A DATE WITH DIGITAL DEEPAK – THALA OF DIGITAL MARKETING AT KOLKATA
INTRODUCTION
Hey! Have you read the title of this Blog? No……. then read it again.
Do you understand the meaning of the word Thala? No…. Ok.. I will explain to you now, and teach you a few Tamil. Before you know Thala, you need to understand Thalaivar, don’t know, Google it. It means Leader or Boss; You will find Mr. Rajanikanth. Tamil Film industry have titled him as Thalaivar. Everyone knows Rajanikanth, no need to write about him.
Let’s move to learn Thala; it means Head of the family; this title is given to Mr. Ajith Kumar. He is a bearded Tamil actor, next generation of actors after Rajanikanth & Kamal Hassan, and has a large fan following. He is also one of my favourite Tamil actor, whose movie Dheena, I had watched in Chennai at Sathyam Cinema, while I was studying my engineering. So this title, I have given to Deepak Kanakaraju, the only analogy is the beard.
I have been following Deepak page since, I guess 2014 or 2015 and later his groups, and reading his blogs on DigitalDeepak.com He does not write explicitly about any niche like SEO, Facebook Ads or Google Ads, Affiliate marketing, but general marketing stuff.
I signed up for his free Digital Marketing course on 1 Feb 2016, and then I was in his email funnel and then course after course landed in my inbox, and I bought all of them(You can’t escape from his funnel). ? I paid for few courses like 100-day Blogging courses, Email marketing, Mastering SEO.
I earned some courses for free like Google Ads, Facebook Marketing, by sharing his link on social media, asking 5 people to register for Free Digital Marketing Course. I helped Deepak find 5 new customers, and I am sure many of you would have done the same. (My dying confession – all the 5 people, who registered for free DM course, was from fake email id) ?
His marketing strategy was like that of Candy Pulse, low price; High Volume. He priced his entire courses in the Price range of Rs. 1999 to Rs. 2999 and then sometimes giving a discount for early bird registration. Sometimes, clubbing two or more courses for some discounted price.
Had he priced his course in the band of Rs. 20,000 to Rs. 30,000, I would not have bought for sure. He came with various small courses. Digital Marketing courses like Candy Pulse, you don’t think much before buying it, you just buy it impulsively. ?
Overall, he gave a face to this Digital Marketing Community in India. After his success, then came a time when everyone with a DIGITAL added to their name, began to sell the course. My wall on Facebook became crowded with such people, and I would not name since few of them are in my friend’s list in Facebook. ?
I am not going to review his courses or give feedback here, maybe for that, I will write some other blog.
EVENTS DETAILS
Digital Deepak Meet up.
Speaker:- Deepak Kanakaraju
Time :- 25 Nov 2018 at 2 PM to 5 PM
Venue:- Openhouse
Entry fees: – Rs. 100
DEEPAK ON STAGE
Let’s welcome Deepak Kanakaraju to the city of joy. He has come here for the first time.
Vanakkam (Namaste)!
Mr. Deepak Kanakaraju said that this was a casual meetup in Kolkata, to meet his virtual follower in the real world. He did not have any set agenda or talk prepared.
He asked the audience to introduce themselves, and it was more of a networking event. He organised people into 7 groups and had a game to play.
Each team has to come up with a business plan; either it can be a product company or service company. Each group should name their Business; develop a business plan and marketing plan, and pitch before the audience.
Networking is the key to success, and you could meet your next co-founder through networking. It is always good to interact with like-minded people, you never know, who can be of help to you.
HCHOCS
HCHOCS stands for healthy chocolate. Rahul Maurya was the captain of this team, and he pitched to the audience about his Business plan, he said that there is no healthy chocolate in the market.
The chocolate available in the market has a lot of preservative and chemicals in it to increase shelf life. His chocolate has lower preservative than existing chocolates, and hence shelf life is less. All his chocolates are handmade, made to order only.
Initially, he plans to sell his chocolates through online and partnering with existing online player like Bigbasket, groffer. He wants to sell more by offering a subscription to the customer by offering special discounts.
His tagline for HCHOCS is “Mummy wala mitha.”
ZENCRUISE
Arun Chattapadhyay was the captain of this group. He pitched for luxury cruise travel. He said that it is a $ 45 Billion industry. Every year, it is growing at the rate of 8%.
He said that 26 Million people travel on a cruise. Only rich & ultra-rich people go by cruise. He wants to make this luxury segment affordable to middle class and lower middle class.
His marketing plan for this business is to promote it in a travel magazine, in-flight magazine, hotel magazine. He would aggressively promote using the digital channel.
CONTENTHUB
Ashwini Sah was the captain of this team. His business plan was to start a content writing company, something like contentmart.com which has closed recently, so he sees a lot of potential in this market. According to Ashwini, there are not enough players in this segment.
His target customers are prominent corporate, small blogger, and even those companies, which are offline and waiting to come online. He also wants to start free Content writing courses to a newbie to help them become a successful Content writer.
He would do Google Ads, bidding on the keyword to attract customers. His mantra for his company is quality with reliability. According to him, this industry has a severe problem with deliverability of the projects, and he wants to solve this.
AMBULINE
Chiranjib was the captain of this team. He proposed his business plan, which is to start a centralised ambulance service, something in line with Ola and Uber. He said that this industry is un-organised.
The tagline for his Business was “Think Ambulance, Think Ambuline.”
The customer can book service using mobile Apps. Sometimes, it happens that if the ambulance takes a patient to the hospitals, the required doctor would not be available. So his Apps will solve this, by showing which doctor is available in nearest hospitals.
The marketing campaign, he wants to do it through a mix of online and offline. He would have referral schemes for users and discount coupons.
Mothers take care of everyone in the family and often tends to ignore her health, it is our duty to take care of our Mother.
UFIT
Sonali Dutta was the leader of this team. Her business idea is to provide Yoga trainer, nutritionist, meditation services to Moms and kids. She said that moms take care of every family member, and often ignores her health.
She wants to introduce a simple pricing strategy to increase sales. She wants to provide both online training and household services.
Her marketing strategy for the business would be free health awareness camps, free medical check-up, running ads on Youtube, making good use of Whatsapp groups.
APPRANKER
Debojit Kundu was the captain of this team. His business idea is to start a company APPRANKER , which helps developers in increasing the rank of Apps in the Google Playstore. He wants his product to act as a bridge between Mobile App developers and Digital Marketer.
His USP is to charge less money.
His marketing strategy is to do ads on Facebook, Google, Linkedin. He would do aggressive email marketer, affiliate marketing and influencer marketing.
MY ASSIGNMENT SOLUTION
Siddhartha was the captain of this team. His business plan was to start a service where he wants the student to complete their assignment, report, and homework. He wants mainly students to give their headache to him, and he will help them pass grades.
His USP is to provide 100% plagiarism free assignment and content to his student community. He wants to target student, who find it hard to complete homework and assignment.
His marketing strategy is to connect with college cultural groups, Facebook Ads, event marketing.
I could hear people whispering that it is a MUNNABHAI MBBS model of business. Soon they would offer services to write the exam on behalf of students. ?
CONCLUSION
I need to tell you the winner of this game show. Deepak sent an SMS to everyone and asked the audience to give votes. According to audience poll and voting, Team Ambuline was a winner, and Ufit was runner-up.
My vote was also for Ambuline, their idea was fresh, and it is serving society at large. Quick and affordable ambulance service is the need of the hour.
Deepak has told that he has plans to start a Digital Marketers Club on a national level. Each city will have a separate Secretary, President, who would collect money and enroll new people, organise monthly meet up.
He advocated that networking is the key to success, and he has met his co-founder Sanjay Shenoy through networking. It is always good to interact with like-minded people, you never know, who can be of help to you.
He also told that he was little skeptical about this event when he planned to visit Kolkata, but seeing this warm response made him feel that, he should organise another Event, sometime in Kolkata.
Overall it was a great networking event and learned the skill of teamwork, planning, communication and time management. We made a few friends, got to learn a lot from other people.
One thing which intrigued me was and deserves mention here is, I met a person who is a qualified MBBS doctor, who has left his medical profession and running 2 successful company providing Digital Marketing services to Hospitals and doctors. Salute to you, Dr. Suman.
That’s it, time to wind up. Please leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts. Spread it on social media. Only thing I want in return from you is to share on social media. ?
Rombo Nandri ( Thank you very much) ?
