at
exercise for the $82.6 billion Proctor The premise: in one-to-one client animation work on Jade Magnet gramming jobs worth $400 million, from many countries contributed as little the stage where
& Gamble (P&G). The US-based con- dealings, overheads pad up costing. for about 15 clients from the UK and are based in India. “With loads of as `1,000 and as much as `15 lakh,” he
sumer goods major has a dedicated In crowd-sourcing, overheads are India. The 29-year-old graphic de- talent available in smaller cities says. Directors Anurag Kashyap, Ashvin e-commerce was two
website, P&G Connect+Develop, to minimal. For smaller and simpler signer is currently designing a web- and towns, crowd-sourcing can help Kumar and Guneet Monga want to follow years ago. It is about
solicit ideas for products, technolo- projects, then, costs come down site for a client in the Middle-East. businesses access it without having suit. “Crowd-sourcing in India is cur-
to explode
gies, businesses and innovation -- drastically. “It has provided lot of freelancers, to wait for these people to migrate to rently at the stage where e-commerce was
from one and all. Jessie Paul, the former chief individuals and firms a good plat- metros,” says Paul. “On top of that, two years ago,” says Mehra of Talenthouse ARUN MEHRA
The ideas sought are both general marketing officer of Wipro and form to work on,” she says, from her there is a significant cost arbitrage India. “It is about to explode.” CEO, Talenthouse India
and specific. Currently, P&G has who now runs a marketing consul- home in New Delhi. within the country. That makes for a
85 ‘needs’ like ‘new ingredients or tancy, has used crowd-sourcing Doing a few assignments on a platform nice value proposition.”
products that reduce the severity of platforms for brochure templates tends to open up a line of communica-
common cold’. This open strategy and logos. She is a satisfied client. tion for the provid-
…And Large Crossword 5166
works for P&G. “More than 50% of “Their advantage is that you pay ers with it, which
the ideas for our new products and only for what you use. You don’t Besides ideas, translates into work. Corporations
innovation came from here,” says have to pay for the person’s down- crowd- “Over the months, Even big companies are adapting
Raju Konduru, head of P&G’s in- time,” says the CEO of Paul Writer. sourcing is we have built fa- crowd-sourcing into their business.
novation centre in Bangalore. Like Godika estimates that for a logo birthing miliarity with the In early-2010, Parle Agro used Twitter
Olay Regenerist, an anti-wrinkle design, crowd-sourcing is cheaper ventures that platform and they to identify supply-chain gaps. When it
cream, the peptide technology for by a minimum 20-30%; this can would be have also under- launched Hippo, it asked consumers
which came from a small, unknown increase depending on the project stillborn in a stood our quality of and retailers to tweet to a specified
French firm via Connect+Develop. brief and stature of the design firm conventional work,” says Ronak Twitter handle the non-availability
“It (the site) helps accelerate innova- hired in a direct dealing. financing Meghani, a software of this brand of potato chips in their
tion,” adds Konduru. Paul says the world is shifting scenario engineer and web neighbourhood. The company says
It’s called ‘crowd-sourcing’, and it towards informal labour networks designer, about Jade. it received tweets from 25 cities and
involves the outsourcing of a func- and India will follow. “As more work “That makes it easier for us than, say, sales jumped 76% that week. “The
tion once performed only by em- can be done remotely and digitally, new providers.” symbiosis of crowd-sourcing and
ployees to the public. The Internet is the need for these digital equivalents “This works equally well for small social media makes for a perfect busi-
expanding the idea of the ‘crowd’ as of temping firms will only rise.” and large businesses,” says Paul. “This ness plan,” says Nadia Chauhan, joint
partner, helping companies and em- Already, in India, crowd-sourcing gives them access to talented people MD & CMO, Parle Agro, who plans to
powering professionals. It is shaping is funding microfinance and films, they probably could not afford or retain develop such channels and communi-
all sorts of business engagements testing software and websites, doing on a full-time basis,” she adds. ties for each of its brands.
and business models in developed design jobs, creating advertising Hero MotoCorp’s ongoing ad cam-
markets, where crowd-sourcing is and firing innovation, among other paign, ‘hum mein hain hero’, asks
about six years old. things.
…For Crowd-sourcing the public to upload their video to
On the one end of the spectrum are According to Sandeep Khanna, Platforms… the AR Rahman tune on its website,
large corporations like P&G and founder and editor of crowdsourc- Crowd-sourcing platforms usually which the company then incorpo-
Dell, which have dedicated sites to ingindia.com, an online Indian charge clients either per transac- rates into its TV ad. “Its genesis
tap ideas relating to their businesses crowd-sourcing publication, over tion or per subscription. Part of this lies in this ownership displayed by
from the public. On the other end 500 SMEs have used such platforms goes to the providers. According to people: what if every individual was
are smaller enterprises, which are in the past year. “It is growing fast Srivastava, Jade keeps 20% of the given a chance to create a video that
trying to ride on websites that are in because of the growing freelance client fee and passes on the rest to could be seen by others?” explains
the business of creating a meeting culture,” he says. “Since the model the provider. Some like Talenthouse Anil Dua, senior vice president-mar-
place for crowds and companies. helps SMEs, more people are able to also charge a registration fee. keting and sales, Hero MotoCorp.
“It (crowd-sourcing) can help busi- use it and benefit.” Selling advertising on the web- As is evident, large Indian compa-
nesses keep costs low while getting Take Jade Magnet, which site is another revenue stream. nies are still using crowd-sourcing
their work done by qualified people primarily hosts projects related “We seek brand sponsorships for for soft activities, unlike, say, the US.
who can deliver good quality,” says to logo and website design, bro- each ‘creative invite’ that we put Dell, for example, launched a crowd-
Sitashwa Srivastava, CEO of Jade chures, demo animation, and up,” says Arun Mehra, CEO of sourcing site, ideastorm.com, in ear-
Magnet, a Bangalore-based crowd- print and banner ads. CEO Talenthouse India, a joint venture ly-2008. According to Dell, the site has
sourcing platform. Srivastava says it has delivered between Reliance Entertainment logged about 11,000 ideas, of which,
Both these templates, though nas- about 1,200 projects in two years and Talenthouse, a crowd-sourcing 350 were implemented. These include
cent in India, are gathering steam. and the adoption rate is increasing. platform for performing arts. making USB 3.0 port a standard fea-
So, for example, the logo of Ashok “Convincing clients, especially However, given the nascent nature ture on its PC and laptops, a common
Soota’s new IT venture, Happiest SMEs, is never easy. But when they of the business, hardly any crowd- charger for devices, and introduction
Minds, came from Jade Magnet. see the cost advantage, they agree sourcing platforms are making prof- of anti-glare on notebook screens. Dilbert by S Adams
“We had a specific and well-defined to give crowd-sourcing a shot,” he its. “Each project ends up making an The real appeal of crowd-sourcing,
project that didn’t require any says. “Also, viral effects and refer- operational profit,” says Srivastava of though, is for smaller, less main-
serious background research,” rals is popularising crowd-sourcing Jade. However, adds Khanna of crowd- stream outfits and ideas. In microfi-
says Salil Godika, chief strategy & among small companies and sourcingindia.com: “Most platforms nance, for example, crowd-sourcing
marketing officer, Happiest Minds. start-ups.” are in investment mode.” With an eye is enabling a meeting of minds.
“So, we chose to crowd-source it as a One of Jade’s recent clients is on a wider audience, platforms are According to Rangan Varadan,
faster way that would give us fresh Sure Fertility, a fertility clinic in investing in technology, marketing, founder of Micrograam, the power
and diverse thinking.” Bangalore. The clinic posted a de- research and delivery methods. of the crowd-sourcing model is
Besides ideas, it is birthing ven- sign brief for a logo on Jade, includ- The challenge for a crowd-souring two-fold. One, because investors
tures that would probably be still- ing its budget and time. It received platform is to bring together a large are socially-conscious individuals,
born in a conventional financing about 35 designs. It short-listed one. number of providers and vendors there is little pressure on a micro-
scenario. Crowd-funding is helping After a few iterations with the de- on a platform, while keeping its credit company to be aggressive in
small and independent film-makers signer through Jade’s Magnet mes- marketing spends low and main- repayment and collection, or pursue
to make the films they want to. And saging application, it arrived at the taining high quality in delivery. excessive profits or growth.
it’s creating a new model in the final design. Says Srivastava: “Platforms are also Second, it offers an effective vehicle