BUSINESS PLAN: CAMPBUZZ.

COM

TeSONAM CHAWLA FB09116

Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ............................................................................................................................. 2 The business concept .......................................................................................................................... 2 Value proposition ................................................................................................................................ 2 MARKET ANALYSIS................................................................................................................................... 3 Market Potential (Statistics on the higher education system of India) .................................................. 3 Trends ................................................................................................................................................. 3 Competition ........................................................................................................................................ 3 Market Segments ................................................................................................................................ 4 Market (Initial Target) in Next 2 years: ................................................................................................. 5 TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY ........................................................................................................................... 6 Functional requirements ..................................................................................................................... 6 Non-functional requirements .............................................................................................................. 6 Software and Hardware Requirements for Users ................................................................................. 7 System Interfaces ................................................................................................................................ 7 Customer Support ............................................................................................................................... 7 Risk Assessment .................................................................................................................................. 8 Failure Immunity ................................................................................................................................. 8 FINANCIAL VIABILITY ............................................................................................................................... 9 Cost analysis ........................................................................................................................................ 9 Expenses over the years .................................................................................................................... 10 Projected cash flows in coming years ................................................................................................. 11 IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY................................................................................................................ 13 Target market .................................................................................................................................... 13 Marketing .......................................................................................................................................... 13 ORGANIZATIONAL MAP ......................................................................................................................... 15 Roles and Responsibilities .................................................................................................................. 15 Resources Available ........................................................................................................................... 15

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The business concept
Graduate and Post-Graduate colleges are the home for the young crowd of the country. It is from this crowd the marketers find innovators, early adopters and active users for their products. Almost throughout the year, these colleges organize national level events and contests. The footfall and the participation in these events present an opportunity for promotion of various businesses catering to youth segment. The purpose of our website is to act as a single convergence point for all the information related to these activities. It will be a win-win situation for the colleges, who want to promote their events; for students, who need information on all the events based on their interests; and the advertisers, who want online promotion.

Value proposition
We have classified the website information into three categories: 1. Events, like seminars or workshops which are organized by colleges 2. Contests, with prizes up for grabs 3. News, which will showcase latest happenings across the colleges This system will help users from colleges to plan, manage and promote their events. Students can also vouch for sponsors and at the same time promote their existing sponsors. And for the students, who want to participate in these events, it could be tracker of all events. The features given in the website will help them to plan for the events which they would like to be a part of. Our website will be integrated with various social media networks such as facebook, Google location services, email and SMS services as methods for selling and advertising.

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MARKET ANALYSIS

Market Potential (Statistics on the higher education system of India)

Number of Universities: 230 Number of Colleges: 16855 Number of Students: 99.54 Lakhs Number of B-Schools: 2400 Number of students in B-Schools: 4 Lakhs

Trends
The Indian higher education system has been continuously witnessing robust growth post liberalization. Student enrollments in the country have grown to over 12 Million in 2009, from just 0.1 Million in 1947 There is 100% internet penetration among this community (B School) and also increase in internet penetration in other higher education colleges. With increasing private investment and government spending, the entire growth rate for the education industry is predicted to be at 21% for the next 3 years

Competition
The present way of promoting various B School events is primarily through word of mouth, print media, mailers etc. Our portal will start as a supplement to this method of promotion, so the existing method is not expected to compete with our portal.

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Current operators employ an information portal based approach for sharing information related to B-School events In contrast, we plan to use a marketing based approach whereby the portal will market the events on behalf of the B-School event organizers thus reducing the effort at their end Other differentiators will include dedicated web pages to market B-School events, event tracking, event notification services, mailing upcoming event information to registered users based on their interests

Market Segments
The market is segmented geographically as well as based on the type of education.

National: B Schools Technical Design Others

International: B Schools Technical

The Market is targeted first geographically and then on its potential: Phase 1: Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Top 100 Colleges/ Schools across India

Phase 2: Europe, America, Australia, New Zealand, Asia Pacific. (Only English speaking nations across the globe). The colleges and schools will be targeted based on the potential.
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Phase 3: Other States in India. The other countries will be targeted based on the success of website in phase 2.

Market (Initial Target) in Next 2 years

Primary Drivers: The B School activities happening across the top 20 B Schools would be the primary drivers of traffic to this portal, so all services to these B Schools would be free of cost.

In addition, the portal would enable companies to tap this niche segment accessing this portal. For example, companies such as educational Services (such as books, loans etc.), job consultancies, telecom companies etc. can advertise their products/services on our portal to target the student community. We plan to tap revenues from affiliate online marketing with such businesses.

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TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY
Software Requirement Specification (SRS) document is prepared to understand the technical feasibility of the system, along with the flow charts. The summary of the SRS is as follows:

Functional requirements
Posting events and contests held in their colleges. Adding, editing and publishing of the events Providing them the templates to showcase their events in a nice and presentable way (if they want) Providing them the flexibility to add any related files like images, videos, PDFs, PPTs etc. Providing them the features to conduct online events from the website itself Provides registration and email facility for future correspondence and database build-up Giving features like calendar and events planner for personal planning Adequate searching mechanisms for easy and quick search based on the interest of the users Unique webpage for each college where the information about the college and the student bodies conducting the events can be posted Regular updates of the events and related news on the homepage Special testimonials from the event winners and key personalities visiting the campus events Discussion forums for different topics and also under each event Internet traffic auditing mechanism for gauging the return on investment

Non-functional requirements
Get the users database build-up through sign-ups on the website.

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24 X 7 availability Better component design to get better performance at peak time Advertisement space where it will effectively catch the users attention and as a source of revenue

Reports generated periodically to track the traffic Automated moderation for the content posted by the users

Software and Hardware Requirements for Users

Software Requirements PHP Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

Hardware Requirements CPU Intel Pentium and above RAM 1 GB Hard disk Any size Browser: Any browser (Google Chrome, Opera, Mozilla, Mobile browser, Safari etc)

System Interfaces
There is no external database interaction to fetch the data from. The data are posted through social network websites, so there will be no direct interface with the system.

Customer Support
Online user help with all the necessary help needed to use the site in a bulletin format. Problem addressable forms Software and database specification Details of rules and regulation to all users
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Risk Assessment
The main constraint here would be the checking the genuineness of the person posting the event, which is not always possible. The database must have information about all POCs which can be cross-checked while posting. The design constraints are that the browser at each place may not follow similar screen resolutions, browsers etc. This can lead to the website not having the impact it is planned to have. Also storage space constraints may come if the listing becomes too large. Hence a strong server needs to be chosen to host the database. A partitioned database design may have to be considered and be more appropriate.

Failure Immunity
The system is easy to load and light. It adds to the quality and usability of the system. Some others quality considerations such as adaptability, availability, correctness, flexibility, interoperability, maintainability, portability, reliability, reusability, robustness, testability, and usability will also be very seriously taken to consideration.

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FINANCIAL VIABILITY
Cost analysis
The website bears one time development cost in the first year. Website hosting charges and charges for database and server will vary over the years depending upon growing number of users and features. The marketing costs will be high in first two years when we will be following the aggressive promotional strategy. The offline promotion will cost us more in the first two years. Once we get the visibility, we expect a viral effect which is - increased visibility with increased website clicks. The principles of Search Engine Optimisation hold true here. Once online promotion sets in, we expect a decrease in marketing expenditures in further years. Following table quantifies the above cost items:

Cost item

Cost(INR)

Website design Home-Page design Other navigated pages(Dynamic content) @ Rs.800 per page Logo design (.GIF image) 8000 7200 3700

Domain registration(.com) per year

600

Maintenance and up-gradation cost (per year)

5000

Server and Database cost

7000

Marketing and promotional expenses Number of Calls(15 mins for each call) Cost of each Calls Annual Travel Cost for approx.50 locations a year Human Resource Budget and other miscellaneous expenses Total expenses for first year 10000 15000 30000 200000 286500
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Expenses over the years

Following table summarizes the expenses over next five years. The items are grouped from above table. The assumptions have been written within brackets with each expense item: Year-wise expenses Year 2011 Expense item 2012 2013 2014 2015

One time website design expenses(assuming that on an average two pages will be added every year till first three years of development) Domain registration cost Maintenance and up-gradation cost (Assuming inflation as 6%) Server and database cost Marketing and promotional expenses(Maximum in first two years, then decreased) 255000 255000 100000 100000 100000 5000 7000 5300 7420 5618 5955.08 6312.385 18900 600 1600 636 1600 0 0

674.16 714.6096 757.4862

7865.2 8337.112 8837.339

Total

286500 269956 115757.4 115006.8 115907.2

These expenses are on higher side and are expected to reduce as we move above the learning curve over the time.

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Projected cash flows in coming years

There are two means of generating revenues through our website. These are: 1. Revenue generation through direct advertisements from colleges, event sponsors and corporates 2. Affiliate marketing for other related website by providing them back-links We will not be charging any fees from any college who wish to associate with us by hosting their events through our website. We will provide them assistance in developing creative promotional campaigns at free of cost. The advertisement revenues are on the basis of Pay Per Click (PPC). These revenues will be tracked through tools like Google Analytics at free of cost. Following table summarizes the cash flows over the years.

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Year 2011 Projected cash flows Expected number of colleges registered in that year Cumulative number of users generated from colleges(average200 users per college) Cumulative other users(including the participants from other colleges who have not registered) Cumulative number of advertisements Advertising revenue ( pay per click of 0.12 $, with $1=INR 45) and click through rate of 5% 3780 51030 348840 1109700 2505600 2 7 19 30 40 3000 13000 30000 55000 90000 4000 14000 38000 82000 142000 20 50 120 220 300 2012 2013 2014 2015

Number of affiliate websites Revenue from affiliates(average Rs.60 Per website)

50

120

200

350

500

3000

7200

12000

21000

30000

Total revenues Total expenditure

6780

58230 360840 1130700 115006

2535600 115907

286500 269956 115757 -

Total cash in hand

279720 211726 245083 1015694

2419693

Based on above estimates, we will start earning after two years of launch of website. The first two years will be crucial as we will need guaranteed financial capital. Website content needs to be updated which should be outsourced, but we have not considered that option because of cost implications and moreover we want to control the content being posted. This will also be crucial in developing good relationships with all colleges.
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IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY

Target market
3 segments of customers shall constitute the core user base B Schools: B Schools can use this portal to market/publicize/promote their college events on a common platform.

B School Student community: The student community can leverage the information posted on this portal

Advertisers and companies: Advertisers/ companies can promote or market their brands/products among these 2 segments

Marketing
Offline marketing:

Target our college community through word of mouth Include a link of our portal in all emails meant to market BSchool fests to cultural secretaries and college coordinators of various B-schools. This is in line with the existing model of marketing BSchool events in which targeted mailers are sent to college coordinators to broadcast event information

Meet cultural secretaries across BSchools and visit colleges within and around Mumbai to advertise the portal

Display the previous years content of key fests across B-schools, on the website, to showcase the portals marketing capability. This will help us to pitch our services to Bschools across India and eventually procure the details of various events occurring during their fests.
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Online marketing:

With the growth of social networking, we plan to leverage social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook to promote the services provided by our portal

Tie ups with sites such as MBAdepot, Career Launcher that are frequently visited by the target community, to advertise our portal

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ORGANIZATIONAL MAP
Roles and Responsibilities
1. Business/ System Analyst a. Coordinating with website developer vendor b. Requirement gathering for the system in product development phase as well as any changes or any enhancement during maintenance phase. 2. Marketer a. Farmer as well as Hunter role b. Relationship with colleges/ schools event coordinator c. Advertising through Social media to the target customer d. Approaching Company to use website for advertisements 3. Financer a. Managing the total Expenditure b. Manage the total revenue generation through advertisement c. Other ways to generate revenue 4. Customer Supporter a. Responding to the customer complaints b. Providing support to the customers c. Relationship maintaining with the Customers

Resources Available
Name Vineet Taneja Experience 34 Months, IT experience in JAVA 35 Months, IT experience in JAVA 45 Months, IT experience as Business Analyst Qualification B. Tech. (Mechanical Engineering), MBA-Marketing B. Tech. (Electrical Engineering), MBA-Marketing B.E. (Computer Science) , MBA Marketing Role and Responsibilities Website content management, online and offline promotion and financial analysis Website content management, online and offline promotion Business/ System Analyst

Amitesh Singh

Sumit Kumar

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