Month: November 2008

  • Heera Panna

    And after quite a few weeks of Continental stuff, we decided to break the rhythm, and reserved ourselves a table at Heera Panna, on Church Street. This is on the same building as the Nokia Experience store, UCB etc, soon as you enter Church Street from Brigade Road. No, I cannot advise you on parking on Church Street/Brigade Road. Each time is an adventure, which you have to experience for yourselves. But I think Heera Panna has some parking facilities. Maybe you could ask them when you call for the reservations.

    Heera Panna serves a Mughal , Awadhi experience. Yes, its not just the food. Right from the staff at the door, who are all decked up in Mughal style, complete with turbans, to the very well done interiors, and the lighting, its not just about the food, its about the experience. The hostess said we could choose from the seating on either of the floors, but suggested the top floor. The cushions did turn out to be comfortable, and the seating spaces have glass bead curtains. The music that they were playing was Hindustani and ghazals. That, along with the way they dim/brighten the lights with red, white and green tinges really have a way of transporting you to a different realm. And if you really want to go one step more, they give you Mughal turbans and a sort of waistcoat. Some very interesting photos these make. 😀

    The staff is extremely helpful and courteous. As soon as you’re seated, they ask you whether you’re comfortable. I haven’t heard that in recent times. The menu card says that the restaurant theme is a tribute to Salim and his love for Anarkali. The guy who served our table practically insisted that we tell him what we liked (chicken/mutton/seafood) and how many dishes we’d like to have, and he’d take care of the rest. So, as per his suggestions, we ordered a Tawa Bhuna Ghosht as a starter, that’s ‘pan fried lamb cooked with potli masala sauteed till brown’. We’d told him that we didn’t prefer mutton much, but he said that we’d still like this. And he was right, though very strangely, it reminded me of our Kerala version of beef roast. 🙂

    For the main course, we ordered the day’s special, Murgh Awadhi, and to go with it a Lachha Paratha, and a hari mirch ka paratha – ‘crispy bread made from wheat flour and mixed with green chillies and ajwan.’ The Murgh Awadhi is a thich brown gravy, and we’d asked for it to be made spicy. (you can tell them to adjust the spiciness based on your preference) We ended up ordering one more Hari Mirch ka Paratha, which meant I consumed one and a half Hari Mirch ka Parathas, and both the spicy dishes (starter and main course) My stomach, of course, didn’t take kindly to it, and I can still feel the burn, but I enjoyed the food so much it really doesn’t matter 🙂

    The quantities were just sufficient, but we ended up not having sufficient space for dessert. Meanwhile, they also serve liquor, and some nice sounding mocktails.  A 330 ml KF costs you Rs.100, hope that helps. The desserts are in range of Rs.95-135, gulab jamun, rasgulla, jalebi, ras malai, moong daal ka halwa and so on.

    Once again the ambience is simply awesome, the food is excellent, and the service is splendid. I have only a couple of suggestions – the cutlery (fork, knife etc)  doesn’t quite fit the ambience, and the space between the table and the sofa is a bit too much. And inspite of the green inkstains from the quill they gave with the feedback form, (yes, a quill, that you dip in ink, and write your feedback with) the experience left us delighted, and we’ll certainly be back. The bill came to just over Rs.850, and we paid it gladly. You should drop in there too, for an absolutely unique experience.

    Heera Panna, The Pavillion, Church Street, Bangalore -01. Ph.9886461108, 9845175777, 41152727, 41143737

    PS. I don’t know if its a mistake, but I just realised they haven’t billed me for the mineral water 😐

  • You are here

    Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

    I picked it up because it was written by a fellow Indian blogger. And yes, I prefer Indian fiction. But I’m guessing I am not exactly the target audience 🙂
    Considering the author’s profile, I’d say the book is at least faintly autobiographical.
    Arshi, the protagonist, is a twenty something, 21st century Indian woman, who lives (or at least tries to) live life on her own terms, only she doesnt seem to be sure what they are. A potentially interesting premise of self discovery in an urban Indian milieu.
    But in that sense it disappoints. Here are a couple of things that put me off. While it could be an attempt at stark portrayal, i felt that a lot of things had a force-fit twang, added to get a “yup, am with it” effect. Also, the title was very ironical in the sense that the story seemed to be going all over the place. A very lifestream flow which didnt work for me because of its predictability.
    However if Indian chick lit is your scene, you cannot afford to give this one a miss. And having said all that, I’m still happy that a blogger has become an author. 🙂

  • Figuring Social Media?

    Recently, Jeremiah Owyang wrote about Intel’s community efforts, which also throws light on the join vs create debate that has intrigued me too, for quite sometime. Intel’s marketing manager is of the view that companies should join active communities, rather than trying to create them at corporate websites. The two examples used for Intel’s efforts are those it did at Digg and Slashdot. There’s also the middle path, start the conversation on social networks and then take them outside to you own site, but I’m not a big fan of that either.

    I have a feeling that the reluctance for brands to join (as opposed to create) is because of the lack of control it entails. On their own website, it’d be easy. Besides, a neutral venue (like a social network) means that a brand cannot restrict its conversations to spokespersons it chooses, like British Airways and Virgin Atlantic found out to their dismay. There’s probably another reason why companies prefer their own websites – with company websites, it’d be easy to define and track ROI, based on the clicks, time spend etc, but how can ROI on activities on other sites be defined and calculated? Of course, there are ways to track online reputation, like Trackur, for example, but I wonder what metrics should be applied to figure out the effectiveness of an activity. After all, its no longer just a linear (banner – click, though that seems to be working well on social networks too) set of activities that happen on social networks now. But again, ROI entails that its an investment. From some of the activities I see on social media, I doubt whether many brands see it that way. Also, I agree with what’s discussed in this post – that ” The problem with trying to determine ROI for social media is you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable”. While the ‘how’ is indeed a debate, we also need to be clear about what we measure. Here’s a great post by Dina on the subject on ROI, in which she also explores the things that should be measured.

    I think its too early for brands to take examples of others’ activities and use them as a template for their own activities. After all, according to this article, a majority of marketing guys are still learning the media,  and apparently, close to 90% of them who are involved in programs are not measuring the ROI of theor efforts. Or maybe ‘too early’ is a wrong phrase, with the dynamic nature of social media, perhaps the time for fixed templates is over. Perhaps, there are only broad indications and inferences that can be derived, but brands would have to evolve their own set of activities, and their own methods of defining and tracking ‘ROI’ on social media, basis their strategic intent. (Nike seems to have done a smart job in that respect) ‘ROI’, because, I can’t think of any other term that would mean ‘results for the efforts made’. In this context, I’d also recommend this post very highly – the 5 critical responsibilities of a social media expert.

    But perhaps, as this article notes, it needs to start way earlier, like companies allowing employees, access to YouTube, facebook etc in office, and understanding that the media consumption habits that digital natives have created are also creating changes in business environments and communication methodologies. Maybe that’s a good place to start a reworking of business strategy.

    until next time, the medium is the message

    PS. A great read on how remarkable companies are creating consumer evangelists (download pdf) (via Himanshu’s blog)

  • Martial Acts

    From the lift, he heard the shouting on his floor. If he was greeted the same way he’d been the last few days, he’d complain. He hated confrontations. It didn’t help that he had to confront a 6 year old, who was learning karate and whose straight punch greeting landed at his body’s strategic points.

    until next time, karate kids!!

  • Tata Sky – life after plus

    I did wonder what was cooking when Aamir first appeared in the Tata Sky Plus teasers. But in the end, i felt that with this different service (a personal video revorder, that allows you to pause, record and rewind Live TV), and two brand ambassadors, they could’ve really made a great, extended storyline out of the entire thing. Roughly put, approach the ‘centre’ from both Aamir and Gul’s perspectives, and then show them together to give an ‘Ah’ moment to the viewer. I wonder whether the recent Airtel experience scared them away from using the teaser concept for too long, but with two celebrities, they really needn’t have worried.

    httpv://in.youtube.com/watch?v=g1nTg6bJRPE

    The TVC storyline was quite decent, and brought out the concept well, though we did have an interesting discussion on whether Gul Panag ended up looking like Freddie Mercury (with the moustache) in ‘ I want to break free’. The ‘landing page’ of existing Tata Sky users also has an interesting conversation between Gul and her friends, which again brings out the features of the service quite well.

    Considering that Dish TV now has a 53% market share in the DTH market (via Trak.in) the upgradation strategy is a smart move. The kind of audience that would go in for a DTH service should easily consider upgradation, only, the future of TiVo ( the pioneer of a comparable service in the US market, the biggest difference being ability to forward Live TV – yes, skip ads!! ) is far from rosy, if we go by this report from Wired. Apparently only 3.6 million of the nation’s 36.2 million DVR users go for TiVo, after 11 years of existence. Also, their revenue model is shaky, with advertisers not too interested in the kind of units it offers. But TiVo’s been trying hard, and have ties with Amazon and Netflix, to allow TV users to stream movies and TV shows. Netflix uses postal delivery, online streaming, a set top movie player and HD streaming as methods of didtribution.

    In the light of this tie up, it was interesting to see a local tie up made between NDTV Lumiere and BigFlix, by which some titles from NDTV Lumiere’s extensive acquisition list will be available on the bigflix site on download to rent/own options. It’s an addition to BigFlix’s existing portfolio. With BigTV, this is like TiVo having the resources of NetFlix inhouse. Thats BIG. Comparing the net penetration and DTH penetration in India, perhaps BigFlix would expand faster on the DTH tie up route, than a net downloads route.

    But yes, if the internet penetration in India shoots up drastically, we can see a different kind of tie ups happening, like the one between MSN and Endemol, for an online interactive show. I also read about a service called Clearleap (via Startup Meme), which delivers videos from numerous sources to the television, thereby expanding consumer options.

    With Tata Sky Plus being an upgrade from regular DTH, it will be interesting to see how fast Big counters, and whether it adds a tie up with BigFlix. Tata Sky meanwhile, perhaps needs to scout quickly to figure out a good partner to strengthen its offering.

    until next time, watch it