A “digital presence” simply refers to how your business appears online; it’s what people find when they search for your business or company on the internet. Digital presence includes content that you control, like your website and social media profiles, but also content that you don’t control, such as online reviews.
In a world of fast-paced life, our attention spans are so short that you have got only 8-12 seconds to move the viewer. That is now only possible through a video.
A video is an excellent way to narrate a story conveying the desired information leaving a lasting impression on the viewer.
Video content has its own set of perks in the business world. I have listed a few here.
The right mix of passion to create films and knowledge about footage editing tools render out the best videos. Your video could be anyone among the list below:
The post-production of any video production house is a crucial part of the entire process. A good video editing software can help you showcase your product and services utilizing various effects and animations.
These days the video editing tools have a user-friendly interface making an editors’ life easier. As a beginner, you do not have to spend a fortune but a professional should invest in the right tools to carve out the best output. All you need is the power to visualize before you start putting the movie together.
Go on and splice some footages!
Adobe Premiere Pro CC comprehensive editing software available as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud.A popular powerful tool among the professional video editors capable of producing high-definition videos.
Feature Highlights Adobe Premiere Pro CC:
Apple make for professional video editors out there. Final Cut Pro X is a non-linear video editing application that was created and published by Apple Inc. among the other Pro Apps they have populated in their family of software.
Feature Highlights Final Cut Pro X:
Evolved from audio editing software to video editing software for non-linear editing published by Sonic Foundry followed by Sony Creative Software and currently by Magix. Vegas Pro offers several versions, incredible performance is that one feature that binds them together
Feature Highlights Adobe Vegas Pro:
All you enthusiasts with beginner and intermediate level video editing skills, this is an article that will help you start.
To view, the outputs of these professional tools check our portfolio
In the era of 2020, we need to have one design for all be it on a mobile, tablet or desktop of compatible screen resolution.
A smart way to put together a website which allows automatic scaling of its content and elements to match the screen size on which it is viewed, making it hassle-free reading for the users. Optimizing a website to be responsive avoids the need to design multiple websites for various screen sizes of mobile, tablet and a desktop making it easier to maintain them.
From sharing your resume to ordering sumptuous food, we do all of it online through our current day magic wand which is our mobile device.
Each one of us is glued to our smartphones right now, you might be one among them enjoying this piece of content on your android or an apple as you are taking a metro.
When this reach to the audience is put to right use, it can drive the world traffic to your website ensuring your business growth
83% of mobile users say that a seamless experience across all devices is very important. On the whole, a responsive website allows an increased reach to customers on all their devices maintaining consistent user experience improving retention.
How did you end up in such an offbeat, unconventional and cool career?
Well, I guess I took an offbeat and unconventional path to pursue my passion for photography and writing. And It eventually ended in an outcome which today is considered to be cool. To be honest the journey was not as cool as it sounds. It was quite an uphill task given that I moved from the technology field to the photography industry which is totally alien. To have photography as a hobby is one thing but to make it a profession it is a totally different ball game. I think understanding the nuts and balls of this industry and making growths into this industry is extremely challenging because we really didn’t have a handbook as such in those days of how a photographer gets into this field and makes something out of it. When I quit my IT field, by the way, I’m an engineer with close to a decade of experience in the IT industry. Way back ten years ago when I moved out of IT. It seemed like I was standing in the middle of a vast desert and with no signboards or directions whatsoever. So it seemed like you could have any directions so that was the state and then I think I might have taken different directions. Go one way try out and if it doesn’t work out come back and try another direction and come back. And this is how the journey has been. But I think the strengths I gathered in the IT field having played a lot of roles helped me to try to go into different directions and shape up what didn’t work out. That’s how over a period brick after brick gradually my flight took off.
What is your life mantra or life motto?
Well, these are big phrases I have really not thought about it that way. I think I have just gone with the flow and done what my heart’s desire and what has made me feel alive, what has got the best out of me and I think the craft of photography in writing. Over a period of time, I have realized I have got the best out of me and therefore I have stuck on with it. I wanted to excel in this art. I took up a three-year course from Newyork Institute of Photography and that was like finishing school and that really helped. Now that you have asked me about the motto I am reminded of a couple of lines which I saw in the back of a bus in Spain “One life One short Make it Count #noregrets “. Perhaps looking back that has been my motto. Honesty, I wanted to give photography a shot and I think I have made it count and I definitely can say #noregrets.
What is the turning point of your life?
I think it must be the April fool’s day of the year 2009. I think when I woke up that morning I did not have anywhere to go which means that March 31st of that year was when I served my last day of corporate area. It seemed like a bliss, a blessing as well as a vain. I knew that I could do whatever I wanted but at the same time, I really had no idea how to go about it. It was a rude awakening in some ways but also a pleasant blessing in other ways. But coming back to the turning point of my life that day is the defining day because it divides the phases of my life. It is a definite divider one as a technologist for over a decade and the next as a photographer and writer. The story has always been drop by drop dipped into the ocean. Like I said earlier there is no handbook as such in the industry of photography so every little step I would use to my advantage. Two of my friends in this industry gave me opportunities to be mentors, one in travel photography space and the other in street photography space. After doing coaching for a bunch of people I realize that I also had a flair for teaching. Simplifying complex things was an attribute I always had to have since my childhood. That’s how one of the service lines came under my banner which is photography workshops. Talking of turning points I did not turn back ever after having taken the decision of moving out from an IT career. Honestly, this single-handedly has helped the trajectory of my flight take off in a very unseen and uncharted industry.
What do you consider to be your biggest professional achievements?
Achievements are a very subjective term and to everyone it is different. Yes in the field of photography I have won lots of awards which I am very happy about. It kinda boosted the confidence, acted as a catalyst to the work I was doing. One of my personal favorites is to be shortlisted as one among the 35 worldwide by National Geographic way back a few years back. Having said that the professional achievement which I considered to be important are three important things. The first one being the paradigm transition from the industry of technology to an industry of photography and going endlessly and tirelessly without giving up so that’s the first one. The second one is making a small business with a brand name called Wider Angles photography and without having anything under it today I have a few service lines. A lot of people like to travel with me and learn with me. I feel instilling certain values and passion have come a long way since it is a very successful business industry. But I think the most important thing I feel is the most important achievement I feel is winning the respect and regard from fellow photographers and people in the industry. You know when today when I get calls for the panel discussions, speeches by the academic institutions or universities or galleria I felt fairly privileged and humbled that I am considered an established photographer. I think winning the reverence and respect is the ultimate.
Tell us more about your brand “Wider Angle”?
Well, with all these skills that I have garnered n the IT field in corporate life I also wanted to give being an entrepreneur a chance and I also needed a brand name when I stepped out as a photographer therefore overnight in back in 2012 If I am right I came up with this phrase called Wider Angles Photography based on one of the lenses we photographers use which is a wide-angle lens. The idea being that over a period of time a lot of things, a wide range of things can be done under this banner or the brand. I think one of my earlier questions I did mention that mentorship came very naturally to me. Teaching was one of the things that I really relished, therefore, the workshop is the first thing I introduced starting with basics and as of today, I teach many genres like street, travel, landscape, architecture, night photography and a lot of them for kids. And also editing like photoshop and so on. And after that started introducing photo walks within the city which focused on certain aspects of photography and one of the things which I always wanted to do was when I got out of the industry of IT was to work with children. And therefore I decided I should teach photography to the children and see how they responded to this particular beautiful craft. The international school of Bangalore reciprocated my idea of introducing photography to their children as well as their extracurricular activities. So since 2012, I have been teaching them from grade 4 to grade 11 every Monday and I believe that is the best highlight of my week. A big stress buster and its wonderful teaching the children. After this came the commercial photography projects I did a lot of shoots and different genres. But one of them out of the box ideas that came up way back in 2013 was a bunch of students used to tell me when I taught them and showed them the images Hema why don’t you take us with you. I heard this phrase take us with you often from a lot of students and I said ok let me just take you guys with me and this is how I thought of introducing photography journeys which is very unique and I decided that India will be the best place to do it. Nothing is more beautiful, more colorful or more diverse than what our country has to offer so I introduced my signature which is today well-received by lots of people and that’s called Experience India. So at the end of the day, I have wider angles as the only service.
We would like to hear more about your signature tours “Experience India”.
The idea behind the photography, it was called experience India initiated when I started to work with a partner of mine way back in 2013. Having traveled widely and all over the world and within India, I always thought India had far better and far superior elements or subjects for photographers to shoot. When I decided I should do Experience India Photography trips I thought about what should go into it so these are uniquely designed and curated programs. The crux of it being can I taste or can I offer someone the experience of a slice of India based on the state that we go to could be the culture of the place could be the architecture of the monuments or festivals or just the people and their lifestyles. So every photograph of India tour is based on a particular state and they focus on a set of things which are definitely very different from photography tours that we go otherwise. The idea is that it becomes one of your journey of a lifetime and definitely a slice of India stays back in your heart. These photo journeys are usually three to ten days sort of duration depending on the places we go to, and the amount of the drives that are involved, the sequences of shots that we want to try. The best part of this kind of journey is that we spent 4 to 10 days over a period of time who didn’t even know each other before. They tend to form a very good network of photography. I am very very happy that I have a large set of networks all across the world because I have participants not just Indians but also from across the world. The combination of people from different cultures makes the network even more exciting, more enriching and finally one of the things that I definitely wanna do in some days that is to take up all the offers that I have received from my friends across the world to go visit them.
You are a published travel writer as well. Tell us a bit more about that part of your career.
As an avid Traveller, I have done a lot of journeys but I have always had a fascination for words and somehow the travel doesn’t seem complete unless I put them down in words either in a book or the format of an article. I had my first break with The Hindu long back. The first time they have given an opportunity to write about the Palatine in Rome and I really felt absolutely amazing getting my features out there. And over a period of time, I started writing for many dailies, many magazines, and journals and predominantly in the space of travel bit on technology but later on, I moved to travel. It takes me to space and a zone which is more like reliving the experience you had months or years ago it is so totally engrossing. Every time you write about the experience it is like a partial trip in a time capsule. I like this travel back in time thing concept each time I write an article. I think I have close to 85 to 90 published features as of today. This has been my career or my journey as a travel writer. I wanna do more of them.
What does a photograph mean to you? What genres do you indulge in? Any favorites?
I think I like everything about photography, all the act of photography, the look and feel of a camera, the way you hold it the weight of the lenses you have in your hands or maybe the pain that induces on the shoulders, the outcome which is definitely is the photograph and above all I love the sound of the click as the photography releases the shutter release button it’s like a jingle bell to my ears. What about the photography I like is to me it’s a partial time machine it can really take you back into space and time where you wanna go back to. It is a very known cliched quote that photography freezes time. Well, definitely it does because each time you wanna go back see a particular element or an aspect of an experience you had a photograph allows you to do that. This rewinding ability of a photograph is the most brilliant part. One can live through an instance of time you had in the past.
Coming to the genres initially when I started off the genres I did everything or I was open to everything because I feel as an artist having a boundary is very restrictive. So I have never restricted myself. I enjoyed doing each genre even till today every nuance is different. Every challenge is a different challenge and recently I also tried to dab in my hands with creative sides like glassware and Macro as well as astrophotography but if you were to ask me what are my favorites I feel there are two genres that are totally contradictory or contrasting at least in my experience. One is street and the other one is architecture, these are the two ends of the spectrum. I will tell you why because in architecture as photography you are trying to breathe life into something static. As supposed to the street there is a lot of life happening and you are trying to make something static cause you wanna freeze it so life happens on the streets while in architecture it is totally the opposite so I like the contrast and these two genres are very close to my heart.
How do you define your personal style of photography?
Initially, it was never defined there was never a boundary, I just started to experiment it was restrictive to kind of say that I could only do this or this was my personal style but over a period of time being on streets for a long number of times experimenting with live scapes happening out there, it was very evident to me that the one thing I wanna cherish the most about street photography is storytelling. I look forward to creating a photograph each time which is basically narrative and nature. Why does a photographer really take a picture right, It is because he or she wants to communicate a message which he or she is experiencing and in the street, it is even more magical because everything that happens can never happen again. So the revelation or the revelatory aspect of the street is what I find most fascinating. You know you step out there into the streets and without making an announcement the street just unravels itself in front of you. So the revelation is what I think I wanna capture all the time and try to bring subtle or hidden messages through my photographs.
How do you make the emotions flow inside the frames, how difficult is that and how do you achieve it?
Being present in the situation helps a photographer what I, mean by that is if a photographer can be immersed in a scene that is happening in front of him or her that actually has an impact on the way you feel and I think personally to me photography is not just about looking at the same but is more about feeling and it is very easy to say so but it is not very easy to practice. But think of it this way if you don’t feel when you take a photograph you can’t make the viewer feel anything out of it. So especially in streets where people’s expressions are involved, it is very crucial to be able to photograph the way you feel rather than the way you see. I believe there are two things that this can do when you feel the scene rather than just seeing it one it changes the perspective in which you see the scene and indirectly or directly that alters the composition in which you photographs so the image not only has the emotion but also brings about a variation in perspective in the composition of the images and on the same lines talking of which emotions is a photojournalistic genre because emotions sometimes when you take photojournalistic projects are almost automatic because you go into some of the very tough situations to shoot maybe in very poor area poverty-driven or stricken slum area where the emotions are easily free-flowing as in a photographer than in areas which are not. But I think this is the way, I have spent a lot of time in the streets, especially when I wanna capture expressions I stay in the same place for a very long time.
What is the most rewarding part of your career as a photographer and writer?
The first one I definitely think is utter independence, the freedom and the ability to create what I want just because I moved out of the 9to5 job. That definitely is very refreshing. The second and the third is directly involved with the act of photography or the act of writing you know the spaces I go into when I’m a photographer I feel I have evolved over a period of time and the reward truly is in the engaging of the photography or in the art of the process of writing. Having said that, one of the biggest rewards in my experience is I am a travel buff and it gives me a lot of opportunities to travel, travel and travel. And I think it is very important to travel because the knowledge that you gain is far better than sitting in a corner and reading books but that doesn’t mean one should not read a book, so personally traveling is like oxygen to me so it is a very important aspect. My profession in photography in writing does take me to different places. One of the key things which I personally love is that it allows you to witness phenomenal and rare events and experience some unique reality, meet some sensationally different people which you just don’t get to if you never travel. One of my favorites is a phenomenon that I experienced in Ladakh called Nacreous. It happens in the stratosphere and suddenly the entire cloud, it is almost like a cloud burst, the whole clouds are filled with colors and apparently it’s a phenomenon which happens very rarely similarly and another phenomenon as well. It happened when we were flying over the Himalayas. From the airplane very very unique phenomenon very very few people can see so things like this which are very rewarding you know you just pick up your bag and camera and travel. And I think that process also has business around it.
What tips or advice do you have for other aspiring photographers?
There are quite a few but I will just pick three. The first one passion is a good word but perseverance is a better one. In my experience, I think passion without perseverance is totally non-consequential so all of those aspiring photographers go out there and put in their efforts and put in their hours in an experiment. Second, I think you should create images for yourself, it is very important to fall in love with the craft and understand what it is to make a photograph, develop your own style if you will. And document what you see the way you want to see, the way you want to convey it. It should not be governed by the approvals you receive from others. In today’s world where social media is taken over a lot of things are defined by how many approvals you get for an image you shoot. I think that is good but that should not be a benchmark for you. The third important thing is that as photographers we sometimes miss out quite a bit on seeing with our naked eyes we are always chasing photographs whatever we see we just shoot so in the process we just don’t see anything with our naked eyes so therefore an experience is as important as a photograph. At times you should keep your mini camera aside and look through your naked eye, but the balance is very important.
A featured snippet is a concise summary taking the topmost position on the search result page of Google when you are searching using a phrase or a question.
This snippet shows well above the organic search results and below the Ad box.
They are well known as answer boxes as they immediately answer the users’ questions presented in four common formats.
Featured snippets play an important role in digital marketing sector these days leading to more brand visibility.
4 Types of Featured Snippets:
When you search for “Types of Brochures”, the result appears within a box with well presented additional information along with relevant images of brochures. This helps the user to learn about what the link has to offer.
There are four major types of featured snippets appearing on the Google search result page, the text featured snippet, the video featured snippet, the list featured snippet, table featured snippet.
They are snippets that provide answers to the questions in the text-based format as a paragraph and sometimes along with the presence of an image.
Example of a text featured snippet where the question is“why does the star shine?” and the answer is presented in a textual format with an image displayed on the right side. This paragraph is directly linked to the website displayed below.
Other than text featured snippets there are also Video featured snippets that appear on the search result when we ask a question. If Google thinks this would be the right way to answer the question then Video featured snippets replace the text featured snippets of that question.
Example of a video featured snippet where the question is “how to design a logo in photoshop?” and Google’s right answer is a video because one would be able to learn to design a logo better by watching a video rather than reading it as a text.
The list snippet is the third type of snippet which usually presents itself in two types one as a numbered list and other as the bulleted list in response to a query.
Example of Numbered list featured snippets, 10 ways to save water was the query and Google presented an answer in the form of a numbered list making it convenient for the user to look up to the answer in the link below.
Example of Bulleted list featured snippets, ‘Fruits that boost immune system’ was the query and Google presented an answer in the form of a bulleted list making it convenient for the user to look up the answer in the link above.
As the name suggests the table featured snippets answer the query in a table format depicting the data points.
Example of Table featured snippet, ‘Price list of iPhone’ was the query, for some searches Google may decide that knowledge transfer is better in the form of a table taking the data from the link it structures into a table.
This featured snippet way of receiving answers to one’s query is now the most preferred by the users. The click-through rate of the featured snippets serves good proof. Here are the top 5 benefits your business can savor on using the featured snippet wisely.
Featured snippets provide quick answers reducing the hassle of clicking into each link and scouting for the right answer. Snippets increase the click-through rate of the link which in turn improves your website traffic. Following the featured snippet way will show you the difference between the spike in the number of visits to your website.
That one thing every business earns for is to achieve conversion as per target. A featured snippet is one of the many potential ways to increase organic conversions. If you can answer your prospect’s queries that have a great influence on their decision making which has a vivid result on the conversion.
Unique and well-presented content is any day appreciated by Google by highlighting you on top of the search.
Once Google chooses to feature your unique content on the organic search result as a featured snippet. You will notice a tremendous amount of incoming traffic which in turn boosts your brand awareness.
Google takes a few factors into account when it comes to giving a good website authority score.
You can enhance the following factors using featured snippets.
The entire process of using featured snippets has interlinked benefits. An increase in website authority automatically triggers the improvement of the keyword ranking, as a result of your business visibility significantly improves.
Website Authority<->Keyword Ranking<->Business Visibility
These are the benefits of featured snippets that help your businesses to grow through digital marketing in the year 2020. We all want our customers to find us, so let us just carve an easy path for them to get to us.
Give the prospects what they need for Google to give you what you need.
Covid-19 has shut down schools, restaurants, malls and almost all offices and companies nationwide. However, some businesses can still function online as well as offline making survival essentials available to all. Employees across India are now being asked to work from home.
Now, let us look into the top 5 tools that can make working from home as convenient as possible.
VPN – A VPN or Virtual Private Network is a crucial tool that you will be needing to access Corporate Resources. Company data is extremely vulnerable to attacks if its left unprotected and remote working employees need to have a VPN to ensure that their details are not easily hacked, which can then be used to target the company. There are a variety of VPN tools available online. Some of the most popular ones are NordVPN, and CyberGhost for the first-timers.
Slack – When it comes to remote working Slack is the tool of choice for communication management. It has multiple functions that allow users to cut down on the number of emails they need to send internally. On Slack, you can create department wise channels that let you communicate instantly with your teammates. You can pick and drop files, direct message people, bookmark messages and much more.
Zoom – If video conferencing has been giving you nightmares because it can be such a challenge to set up then Zoom is the light in the darkness. It allows you to share your screen, record the meeting, share content and best of all, only one person needs Zoom to set up a conference call, that person can then send the link to the other members and they can log in and participate for free. You can access the meeting from any device such as desktop, laptop, tablets, and smartphones.
Aircall – Aircall is a VoIP business phone system that lets you create Virtual Call Centers, employees can field calls and contact leads from the comfort of their homes. Aircall is a viable tool for both internal and customer-oriented staff. Best of all it can be easily integrated with a variety of CRM tools to ensure that all leads are followed up.
Trello – Trello is one of the best task management systems out there, its fun, quirky and most importantly, it is effective. It allows your whole team to create, design, and assign tasks in a straightforward visual interface. You can also create cards for every task, and sort them by the department or assigned personnel.
Be it an establishment of the size small, medium or large it is wise to opt-in for graphic design as an integral part of your business. We are all striving to get to the top position. So it is important to make wise choices while running a business.
Well, Graphic design is one such choice to communicate to your audience the vision of your brand.
Graphic design is a creative output involving a brilliant combination of colors, texture, and typography to inform and educate the audience. There are different ways to do this from logo design to a hoarding design.
There are five points listed below emphasize how important graphic design is to your business to tune in more revenue the year 2020.
The first time your prospect meets your brand, it could be through your website, a brochure, leaflet or flyer from a stall, a business card from one of your employees, or a hoarding advertisement on the driveway. It could be anywhere but as a brand, you have to be well prepared to create a long-lasting impression, which is where graphic design comes into play.
When something catches our eye we never forget it, all our prospects are just like us. We all can recollect the logo of Apple, Nike, Volkswagen, and many more brands easily. Why is it that way? The best part is we are even able to visualize it the moment we hear the brand name, that is the kind of recognition I am talking about. It is possible with a functional, outstanding, and professional logo design for your business which can be done with the help of a best-in-class graphic design company.
A story is what everyone will connect to, you as a business should be able to narrate one through your design. The right choice of color and typography brings out the emotions in the story while each one is unique in its own way. A car brand and a jewelry business will instill different emotions through their design aesthetics. Brochure design can be a brand guide that can help you convey your story better.
All brands go out on social channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and more where they turn into being social butterflies. During the time of shares, you can summarise the entire message through infographics and illustrations. We have all enjoyed storybooks filled with colorful illustrations and caricatures as children and we still stick to it. Anything visual is well accepted by us and our readers. Therefore it is necessary for a business to seek help from a design agency to develop eye-pleasing designs.
As businesses we all long to do better day by day, definitely better than our competitors. It is essential to understand the pain points of our customers and provide unique solutions to them. Creativity and innovation is one such place that solves problems of customers through the right content and design. Kill the competition with killer designs, now with the help of a graphic design agency
Use Graphic Design to win the race in your niche!
Can you briefly tell us about your journey?
I am a hardcore Mumbaikar born, raised and educated in Bombay. In fact, I am the first alumni of Symbiosis, Pune. I then relocated to Bangalore, since then Bangalore has been my home. Having a technical mindset: ‘my heart drives me through my lens’. In fact, that’s my hashtag ‘#Throughmylens’. While I believe that life can be a stretch but it depends on the attitude, the way you withhold. Now my world is more of a canvas where I want to spend my visualization using my lens. I have contributed to multiple photography exhibitions in the past proceeds of which I have gone for a lot of noble and charitable causes. I am part of various photography institutions and clubs to name a few Photography Society of America (PSA), Thank God It’s Saturday (TGIS) from Bangalore and Youth Photography Society of Bangalore (YPS). I ensure that I participate in all kinds of workshops, training, or learning so that one it helps me learn, second it helps me to impart help for anybody who needs it.
What do you consider to be your biggest achievement in photography?
Well, the year of 2019 was my height of success in the photography field actually. Honeycomb Creative Support my print partners, like my own family, decided to feature me in their blog in March 2019. It was a great honour for me. I won the first distinction in photography which was called as Artist Federation of Indian Photography AFIP, the title which was conferred upon me in the month of August. In July 2019, I decided to do my first solo photography exhibition in Bangalore including one day at my apartment complex. It was raging hit because we had around 1000 plus footfalls in the two weeks of the exhibition that I did. That was the first time that I displayed my art to people as a travel photographer. It was an absolutely prestigious honor for me to be part of my first solo exhibition. Then I moved my solo exhibition to Pune in the month of November, very recently and I had 60 plus frames displayed there. It was in two different galleries and we had a huge success in that exhibition as well. What was interesting is that for my Pune exhibition we introduced Photobook for the first time. For which I selected pictures from my collection and desktop calendar for the year 2020 which was raging hit. Meanwhile, I was also participating in a lot of national and international competitions which are also called salons aggregated by PSA, FIP, FIAP, and GPU. These are all international bodies and I started winning awards and acceptances in each of these various categories like travel, color, monochrome, nature and there were various other thematic categories as well. As I entered the year 2019, I had nearly 500 plus acceptances in these various salons and 10 awards which included gold, a couple of bronze and honorable mentions. This all seemed to be a lot of motivation for me. It was all due to the active involvement in the Youth Photography Society YPS team. And actually I am very thankful to them because of which I was able to achieve these various feeds getting these acceptances and awards. I was featured in nearly one page in the Pune Mirror in the month of November just before my exhibition by a very famous journalist named Mr. Ashwin Khan. And then I was subsequently featured in Yourstory.com which is an online media where artists across our country are featured. It is an honor for me and the article was written by Mr. Madhath Mohan. This is all in addition to the youtube videos and various other digital marketing we tried for my exhibition because of my well-wishers and various people who visited my exhibition. It was absolutely an honor that’s how the year 2019 went.
Since the photography techniques and equipment change quickly, how do you always keep up with the times?
Well in the last two decades, what we have seen is digital photography has been at the forefront. And everybody today is using the digital camera whether it is on the phone with a camera, or SLR or Point and shoot camera. It is just the increase in technology belief that is overpowering the human aspect of it. What I see is children with less than 10 years of age are clicking excellent pictures. I think that is all possible because of the technology, digital era and their flexibility and agility with respect to doing anything with photography and that’s my opinion that technology will only advance. But if you ask me honestly, I will not make any rash decisions to invest in camera equipment or accessories just because it is the latest in the market. I will take some time to discuss this with my fellow photographers. There are a lot of times in our groups we discuss the pros and cons, whether we should buy or should we not because having everything at your home in terms of spending capital may not be wise unless you are actively using it on a daily basis that’s what I think about this.
How do you make emotions flow inside the frames, how difficult is that and how do you achieve it?
As a famous photographer, Ansel Adams once said that ‘A good photograph is knowing where to stand’ and I think that is a very critical and powerful statement for any photographer. Now we all know that we can always purchase equipment, camera equipment, accessories, fill up your memory cards and hard disks with GBs of data. But if as a photographer if you are not willing to or not able to strike a chord with your audience, if you are not able to tell them the story, if you are not able to tell them in what situations you actually had to go through to take a photograph I think that is not going to do any justice to the audience who is probably looking at you. In this generation all people want to do is swipe left or swipe right. A photograph that has no story will be lost chances and opportunities to strike emotion calls with your viewers or audience. People are so busy with their daily routines and the world. They will hardly have a few seconds to actually go through any of your photographs or read through and that’s actually been my experience as well. You need to have excellent vision to see what is happening into a scene I think that is very critical as a photographer because there are only a few seconds that any audience gets to view your photographs and to understand what is happening and draw their attention to the seen that we are portraying in front of them and that is very important for me as a travel photographer as well. But at the same time, I personally believe that a story element is very critical because that gives whoever is viewing the photograph a lot of information and appreciation with respect to what is happening.
How did you manage to come up with different themes for 365 days in 2017, which had gained attention at a wider reach on Facebook?
Well at the end of 2016, when I learned from Mr. Anand Sharan like I said I bought my first DSLR which is Nikon 17 200. I did my first group travel to Rajasthan, specific travel-based photography and when it was the end of 2016 and start of 2017 I decided that let me try a different thing for the rest of the year which was putting theme-based photography on my social media posts so what I decided was I picked up a theme on a daily basis and I used to pick up photographs from my personal collections surrounding the theme I used to have a quote which used to go with the theme or the photograph that I am displaying on that day. It was a huge challenge, in fact, you know because selecting a theme, thinking about what photographs will match with that theme and the quote was a very daunting task. Sometimes due to my travel the personal front or the professional front, it used to be even difficult to put a post on that day but now I used to ensure that when to get the access back. I put the photograph back at the theme back on track. It connected with a lot of audiences, a lot of my well-wishers who found it as a very interesting aspect. Some of them used to wait for the post to come if I didn’t put it on a particular day they used to ask me why, so I think it is connected with a lot of audiences. And it was a big success according to me it gave me a lot of visibility as a photographer as well. By the end of 2017, by the time I finished off 365 days I got a lot of great appreciation and they wanted me to continue for further years so I took a break of 2 years and started it again in 2020 January 1st. I again started off a cut down version of the same where I am putting one photo per day kind of theme. Let’s see how it goes as of now it is taking up great appreciation I think I will continue for the rest of the year.
What inspired you to be in collaboration with TGIS and YPS?
Well collaborating with fellow photographers like-minded people was the reason why I chose TGIS (Thank God It’s Saturday) prestigious club of Bangalore as well as the Youth photography society of Bangalore YPS like I already mentioned. When I learned from my mentor Mr. Anand Sharan in 2016 his conventional approach gave me a lot of tips for photography. They are naturally, you know I have to go onto the field, practice various genres of photography, try and understand the lighting and the biggest other technical aspects of photography. So collaborating with these clubs, we traveled together, we shared together, we competed in various national and international salons and altogether it was a healthy competition. It helped us to actually get into a lot of knowledge sharing sections that happen. In fact, I would also like to mention that H. Satish, who is the president of YPS, has also been of great help. There has been a lot of learning process because of him. Like I have mentioned because of YPS I have won those 10 awards and 500 plus acceptances by the end of 2019. So I am very thankful to YPS as an organization.
From your point of view what makes a good picture?
‘You really have to care about whatever you are shooting’ it sounds like an understatement but when I took my first photographs or multiple photographies or when I started the photography journey I used to click anything on this earth starting from flowers, regular objects at home, birds and a lot of things. Whenever I used to find an opportunity, I would just click click and click. And then I realize that, it is a very cool thing, this piece of equipment in my hand. And over a period of time, I realize that it’s not how you do photography. We need to have a good sense of composition, framing, and what am I trying to showcase because that is a strong belief that unless the audience has looked into your photograph for a few seconds that you get, I don’t think it will help bring any interest element for them to look at. My favorite photographs are always the ones that evoke feelings or mentally transport you back into time. I personally believe that the camera, body, the gear, and the accessories are not very important because you can always have a pace level camera as long as you have the framing and composition correct you are able to depict scene, touch human emotion and I think that is something that will always connect with the audience or the viewer.
What makes travel photography so special to you?
My personal belief is that when you travel you experience, you learn, you share in short you are happy. Travel has helped me experience other cultures across the length and breadth of this country as well as abroad. That is when you see the beauty, experience the local cuisine, living conditions, you understand how things happen in different regions where ever you shoot. As a travel photographer, the most critical component of photography. So what I normally do is I undertake the photography assignments once a year for the last four years I have been going across different parts of India. Unless you go into the deeps or meet with the local people, enjoy the environment around, document it basically for those who cannot for whatever reason visit that place is I think is the most critical aspect of travel photography and that’s what I do and that’s what makes me happy.
What are you currently working on and do you have any photographic plans for the future?
My future plan is to actually document the beauty of nature, the mother Earth’s creation across the world, narrate this into a documentary and for the future generations to get inspired and acknowledge. I also wish to go on a long photo experience not only in India, across the world where I can document various cultures, religions, historical significance, geographical architectures whatever I can. In fact, one of my bucket list that I have is to showcase India to every Indians the way it has never been done before, documenting everything right from historical monuments to festivals to the cultural diversity that this country has to offer, the street various other aspects on a daily life that we all live in India that most of us don’t even know for me that’s very critical. I think as my kids are growing they are showing some interest in photography so I am waiting for the time when they will become older then they can travel with me on these assignments. It will be fun to actually go together, shoot and have a nice time. That is something that I am definitely looking forward to.
What tips or advice do you have for the other aspiring photographers?
Just that you as a photographer have to always exercise caution according to me, never to cross the line. Extremely ethical, respect the privacy of the subjects even if it’s a human being or nature. And extremely critical that you know we will always find that the human race is always the winner when you have the right competitive spirits irrespective of how many photographers are shooting at the same time, explore the unexplored, don’t do the status go that everybody does try and find creative angle document it very well have a storyline. More Importantly, print your work do exhibitions and showcase it to the world because you cant have GBs of data, put things in social media and expect everybody as an audience because there are lot of people view that who don’t get opportunity to view so I think doing an exhibition is definitely something that I would encourage everybody once you have come to a stage where you feel you have a lot of areas that you can showcase. I normally believe that if two of the photographers are standing at the same point I don’t think they will they will ever come with the same frame or same composition ever so I think bringing in some creativity into your photography is definitely the end thing. To sum it up I would definitely say that ‘Be human, keep it simple because simple is what people like. Have a very powerful, impactful photograph that gives you more honors, more acknowledgments rather than winning awards or those kinds of stuff. That is my advice to budding photographers.
A lot of businesspersons of all ages ask me this question: can digital marketing help my business? Of course it can, if you create and implement a proper digital marketing strategy. Indeed, digital marketing isn’t something esoteric as one may falsely believe.
Instead, it’s a collection of online and offline processes that help you create awareness and need for your business, brand, products and services to countless people across the world.
There’s a famous quote by Bill Gates, Founder, Microsoft. He says: “If your business is not on the Internet, soon your business will be out of business.” In these few words, Bill Gates sums up the importance of every business marking an online presence.
Understandably, there’re many ways to create your online presence: Facebook page for your business or website. Fair enough.
However, these don’t really qualify as online presence nowadays considering there’re 1.75 billion active websites on the Internet and over six million blogs. Facebook has over 2.51 billion users worldwide.
Given these figures, you’ll clearly see that having a website or Facebook page isn’t really sufficient. You’ll have to compete with all other websites in your category of business and rank on top of search engine results whenever anyone searches for similar businesses, products and brands.
This is where digital marketing helps your business. This isn’t all. There Are numerous other ways digital marketing can help your business grow and flourish.
There Are countless ways digital marketing can help your business. However, I’ll speak about some of the topmost benefits that you can’t afford to miss.
America’s leading management expert and entrepreneur, Peter F. Drucker says: “Every business has two functions- marketing and innovation.”
Digital marketing helps fulfil one of these functions. Your business gets a strong online presence by using effective digital marketing. It creates excellent awareness of your business, creates brand image, generates interest in products and services of your business and of course, gets leads and customers.
Now let’s come to the other part- innovation. Digital marketing of your business through social media or even a business website enables customers and leads to post questions. And some of them demand specific elements in your product or service. This helps you innovate the business functioning, increase the product or service line while finding innovative ways for customer care.
Another major way digital marketing can help your business is by enabling expansion to newer markets. How’s that? Your website or social media page or YouTube channel, among others will be visible worldwide provided you’ve done proper digital marketing. As I mentioned earlier, it will figure on top of search pages at various locations.
As a result, prospective consumers in a remote market might find your business and its offerings attractive enough. These usually translate as leads and are easy to convert as customers, with some effort. Additionally, you can also offer an online order-and-payments link on your website or social media page to facilitate these people to patronize your business.
Low cost advertising is yet another way how digital marketing can help your business. Buying newspapers or print media ads or TV is a luxury that few businesses can afford nowadays. Instead, you can create and post ads on Facebook, use Google Ads and other resources that cost a fraction of conventional advertising. And you can also select the target audiences.
There are so many people who want to start their own businesses. But they step back due to high marketing costs. If you are among such people, I suggest you choose any business ideas from this excellent list on surejob. Surely you will find a business idea that you like.
Through digital marketing, you can generate excellent ads that pop up each time someone searches for something that’s related to any and all businesses. Chances are, the person will click on your ad and make a purchase. And even if they don’t you’ve nothing to lose. Because you don’t have to pay till someone actually clicks on your online ad and possibly visits your website.
Digital marketing helps your business to provide multiple sales channels to customers. Hence, you can expect more business for your business- literally. One among these is affiliate marketing. You can promote your business through bloggers and digital marketers by providing them affiliate marketing programs.
A lot of organizations nowadays also allow customers to subscribe or pay for a product or service using Facebook, their business website and their own blog. You can also open a marketplace on Facebook and Shopify. There’s no telling how a potential lead can immediately convert as a customer. Therefore, offering multiple sales channels is the best way to tap a huge market.
Email marketing and instant messaging are two time-tested and proven digital marketing techniques. You can keep customers or your potential leads informed about the latest developments in your business through email and instant messages.
However, to help your business genuinely, I would recommend extremely judicious use of these techniques. Or customers would believe you’re spamming and block your emails, Tweets on Twitter and instant messages on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and other platforms.
It’s possible to open a free YouTube channel for your business and promote it through digital marketing. In fact, most major businesses now have a dedicated YouTube channel where they post tutorials, Do-It-Yourself, informative and educational videos, real life stories and lots more on YouTube channel. People love watching videos. And if you can create amazing videos that people can identify with- your business gets that leading edge over other competitors.
Interestingly, creating excellent videos for a YouTube channel isn’t as expensive as you might believe as a business owner. In fact, a smartphone with a good camera and some basic video editing skills are all you need to post videos on YouTube. Meanwhile if you have seperate marketing budget then you can look for corporate video production service providing companies. You can get people to subscribe to your YouTube channel and share videos they like with their contacts.
The above facts clearly indicate how digital marketing can help your business. There are numerous companies which provide digital marketing services and Honeycomb in one among all helping clients achieving their business goal. There Are projections that between 60 percent and 80 percent of all purchases will occur online by 2025. Figures clearly show this trend. Therefore, it’s essential to engage in digital marketing to benefit your business.
A brief introduction
Hi, I am Dilip Param, Founder and CEO of Dhobiwala.com, India’s Eco-friendly garment care services, company. Your one stop solution for all your garment care. I thank Honeycomb for giving me this opportunity to showcase our journey so far to all of you.
A Snippet of your journey so far! The key driving force to your entrepreneurial spirit?
I have always been inculcated into this business environment from very young ages. It was my father V Parameshwaran who has been the guiding force behind my success in all the ventures that we have taken for so far. The inspiration that we get from him is that 30, 40 years before he got into the business at the age of 30, 40 with no business background. He gave us, and gave me particularly the freedom to try businesses and to fail businesses, and gave the courage and encouragement to learn from every mistake that we have made previous businesses. So for the last 21 years, I have ventured into 4, 5 businesses other than our core businesses and each one of them has really taught me certain lessons which I make sure that those mistakes are not taken forward into the other businesses that we get into. So the driving force behind me has been my father V Parameshwaran.
How did you know when you had the right idea and how was it derived?
From the year 2000, I have been in business and we have been predominantly in B2B business which is run by the family and the B2B business taught us a lot of things which helped us know how we can scale businesses. It was always my wish to start some B2C business and over the last 10,15 years, I did venture in a couple of B2C businesses and learned the nuances of how to tackle B2C businesses. In the year 2014 when I was shifting my residence from a particular place to another place is when I really had got the hardship of getting my garments ironed and when I try to understand why this problem is there and try to understand to get into the depth of it, I understood that this is really big problem for all of us living in metro cities to have your garments ironed get them back on time. And this gave me the idea to see and explore if we can get into the depth of this business opportunity. See what are the nuances that are there to understand this supply-side issues and demand and kind of find solutions for this particular problem so predominantly in 2014 -15 is when I got this idea and I started in a very small way to see how we can make a difference in this service of ironing clothes for customers. I ventured into a small space with just one or two people and I wanted to make a big difference in terms of quality and started using steam ironing as a service that always the normal people would use electric or cold steam boxes to iron the clothes. I did work on this for a couple of months to understand how we can scale business and took a break to find the loopholes between the supply sales system. It was in 2015, I decided that I didn’t have the confidence to run this business and was in search of a proper institution that could teach me this particular trade. Unfortunately, there was not much offered in India and there were very few places internationally that could teach me. So the decision I took was very firm to get first knowledge about what I was going to do, the scientific process behind what I was getting into and went to the United States of America invested quality time in learning the science behind the business of garment care. Once I came back from the US I understood that all that we learned may not be possible practically implemented in India. But nevertheless a lot of those things we have put in place over the last 4 to 5 years. The garment care industry is a huge industry. 2.2 lakhs cores as the business revenue of which only 2 to 3 percent currently is the organized sector. In this two to three percent of the organized sector, a very small part of it is laundry in which Dhobiwala.com is currently present.
Brainstorming behind the name of your company?
When I decided to get into this business I had two options to choose from one was whether I was going to cater to the niche segment or whether I was going to cater to the mass segment. This was one of the main decisions we needed to decide and I chose to go for the later. India is a land of opportunities and the population growth in all the metro cities was by itself a good reason for me to go with the masses. The brand name was very important and it took a lot of time for me to think about what could be the ideal brand name, which could directly imply what service is going to be offered to our customers without having to explain the same in detail. I went over 20 to 30 names for the brand before I could freeze on the name Dhobiwala.com and go ahead and also get the domain in the dot com domain. East or West from Kashmir to Kanyakumari most of us would know the name Dhobiwala means it’s got to do with something to do with the cleaning of clothes or the upkeep of garments so I thought this would be the best name that will suit the business philosophy that we are going to get into.
Considering the fierce competition in today’s world, how would you highlight your company’s competitive advantages?
I am quite fortunate to have been in this business in the last three years. Competition is really not stiff in this business as of now because the demand is way higher than the supply. Having said this the unorganized sector predominantly 98% of the service is done by the unorganized sector and hardly 2% is there in the organized sector. Competition is always healthy because it brings new avenues and opportunities. As far as Dhobiwala.com is concerned our forte has been environment-friendly services provided. Our strength is in the way we process our clothes without using harsh chemicals and try to save as much water and other natural gases and electricity in the process of doing our garment care services. This has been something that we have innovated over the period of time and competition has not really been able to keep up to match with the environmental friendliness we are able to deliver to our customers.
What best motivates you? How have your entrepreneurial motivation changed since you first started and how has it turned you into a better person?
For many success motivates but for me challenges motivates me. When we have more challenges we think deeper to find solutions for these problems. That’s exactly what Dhobiwala.com has taught me. Ever since the first day we only faced problems and problems. Every day we brainstorm to find solutions for these problems and also look at ways and methods, which we will be able to scale the service by solving problems. So the more the problems we have, we brainstorm more we ideally bring better solutions, provide better service for the customers. This has really helped in my personal life as well because we are prepared to face any consequence and handle any situations by trying to not get agitated or disturbed by the problems that come in front of us but be calm, composed, do some research and experiment with certain solutions and be sure that those experiments are bringing fruitful results before they can be implemented and scaled them up to serve the customers.
Tell us about the eco-friendly laundry you carry out.
In the business of laundry, the most important raw material is water along with water are the detergents or the chemical agents that are used to clean our clothes. When I did a lot of research on the existing practices I was alarmed to find that none of the people had knowledge about the amount of water that has been consumed to wash their clothes nor they were concerned about the chemical compositions of the detergents that were being used. This was very important information that I got and I started researching more on this. To find and develop processes that can save water and Dhobiwala is proud to have introduced systems where we were able to save 50 to 60 %of water consumption in the entire process that we get for. As far as the detergents and chemicals are concerned we are also again proud to actually manufacture our own ingredient chemicals that are eco-friendly and don’t harm the natural environment as much as other chemicals that are available in the market. So this is a very important factor in the entire process of laundry and dry cleaning. We also adopted international standards in the dry cleaning process where we don’t use harsh chemicals or solvents in the process. What we do is remove stains using specific agents and then process the entire garment in a very very environment-friendly process that is used internationally. This is one of its first if its kind implemented in India through Dhobiwala.com.
What is non- negotiable for you? Do you believe there is a winning formula for becoming a successful entrepreneur? What is yours?
To me sticking to our core values to which we have started our organization is something that is non-negotiable. Every organization is built with certain ideas and those ideas and those ideas there would be some core philosophy based on which the organization of the business has been started. And Dhobiwala.com we take great importance and care to the environment to ensure that whatever we do in the processes as environment-friendly as possible and this is something that is non- negotiable in dhobiwala.com. The second thing that is non – negotiable is customer service, being in the service business customer is the king and we are here to serve the customers. So this happiness of the customer is of most importance that is again non-negotiable. There is no one single formula to be a successful entrepreneur but the most important quality to be a successful entrepreneur is to believe in the ideology that you have started the particular business, to face the problems that would come to be persistent enough to find solutions to never lose hope and heart and consistently work and build team of people along with you to solve the problems you have to have a successful business venture.
Are there any missed opportunities that you wished to have leveraged?
I will firmly believe that opportunities are coming and going every other day. I don’t have any regrets of missing out on any opportunities because when we get to know that we are lost on an opportunity it is completely on us to decide whether you want to revisit that opportunity and try and we do that opportunity and make it a success. There are several opportunities that keep coming by our way and we also need to know which are the opportunities that are worth investing our time and energy on. Many entrepreneurs have this issue where they start looking at the opportunities and start investing a lot of time and then fail to convert the opportunity into practical businesses. So it is quite important to take up these opportunities but also evaluate these opportunities before a lot of time is spent and wasted. I always believe that a lost opportunity will always give you another occasion to give you to ensure that you can capitalize on that in a better way. So there is no regret for my side or there has been no opportunity that has not been left unattempted at least once again.
If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?
For all of you who are just starting out on your first business venture I am sure by now you have enough advice from various people. My one point of advice I would like to share with you is to be firm with your idea in which you want to start your business. Be prepared to face hardships, success doesn’t come easily, work hard to make sure that your business is successful and keep innovating at new ideas to solve the problems that the particular business service or industry faces. Innovation is very important and hard work has no substitute.
Watch Dilip Param’s Game Changers video here.
