| Harish Anand Thilakan | — @TheSharck

It’s the last day of 2017 and while I sit back in the super-relaxed environs of my buddy Rahul’s apartment in Goa, I’m reflecting on what a great year 2017 has been for me - personally and for Influx. As I look forward to 2018 with renewed vigour, the one thing that definitely is top-of-mind for me is for Influx to be a more decentralized organization in the upcoming year.

This year saw three major new forces join us to augment our leadership team. While Amit worked alongside me to seriously take control over our international business development efforts and Naga furthered our tech strength, Dodo, Aditya and Aum came on board to lend weight to operations, performance marketing and social media marketing respectively. However, in order for Influx to really evolve and operate as a well-oiled machine that keeps Building Great — without people...

| Hardik Goswami | - @geniushkg

Yes, you got that; it’s correct.

A hardware product is hard to build for various factors involved with it. And even harder for a startup to build one when resources are scarce and success purely depends on time-to-market with the product that people will want.

Obstacles :

• Cost - According to Subhedar of Bang Designs, any hardware startup needs a minimum investment of USD 1 million to 1.5 million to build a prototype, while its software counterpart can have a prototype ready with a few thousand bucks.

• Risk - Software is built on top of multiple re-usable components, so it is possible to reuse code in case of pivoting, which is not possible for hardware products. Anything that comes out of the foundry is permanent and can only be sold differently by changing the packaging. Everything else remains the same, unless there’s lots more money to burn.

• ...

| Deepa Sai | — @quillink0

Is the web content dumpyard giving you a slow death?

As a digital solutions agency, we are approached by organisations — big and small — for magical makeovers. All day long, our content writers hustle to make every brand’s inner mojo shine.

With such volume of work, wouldn’t it be nice to have some quick-fix tactics that will save your time, nails and hair?

All you worried writers out there, sharpen your nibs. You can have your readers hoo-ha about a ho-hum topic!

Have a stake-out

I cannot insist enough, the value of doing your basic research first. If you know the nitty-gritties, heck, you can do stand-up comedy about the brand instead of throwing technical gobbledegook at your readers. So internalise this rule: Know your sh*t.

Next, stalk your competition. Find out how your brand’s competitors are positioning themselves online and offline. You...

| Vaidehi Mehta | - @mehta_vaidehi

Many moons ago, I picked up a book titled Manwatching from a street vendor in Kolkata (then Calcutta). That was the first time I had read about body language, and have since been completely fascinated with what people around me are saying without using words at all. I realised that, with just a few adjustments, I could correct my own non-verbal communication to be positive, both at work and in a social context.

How good you are at your job depends not only on how skilled you are in a particular function but also on the nonverbal messages you send out with your voice, posture, gestures, and manners. To win someone over to your side of the argument, you have to be seen as confident, enthusiastic, transparent and non-threatening.

It’s all in the Kinesics

More often than not, you are probably unaware of what you are conveying to others or what...

Avanthika Sivakumar - @avsiii

Social Media Optimisation (SMO) has become an important part of overall digital marketing. Interactions via social media are more crucial than ever — and unless you communicate and associate with your audience, you are bound to lose a valuable advantage.

Why is Social Media Optimisation so vital?

When combined with traditional SEO, it can take your online marketing efforts to the next level, allowing you to achieve a ‘master strategy’ that reaps solid results.

Below is an infographic explaining social media optimisation, its benefits, and some important rules to follow and techniques to make the most of it.

Social Media Optimisation Infographic

To summarise

To grow your online presence effectively, you need to plan and strategise your social media posts accordingly. Create good content, make it easy to share, post at the right times and on the...

| Karthik Arumugam |

I remember sometime in 2014, when I saw Lewis’ video, Unbox Therapy on YouTube, reviewing Google’s cardboard VR experience, I thought this was going to be an interesting phase in digital technology.

Now, I am thinking about Virtual Reality as we know it today and what its future might look like.

A re-cap

There was practically no real advance in the field until 2011. Oculus Rift, developed by an American youngster named Palmer Luckey, was launched in 2012 and offered another VR involvement with a motion-tracked headset guaranteed to deliver deeper immersion.

Oculus VR was acquired by Facebook in March 2014 for USD 3 billion. They have been attempting to turn a profit from Oculus Rift, but the fact is that Oculus was developed for VR in gaming. Given the high cost of VR and related equipment, and other market factors as well, the technology hasn’t quite...

| Amit Mehta | - @AmitKO84

I recently went to watch Thor-Ragnarok on the first day of its release at a cinema theatre. Being a Superhero movie fan, I expected to see a packed house, with a comic-con atmosphere and the Avengers jumping in. Okay… that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea, right?

However, to my lack of surprise, the cinema was only 20% full. The movie is awesome and bringing in a whole lot of money, but the 80%-empty number isn’t very appealing.

Competition

Today, we’ve the couch-potato syndrome with Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube and a million television channels scraping our attention. It’s difficult enough to get people to hit cinema halls, and the thought of spending $50-$70 per movie (including the astonishing F&B prices) is a complete turn-off. Hence, moviegoers typically wait for one good movie they want to watch, or just wait for the movies to...

Aum Janakiram

Warren Buffett once said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation, but only 5 minutes to destroy it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

Getting your brand noticed in a cluttered market is a challenging endeavour, and once you get into the limelight, everyone is watching. Some are even hoping you will falter. As a brand gets bigger, the risk of something going wrong becomes higher. And when (not if) unflattering news hits social media, all hell can break loose. Your brand can face a huge setback not only in terms of reputation, but in the bottom line as well.

This is especially true with companies that have been doing a great job so far and then release substandard products, or when associates makes bad judgment calls.

The mistake could range from a minor one — for instance, a spelling mistake — to a major one like an insensitive comment or...

Daniel Anandaraj Garnipudi - @dodosamuel

In the aftermath of the rains that lashed the city and its environs, I have been thinking how easily rumours of cyclones, floods and other dire consequences spread. In the past week and more, I received numerous calls and texts from office colleagues regarding the status of the rains and began pondering on the best way for people to know what the real situation possible flooding and water-logging is.

What really does not help is the fact that social media — whilst having many positives as evidenced by the way the city of Chennai rallied together during the “great floods” in December 2015 — also has significant negatives.

I don’t know what it is with rumour mongers. What do they actually seek to gain from spreading false rumours? I agree; many a time social media is a great platform for sharing true information and connecting with people...

Harish Anand Thilakan

429
The number of business inquiries received through the Influx website in 2016.

47
The number of clients we engaged with. (We responded to everyone!)

At Influx, we set a very high threshold for who we work with. Call us fussy, call us high-handed, but it’s in setting the bar high that we’ve managed to stay small yet make a good impact. We even had a client refer to us as “the Louis Vuittons of the web design world!” We’ll take that.

When we started off back in 2005, the trend — and easiest ticket to success — was to set up a team of developers and become an outsourcing shop or, as the more gifted would term it, an offshore unit. Most projects flowed in from the US, Europe and the Middle East and the money was good.

However, that never appealed to me. I was convinced that there was enough of a market in India to cater to first and a certain pride in working...