Business Opportunities Corner: Making Ice-Cubes

"Thimphu is a cold place" is the sentence taught at our schools. Whether summers are getting hotter from year to year or else Thimphupas are becoming more sensitive, there are quite a bunch of shops in Thimphu now selling air-conditioners.

But how about "cooling from within"? A few entrepreneurs have already started offering great services: Sonam Tshoey's ice cream cups, Willy's ice cream parlor, and the cafes offering frozen drinks are some examples.

This brings me to our Ice-Cube Making business opportunity. We volunteered to run a small lemonade stand at the upcoming sports day at a local school to revive the many sweating & thirsty kids. I therefore went in search of ice cubes but nobody seems to know of any such joint.

Using social media for classified ads

 Need to sell your auntie's rice cooker, a used Alto or your "old" iPhone 4? Check out B-Bay, an open Facebook group for "Buying and selling second hand stuffs in Bhutan". Created about two months ago by Passang "Passu" Tshering, the group already boasts more than 850 members.  Using Facebook for classified ads has an interesting advantage. While scams are common on websites such as E-Bay and Craigslist (which are very popular in other countries), it is much harder to cheat on B-Bay: You often know the real person behind the Facebook user, especially in a relatively small and tight-knit society such as Bhutan.

A small favour from Google

From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, search giant Google has online presence in over 180 countries, including Bhutan's long-time football rival, tiny Montserrat at google.ms.

Thus, the obvious question: Isn't it prime time for www.google.bt? Surprisingly, the domain is currently available for purchase, arguably one of the last Google domains still not taken. Yes, I know: International companies have to pay a hefty Nu 3,000 per year (around US$70) to register a .bt domain ("exclusive of bank transfer charges"), but with Google's last year's revenue at around Nu 1.3 trillion (!), I have a gut feeling the company can afford this lavish expense.

So please, if you happen to meet Google's CEO, Mr. Larry Page, kindly ask him to consider google.bt. And please let him know that these types of things are better resolved in a civil manner, or else Google might be running the risk of a well-organized campaign via a Facebook page... ;-)

Artist's rendition of Google Bhutan's future home page © 2011 ThimphuTech.com

Raising the next generation of "Fair & Lovely" consumers

"When I grow up, I want to look Indian!"

If you want to help your "dark-skinned" child to develop a slight inferiority complex, I have a simple recipe: Take her to any Gini and Jony shop. This high-end Indian retailer of children's clothing has hundreds of outlets all over the subcontinent, and a branch was opened recently in Thimphu. Naturally, I went to see what the buzz is all about.

New server to improve response time, not bandwidth

The Kuensel recently reported that according to Bhutan Telecom officials, "internet services would be much faster" following the launch of a new DNS server. Unfortunately, this is not accurate. While we might notice an improvement in the response time  - i.e., the time it takes until the download or upload starts - the download and upload speeds are not expected to improve dramatically.

Is Bhutan becoming less "interesting"?

One of Google's most fascinating tools is Insights for Search, which lets you compare search patterns across time and geography (a more basic version is Google Trends). I've decided to see whether more people are searching for "Bhutan" lately, which might indicate a rising interest in the country. Looking at the results, searches shot up during historical events - around the mock elections, the actual elections, and of course the coronation of His Majesty. But otherwise, the trend line demonstrates a slow but constant decline of searches beginning in January 2004 (when Google first started to collect this data) and reaching the bottom in December 2009, when activity slowly started to pick up again. Now whether interest in Bhutan is desirable or not is a whole different question.

Bhutan Post takes advantage of SMS technology

Yesterday morning I received an SMS from Bhutan Post:

You may kindly collect your parcel from our General Post Office, Thimphu during working hours - BHUTAN POST - Your Friendly Service Provider

I rushed down to the post office and a package was indeed waiting for me. I found out that the IT department at Bhutan Post recently installed a system that sends out these messages to the recipients of parcels. A fine use of SMS technology, and another example of Bhutan Post's all-around fantastic service.