Punekhel.com – One of the most exciting projects I have done in my so called ‘glory days’. It was a concept conceived by Sunder and I must say it was way too forward thinking for that period of time. You all must be wondering ‘what was punekhel’?
Punekhel.com was an ambitious online website to bond sports lovers in Pune ( A small town near Mumbai, INDIA). The idea was to educate people about history of sports in Pune.
Pune’s claim to fame in World Sports are:
1. Badminton was originated in Pune.
2. The Balewadi National games stadium (currently hosted Commonwealth youth games 08) is the fastest constructed stadium in the world, a guiness record (check guiness book of records for more details)
Well, keeping these things in mind we set out on the online project with our little army of senior journalists like Harry David, newer breed of journalists like Mickey Aigner, our website developers at glowcom, Jehan Kothary, Sunder and Sheetal and ofcourse myself as the manager of the project.
GREAT START
We were off to a flyer with the concept ( the concept was ever changing) I must say that Harry was brilliant with information gathering, Infact I remember spending a saturday at Harry’s house digging through all the piles of notes and newspaper cuttings stored in his loft!!!!!
Once the information was collected it was put together by Harry and i was then incharge to communicate between Glowcom and TSM. The moment we mapped the project I knew help was needed and we got Jehan Kothary on board.
Sachin, the resource provided to us for our website development was fantastic and I actully messed with his mind on the design and website development elements for the website. He has indeed done a good job.
WHAT WENT WRONG
Once the initial information was put up online, we were in a tizzy as to what to do with the website. Thats where the conflict of opinion started and the project was left high and dry.
Sunder was looking at the website as a community site which gives out information and gets people together whereas I was looking t it from purely commercial purpose with moving the website to:
1. Online retail
2. Subscription based activities
3. Social networking
Basically, spinning of the website to a revenue generating property. However, things didnt go quite the way we wanted. Inspite of numerous resons on making it more social networking style it was lurking in the free community information based / educative category, this really irked me!!!!!!
Maybe, we underestimated the future of Internet in India. My idea of revenue generation through online retail, advertising programs, Subscription and a possible publishing plan fell to deaf years!!!!
REFLECTIONS
Its been 4-5 Years now that a fantasy idea that once was took some shape but dies a premature death – punekhel.com, the idea that was underestimated comes back to me and haunts me!!!! We misssed out out on the first movers advantage to take the concept nation wide and I still regret it all.
Look at Mark Zukerberg and his Facebook. I was thinking on the similar lines, but everyone else under estimated the plan. (Not that I am saying that we were looking at something on the scale of Fabebookor Orkut or Bebo)
However, there are not many such websites in on the websphere, which means opportunity to develop something similar does exist, and just a message to anyone who is planning something similar – Look beyond the bigger picture as nothing can stop you from doing what you want not old fasioned thoughts nor can markets or economies!
Everything is possible if you dream of it!
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