What an Idea!! - How brands are using Ideation Communities

Background: Ideation communities are platforms where customers can post news, stories, ideas, case studies etc and other people can rate, vote for the best ideas, comment and share ideas etc. This is more sort of like a simple Digg.com models where people submit news, community curates ( votes) the best news which is showcased on the homepage.
Ideation communities are a people centric way of carrying the brand message. It is an open platform for people to talk about brand or related businesses. But unlike typical communities or social networks the focus is more on content consumption, curation ( rate/vote/ comment) and creation rather than connecting consumers or building relationships among them.
It will be interesting to see how many popular brands have used such ideation communities:

Starbucks: My Starbucks idea is one of the most popular ideation communities. The agenda is simple. The community members submit ideas on what they would want from Starbucks and others vote and comment upon the ideas they like. By the end of the day, Starbucks has the most popular, democratically decided ideas for its brands. How this benefits Starbucks is that this community automatically positions Starbucks as a brand that is all ears to its costumers which is great for any services company. Secondly it has a platform where people repeatedly come to submit ideas, comment and have conversations, that is better than any marketing campaign. Thirdly through this platform the company knows who are its biggest fans and evangelists and it knows whom to go to for positive advocacy.
Starbucks has put in a lot of effort to showcase how it is taking care of the ideas, which in fact has been the core to the success of this community. My Starbucks idea has a 'Ideas in action' blog where they talk about the ideas that have been brought into action. They also have a leader board to recognize its most active members.

Dell: Surely Dell learnt it the hard way, but then Dell Ideastorm is some of the benchmark examples of brands using social media. Like my Starbucks Idea, Dell Ideastorm is also about the ideas for Dell services and products. The good thing is Dell has sustained this community and nurtured it with time by adding small timely campaigns to it. Presently I see them running 'Storm Sessions'.Many companies like Best Buy and Hindustan Times have tried to model their social business strategies along the same lines.
Dell has also used such Ideation platform to run periodic social media contest campaigns to promote and generate buzz on some issues. Dell Go Green and Dell Social Innovation are example of such periodic Social Media campaigns. ( As a disclaimer, I work for the firm that planned Dell Go Green )

Intuit: Intuit, the financial & accounting software company is an interesting example where an ideation community was developed to woo not end consumers but small businesses. The Intuit small business community is an ideation platform for businesses to share stories of success and business ideas and case studies to the community.How Intuit is doing it differently is that this community also showcases the full Intuit shop, intuit products, services and solutions etc. Also there are periodic campaigns and contests like 'Business Grant Contests'. This also helps the company position itself as a supporter to small businesses in helping them grow and bring ideas into action. Some other B2B ideation communities/ contests have been built by Intel, Nokia, Tata NEN etc

Idea Cellular: In India, the telecom company Idea has and ideation platform which is although not a community ( that is it does not have profile or relationships) but it is a good beginning. What is interesting about this platform is that it is engaging customers around  the ideas for brining change in India, which in itself is a good social object ( a lifestyle/ passion/ cause which is the core theme around which a community talks) for any community. A similar campaign was run by change.org around asking the US citizens to submit the ideas for change in America.

Conclusion: Ideation communities are a good way to make your business social. You can use them to get customer ideas for your brand, thoughts around a cause or a passion core to your brand, generate buzz through user generated ideation contests, crowd source around important objectives etc. Surely, you would need to incentivize the social behavior among consumers which mainly depends on what core theme you ask this community to ideate upon, how engaging the community is, inbuilt rewards and reputation systems etc.

Why I do what I do (for a living)

This is a question many people ask me or at least might like to ask me. If you look at the typical break-up of jobs from a college like IIT Delhi, you will see major chunks going into core engineering, banking, consulting, analytics, software and a very small fraction getting into marketing. Even a smaller fraction gets into start-ups as a fresh recruit. In fact start-ups are usually also associated with those who are not able to get a job anywhere else!

So what am I doing in a social business strategy firm? And why should anybody looking for a serious career in marketing and brand management look for a job in social media?

To address these questions, let me first explain what a social business strategy firm like mine does. A social business strategy firm builds a brand's presence on social web ( i.e. web 2.0). So apart from the general forms of social media that we see everyday like Facebook/ twitter/ LinkedIn, a social business strategy firms tries to establish a sustainable presence for its clients by building and nurturing community platforms for the client's prospects and customers in a way to meet the client's business needs and objectives. Hence although this is a solutions industry where there are mostly projects and consulting assignments, there are tremendous scope for understanding and learning marketing:

1) Overall presence: Although companies use a social web presence for purposes more than just marketing like support, research, ideation, CRM, attracting talent or even creating the core product ( news and media industry), however I think a presence in any form can be attributed to marketing the brand in some way or the other. Since here it is about establishing the brand's social web presence, any sort of effort will have an effect on how people perceive the brand and hence is a part of company's marketing.

2) Sustainable communities and not one time campaigns: As I must have mentioned earlier that the real value of any investment into social media is in building something that you can sustain and nurture with time. As compared to traditional social media agencies, in social business strategy firms the focus is into building these sustainable long term engagement with brands where you are on the same note as the client's marketing team in understanding their business problems and coming out with solutions.

3) Defining a new type of offering in India: For me the best offering from this job came as the opportunity to learn something that so less people know about at least in India. You get ( and in fact need) to research so much into this field that at a very young age you get the confidence to preach others how they should go ahead with their businesses on social web. Looking at the fact that most of the people working in this field are pretty young, entering this field at the right time can help one build thought leadership at a young age.

4) Get a taste of different industry sectors: Social Business Strategy is more like a solutions industry than a services industry. So one day you are understanding a beverage company's business problem and the next day you are doing the same for banks, NGOs, technology, consumer durables, automobile etc companies. Likewise you get insights into business and marketing practices of different industry sectors.

5) Generate a new perspective for brand building: When I learnt brand management, none of the many books and resources I researched talked constructively about building a brand based on what a customer wants it to be or what the customer wants from it. All talked about creating the right brand identity, right brand personality etc to communicate itself with the ultimate goal to generate awareness; basically the right ways to broadcast themselves to their customers/prospects. However at none of the resources I got to read how should a brand be built in an ecosystem where broadcasting no longer works ! ( due to the availability of social tools )
Interestingly, when I first studied Brand Management, I never bothered about it! But now I see that many brands are increasingly becoming concerned with the shift of power from the organization to the customer, and many of them are thinking of different ways of sustaining or building brands. Many companies like Dell and Starbucks have successfully shown that this is possible.

I hope the above mentioned reasons would help marketing enthusiasts and freshers from colleges like IITs to look into a career in social business strategies or at least explain it to some why I chose  it. And by the way... it also pays well :)

Learnings from the 2020 Social workshop on personal branding

Its is great to be a part of an organization that encourages its employees to build a personal brand. And its even great to be a part of an organization and working with people who have successfully implemented this mantra in their life.

I began writing in 2007 as a society humor blog since I thought that as I have nothing else to write that people would like to read and moreover as humor sells, it is a good starting point. Then 2 years later when I started working at 2020 Social and as my worked involved a lot of research in Social Media, I realized that probably I should write about social media too as I have a lot to say about it. Hence started the dilemma between writing what I wanted to write ( Society Humor) and what I was good at ( brands, marketing and social media) because of the obvious reasons of working in a social business strategy firm and having authored a Brand Management Textbook.

Typically I should have chosen one of them long ago because writing about society humor and marketing would be confusing to anybody. It is difficult for anybody to digest, " He is a social media guy writing serious stuff and also a funny guy writing random stuff". But I did not want to part away with making fun of people, one reason also being that any typical funny blog posts on this blog generated much more comments than a social media blog which I wrote then on my company blog. So then I thought of Barista, and the way they sell food ( sandwiches, submarines, lasagnas etc) but effectively branding themselves as a beverage ( and that too coffee) company. The learning was, market your USP and keep the additionals inside the shelf. Hence this blog became a place for "Social Media, Marketing & other random stuff" where essentially the social media part was highlighted and the other funny posts were kept in another category tab.

But then yesterday in the 2020 Social Salon Saturday workshop I learnt that a) I am not Barista and b) One needs to choose a very niche thin segment of workspace and try to build a personal expertise brand there.Also that the best time to develop a personal brand was 20 years ago and the next best time is now!  So it appears that it is time to make a choice whether I want to write the random funny stuff that I like to write or whether I want to write the stuff which actually adds value to me in the domain related to my work.

Moreover over the time I have realized that I always had so much to say about marketing and social media but never really seriously thought about putting anything more than my research on this blog. So as a note to myself, let me remember this day as the day I chose to write about marketing and social media than writing about society humor. Maybe its high time that I grow up!

My favorite print ad

This is one of my favorite ads. I mention it every time someone asks me my favorite print advertisement campaigns. This is one of the ads launched in the series of 'The power of knowledge' campaign by Economic Times. It's a very old ad and I remember my dad showing it to me when I was a kid. Probably it was the first time I must have noticed that a print ad might not be just about some actress saying 'this washing powder is good on my hands'. Although I must have seen many print ads later but this still fascinates me.

Vision of change II: Not just a vision anymore

The tortoise, winner of the race,
Stood proudly in the winner's place.
The moral of the story I'll say,
Slow and steady wins the day.

Almost everyone who knows V.I.S.V.A.S. (visionary initiative to sculpt a virtuous academic system) at IIT Delhi would like to thank the messy IIT reading room and the institute library that closed at at 6; which inspired the two IIT guys Vinayak Garg and Bhushan Shinde to start a social entrepreneurial venture called V.I.S.V.A.S. The idea was simple: Students join the initiative by bringing their problems in the academic system and together work out a solutions for it. Within no time the V.I.S.V.A.S. team changed the reading room outlook and convinced the IIT authorities to extend the library timings. But that was just the beginning for them because since then what started as a soc

ial entrepreneurship venture has now emerged as an NGO and is expanding in other Delhi colleges by starting V.I.S.V.A.S. chapters there.

About an year ago I had first written about this venture as I thought that a social entrepreneurhsip venture from an institute that is know for producing business magnets is worth getting inspired. An year later I called up Vinayak and his team for lunch to get a status check and found that the team had nothing to leave anybody dissappointed.

Everyone in IIT Delhi has seen V.I.S.V.A.S. building up its avenues from scratch and bringing very satisfactory improvements in their projects. All V.I.S.V.A.S. projects however are directed towards creating a better acedemic system which in fact is the niche of the organizations working model. In fact it is perhaps India's only student organization which encourages students to search problems in their own academic system and helps them to reach a solution. Notices Vinayak Garg,"Other NGOs work for the society and try to raise the bars. We at V.I.S.V.A.S. just do that for the academic system"
So why have an organization working for improving academic systems of institutes which have already established their reputation in academic brilliance like IITs? Replies Garg," Every academic institutes will have its own problems. What is different about the working of V.I.S.V.A.S. is that each project we take up has a core ideology behind it. We just try to solve the ideology, the problems get solved on their own." This in fact might be the reason why V.I.S.V.A.S. has gained so much popularity among student community speacially in I.I.T where the organization is helping out students in their every day academic problems. One of the very recent task accomplished by V.I.S.V.A.S. was the establishment of an online exam archive where students can download previous exam papers. Ankit, a third year student who has been working on the project since past one year puts the core philosophy behind the archive. "We established the archive not just because students can download previous years papers and get relevant questions but also because availability of an open online archive would force the faculty to test parameters like pracicality and applicability rather than rote slogging."

As far as the organizations progress is concerned, apart from establishing itself as an NGO, V.I.S.V.A.S. has slowly but steadily achieved great milestones. For example,during minor 1 examinations the online exam archive established by V.I.S.V.A.S. was accessed by some 650-700 students among around 1500 IIT students who gave the exam and thats a debut success rate of 50% . Their reading room and library initiative was recognized and awarded by the IITD alumni association. Another project in working is Droabe, which is a web based portal for educational institutes aimed at providing effective commuication between students. Pankaj, who is looking after the Droabe project puts it this way,"There was a need for an online notice board cum communication and news distribution channel for students. Droabe fulfills all these needs" In fact many other delhi institutes have shown interest in Droabe and no wonder all present energies of V.I.S.V.A.S. are being focussed on this dream project which will also mark the entry of this NGO in other Delhi colleges.

Although V.I.S.V.A.S. is just more than a year old, it has built a very solid student reputation, especailly in IIT. Presently it has some 40 working members from IIT itself along with others from various other college chapters. This year V.I.S.V.A.S. would be featured in 'IITD ke funde', an official institute booklet given to freshers to introduce them to IIT life.
However all this glory and success has been achieved through a lot of struggle specially as it requires a lot of investment of time, which in IIT can sometimes be a costly affair. For example in the beginning, the founders Vinayak and Bhushan had to do a lot of convincing to students as well as faculty to launch an idea like V.I.S.V.A.S.so that it does not gather a rebellious or political image. Ankit who worked on the exam archive used to utilize his lunch hours to find time for sitting in IIT computer center and uploading exam papers. And this all must be true for everyone who is putting his time for V.I.S.V.A.S. But finally all the hard work is showing results. Today many educational institutes like SRCC are showing interest in opening their own V.I.S.V.A.S. chapters seeing its success in IIT.

"We still have a lot to do", says Vinayak. "We will soon be launching 'Dayitva', an Entrepreneurship contest in IIT with a difference that this would be more focussed on implementation rather than just B-plans and ideas. This would include IIT administration supported projects which can be carried out in IIT itself." The team is currenlty also working on Video introduction of elective courses and 'Samvaad' a seminar series for increasing awareness amongst students and enabling them to excersice an informed choice.

A dedicated workforce, a brilliant concept and some established credentials; V.I.S.V.A.S. has every ingredient for a success story. Finally it is good to see a group of students that is working on creating gloably competitive education systems. Now it would be all the more interesting to see what route this NGO takes up now. After all, that's how revolutions are created.

The Beggar Blog

No, I am not obsessed with the down trodden and the poor in this country. So, if my previous post was about the 'bais' and this about the beggars, that doesn't mean I have developed some sort of liking towards the backward class. It is just that I am getting to observe some newer sides of the society.

When as a child the first time I would have seen a beggar, the first impression would have been less of annoyance or pity, but more of curiosity, 'Why doesn't he earn it on his own instead of asking for it?' Surprisingly, that's a question for which even today I am finding an answer. Although the beggar community constantly keeps on trying to give me reasons, like I am blind, lame, old etc, but then they are hardly reasons. I have seen disabled people working, selling stuff in trains, polishing shoes or any other small business. So although the reasons might be genuine in some cases; but in a vast majority, they are just fraud marketing.

So let’s face it, begging is a profession. The purchases in this segment are impulse based. Somewhat the same as you spend your money on an alpenliebe or hajmola candy. You have never planned it before hand, it takes a fraction of a second to make a purchasing decision and the satisfaction just lasts for a minute or two and then it’s all forgotten. Now, coming back to my first memory of beggars, I remember my parents telling me to ignore them and that they are just a bunch of lazy people who don't want to work and earn money sitting. At that time it was difficult to digest the orders to ignore a poor man who was looking so pathetic, but with time I evolved and hardened my attitude towards them. But surprisingly they evolved too and changed their sales strategies. By the time I got comfortable with ignoring a lazy man sitting with a cup, they had poor children and women 'touching' you in railway station platforms or traffic light to get the money out of you in annoyance.

As an impulse, it might seem that for a business model that demands just one or two rupees from your pocket, spending that much is worth it to get rid of the sleazy stinking person standing in front of you. But then lately they too realized that this aggressive 'push' strategy was actually a mistake and that you can't fight with your customer's ego. So they changed that too. Now they are using 'pull' strategies, that is we don't want to beg, we are not beggars, we agree with you that it is a profession of lazy burdens on the planet, but what can we do, circumstances have led us to do this. But it is only momentary. The moment we get over it, we will be back in business, working hard to get back on our lives.

Now that sounds more convincing, but how are they doing it? On traffic light a woman approached me with a doctor's prescription saying she needed money for her husband's medicines. I would have given her money, and then I noticed that the date on the receipt was two months old. I asked her, why don't you update this, it would fetch you more money. She said nothing and turned away to the next vehicle! But then I realized it was a good strategy and she could have fooled anyone and many other beggars would be using the same at other traffic lights in other cities. But interestingly there is a clear cultural divide between beggars of metros and beggars of tier 2 cities. The Delhi beggars have evolved to such convincing ways, while beggars in my Bharuch are still relaxing on platforms with a cup in hand.

Whatever may be the case, every time a beggar approaches, I (and I am sure that must be the case with all of you) feel hard to convince myself to ignore that guy. On one hand I might be refusing a person really needing money, and on the other I might be encouraging such a profession. But then how many times have you heard a beggar dying of hunger. It is the hard working man who is too proud to beg that dies out of sickness or hunger. And what convinced me to this was a little incident a friend told me. She believed in 'you give a man a fish and you feed him for once and you teach him how to fish, you feed him forever theory' and hence when a girl approached her for money, gave her an address where she would get work . The girl asked, how much would this pay in a month.

"Two thousand", she replied.

"I make five thousand per month”, and went away.

The 'Bai' Blog

This post is dedicated to the last few days I spent at home...


What is common to Kanchan, Sushila, Vimla, Ranjan, Geeta, Kapila, Urmila & Somi. They are some of the names in the 'list of honor' of all 'bais' who have worked in my house. Although I am sure that my house would have witness some more occupants of the 'house bai' position, these names were all I could recall.

The reason why I am dedicating a whole post to this female free lance housekeeping entrepreneurial venture is because I very recently realized that for us 'Bai' is much more than just a house maid. This 'bai' word has had a very tremendous impact on me since childhood. When years ago when we shifted to Gujarat from Kota, the first lesson that I was taught at home was to call the 'bai' at home 'masi' as they didn't like being called 'bai' ( I still think it is a cool name). As I grew up, the first time when I visited the staff room of my school, the first lady teacher gossip I overheard was 'Aaj humari bai nahin aayee'.

Be it the mightiest of the mothers, the news that the 'bai' won't come sends shivers everywhere in a universe that doesn't get bothered even if Lehman collapses. In my house, I am not even allowed to joke about the 'bai' not getting to work. So what's the big deal about the house maid not turning up to work? I think the first reason why 'bais' get so much importance in India has to do something with our topology. We are a very dusty country and hence our homes and our clothes need more regular cleaning. So we can't survive without everyday or every alternate day cleaning. So that day the 'bai' doesn't come to work, the lady knows she would have to get her own hands dirtied. Moreover in the present times 'bais' are the strongest weapon of the working women. Hence the USP of the Indian 'Bai' Community is not the work she does when she is present but the mess she creates when she isn't.

But that's not all. 'Bais' are the colony's hottest gossip channel and I am sure there must be a cut throat competition among women to acquire the 'bai' that gives the colony's hottest news. After all who wouldn't want to know what's happening in Mrs. Sharma's house. They are also the main driving force behind the TRP success of Ekkta Kapoor serials for hadn't it been for them, our mothers would never have had so much free afternoon time. They ruthlessly waste your washing soap, cleaning detergent, liquid dishwash and floor cleaner thereby giving a boost to FMCG product industry. If this claim appears unconvincing to you just think that even if a 'bai' wastes 15% of these commodities this would automatically lead to 15% increase in product consumption in millions of Indian homes and hence a 15% rise in sales which is something you get in a 'great' year in sales. Moreover, its not just the economic impact, these 'bais' have a significant socio-cultural impact on our society too. "Aaj humari bai nahin ayee' must be rated as the no.1 conversation starter of this country which our house wives have used over tea, office gossips and over the house boundary wall talks.

Now let's have a simple estimate of the 'bai' market size in India. We have a 400 million middle and upper middle class population who must be employing 'bais' (assuming the rich upper class goes for servants). Now taking 5 people per house hold leaves us with 80 million household requiring 'bais'. Now if on an average each house hold spends Rs 500 ($10) a month on bai then this adds up to $ 800 million a month or to say around $ 10 billion per annum business currently suffering from massive attrition, absenteesm & mismanagement. I don't know why corporate and conglomerates who are ready to sell us 'sabzis' have not thought about giving us a better managed 'bai'.

Moreover if the bai service gets centralized then this can become an effective tool for word-of-mouth campaigns, especially for consumer goods. There is anyway so much communication between the bai and the housewives everyday. Why not get leverage out of it and use the communication for product marketing. Think of the mind boggling consumer network these 'bai' campaign can generate leading to mammoth marketing avenues. In the past Microsoft tried something similar with Mumbai Dabbawallas for its asli pc campaign.

Finally, on a positive note, house cleaning is a great workout. You need not worry about heart problems and obesity with a mop and a broom in hand. But then why scare away the luxury. Let's spend 500 a month on bai, 1000 a month in gym and some thousands more on washing machine, vaccuum cleaners and dishwashers to be prepared for the day she doesn't come.

A vision of change

There was once an oyster, whose story I tell.
who found that some sand, had got into his shell.
Now did he berate, the harsh workings of fate,
that had brought him, to such a deplorable state.
No he said to himself,as he lay in the shell.
Since I cannot remove it, I shall try to improve it.

These lines found on the homepage of V.I.S.V.A.S. speak of the vision it carries. V.I.S.V.A.S. ( visionary initiative to sculpt a virtuous academic system) is a social entrepreneurship venture directed at molding a better educational system. It is a brainchild of two IIT Delhi students Vinayak Garg & Bhushan Shinde who have been working upon the idea since last year. What is significant here is that when most of the entrepreneurial ventures of this technology heaven are meant for business, these students have combined there efforts towards social entrepreneurship. Bhushan Shinde says," Entrepreneurship is about value generation. You generate value, money will follow. It is more important to make people realize that they can bring a change." Adds Vinayak," IITians presently are running the world, but IITs are not the no. 1 university. Why? This shows that there is some problem with the system, and that must be common to all the IITs."

Thus V.I.S.V.A.S. was started to provide a common platform for bringing problems and finding solutions. In a span of three months since its establishment it has achieved some mammoth tasks like improvisation of Reading Room facilities, opening of library till midnight, Video introduction to elective courses and exam archive: a portal where previous test papers can be found and downloaded online. Garg says," We started with Reading Room as it was no longer a tangible place to study. After its success we moved on to the library timings. A library which closes at 5 is simply not palatable for a 8 to 5 academic schedule."Bhushan adds about the exam archive progress," our team is working on the project. By August we will have all exam papers uploaded and ready for use." Both the young minds are specially enthusiastic about the exam archive project because they believe that if they ensure easy availability of previous exam papers, this can be instrumental in improving the teaching methodology. " If the teacher knows that his previous exam papers are easily accessible, instead of repeating previous year questions, or questions that require just rote slogging, emphasis would be more on teaching and testing practicality and applicability,"notes Vinayak garg.

V.I.S.V.A.S. has currently membership of 80 students and a core working team of 20, which is assigned projects, and complete responsibility is assigned to the team for the innovation, progress and completion. " We generally have brainstorming sessions over a cup of coffee, where members bring problem and along with them the solution to remove the problem. It is the assignment of complete responsibility that generates interest among team members, and ensures that the idea of this social entrepreneurship doesn't die, "says Vinayak. To this Bhushan adds " we are not a complaint box, we don't want just problems. Neither are we a rebellious, anti IIT organization. We want people to come with logical problems but then volunteer to work on a logical solution too."

However like every other good thing, establishing V.I.S.V.A.S. came with many challenges. The first thing being clarity in people's mind about the vision and functioning. Both wanted to ensure that is doesn't create an anti IIT or rebellious image. Bhushan and Vinayak gave many presentations to students regarding working of V.I.S.V.A.S. Recalls Garg," we needed workforce, volunteers and some genuinely interested people who are ready to work on no profit, no loss." The initial steps required a lot of convincing. The initial expenses came from their pocket money, but with the growing popularity both are sure that today they can convince anybody for monetary aid. " V.I.S.V.A.S. is not costly. We dont need more than 5000-7000 a year," says Vinayak. But the difference has been immense and is being noticed by everybody.Also there have been efforts to integrate with other universities.
Like other IITD student bodies, there are no posts attached to V.I.S.V.A.S. Recruitment is purely on the basis of interest and commitment.The founders believe that a selfless team effort can only help the wave from dying out. Shinde realizes,"There will be many to give suggestions, but we need people who can convert ideas. Difference will come when people start realizing that they can do it. If everybody starts realizing this, then maybe we dont need a V.I.S.V.A.S. at all."

( Know more about V.I.S.W.A.S. @ www.visvas.org )

Get-o-robbed

I have in my hands this bottle of Gatorade, this 500 ml bottle which cost me 30 bucks. And I cannot feel worse after drinking it. At 60 Rs/ liter, petrol is cheaper than this brand. The very reason I bought this bottle was because I thought it is costing so much, there must be something great about it. Now I know the only thing great about it is that it costs you too much without having anything great about it. After all, what not can you buy in IIT at Rs 30 if you are hungry. You can have an entire dinner in Holistic or SAC at much cheaper rates. An aloo bun and a maggi. Come on! an entire Temptations which is much better than this stupid energy drink. And it doesn't even taste good. The orange flavor I unfortunately bought tasted like the ORS syrup the IIT hospital provides you when you have food poisoning or an upset stomach.

So let's see the nutritional information. The bottle gives 120 Kcal per 500 ml, which is approx. equivalent to that obtained from 200 ml of orange juice. Wait a second, there is more. It says, protein 0g, carbohydrates 6g,Fat 0g and sodium 43 mg. So finally these people have mixed salt in orange flavored water and sold it to me! And finally when I have this empty 500 ml bottle in my room, I can't even use it for filling water, it being so small. Looks like someone is making a lot of money by selling salt water in small bottles and calling it as sports drink. Organizers of sportech'09, do you smell potential sponsors?