Last month I was interviewed for a small video feature that covered 3 booming economies India, Brazil and China. Here’s the link to the video feature.
Video Interview with BBC: Tales from 3 Booming Economies
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Category Archives: interview
Techie Starts Dial-a-Book
Despite being wanting to blog for a long time all I am able to find time for is to share the links/stories of Dial-a-Book. But I sincerely hope to change this, in the mean while here’s another story on a site for techies
Here’s an excerpt
Mayank Dhingra studied to be an electronics engineer and started his career as a software developer. In 2009, he quit the security of a full time job to start Dial-a-Book that lets you order all types of Books over the phone. They accept Cash on Delivery in 27 cities including NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkatta, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Hyd. TG caught up with Mayank
Techgoss (TG): Tell us about your educational and IT Work Background?
Mayank Dhingra (MD): I am an electronics engineer by education and started working as a software developer and eventually turned into a Social Media Consultant. My first job was with Fidelity in which I worked on building and enhancing software (on Microsoft technologies) for their internal use. In my second job at Slideshare I worked on their Slidecast feature, did some work on the back end/server side and some front-end coding for a few features.TG: How was Dial-a Book business idea born?
MD: I’ve always wanted to start a business around books and after …..
You can read the complete article here
First City’s story on Dial-a-Book
Last few weeks/months have been good for Dial-a-Book especially as far as the press mentions are concerned. While January saw coverage from Inc India (Dial-a-Book to be chronicled by Inc India), February saw the coverage in Yourstory.in (My Interview with YourStory.in) and Rediff
and this month its First City Magazine that carried a story on us
It’s a great story but apparently they don’t have it online so you’ll have to grab a copy of March issue of First City to read 🙂
Dial-a-Book to be chronicled by Inc India
I am happy to share with the readers of this blog that my start-up “Dial-a-Book” was recently profiled by Indian Edition of the Awesome Inc magazine of the US.  To make things more cool they’ve added us to their feature ‘Start-up Diaries’ in which they track various start-ups over a period of time to see how they are performing. Guess, now we have another reason to perform better 🙂
I love Inc.com and try to follow it as much as I can and it’s great to get recognition from them. The story shares my and Tarang(my younger brother and partner in Dial-a-Book)’s educational and professional background and how we started Dial-a-Book. It also looks into our business model, our operations, values and future plans.
I suggest you grab a copy of Jan edition of Inc India and give it a read.
PS: You can also call us at 9650-457-457 if you want to get a copy of Inc India home delivered(free home delivery)
PPS: The previous big mention Dial-a-Book had in press was when Mint included us in their story of start-up ideas you wishyou had thought of.
Dial-a-Book gets covered in Todays Mint Lounge
My new startup ‘Dial-a-Book’ has got its first mention in print media today. It’s been almost a year since I started working on Dial-a-Book along with my younger brother and it’s been an absolute fun ride.
Here’s an excerpt from the article
Past life
Dial-a-Book is a Delhi-based start-up founded by brothers Mayank and Tarang Dhingra. Tarang, 25, is a final-year student at the University of Delhi. Mayank, 27, is a software engineer who left a corporate job at Fidelity International in 2005 to work for a string of tech start-ups—from SlideShare, an online presentation hosting service, to MPower Mobile, which works with mobile payments. In 2008, before the Twitter bandwagon bulldozed its way across the country’s Internet landscape, he experimented with creating a Twitter-like service for India called Kwippy—which Mayank called a “conversational platform”. The site folded in mid-2009, and subsequent dabbling in ideas on what to do next led to Dial-a-Book
and you can read the complete article here
I know some of you *might* find this surprising and *might* have some questions for me, so feel free to ping me anytime 🙂
Word of mouth is no longer just about words
One fine day while browsing at a bookstore I stumbled upon this rather intriguingly titled book “The Anatomy of Buzz“. I acted on my hunch, picked this book up and started reading it’s blurb. Half way into the blurb I realized I should buy this book and I did. “The Anatomy of Buzz” is a book about “Buzz aka Word of mouth” and it’s undoubtedly one of the finest books on the subject. A couple of months back Emanuel Rosen, author of the book, released “The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited”, with lots of new content and case studies focused around online buzz. I so liked the book(first one) that not only did I decide to buy the new one but also to Interview the author of the book for all of us. Here’s the interview, as it is. Thanks Emanuel for sparing your time to answer these questions for us.
Mayank: Why a book on Buzz ?
Emanuel: A lot of our decisions on what to read, watch and buy are influenced by buzz. There are thousands of books about advertising, but only a few about word of mouth marketing and buzz. It’s important for marketers to learn about how they can stimulate customers to spread the word.
Mayank: How has “Word of Mouth” changed since you wrote your first book (back in 2000)?
Emanuel: The basics have not changed, but now word of mouth is no longer just about words. We have many more opportunities to show our friends the products we like and not only to tell them about these brands. This is done on Facebook, flickr, Myspac, YouTube, and other forums.
Mayank: How are online and offline “Word of Mouth” related ?
Emanuel: They are both part of what I call “buzz” which I define as all the person to person communication about a brand. Most of this communication still happens the old fashion way–in face to face conversation. But online buzz is still very important because it accelerates the process.
Mayank: How did you try to build buzz for your first book and what all are you doing(plan to do) to build buzz for your new book ?
Emanuel: To promote my first book, Doubleday sent advance copies to over 2000 people, and it worked very well. The seeding for the new edition was more modest because we could afford to send the book to only about 300 people, but it’s working pretty well. I’m also running a unique book tour on a bus powered by recycled vegetable oil. This bus is mentioned in the first chapter of my new book, and it is being used by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) to promote their organization and alternative energy. You can read about the tour on my blog at http://anatomyofbuzz.blogspot.com/
Mayank: Are you working with a team/organization for spreading the word about your new book or you are doing it all by yourself ?
Emanuel: There’s a team at Doubleday that helps and provides resources and I do a lot by myself.
Mayank: Are you just relying on “Word of Mouth” or do you plan to advertise the book too ?
Emanuel: I’m a great believer in advertising as a supplement to buzz. Sometimes you have the budget to do it, and sometimes you don’t. My publisher advertised the first edition in the Wall Street Journal and New York
Times. The new edition may be advertised in smaller trade publications and online.
Mayank: How are you measuring Buzz for your new book / How can one measure Buzz(online and offline) ?
Emanuel: There are tools such as Scoutlabs.com that allow you to measure online buzz. You can also search Twitter, blogs etc. separately. We’ve made a lot of progress in this area and I added a chapter to the new edition
on measuring buzz. I also talk to many readers face to face before and after my lectures
Mayank: How has been your experience with Twitter and Blogs ? Are you using other tools too ?
Emanuel: Of course. I use both Twitter (@EmanuelRosen) and a blog to let people know what’s new. I also regularly search these tools to hear the buzz about the book.
Mayank: Where do you see Buzz(online and offline) in the next 5-10 years ?
Emanuel: Online buzz will increase as more people on this planet get better access to the Internet, but face to face will still be the dominant form of buzz.
Mayank: Do you plan to write another book on Buzz ?
Emanuel: I think I will.
You can read more about the author and the book here and here . Hope you all liked the interview
“The Anatomy of Buzz” is one of the books I recommend everyone to read.Here’s the list of other books I recommend.