By Sajith Pai in Higher Education 1 Comment Tags: Engineering Education
Recently, Mohandas Pai, the Chairman of Manipal Global Education Services expressed his disquiet about the rather low starting salaries for engineering college graduates, accusing IT companies such as Infy, Wipro, TCS of conspiring to keep salaries of graduating engineers artificially low.
Mohandas Pai and Manipal Global have much to gain from higher salaries, for the promoters of Manipal Global also control the trusts that run Manipal University. Like several …
By Sajith Pai in News Media 3 Comments Tags: Digital Advertising, Facebook, Google, Online / Digital
Facebook’s India arm reportedly made Rs 177 crs revenue in FY16, the last year for which it reported revenues. In the same period, Google India made Rs 5,904 crs. Google is thus about 33x Facebook revenues in India.
For the year-ending Mar’17 we will very likely see a lower multiple, for Google may not grow as much as Facebook in India, given its higher base. Let us assume …
By Sajith Pai in News Media 1 Comment Tags: Advertising, Content, Product Discovery
In 2017, Group M, a leading media agency, estimates that we will see marketing expenditures cross the $1 trillion threshold for the first time ever. This includes about ~$550b of advertising expenditure or ‘Above The Line’ i.e., print, TV, digital, radio, OOH etc., and balance ~$450b in marketing services, primarily ‘Below The Line’ spends e.g., direct marketing, events, activations such as tasting sessions within a mall as well as buying …
By Sajith Pai in Book Discovery 1 Comment Tags: Amazon, Bookstores, Curation, Experiences
On starting a bookstore
Imagine that you have decided to set up a bookstore. It may be that that you are retiring and now you have some time and money to pursue your dream. Or you have won a lottery allowing you to quit your boring job and give in to that urge, that you have been nurturing since childhood. Either way, you are ready now to start looking …
By Sajith Pai in News Media No Comments Tags: Broadsheets, HT Media, Mint Newspaper
Mint, a financial daily from HT Media Group, went from a Berliner to the larger Broadsheet format today.
Why did they do this?
Mint’s Executive Editor R Sukumar explained the change here. In the article he cites only one reason; that the earlier Berliner format was better suited to carrying longer in depth investigative pieces (“more of less” as he calls it). Today, he says, consumers prefer to get …
By Sajith Pai in Book Discovery No Comments Tags: Amazon, Book Discovery, Bookstores, Curation, Libreria, Morioka Shoten, One Grand Books
Benedict Evans, tech blogger and VC with a16z, recently had an interesting series of tweets, polling his followers about their perception of various industry facts, such as android devices vs iOS devices, in an attempt to contrast the polled results with reality. One of the polls was about perceptions of Amazon’s share of the U.S. Consumer print book market.
Perception: the correct answer is around a third, depending on definitions
By Sajith Pai in News Media No Comments Tags: Content Discovery, Curation, Twitter
Twitter recently announced its Q1 2016 results. While its revenue grew by 36% to ~$600m, and losses halved to ~$80m, the numbers didn’t impress Wall Street analysts or tech pundits. After all, revenue growth is slowing, audience numbers are barely moving and there are newer more exciting kids (snapchat, medium etc) on the block. The stock dropped as much as 13% on the news, and is now trading at its …
By Sajith Pai in Higher Education No Comments Tags: MOOCs, Online / Digital, Universities
An open letter to Mr T S R Subramanian & fellow committee members drafting the New Education Policy
Dear Mr Subramanian & fellow panelists
Congratulations on being appointed to the panel.
This is only the third time since independence, that an education policy is being drafted. The previous policies, be it the Education Policy of 1968 that resulted in the 10+2+3 system of education that we follow today, or the …
By Sajith Pai in Book Reviews 1 Comment Tags: Book Review, History, India, Politics
Reading Sunil Khilnani’s Idea of India nearly two decades after its original appearance to considerable acclaim, and nearly fifteen years after I purchased a copy (yes, I have waited that long to read it!) I am struck by
By Sajith Pai in Book Reviews No Comments Tags: Books
Of these 28 books that I read in 2015, three-fourths were non-fiction. The average page-length was 377 pages. Over a third of these were books written in 2015, and all but two were written in the last 7 years.
I know all this, because I have been keeping tracking of the books that I read, rather obsessively for over a decade now. Every year, at the beginning of the year, …
