Mediaboss Marketing

Dont go to India! The negotiations take ages, the sales cycles are longer, and the prices are adjustable. That is not a market you should target. Amit Mizrahi received all these warnings early last year when ICV, the Israeli HR tech startup he works for, decided to foray into the Indian market.

The red flags were raised by the companys angel investors and other Israeli corporate executives in his network. ICV ignored the naysayers and spent the next six months customising its product.

How? Mizrahi, who heads business development at ICV, explains: An average CV in Israel is a page long. It goes up to three pages in the US. In India, we saw some CVs that are 50 pages long! On average, they go up to 12 pages. Most systems cannot handle such vast amounts of data. So we developed machine learning tools that understand various educational degrees, designations and institutions prevalent in India, among other factors, to find out what makes for a suitable candidate for a company and how we can enable quick and cost-efficient hiring for them.

ICV is currently doing pilot projects with 20 Indian companies to fulfil their staffing needs. Its India story has prompted one of the investing firms, Prytek, to aggregate 43 Israeli tech companies from its portfolio and offer them as a suite to Indian companies.

This has also made ICVs critics eat their words.

Enter the Wadi Israel has, over the last decade, emerged as a hub for deep-tech startups. Thousands of these ventures have mushroomed around Tel Aviv and nearby cities, earning the area the moniker of Silicon Wadi (wadi means valley in Hebrew). However, Silicon Wadi had a small domestic market to cater to Israel has a population of less than 10 million.

So the Wadi companies looked westward and created products and services for the lucrative US market. Many managed to raise a lot of funds and ensured profitable exits for investors. Soon, Silicon Wadi became the B2B tech support for Silicon Valley heavyweights such as Google and Facebook.

Now, things are changing in the Wadi. Companies like ICV are creating products thinking about India first, says Anat Bernstein-Reich, who runs A&G Partners, an advisory firm that helps Israeli companies find more business in India.

Since 2002, her firm has helped 100 such companies set up shop in India and majority of the deals have happened in the last three years, 18 of them this year alone. Israelis are finally looking at India as not just a backpacking destination after their compulsory military training, but as a country that means business, says Bernstein-Reich.

Of course, growing bilateral ties between the two countries and advisory companies have a lot to do with this new Israel to India wave. Most of all, it is India Incs growing interest in the Silicon Wadi that is causing this shift. Ten years ago, Israeli companies like Ness Tech and Click-Software were acquiring Indian companies.

Now the trend has been reversed by the likes of Wipro, Flipkart and Sun Pharma that have acquired Israeli tech companies in the last three-four years, says Bernstein-Reich. Indian companies are also aping the Silicon Valleys strategy with respect to Silicon Wadi by attending startup events, setting up R&D stations, and assigning a staffer to stay in Israel for longer periods to scout for companies to acquire or collaborate with.

Collaboration with Israeli tech gives India a competitive advantage in the global market, says Ankur Pahwa, partner-ecommerce & consumer internet, EY India. Israel spends close to 4% of its GDP on R&D which makes it one of theleading countries in global innovation.

The Beeline

Thanks to this push (from the likes of A&G) and pull (from Indian companies), Israeli tech firms have been able to crack the B2B Indian market in six major sectors: telecom & internet, agriculture, cybersecurity, education, healthcare and automobiles.

Today, an Israeli mobile marketing analytics and attribution firm called AppsFlyer occupies 75% of the market share in India, adding top consumer internet companies such as Paytm, Hotstar, Nykaa and Swiggy toits list of 250 Indian clients. Ariel Assaraf, CEO of a log analytics company Coralogix, tells ET Magazine that the Israeli company now ranks India alongside the US as its top market.

His company managed to unseat two Silicon Valley unicorns to bag deals at one of Indias leading streaming platforms and an online ticketing company that are now among Coralogixs 10 major clients in India. It is no mean feat considering most Israeli tech companies see the US as their biggest market and India as only the latest one too small to make a significant contribution at the moment.

Only one or two leading Israeli companies manage to make $10-15 million in annual recurring revenue from their India operations, say the stakeholders. But the numbers are getting better with each passing day, according to Mark Granot, vice president of software testing firm Applause.

Have a new app you want to test for user interface and user experience across different operating systems before the big rollout? Want to check how user-friendly is your streaming players interface across all shapes, sizes and brands of screens? Granots firm offers a select set of users from a community of over 400,000 people. It has been doing that for a few years for Google, Facebook, Netflix, Walmart, Starbucks and Nike.

Two years ago, Applause decided to venture into the Asia-Pacific region and chose India first. Currently, we are working with 10 Indian companies in addition to Indian branches of American companies. India contributes a high single-digit percentage to our overall revenue, says Granot.

Meanwhile, in the world of Indias overthe-top content players, Israeli tech companies such as Kaltura, Screenz, Applicaster and Cloudinary, are common names now. ZEE5 is working with at least 12 Israeli companies while VOOT with half a dozen. MindCET, an incubator for edu-tech startups, has helped at least 20 Israeli companies find opportunities with Indian firms and institutions in the last couple of years, says founder Avi Warshavsky.

In April, Bernstein-Reichs A&G Partners signed a deal with EM3 Agri Services in Noida to launch an accelerator called Agribator to connect Israeli agri-tech companies with Indian agro firms and farmers. In just a few months, Agribator brought in six Israeli companies into India, says Rohtash Mal, chairman of EM3. More deals are being signed as we speak, he says.

There are at least a dozen other big Israeli establishments in the agri-tech space that have set shop in India in the recent past, says Randhir Chauhan, managing director of the India arm of Netafim, an Israeli agri major present in the country since 1997.

From nowhere to nearly everywhere, the Silicon Wadi is gradually forming another Mini Israel in India. Only there is nothing on the ground everything is in the cloud, as software as a service or SaaS. It is also evident that these synergies are not being forged on the back of solid tech alone, but on the basis of similarities in culture and values.

As Gily Netzer, chief marketing officer of Cymulate, a cyber tech firm that entered India last year, notes, People dont buy a product, they buy into the people. Our ambitious yet straightforward nature appeals to the Indian business community.

We are always pushing ourselves to find solutions to problems but we are also not afraid to say no. Cymulate simulates cyber breach and attacks for security testing. In other words, it inflicts multiple artificial attacks on the clients system to find out how badly it needs to be secured and then shows just how it can do that.

Last week, the company signed a deal with one of Indias largest banks whose name Netzer says she is contractually bound not to disclose. Meanwhile, NSO Group, an Israeli tech company, hit the headline in India after its spyware was allegedly used to snoop on WhatsApp accounts of dozens of Indian users.

NSO later denied the allegations. Israelis are constantly under threat. They have a tendency to keep innovating because if they dont evolve, they fear they wont exist, says Saket Agarwal, managing partner of Onnivation, a Mumbai-based firm that invests in the India business of Isreali tech firms and runs their sales and growth operations.

Started in 2016, Onnivation made $1 million in revenue in its first year. Last year, it made nine times that figure. Agarwal contemplates a co-investing model for working with Israeli startups now and hopes to make $14 million by May next year. So far, Onnivation has helped 15 Israeli companies find business opportunities in 100 Indian companies.

Among them is ZEE5 that evaluated tech partners from several markets before picking the Israelis. We are attempting to do a lot in a short period of time to deliver value to our audience. For us, the pace at which the Israeli partners work is encouraging.

You need the kind of discipline that comes from them. Perhaps their compulsory military background also ensures they are regimented towards timelines, says Rajneel Kumar, head of product at the streaming service.

For Akash Banerji, business head at streaming platform VOOT, it is Silicon Wadi over everyone else because unlike the American, Chinese, or even Indian techies, the Israelis design products and services for a foreign market first. So you wont find many direct to customer products there, but several successful SaaS companies.

Given their wealth of experience and exposure, they are more sensitive and agile to foreign markets, and also have cost-effective solutions. Another reason Indian companies end up working with multiple Israeli tech firms, he notes, is that the Wadi is one organic creature with different strands, all rooted in one place.

You meet one player, they recommend several others that could be useful for your business. The Silicon Valley in the US, on the other hand, is far bigger, but also full of individual creatures, he adds.

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The Wadi connection: Technology startups from Israels Silicon Wadi have found a fertile ground in India - Economic Times

December is the last month in the tumultuous 2010s, a decade that saw the rise of new political heroes and villains, a changing of the guard in different sectors of society, the growing concern for climate change taking a more desperate turn, and an unending cacophony of opinionated people screaming into theFacebook void. In "The Last 10 Years," a series of pieces scattered over these last 30 days, we look back at what happened to try to figure out what comes next.

At the risk of exposing my true age to all and sundry, I am going to share with you the story of the marvelous, Golden Age of print. I am going to discuss how it was creating that supposedly archaic medium of information, lifestyle news, and entertainment: The glossy magazine.

Magazines were like the media version of slow cookingit took a while, but the end product tasted so good. Writers were given a two-month lead time (three or four, if you were a bimonthly), photo shoots were done from scratch, and no one would touch stock photos with a ten-foot pole. You didnt pluck something from Facebook or Instagram and called it a trend; youcreatedthe trends. The salaries and contributors fees were mostly paltry; but it seemed, at least to non-media people, that everyone looked great and was having a fantastic time.

I am the former editor of an erstwhile shelter and home magazine, but I did have a life before all this as an interior designer and it was something that I had always pondered going back to. After all, it started in a design office for me.

I got my first writing assignment while I was employed as a junior designer at a big firm. Summit Media had just boughtGood Housekeepingfrom Hearst, and then-managing editor Apol Lejano called me on my office landline (yes, landline).

Kapatid, marunong kang magsulat, di ba? she asked over the crackling phone. I vaguely remember answering Medyo.Whatever I said, she told me to go to the Sogo offices the next week to shoot a house for their second issue. When I got there, I was handed a Ziplock bag that contained four cartridges of 120mm film to give to the photographer and a home address, and I never looked back.

This was the pre-digital-photography/early Internet era, and it was quite a bit of a process to produce a single article. For every shoot, then-editorial assistant Mabel David would hand out the magical Ziplock bag with film (if I was lucky, they would throw in a precious pack of Polaroids, which costed P800 a pack).

Every shoot was like this: I went with the photographer to the shoot and interviewed the lovely subject. And then there was the waiting game of having the film developed at Benjie Todas for a couple of days, and the transparencies were chosen by the art director with a loupe (Ano po angLoupe? Google it, son). Id print out and fax my article toGood Housekeeping(yes, fax) at my uncles laundry shop, which was the only store in my small town that had a fax machine. Mabel would encode it, and Apol would edit it. Fact-checking was done through a pager (yes, a pager) and Id have to call them back on the landline to respond. By then, a couple of weeks had flown by.

After a three-year hiatus, I took on a copy/features editor position at the bimonthly design magazine Bluprint at Mega (now One Mega group). Back then, the premise of creating a magazine on the editorial part was very simple and innocent: just make a magazine that people would buy and read. It was often left to the publishers to slug it out in terms of sales and marketing, with the editors-in-chief doing whatever they wanted, with a little bit of reprimanding from the top.

Writers I encounter today below the age of 25 are often mystified by the subject of Page Plans. Before magazine offices had a decent Mac that could do this on desktop, each title was given a giant board with either cardboard pockets to slip the pages in, or a magnetic board with printouts of the magazines thumbnails. It was definitely an art on its own.

Here, the editor-in-chief (the EIC) and art director (AD) would plot how the current issues pages would run, from Inside Front Cover (IFC) to Outside Back Cover (OBC). And you also had to make sure that the final page count could be divisible by eight or four (a printing requirement). Each title had its own formula of Page Plan arrangements, and you needed a build-up of interesting stories before you got to the Well (the main stories in the middle). If your Pre-well articles were boring, the reader wont even have the patience to get to the Well and she would never buy your magazine again.

Advertising executives also had access to the Page Plan to plot their ad placements. A few days before printing, they would all huddle around the boards in their heels, bickering over whose client would get the prime ad spots at the beginning of the magazine. And mercy on the unwitting person who would mess up the Page Plan while at itthey would definitely take a good beating from editorial and the art department the next day.

It was in 2005 that I was appointed EIC ofReal Livingmagazine; the position came at a good time, as this was the beginning of a robust era in print media. By 2009, the publishing company I was working at had around 25 glossies to its name, and it wasnt uncommon for a fashion magazine to go beyond 200 pages with about half of that number dedicated to ads, which was a feat for a local title.

Also, covers mattered. These days, nothing would date an editor faster than by saying the phrase: Whos your cover girl? But decades ago, it was the most important part of the magazine. Unlike now, where every articles views contribute to a whole for your websites performance that month, a magazine cover could make or break your issue. If you had the right, perfect, and timeliest cover, people would buy your magazine, regardless of whatever was in it. Just dont fudge the coverlines.

It was an exciting time, and the sheer variety of stories and adventures that went with it was incomparable. The editors themselves would say that working at a magazine wasnt glamorous at all, but the truth is that even if it did entail a lot of hard work, itwasglamorous, by todays standards, at least. Out-of-town shoots were the monthly norm, especially for the big issues; style editors and EICs would go on week-long foreign junkets; PR firms would jockey for position to push products to the bigger titles; and there were even some shoots with catering (not ours, though). I think it was also because we all had the luxury of timeand for the clients, an excess of money. But then, we knew this wouldnt last.

Of course, the irony of writing all this for a website isnt lost on me. A colleague whose magazine was shuttered at the same time as the one I was working on likened the whole situation to the advent of automobiles when people were riding on horses. It was like these new vehicles were all driving by you, yet you didnt trust your gut and still ordered your carriage wheels and saddles.

This is exactly what happened. Digital had snuck in, with a totally different team set up to handle it. Instead of getting aggressively involved and forcing myself upon this team, I was in denialeven when at each report, all the numbers had gone down. With each budget cut, I became excessively paranoid, and with good reason.

A colleague whose magazine was shuttered at the same time as the one I was working on likened the whole situation to the advent of automobiles when people were riding on horses

The final nail on the coffin came a week before the print title I was handling was terminated. Like a harbinger of doom, someone posted her entireReal Livingcollection up in a selling group on Facebook. There was the photo of my entire editorial life, in stacks of magazines and books from 2003 to 2017, with the post caption: Reason for selling decluttering. I had published articles on decluttering, and now, the title had become someones clutter! The only bright moment there was a long thread of strangers who actually wanted to buy the whole collection.

Right after the closure of many print titles in 2018, most of the EICs, myself included, were at a loss. We all had devoted our time and lives to being editors, and once that era ended, it took some time to figure out what to do.

Not all of us were equipped to transition to digital. I envied friends in the industry who had done that as early as 2008 to 2009, when not having a magazine was still unthinkable. The rest of us scrambled to take on every assignment we could get, getting directions from editors who were half our agethe Digital Natives. It was humbling, to say the least, but it was a learning process, too.

We all had devoted our time and lives to being editors, and once that era ended, it took some time to figure out what to do.

While magazines still exist in some indie shape or form in other countries, it isnt the same here. So, the print peeps had to move on. Many of us transferred to agencies and content creation offices. Some went into marketing and PR work, and are doing very well. The younger and more social-media-savvy ones became influencers (its not a bad word, mind you, there are still some pretty good influencers out there). Others, the lucky ones, stayed at home to create their own businesses and raise the children they had neglected for so long because of the hectic media lifestyle.

And on the few afternoons the former EICs would meet up for coffee, everyone dreamed about the salad days of the magazine, like some fantasy from an ancient time. But that was ita fantasy.

Personally, and objectively, I do think of the closure of print as a blessing for me. I am thankful that the web editors I work for appreciate the need for in-depth articles and not clickbait. There is no advertiser levelling, nor numbers or analytics to worry about. And even if one readerjust one readergets inspired by something that I write and put out on the web, then I believe I have succeeded.

Just dont tell the publishers about that.

Photographs courtesy of the author.

Excerpt from:
I lived through 20 years of print, and then online took over - ABS-CBN News

LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / December 2, 2019 / Cheapquotesautoinsurance.com has launched a new blog post that explains why drivers should comparing multiple car insurance quotes before they decide to switch their current carriers.

For more info and free quotes, please visit https://cheapquotesautoinsurance.com/why-getting-quotes-is-the-smart-thing-to-do-before-switching-carriers/

There are many insurance carriers that can offer better insurance deals. Although there are many policyholders that can be tempted to accept these better offers, in some cases they will have to pay more if they decide to switch their insurance providers. Before switching the insurance carriers, drivers are advised to get insurance quotes and see what they will gain and what they lose if they decide to switch their current insurance providers.

Before switching carriers, drivers should consider the following steps:

For additional info, money-saving tips and free car insurance quotes, visit https://cheapquotesautoinsurance.com/

Cheapquotesautoinsurance.com is an online provider of life, home, health, and auto insurance quotes. This website is unique because it does not simply stick to one kind of insurance provider, but brings the clients the best deals from many different online insurance carriers. In this way, clients have access to offers from multiple carriers all in one place: this website. On this site, customers have access to quotes for insurance plans from various agencies, such as local or nationwide agencies, brand names insurance companies, etc.

"Switching the current insurance provider is not an easy task for many policyholders. Before making any decisions, drivers should analyze the advantages and the disadvantages of this important move", said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director of Internet Marketing Company.

CONTACT:

Company Name: Internet Marketing CompanyPerson for contact Name: Gurgu CPhone Number: (818) 359-3898Email: cgurgu@internetmarketingcompany.bizWebsite: https://cheapquotesautoinsurance.com/

SOURCE: Internet Marketing Company

View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/568666/Why-Should-Drivers-Get-Online-Quotes-Before-Switching-The-Car-Insurance-Provider

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Why Should Drivers Get Online Quotes Before Switching The Car Insurance Provider - Yahoo Finance

LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / December 1, 2019 / Compare-autoinsurance.org has released a new blog post that explains how to use online car insurance quotes and find the best rates!

Making car insurance cheaper is something that all drivers want. The best way to track companies that offer fair prices is by shopping around. Websites like http://compare-autoinsurance.org were designed to help drivers get price estimates and make an educated choice.

Car insurance companies have different algorithms for determining rates. That makes prices vary a lot between carriers and increases the necessity of using online quotes. Online quotes provide price estimates, allowing users to select a coverage plan that will not financially ruin him.

Compare-autoinsurance.org is an online provider of life, home, health, and auto insurance quotes. This website is unique because it does not simply stick to one kind of insurance provider, but brings the clients the best deals from many different online insurance carriers. In this way, clients have access to offers from multiple carriers all in one place: this website. On this site, customers have access to quotes for insurance plans from various agencies, such as local or nationwide agencies, brand names insurance companies, etc.

For more information, please visit http://compare-autoinsurance.org

"Use online car insurance quotes to track all the companies selling insurance in your areas and compare prices," said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director of Internet Marketing Company.

CONTACT:

Company Name: Internet Marketing CompanyPerson for contact Name: Gurgu CPhone Number: (818) 359-3898Email: cgurgu@internetmarketingcompany.bizWebsite: http://compare-autoinsurance.org

SOURCE: Internet Marketing Company

View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/568610/Online-Car-Insurance-Quotes-Will-Help-Drivers-Find-the-Best-Rates

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Online Car Insurance Quotes Will Help Drivers Find the Best Rates - Yahoo Finance

AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon are teaming up to create what they are calling the next generation of messaging service. Veuer's Maria Mercedes Galuppo has more. Buzz60

Some of your text messages may have been left exposed on the internet for the world to see.

A database housing millions of private SMS text messages wasleft open online for an extended period of time,ateam of researchers at the online privacy company vpnMentor said Sunday. The Texas-based text messaging firm TrueDialogis thought to be responsible for the leak,the cybersecurity expertssaid.

The database contained access information to online medical services along with passwords and usernames to websites such asGoogle and Facebook.

The researcherswarn that "millions of Americans are at risk." The team was able to access thetext messages because the logs were "completely unsecured and unencrypted," the team said in a blog post.

TrueDialog, which creates text messaging solutions for small and large businesses, has since taken the logs offline, the researchers said. TrueDialoguses texts to sendmarketing materials and urgent alerts to customers.

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The company reaches 5 billion subscribers worldwide, the research team said.

"Wecontacted the company. We disclosed our findings and offered our expertise in helping them close the data leak and ensure nobody was exposed to risk," the researchers said. "The database has since been closed, but TrueDialog never replied to us."

USA TODAY reached out to TrueDialog for comment and details about the alleged leak.

Thetext message data in questionwas also examined by TechCrunch, which said the databasecontained detailed logs of messages sent by customers who used TrueDialogs system. The leaked dataincluded phone numbers, university finance applications, job alerts and other private information.

Privacy issues: Uber reportedly wants to listen in on your rides

"The impact of this data leak can have a lasting impression for hundreds of millions of users. The available information can be sold to both marketers and spammers," the researchers said.

The personal information contained in the text messages could be an asset to scammers;it could also be used in blackmail schemes and lead to identity theft and fraud.

Follow Dalvin Brown on Twitter: @Dalvin_Brown.

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/12/01/text-message-leak-millions-americans-might-be-at-risk/4346711002/

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'Hundreds of millions of people' may have had their text messages exposed online, researchers say - USA TODAY