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Pitchh… levelling the playing field between brands & agencies

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Pitchh is an online meeting ground for brands and agencies that has just got its covers taken off. Conceptualised as a B2B platform, it can help brands (organisations) find the right creative partners- these could be advertising agencies, marketing consultants, PR firms, freelancers, designers & individuals et al. Brands can create a pitch on the website and invite applications from interested partners. Agencies can look through the pitches by popularity, locations etc, reply to them and connect directly once the initial contact has been established.

Pitchh is based on the idea that the brand-agency relationship needs to break out from the shackles of predictability. Whenever brands invite pitches, it is always from the hallowed circle- the same set of big-ticket agencies. Smaller agencies, speciality creative boutiques or even individuals that might do justice to the job on hand never get a call-in. Even the brands that are tied to blue-chip ad agencies with multi-year contracts might sometimes need highly specialised (or short term) creative inputs that the agencies are ill-equipped to handle. Pitchh brings the internet into the equation – its ubiquitous reach acting as a level playing field in this lop-sided relationship.

Pitchh is the brain-child of Rajesh Lalwani, who runs Blogworks, a Delhi based strategic social media consultancy.

The model is similar to Elance (which is for designers) but focused on the brand-agency space. The service is currently free but future monetization will be based on a mix of the freemium model, advertising & sponsorships.

The idea beyond Pitchh is very promising indeed. And while its core proposition is directed at the organised brand-agency setup, I feel its bigger potential may lie with freelancers & individual consultants, at least for a start. It is not hard to imagine a focused online community of creative service seekers & providers.

Whats cooking in Pakistan’s Internet / Web2.0 industry?

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(This post is in response to a tip-off from Shahid Rana, one of the readers of Webyantra from Pakistan. He helped me compile this post as well)

Ever wondered what’s happening in the internet & Web2.0 space across the border in Pakistan? The internet base there is supposed to be app 3 million subscribers (most of which is dialup with only 100K broadband subscribers). The software exports out of Pakistan are galloping at 60% albeit on a small base ($116 million against previous years US$72 million). These numbers off course do not compare with India, yet there’s a fair bit of activity happening in the tech space there. Here’s a bunch of disparate facts/datapoints that would put things slightly in perspective, specially for an Indian audience.

Pakistans’ equivalent of TiE – The Organisation for Pakistani Entrepreneurs (OPEN) in Silicon Valley is possibly their equivalent of TiE. Launched in 2001, OPEN has chapters across major American cities. They do not seem to be having chapters in Pakistan though (please correct me if I am wrong) but are getting Pakistani startups to showcase their wares to the tech community in Silicon Valley as this report indicates.

TiE’s Pakistan Chapters – On its part, TiE has recently (June 08) launched its Islamabad chapter, making it the third city where they are present in Pakistan (Lahore & Karachi being the other two). Details here. While TiE is a global body, it has a distinct Indian origin. And this is interesting trivia- the “Indus” in TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) refers to the erstwhile Indus Valley Civilization from the Indian sub continent, which actually now falls in Pakistan.

Tech News & Blogs – One of the most widely read Pakistani techology blogs is Green & White, which covers software, telecom, marketing, advertising etc and has a sub section for Pakistan tech startups. WiredPakistan is another good blog and so are Tech Lahore & IT Tazee. TelecomPk is a very well written blog about the telecom industry in Pakistan. Add them to your RSS reader if you want to keep abreast of whats happening across the border.

Web 2.0 / Internet – One of the Pakistani startups to have made its mark in the Web 2.0 space is the Islamabad based Scrybe, the Flash/Flex based product that launched in 2006. Built originally to be an online calendar application, they seem to be evolving into an online productivity suite. Scrybe has received Series A funding from Adobe Systems in 2007.

Another company that deserves mention is Naseeb Networks, which runs a battery of websites. This includes Naseeb.com which is claimed to be the world’s largest social network for muslims, Rozee which is supposed to be the largest online recruitment website in Pakistan and RingPakistan which is into calling cards and telehony products. Naseen has recently raised Series B venture funding from two Silicon Valley venture Capital firms – ePlanet Ventures (ePlanet) and Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ).

Naseeb (the social network) incidentally has a basic free version, but many of the features that are standard in social networking sites (e.g. browse profiles invisibly) are available only if you sign up as a paid premium member. Details here.

Online Job space – Check out this slide deck from BrightSpyre, one of the biggest Pakistani online job portals. The other notables ones are Rozee & Mustakbil, and Alexa seems to suggest that Rozee is a clear leader amongst the three, inspite of what the deck claims about BrightSpyre.



Resource List– For a list of technology resources and service providers in Pakistan, check out this & this.

If you have other things to add here, please leave it behind in the comments and I’ll update the post.