Tradition Redifned : Desi Cool" among young female Fashion Innovators in India

Seek your precious time to fill this questioner. It's a survey on the "Color Preferences of Youth in India" and an effort to select 10 most prefered colors in fashion among the youth:


Click here to take survey
(or pest this url in a new window: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NFMCSM7)

- Kaustav

wear thy homeland: youth trend

The very concept of emotion and visual expression of patriotism is changing in this subcontinent. 

The Gen Next of India and globe are defining the “love thy homeland” via various social and cultural clues that also includes the fashion statement of “wearing thy homeland” as a subdued and more refined way of expression than holding a flag and shouting slogans / singing the song!  Unlike earlier generation, for whom the patriotism meant “giving life for nation while fighting a perceived enemy” is predominantly changed due to the random exposure (thanks to the internet, social media and citizen journalists) of corrupted officials, political honchos and distaste of baseless fight among countries.  The youth in India believes in exhibiting their patriotism by not only wearing the subdued clues but also to “do good for the nation and people via social activities, entrepreneurship, and education”.

The patriotism is becoming more micro focused and local rather than nation specific.

young startups making it big! Facebook's Indian flavour

A relatively small e-commerce start-up Tagtile, an innovative start-up founded by two IIT alumni in the U.S. is the latest acquisition of the social networking giant Facebook. 

Tagtile, an e-commerce start-up with a focus on helping retailers build customer loyalty, was founded by Soham Mazumdar and Abheek Anand in March, last year. And for a company that launched its pilot project across some stores in San Francisco and other parts of the U.S. as early as November last, recognition has come knocking at their door real fast.

The acquisition, coming close on the heels of the big Instagram takeover, has received relatively less coverage. But make no mistake, the big technology websites, of the likes of U.K.'s The Register, are saying it could herald new avenues in e-commerce in the mobile space for Facebook.

An irony?

The company's co-founder Abheek Anand, currently in New Delhi, says there could have been no better partner than Facebook for Tagtile. And while the obvious benefits are there — the ‘undisclosed' sum Facebook paid and the fact that Abheek and Soham are now Facebook employees — there is also some irony in the acquisition of a company that was started to focus on customer loyalty. Its current service is being “phased out” now, ostensibly to be re-launched in a new avatar with Facebook.

The story of Tagtile, Abheek said in a telephonic interview to The Hindu, would be traced back to 2004, when he and Soham went to work in the Bay Area in the U.S. Soham was a graduate from IIT-Kanpur and Abheek from IIT-Delhi. They had known each other for a long time and wanted to start their own company. Even if it meant quitting secure jobs.

The Tagtile idea took shape last year when Soham was an engineer with Google and Abheek was working for cloud computing start-up Engine Yard. “We decided to work on a solution that combined the ‘tap the phone' technology that was gaining some traction and use it in a smartphone shopping scenario,” says Abheek. 

The ‘tap the phone' technology, Abheek is talking about, is the ‘near-field communications' (NFC) technology Google has been working on for a few years. Smartphones that have the NFC chips will be able to communicate with other NFC devices, such as shopping check-out counters, and can be used instead of credit cards. But smartphones that have NFC chips are way costlier than the average mobile phones, and hence this technology has a cost factor.

“The technology was always the ‘two years-away' phenomenon. It was so a few years ago and is even now so,” says Abheek. His reasoning is that NFC has a very small penetration. Smartphone users often buy their devices on contract from service providers in the West, and for all practical purposes, a breakthrough in NFC is still some time away.

So what Abheek and Mazumdar developed was an alternative that worked similar to NFC but without the bells and whistles. The Tagtile consists of both the software service and a hardware device — a cube — that stores need to put up at their cash counters. Mobile phone users who have the Tagtile App on their phones can ‘tag' a purchase on the cube. And there are rewards for a specific number of tags, say eight tags of coffee purchased at a café could entitle the buyer to a free coffee.

Instead of using the radio waves communications model of NFC, the Tagtile communicates to the user's smartphone through a combination of technologies already available in most smartphones, including low-frequency sounds. This makes the technology accessible straightaway to millions of mobile phone users. Abheek and Soham claim to have patented the technology.

There are advantages in the system for retailers too. With it, shops will be able to keep track of their customers, something that other, more ‘static' coupon solutions do not do. It takes customer loyalty couponing a step further, according to Abheek, and also makes it a social activity.

While Abheek is under obligation not to disclose any more details about the Facebook deal, there is no stopping us from speculating that pretty soon there could be some kind of social e-commerce-related solution from Facebook. And maybe just some of us will realise there was an Indian story in that.

Source: The Hindu

being socially active

The youth in India are moving beyond "socially aware" to "socially active"! read my other posts to check the various activities in which the youth in India are involved

youth fashion micro trend report by the INgene-BB

Here's the youth micro trend report by the INgene-BB coolhunter Jacqueline Arruda from Brazil. Beyond Borderline is a collaborative youth insight network INgene is involved:

micro trends among the youth in Brazil- report by coolhunter Jacqueline Arruda

View more presentations from Kaustav Sengupta

youth macro trend direction themes @India

You can contact me for detailed explanation of themes: kaustavsengupta@yahoo.com www.kaustavsengupta.com

The generation biasness and perception of being “lonely”

The survey commissioned by Yours magazine (the study included people aged between 18 and 80) stated that over a third of people spend more time chatting online than going out with friends. Sixty percent of those surveyed said they found it difficult to make friends 'in real life' compared with online and a similar number (69 per cent) said they believe that Britain is an unfriendly place to live. Youngsters are turning 'skin hungry' as networking online leaves them feeling as lonely as the elderly, a study has found. Having an average of 243 Facebook friends, teenagers are spending so much time on the internet that they have little time to move out with friends. This report was widely published in india (covered by The Hindu. Deccan Chronicle, Asian Age etc.) and as usual the “gray hairs” (midnight’s children, as named by Sashi Tharoor) enjoyed it as the “declining social behaviour” of youth in India.

The online- offline war has reached in a level where we tend to feel a perverted fulfilment by proving the “online” behaviour is actually making us “unsocial”. We decline to accept that online is also a parallel society which has its own benefit and system. The online life of youth is grooming them well into various fields; right from personal styling, learning English / communication skills, presentation skills and knowledge. At SNS like facebook or blogs, the GEN next learns the skill to write on the wall, pursue the opposite sex into friendship (online), share knowledge, build community, be fashionable (and load photos in the album), learn new skills (through the how to videos) etc. Even, the online activity makes an introvert more of a “smart kid”. This boosts the confidence level of an individual.
The parallel society is not only relevant when one wants to widen his/ her friendship circle without being pestered much about the security factor of adding an “unknown” but also the knowledge sharing possibilities are immense.
Today, the youth are omnipresent in both the societies (online , offline). They are aware of what best they can get from both. Otherwise, the overwhelming crowd in malls, parks, pubs and concerts will not consist of 80% population below 30. Neither they are "isolated" from their peergroup nor they feels lonely. It's the other generation who makes them feel lonely and insist them to accept it! The report quoted the so called relationship expert Julie Peasgood who says "instead of breaking down society's barriers, technology has made us more isolated and it is affecting young people". Its totally opposit to what the youth thinks about their social presence, online. The offline society no more attaracts them cause they are too limited in knowledge and domintae by the other two generations in India.

The places to hangout might have changed but the mentality to hangout remains same and the physical presence should not be considered as the only factor of being “social”!