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Sure you’ve heard me gripe about aweful customer service before, but in great holiday spirit, this time is different. 

I was visiting Chicago a couple of months ago and was staying with my cousin.  We were sharing notes about companies, startups, politics, etc., etc. and he told me how he thought that Zappos had the best customer service ever.  He narrated a couple of first-hand experiences.  I’ve been hardened by my share of bad customer service (like everyone else), so I just shrugged my shoulders and said something like, “Oh, that’s great!”.

Anyway, come December and I’m in the need of some shoes.  So I login to Zappos, browse some shoes, and order 3 pairs.

Immediately I turn to my new addiction and Twitter about it…

 ————————————————> (pointer to my twitter box)

I get a call from Zappos thirty minutes later asking me if everything went smoothly with my order since I had just twittered about it.  In Keanu Reeves style, I went, “Whooaaa”.  So they follow twitter feeds for buzz.  Apparently, all their employees are very active on Twitter.    Very cool.  Not only that, they make me a VIP customer, send my order in next day and take 20% off my order (ok no, the last part didn’t happen).  I get off the phone, and yes, twitter about it….ah, the power of inexpensive social marketing….watch out Rose Bowl ads.

Needless to say, I’m looking forward to my Bruno Magli’s….

I recently had the opportunity to connect with Anurag Aggarwal, CEO and Co-Founder of KhojGuru (’Khoj’ means Search in Hindi), a new information service startup based in Delhi, India.  The site is currently in beta and gaining traction steadily.

So Anurag, how did you come up with the idea for KhojGuru?

It was about 18 months back when I first came to Gurgaon.  I was excited.  I had heard so much about it, its malls, its restaurants in malls, its shops in malls, its life in malls!  2 weeks later I realized that for everything I had to go to the mall or my local “kirana store” (neighborhood store) in the building.  I had no clue of other markets/shops in Gurgaon.  Worse, I did not know where to find a plumber because my shower was leaking or how to find a place so that I could get my laptop repaired or where to find the menus of home delivery restaurants!!

And then I and my friends decided to do something.  We made Khojguru to solve exactly all these problems.

Over this period we have evolved a lot through active interaction with over 10,000 retailers and many more users.

I know you have 3 founders, what is everyone’s background?

I’ve done my B.E. from Delhi College of Engineering and MBA from SPJIMR, Mumbai.  I’ve worked for over 1 year with GE Consumer Finance (India).  A strong marketing and operations background with an experience of handling big teams working across countries.  The other co-founders are Nitin Gupta and Amit Kumar Sharma.

Nitin Gupta has done his B Tech from IIT Delhi and MBA from IIM, Ahmadabad. Nitin has worked for over 2 years with Lehman Brothers (London). A Computer Science background and strong fundamentals in finance.

Amit Kumar Sharma has done his B. Tech. from IIT, Delhi. He has over 36 months of experience with technology companies and always works towards optimization and streamlining. He has very strong logical mind and is an expert at simulations and designing.

I love the catch phrase, “Isko Sab Pata Hai”, but if you were to describe KhojGuru to our non-Hindi speaking community in 1 sentence, what would it be?

Simple translation would be “He knows it all” :D.  But ya, “Khojguru is a friend that gets all the retail based information to the consumers anywhere, anytime”.

What is the revenue model?

1.  Retailers: We charge the retailers for different packages based on levels of accessibilty to the consumer.
2.  Advertisements: Online and on mobile advertising; mostly ad networks like google and some regional networks.
3.  Content providers: Revenue from content sharing with major content aggregators.

Let’s talk competition…do you have anyone else in this space?  How are you guys different?

Like any potential $1bn industry there are many players trying to capture the market. JustDial, Google local, Yahoo local, AskLaila and Burrp are the most identifiable players in this market.

We are different as:

1. We help retailers build or strengthen their brand in a particular locality. We do not intend to simply push forward the basic details like contact details and work timings.

2. We allow our users to get instant updates for their favourite category, outlet or brand. These updates can either be on the user’s profile page, email or mobile phone.

3. We have meshed the whole “locality based information on demand” service with social netowrking features, thus the users and retailers are empowered to share information with their friends/consumers, see what their friends/consumers and associates like/dislike, and follow other users and category experts to know more about options/potential available in their city. This in turn helps a retailer build or strengthen the brand in a locality, giving it an opportunity to target specific audience with specific messages in a specific location.

How big is the development team at KhojGuru?  How long did it take to go from conception to beta?

We have 2 core technical team members and it took us only 1 month from conception to beta. We believe in small and frequent launches.

So you’ve been around for 8 months, how big is the user community?  How many cities do you currently cover?

We have on an average 1500 unique visitors everyday. We added the registration feature in May’05 and we have an active network of over 1000 users in NCR.

We are focussed on Delhi/NCR as of now, with some test data launched in other 7 cities (Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, Hyderabad and Chandigarh).

So fast-forward 2 years, how do you see KhojGuru evolve?  What are you guys currently working on?

Khojguru will be a comprehensive (internet, mobile and new media) platform for all retail, service and brand related information and transactions in major cities in India.

Do you guys have outside funding?  Are you looking for outside funding?

We do not have any outside funding. We plan to initiate fund seeking activity soon.

Finally, on a philosophical note, what piece of advice do you have for other start-uppers in India?

Just be patient, work smart and talk to a lot of people about your venture.

Well, that’s great advise. Thank you for taking the time and talking to me. The site looks great and I love the fact that it is indigenous to the Indian market and not just a bad ripoff of a site here. Good Luck!

Thank you, we are extremely excited about this venture.

I’m just going to jump right into it.  The second commercial in the Gates/Seinfeld campaign is balderdash.  I’m not even going to touch the politically incorrect undertones of “normal family life” as shown in the commercial.

I saw the first “shoe store” one with the following possible conclusions:

a).  Gates and Seinfeld are starring in a new fall sitcom

b).  It’s an ad for Shoe Circus (I get it), and finally

c).  Huh! (this one stuck)

What on earth are they selling?  $300 million for this campaign and this is their answer to the Justin Long commercials.  That’s funny (pun intended) since I’ve always had the same conclusion every time I see one of the Mac ads….why am I still writing my blog posts on a PC?

You can view all the commercials here.  And yes, no more of these since Microsoft yanked the plug on Seinfeld.

I had read about the Netflix Prize when it was first announced and was drawn to it just like other people from all aspects  of life.  Mathematicians to psychologists alike have flocked towards it, vying for the 1 million dollar prize.  You can view the current leaderboard here.

I find this very exciting because this problem has the elements of the greatest battle of our times - Man vs. Machine. 

Can we really program collective intelligence?  Can a machine actually predict human behavior with relative success?  Of course the “humanization” of our choices can neither be discounted nor predicted.  It will always be impossible to compute “I did it on a whim”. 

But I do think it is close.  I’ve agreed with my iTunes recommendations equally (if not more) than some of my friends recommending me music over the years…same with my NetFlix recommendations. 

And with all of us increasing the amount of personal information (TMI in most cases) we have started sharing on the internet…it poses some interesting options as to how “machine choice” will affect our lives?

I just bought an iPod Nano from Amazon.com and based on my buying habits it is recommending that I buy a 62″ HD-Ready LCD for $6000.  My wife thinks I’m crazy…..wife or Amazon.  hmmmm…..

Yes, I’m alive….I took half the year off from the blog.

I’m currently tuned into the livestream of TechCrunch50 at http://www.techcrunch.com.

And I’m building an arsenal of posts for the blog…my loyal visitors (all 4 of you)…the second half of 2008 will be busy.