Sukshma

Aneesh and Badal bring you all the action on BookEazy’s blog

DAY 1

DAY 2

DAY 3

DAY 4

From what I hear, the short student films by Whistling Woods are a great catch!

Looking for a reason to start a web company in your home country? Here’s one more from Santosh and myself - you get to celebrate your Independence Day with every citizen who visits your website.

In true web-ishtyle BookEazy added a splash of our tri-colour to its logo.

This would not have been possible without BookEazy. Besides movies, if there’s anything that gets our team fired up, it’s the excitement of being an Indian and in India at this juncture. If you’d like to add the magic of cinema to your Independence Day celebrations, we recommend one of the following:

- Watch the recently released “Chale Chalo” on DVD (Making of Lagaan) or the movie itself. If you thought starting a company was hard, wait till you see this one. I recommend this to any one who is looking for some inspiration and a lesson in planning.

- Listen to A.R. Rehman’s renderings of our national anthem. The previews of the album released this week look spectacular and every legend you can imagine in the field of Indian music is a part of it.

- And, of course, you must catch the latest blockbuster Chak De! India on BookEazy.com. After a long time, there’s a movie whose spirit is compelling enough to draw out even the not-so regular movie fans.

Some of our early adopter customers have been pushing us hard for a mobile version of bookeazy.com. Last night, our technology team finished and released a Beta mobile prototype of bookeazy.com, what we proudly call beMobile.

If you have GPRS/EDGE enabled or CDMA - data, give the application a whirl. If your phone is GPRS/EDGE or CDMA data capable and you would like your wireless operator to enable it, we have help pages to guide you. Write back to us with your feedback and if you think the application can be improved further.

Do you love watching movies on the big screen, but just hate the idea of standing in line to book movie tickets at India’s crowded theatres and multiplexes? Have you ever stood in line and watched the box office window operator put up the “Housefull” sign just before your turn came up? Have you been cheated by a tout selling tickets in black for a premier show?

I have had the misfortune of being in every one of those situations! I can even remember the names of the movies in the last two exceptional situations :), which is why BookEazy is truly a personal project for me.

Since my return to India, I have been working with a brilliant team on enabling movie tickets online with the right model that will appeal to the average Indian consumer. I know what your thinking, no, you don’t have to pay online in order to book your tickets! Our goal is to make it easy for you to book your cinema tickets online.

All of last week we were at work enabling the technology and the content. At 10pm on Sunday, BookEazy went live! You can currently view theatre schedules for some of the popular multiplexes in Pune on BookEazy. In fact, there are currently 22 movies now displayed on BookEazy including Mira Nair’s Water, Black Friday, Nishabd, Honeymoon Travels, Nehle Pe Dehla and Nicholas Cage’s Ghost Rider.

Have a look at how BookEazy works and let me know if you would like to join the service to book movie tickets in Pune. We also have our list of Frequently Asked Questions.

Our promise is that you will never miss a good movie!

Click on each link to pull up the Google Trends report.

1. In India, Movies have always been more popular than TV. The trend is almost always the reverse in all the other countries where both searches are popular.
2. Rang De Basanti was a lot more popular than Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna.
3. Blogs are more popular than newspapers with the online community in India. Only a few other countries exhibit this trend. Update: The trend report for the search term ‘blog’ versus ‘newspaper’ refutes this conclusion, look at the comments for more on using Google Trends reliably.
4. BSNL and AirTel are the most searched of telecom providers in India. Hutch is a close third and is very popular in West Bengal, while AirTel rules the North.
5. Searches for Naukri edge out searches for Monster by a close margin. Both trend lines reveal a lot more Indians are going online to look for jobs.
6. Shah Rukh Khan is more searched than Aamir Khan by online users. Interestingly, more searches for Shah Rukh Khan originated from Rabat, Morocco, than Delhi, India. Amitabh Bachchan does not make much of a dent here. Update: Prateek also suggests that one take into account different ways of spelling - e.g. ‘Shah Rukh’ also becomes ‘Shahrukh’.
7. Sachin Tendulkar beats Rahul Dravid as far as online trends go… Dhoni makes a surprise climb up the ranks.
8. The online community can’t decide between Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. On the day of Singh’s appointment to the PM’ship of India, the trend was very different. Pervez Musharraf is eclipsed by the turbaned Indian Prime Minister.
9. Only for a little while - Football was more popular than Cricket. You guessed it right, the timing coincided with the FIFA world cup, 2006.
10. Searches for the keyword Matrimony outnumbered searches for Shaadi. Update: Prateek also suggests having a look at the report for ‘marriage ‘ and ‘wedding’ which are much higher than the other two terms.
11. Mutual Funds are more popular than Shares. The search volumes are the highest in India. Update: The report on ’stocks’ reveals one more story. In contrast to the rest of the world, the online populace from India still prefer Mutual Funds.
12. Karan Johar will be happy to hear that he has finally overtaken Mithun as far as online searches go!
13. IIM’s are catching up to the IIT’s in popularity.
14. While global interest in GPRS is declining, GPRS interest in India remains just about the same for the last 3 years. Meanwhile, interest in AirTel keeps going climbing. Is India going to be over GPRS even before it can catch on?
15. Tandoor is just as popular as Chaat or Halwa. Of course, Chaat Cafe (San Jose) has both Chaat and Tandoor, something you won’t see often in India! Update: Prateek points out that a report comparing ‘tandoori’, ‘tandoor’, ‘chaat’, ‘halwa’ would be more on target with tandoori coming out on top.
16. Goa is much more popular than Himachal, search volumes predict a lot of tourists from the UK in Goa this year.
17. Google searchers search for India more than its rival China. The pleasures of democracy or is this the Baidu effect?

Inspired by: Micro Persuasion: 25 things I learned from Google Trends.

Disclaimer: Google Trends is only a tool. Any conclusions you can draw from the trend reports is at your own risk.

Came across a great blog on the desi-videsi movies genre. It’s called Filmiholic. Filmiholics claim to fame in my book is that it captures the less popular but equally enthralling independent Indian cinema very well.

• Pria on Filmiholic
• Indo-American Arts Council festival on Filmiholic
• Punching the Sun on Filmiholic

Another blog worth mentioning is Kal Penn’s blog on the new Mira Nair movie “The Namesake”. Kal Penn (Harold & Kumar…) plays the son of Indian immigrants to America in the movie. The blog is about his stay and shooting of the movie in India.

• About the movie (an introduction to the The Namesake).