Some of my friends were interested in knowing more about Semantic Web. I thought to write some blog entries dedicating to Semantic Web, as it was my research theme in Austria. The thoughts I am pinning down are my own thoughts, the way I understand what Semantic Web implies to do, some people may agree or disagree with that.
Understanding Semantic Web (Part-1)
On a simple note, Semantic Web wants to foster machine to machine communication to make more smart services available on the internet. Today's web is meant primarily for humans. Any content or service provider on the internet provides an HTML web page to his/her service. Any user comes to the website, looks at the particular information and is done. HTML web pages can be as simple as a home page, a blog, news web site to an email service and as complex as an enterprise level ERP service.
So what does Semantic Web do to the Internet of today? Before answering this question, it might be relevant to look into what all we do on internet today. What is the problem that we are facing today?
Internet provides a level playing field where each individual can play its part. This has resulted in huge overload of information. Everyone wants to have an online presence.
Search Engines
--------------
Search engines like Google, Yahoo act as an entry point to the Internet. They need to make relevant information available to the users. Google and Yahoo are able to very effectively search for "specific" information. But how do I search for multimedia images related to Taj Mahal which I can make use of without violating any copyright. Today's search engines are mainly keyword based or some have context associated with keywords e.g. Distinguishing Jaguar as an animal from Jaguar as a vehicle.
Specialized search engines like priceline takes information about products from multiple web sites and then on their end makes them available as a single service. These websites need to always maintain consistency as they have to extract data (such as price, product, features etc.) from HTML from original content provder. Adding new content providers is a headache and moving between domains and integrating multiple domains is quite hard. A common vocabulary would solve the problem of sharing information.
Application Services
--------------------
Application Services e.g. emails, calendar tools, messengers, social networking websites. A service provider like yahoo, google and others provide application services to the user via the web. Big content providers provide even an integration platform between multiple such services. The most common approach for integration is to build a specific protocol. So there is IMAP for emails, iCal for calendar tools, WEB-DAV for distributed authoring on internet etc. But now the next question comes, if I want to integrate data from multiple sources, integrating gmail with a yahoo calendar service, We face a classic integration problem.
Most of the times a content provider provides such an integrable service e.g. yahoo already has an email, so why will it enable gamil on its messenger? Or alternatively, a new startup or a team finds a particular need and comes with a solution.
Enterprise Services
-------------------
Enterprises face this integration problem from every bunch of work they do - from merging data at the database level to integrating an enterprise level service. How do I combine multiple databases and have a common unified view? How do I integrate services once I move into middleware services? Can integration work be minimized or automated? Enterprises spend billions of dollars just on Integration Efforts.
Future Services
---------------
Then there are questions of some other things which don't exist on the Internet, but people have from long hoped they will arrive one day, Smart Agents. A personal agent that handles everything for you. Smart Services also belong to the same category. So if I am doing anything repeatedly, why can't a smart service just handle it. Copy-paste on the desktop works still at the syntactic level, why can't I have a semantic copy-paste available ? Why can't I use my data on mobile, PC, and internet as a single service.
As an individual user needs increase much more dynamically, how do we provide dynamic services catered to a specific user? If a content provider does not provide a service, can someone else provide it or perhaps just "Integrate" from existing building blocks.
Saturday 30 April 2005
Internet Advertising - its HOT
Via Emergic.
What would happen if there are more people accessing content and services from their personal devices, can an internet giant revolutionize wireless advertising?
The Economist writes that "Google's new advertising service could make the internet an even more valuable marketing medium."
This year the combined advertising revenues of Google and Yahoo! will rival the combined prime-time ad revenues of America's three big television networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, predicts Advertising Age. It will, says the trade magazine, represent a "watershed moment" in the evolution of the internet as an advertising medium.
What would happen if there are more people accessing content and services from their personal devices, can an internet giant revolutionize wireless advertising?
Thursday 28 April 2005
Breaking the Monopoly
Via Emergic
That's also what we are trying to do at Wirkle by building an environment which delivers content to users without going through the carrier. Carrier strong hold will decrease as we move forward, but I think just having cool applications will not affect the carriers. There needs to strong effective services and an equivalent business model proposition for everyone (content providers, users, platform providers) etc. Certain services like push based services are initiated by the carrier and are hard to tackle without carrier's support. Innovative business models can help solve such problems.
Mary Hodder writes: "I had an idea the other night, at the 106 miles meeting, that we should develop applications for cell phones that creatively route around the carriers. And we most definitely should not use their framing of the customer situation: 'consumers' and 'enterprise', to describe the possible user markets. I think what's key to breaking the cellular provider stranglehold is developing cool apps that can sit on phones, but that only require users to download these apps in simple ways (not through carriers but through web access and SMS messages sending them the link to the web download). That way carriers will lose the monopoly they have on users access to applications. Because the phone IS the platform, not PC's."
That's also what we are trying to do at Wirkle by building an environment which delivers content to users without going through the carrier. Carrier strong hold will decrease as we move forward, but I think just having cool applications will not affect the carriers. There needs to strong effective services and an equivalent business model proposition for everyone (content providers, users, platform providers) etc. Certain services like push based services are initiated by the carrier and are hard to tackle without carrier's support. Innovative business models can help solve such problems.
Sunday 24 April 2005
Why Indians kill themselves?
Recently there have been two incidents dealing with services provided by indian companies which caused unnecessary frusturation. Two sectors: banking and mobile services have said to cause a revolution in India. But at the ground level if one sees how they operate, a common man still feels frusturated.
Today morning, I went to ICICI bank branch in South Delhi for opening a savings account. I thought it should have been pretty simple, but that's what added to my woes. I was shocked to know that ICICI doesn't open a bank account unless one doesn't have account in another bank in the same city. They need a cheque from one of my another bank account in New Delhi. But since I don't belong to Delhi and am only living there from last 6 months, I cannot open a bank account unless I first open a bank account in another bank. They won't take cash, won't take an outstation cheque and don't have any other mechanism in place. I was ready to give any kind of authentication proof, but no solution.
And when I asked the concerned person, "Isn't it ridiculous?" And he just gave a meeky smile and said "Yeah".
This is the state of indian services and we boast even of that. I remember opening a bank account in Austria, took 5 minutes and they didn't even take a single penny, not even a photograph!
Last Week, I had this another unique experience of taking a mobile connection from one of India's famous mobile providers - Airtel. The connection is an Instant Postpaid connection enabling both prepaid and postpaid facilities. I made 6-7 calls during the week ahead to enquire the status of activation of my postpaid connection. But the customer care over there is as bad as it can be. Sometimes I feel they have been just made to sit over there without any knowledge. They just want to bang the call down as fast as possible. My dual prepaid+postpaid connection resulted in double woes. Now the Airtel customer care has been divided into two parts - where one number is only for prepaid customers and another number is for postpaid customers. Companies are trying to have a single window and they already fragmented their stuff. And the two different customer care's won't even answer any query which is mean't for the other customer care.
And with Instant Postpaid, I had an experience where the postpaid customer care asked me to contact prepaid one and when I dialled the prepaid customer care, they asked me to contact postpaid one. That's the height!!!
And kind of responses I got from customer care, when I enquired about the status of activation on the 8th day (activation is done within 5 days) were totally amusing. One person said, it takes 7 days to activate, there were 3-4 holidays, so "wait another week". I mean why are you trying to fool the customer! I asked him, isn't it 5 days? And then he said yeah, but holidays. And there weren't those many holidays, just a weekend. I asked him to number the holidays.
And getting GPRS activation over it was another headache, my first call's reponse was: activation after 4 hours, second call: said 1 hour, third call said another 4 hours - try tomorrow. And even next day they had their problems. Finally got it working by lunch time.
We people boast a lot but ground realities are quite different. We provide lot of 24X7 services to US consumers but why can't we provide efficient services for indian consumers!
Today morning, I went to ICICI bank branch in South Delhi for opening a savings account. I thought it should have been pretty simple, but that's what added to my woes. I was shocked to know that ICICI doesn't open a bank account unless one doesn't have account in another bank in the same city. They need a cheque from one of my another bank account in New Delhi. But since I don't belong to Delhi and am only living there from last 6 months, I cannot open a bank account unless I first open a bank account in another bank. They won't take cash, won't take an outstation cheque and don't have any other mechanism in place. I was ready to give any kind of authentication proof, but no solution.
And when I asked the concerned person, "Isn't it ridiculous?" And he just gave a meeky smile and said "Yeah".
This is the state of indian services and we boast even of that. I remember opening a bank account in Austria, took 5 minutes and they didn't even take a single penny, not even a photograph!
Last Week, I had this another unique experience of taking a mobile connection from one of India's famous mobile providers - Airtel. The connection is an Instant Postpaid connection enabling both prepaid and postpaid facilities. I made 6-7 calls during the week ahead to enquire the status of activation of my postpaid connection. But the customer care over there is as bad as it can be. Sometimes I feel they have been just made to sit over there without any knowledge. They just want to bang the call down as fast as possible. My dual prepaid+postpaid connection resulted in double woes. Now the Airtel customer care has been divided into two parts - where one number is only for prepaid customers and another number is for postpaid customers. Companies are trying to have a single window and they already fragmented their stuff. And the two different customer care's won't even answer any query which is mean't for the other customer care.
And with Instant Postpaid, I had an experience where the postpaid customer care asked me to contact prepaid one and when I dialled the prepaid customer care, they asked me to contact postpaid one. That's the height!!!
And kind of responses I got from customer care, when I enquired about the status of activation on the 8th day (activation is done within 5 days) were totally amusing. One person said, it takes 7 days to activate, there were 3-4 holidays, so "wait another week". I mean why are you trying to fool the customer! I asked him, isn't it 5 days? And then he said yeah, but holidays. And there weren't those many holidays, just a weekend. I asked him to number the holidays.
And getting GPRS activation over it was another headache, my first call's reponse was: activation after 4 hours, second call: said 1 hour, third call said another 4 hours - try tomorrow. And even next day they had their problems. Finally got it working by lunch time.
We people boast a lot but ground realities are quite different. We provide lot of 24X7 services to US consumers but why can't we provide efficient services for indian consumers!
Wednesday 20 April 2005
Skypecasting
By Samuel Rose on Smart Mobs and the Power of the Mobile Many
New Scientist reports (subscription) on the phenomenon of "Skypecasting".
From the NS article:
...Skype was designed to allow users to make free telephone calls over the internet. But the sound quality is excellent and the software also allows callers to exchange files and play music while they are talking. Radio buffs are now exploiting the new technology to become both interviewer and DJ on a shoestring budget. In doing so, they may be starting a broadcasting revolution, one that democratises the industry and makes the amateur broadcaster king.
Skypecasting, as it is called, is possible because of another trend dubbed podcasting. Podcasts are MP3 files that are automatically delivered to subscribers' MP3 players when posted online...Now with Skype, podcasters can do more than just post an album by their favourite band or record a monologue on current events. They can interview a band on the other side of the world before playing its latest set, or bring together overseas experts to discuss a topic. With a little know-how, Skype allows these conversations and music clips to be saved as MP3 files, posted online and then automatically downloaded by listeners.
What's more, it's cheap. With Skype, people can be added to a conference call at no extra cost.
Success & Failure
Definition of success and failure is different for different people. For some failure means the ultimate death and for some its a learning step for the next big thing.
Rajesh Jain articulated very well on his post about Why Failure Happens:
- Too much Vision
- Wrong Idea
- Wrong Product
- Inability to Sell
- People Mistakes
- Flawed Execution
But a true entrepreneur has a never die attitude. Great entrepreneurs want to solve hard problems. They want to cause fundamental shift in businesses. But what causes this fundamental shift in businesses ?
Do fundamental shifts occur by having a great vision or is it one builds a vision as one is following a particular path. I myself yet don't know the answer. There might be both category of people but I am getting more biased towards people while pursuing their interest reach a point where they can validate their stuff which later on leads to building up of a company with great vision. Google, Yahoo are great examples. I don't think the founders would have thought the scale that they are at today while they were at stanford.
Loss of focus and following the right strategy is very important at every stage in a startup. Trying to follow two strategies together often results in a big loss of resources, time, money and doesn't give in the returns. This is what I experienced it personally. But getting to know what's the right strategy is a very tough job. And when one reaches a conclusion point, corrections need to be made and hard decisions need to be taken.
Moving from a job to starting your own venture is a lot different. One of the biggest thing it teaches you is Reality. How to deal not with software but with People!
Rajesh Jain articulated very well on his post about Why Failure Happens:
- Too much Vision
- Wrong Idea
- Wrong Product
- Inability to Sell
- People Mistakes
- Flawed Execution
But a true entrepreneur has a never die attitude. Great entrepreneurs want to solve hard problems. They want to cause fundamental shift in businesses. But what causes this fundamental shift in businesses ?
Do fundamental shifts occur by having a great vision or is it one builds a vision as one is following a particular path. I myself yet don't know the answer. There might be both category of people but I am getting more biased towards people while pursuing their interest reach a point where they can validate their stuff which later on leads to building up of a company with great vision. Google, Yahoo are great examples. I don't think the founders would have thought the scale that they are at today while they were at stanford.
Loss of focus and following the right strategy is very important at every stage in a startup. Trying to follow two strategies together often results in a big loss of resources, time, money and doesn't give in the returns. This is what I experienced it personally. But getting to know what's the right strategy is a very tough job. And when one reaches a conclusion point, corrections need to be made and hard decisions need to be taken.
Moving from a job to starting your own venture is a lot different. One of the biggest thing it teaches you is Reality. How to deal not with software but with People!
Friday 15 April 2005
Kwickee
From Kwickee's website:
Kwickee enables content providers money for their content. See this.
Kwickee on WirelessDevNet.
Kwickee figures in mobile perals of the year Mobile Technology Blog.
Kwickee™, The Mobile Information Exchange™, is a platform that allows anyone or any company to share information, knowledge and experiences. Using mobile phones we deliver Kwickee™ directly to the end user whenever and wherever they are in the UK!
A Kwickee™ can be as much as 5,000 characters (about a page and a half of text) and is therefore over 30 times larger than a 160 character SMS text message.
Kwickee enables content providers money for their content. See this.
Kwickee on WirelessDevNet.
Kwickee figures in mobile perals of the year Mobile Technology Blog.
Thursday 14 April 2005
Changing Face of Content
For any website, to keep up, having a live community around it is very important. This is what makes them lively, increases page views and affects revenues. My belief is as we move into the future, people would like to access content not in the way content providers provide, but the way users want it. Already aggregation services like bloglines, RSS etc. are showing this up. But this is just a small part of the whole big shift that's occuring slowly.
People use different tools like Yahoo Mail, some different calendar tools, native address books etc. But getting and combining information is still a lot difficult. When I want to email someone using Yahoo, I need to find contact information from a different address book tool. Or I cannot club up all different emails in one place. Current solution is to choose a provider which provides a package of all such services. But this is equivalent to NO solution.
Semantic Web wants to solve this problem via building complex ontologies. I think that makes it more than complex. My view is content providers need to publish interfaces to any thing that they publish. So no just pure HTML, publish REST style interfaces, publish SOAP interfaces or just pure XML structured content. Any application that exists today, calendar tools, email, e-groups, messaging - everything needs to have an external interface.
There are lot more smarter people/companies on internet who can combine information in interesting ways to give smarter solutions. Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay are already doing interesting stuff. RSS is just a beginning, other mature things will follow soon.
Where do content providers stand in this? Will they not loose revenue in this ? Why will they do it?
They will need to do it, because users want such services. User need will drive such a change. May be in short term they loose revenue, but I think solutions will appear which will give revenue to content provider and at the same time make things more usable for the users.
One can make use of the application/ content interfaces for delivering simple, powerful and effective services to the user on mobile devices. Wireless which provides an easy model for doing micropayments will enable a much bigger revenue model for the content provider.
People use different tools like Yahoo Mail, some different calendar tools, native address books etc. But getting and combining information is still a lot difficult. When I want to email someone using Yahoo, I need to find contact information from a different address book tool. Or I cannot club up all different emails in one place. Current solution is to choose a provider which provides a package of all such services. But this is equivalent to NO solution.
Semantic Web wants to solve this problem via building complex ontologies. I think that makes it more than complex. My view is content providers need to publish interfaces to any thing that they publish. So no just pure HTML, publish REST style interfaces, publish SOAP interfaces or just pure XML structured content. Any application that exists today, calendar tools, email, e-groups, messaging - everything needs to have an external interface.
There are lot more smarter people/companies on internet who can combine information in interesting ways to give smarter solutions. Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay are already doing interesting stuff. RSS is just a beginning, other mature things will follow soon.
Where do content providers stand in this? Will they not loose revenue in this ? Why will they do it?
They will need to do it, because users want such services. User need will drive such a change. May be in short term they loose revenue, but I think solutions will appear which will give revenue to content provider and at the same time make things more usable for the users.
One can make use of the application/ content interfaces for delivering simple, powerful and effective services to the user on mobile devices. Wireless which provides an easy model for doing micropayments will enable a much bigger revenue model for the content provider.
Americans - Top Mobile Spenders
Via MocoNews:
Complete link here.
“In the United States, 50 million cell phone owners are younger than 25 and will collectively spend $20 billion this year on their cell phones. American young people spend more on cell phone downloads - such as ringtones, music, games or the latest handsets - than any other country in the world, the research finds…According to the mobileYouth 2005 report released in late March, $1 in every $10 that children and young people now spend is related to their cell phone.” Which is pretty funny, considering that Asia and Europe are so far ahead of the US in terms of rolling out mobile content…
Complete link here.
Tuesday 12 April 2005
100 million and Growing
Today morning, I opened newspaper and found an interesting piece of information.
I knew the the mobile market in India is growing at a much rapid pace. Phone connections in India have just crossed the 100-million mark! I remember the days when everyone including my parents had to wait for months to get a phone connection. And if you want instant connection (instant meant delay of a month or two months), you had to pay huge sum of money.
The tally at the 100-million mark is expected to be 54 million mobile phones and 46 million landlines. India is expected to have 200 million phone connections by 2007. The number of mobile connections have already overtaken number of landlines. I think indian people are a lot talkitive :-)
I knew the the mobile market in India is growing at a much rapid pace. Phone connections in India have just crossed the 100-million mark! I remember the days when everyone including my parents had to wait for months to get a phone connection. And if you want instant connection (instant meant delay of a month or two months), you had to pay huge sum of money.
The tally at the 100-million mark is expected to be 54 million mobile phones and 46 million landlines. India is expected to have 200 million phone connections by 2007. The number of mobile connections have already overtaken number of landlines. I think indian people are a lot talkitive :-)
Friday 8 April 2005
Sparring bouts with VC's and their associates
Via Venchar:
Jason Calcanis has a terrific post on his "sparring" bouts with VC's and their associates. A must read post.
Jason Calcanis has a terrific post on his "sparring" bouts with VC's and their associates. A must read post.
1. Hustle
2. Passion
3. Resiliency
You have those things it really doesn’t matter what the idea is… you can change your ideas all day long, in fact evolving is what you’re supposed to do in business. However, you can’t substitute hustle, passion, or resiliency.
Thursday 7 April 2005
WSP's Vs ISP's and Data Services
WSP's (Wireless Service Providers) or better known as Wireless Carriers.
ISP's or Internet Service Providers.
ISP's provide bandwidth to access internet on PC's and Wireless Carriers are providing voice over wireless networks. Things are slowly changing on both ends. VOIP is emerging as a big force in the ISP business. Companies like Vonage and Skype are changing the ISP's key role. And simultaneously data services are beginning to have a stronger impact on the mobile consumer.
Though some form of seemless convergence is beginning to appear, but for the consumer both these services are a lot different not just in terms of what they provide but also in terms how they are provided. On one hand accessing internet on PC's is becoming cheaper via ISP's and on the other hand cost for data for a consumer is increasing in the wireless world. The world of internet is more of free but on mobile devices, its the carrier who has a stronghold.
The business differs not just for the cosumer but on other businesses who make use of the network. Wireless carriers today charge anything between 30% to 70% for deploying an application on their platform. Sending multiple SMSes on a mobile device can cost you same as your cost of the monthly ISP connection.
Technologies like WIFI, WiMAX, 3G might increase bandwidth, decrease heterogenity but will the wireless network enjoy the freedom of the internet or the ISP business gets more tightened like the carrier?
I believe that future of data and bandwidth will be more open and cheaper in both these businesses. Though today the carriers control the content but in next 5 years, I think it might be someone else (not a carrier).
What needs to be provided?
Value proposition to a customer in a simpler cost effective way!
ISP's or Internet Service Providers.
ISP's provide bandwidth to access internet on PC's and Wireless Carriers are providing voice over wireless networks. Things are slowly changing on both ends. VOIP is emerging as a big force in the ISP business. Companies like Vonage and Skype are changing the ISP's key role. And simultaneously data services are beginning to have a stronger impact on the mobile consumer.
Though some form of seemless convergence is beginning to appear, but for the consumer both these services are a lot different not just in terms of what they provide but also in terms how they are provided. On one hand accessing internet on PC's is becoming cheaper via ISP's and on the other hand cost for data for a consumer is increasing in the wireless world. The world of internet is more of free but on mobile devices, its the carrier who has a stronghold.
The business differs not just for the cosumer but on other businesses who make use of the network. Wireless carriers today charge anything between 30% to 70% for deploying an application on their platform. Sending multiple SMSes on a mobile device can cost you same as your cost of the monthly ISP connection.
Technologies like WIFI, WiMAX, 3G might increase bandwidth, decrease heterogenity but will the wireless network enjoy the freedom of the internet or the ISP business gets more tightened like the carrier?
I believe that future of data and bandwidth will be more open and cheaper in both these businesses. Though today the carriers control the content but in next 5 years, I think it might be someone else (not a carrier).
What needs to be provided?
Value proposition to a customer in a simpler cost effective way!
Mobile Deployment Blues
Developing J2ME applications for mobile phones looks like a breeze but it can really be a pain. The pain is not the development but the deployment of such applications on multiple devices.
Recently I have witnessed a lot of such issues and majority of them have to do with just either inconsistency amongst different device manufacturers or perhaps not being able to come up with a standard or just bugs in firmware implementations.
J2ME applications don't have a standard way to get network connectivity from the underlying device OS. So your WAP connection works but not your J2ME application?
And to make matters worse, the carriers have no standard way to set GPRS settings for wide range of devices. More often your device is not supported by the carrier. I sometimes wonder how complex would it be for a non-techy person like my father to get and make those settings manually.
And then connectivity issues. In India I have tried Idea, Hutch and Airtel GPRS network. I have found Idea GPRS (WAP connection) to be worst. Its just too slow to do anything meaningful.
So be sure to resolve these differences, before your customer bangs on the door!!
Recently I have witnessed a lot of such issues and majority of them have to do with just either inconsistency amongst different device manufacturers or perhaps not being able to come up with a standard or just bugs in firmware implementations.
J2ME applications don't have a standard way to get network connectivity from the underlying device OS. So your WAP connection works but not your J2ME application?
And to make matters worse, the carriers have no standard way to set GPRS settings for wide range of devices. More often your device is not supported by the carrier. I sometimes wonder how complex would it be for a non-techy person like my father to get and make those settings manually.
And then connectivity issues. In India I have tried Idea, Hutch and Airtel GPRS network. I have found Idea GPRS (WAP connection) to be worst. Its just too slow to do anything meaningful.
So be sure to resolve these differences, before your customer bangs on the door!!
Sunday 3 April 2005
Rabble
Rabble - a newly launched mobile blogging, newsreader and networking tool.
From Rabble's website:
Yahoo says:
From Rabble's website:
Rabble enables a new kind of self-expression that informs, entertains and connects people through the media they create. Create your channel and post location-based media - your favorite places, photos or an up-to-the-minute newsworthy event. It's like putting virtual sticky notes on the world around you. Then connect with your world. Tell Rabble where you are and it will show you who is around you and the media they have created. Through bits of location-tagged media, find and interact with other people and get information you won't find in the yellow pages. Part blogging, part location-based personal networking, Rabble connects you with the world in a unique and intuitive way by turning "users" into "producers" and creating a marketplace for mobile user-generated content.
Yahoo says:
The application, called ``Rabble,'' streamlines the now-cumbersome process for publishing text or images from a cell phone to a Weblog. It also creates a way to search mobile blogs for items of interest -- from homes for sale in a particular neighborhood to updated tour information for a favorite band.
...
It combines the social-networking aspects of a Friendster with the enhanced search capabilities of a Google.
Friday 1 April 2005
TiE Business Delegation From US
Today I attended a business delegation from US arranged by TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs). It was my first such networking conference in India.
The day went on quite well and I met quite many people on a single day. Was quite different from my usual day doing and writing software code.
The day started with various panel discussions. All the panel discussions were quite good, led by extremely talented people.
First panel discussion: Where is the Indian IT Industry headed moderated by Kiran Karnik, President, Nasscom with panelists Ajai Chowdhry, Chairman &CEO, HCL Infosystems, Dan Sandhu, CEO, India & Head of Offshore Business, Vertex, India, Atul Dhawan, Deloitte Haskins & Sells.
One important thing that was part of the overall discussion was "scale". Companies in India growing at a massive rate and that was important to make India a global hub. People talked about statistics comparing India and China and talked about growth potential of Indian domestic market in hardware, internet (creating broadband content) and software (SME, health services and education). Dan Sandhu had an interesting perspective where he said indian operations should have "scale, scope and depth" in order to succeed.
The panel discussion and Q&A mainly dealt with India offshore operations, IT, BPO. I was happy to see the rising numbers but it made me ask my first question of the day! So in Q&A I asked:
What holds for technology startups in India? How can agencies like Nasscom and others help young entrepreneurs? When will we see the next google, amazon or ebay coming from India?
The answer to my question was mixed. And I think people know that there are lot many problems that still need to be solved. Some of them which they already talked about in the panel discussion. But this fact pinches me personally at times, we have such a big software industry, why isn't google, amazon, ebay really happening in India. Perhaps this is because of the fact that I am running my own startup, trying to establish my own small niche.
The second panel discussion:
Q&A with companies with investments from US based VCs on their experiences and expectations moderated by Bimal Sareen, Founder & CEO, Avaana and panelists Sushil Gupta, Vice President & MD, Atrenta India & Chirag Jain, VP & Head-India Operations, firstRain Software Centre Pvt.Ltd.
The discussion focussed around the issues of an Indian company getting funding from US VCs. The most important tip is: Get funding from where your customer is. If a company has customers in US, try to raise funding from US VCs as they will provide you with much needed contacts, networking and valuable information of the market. Both Avaana and First Rain raised good amount of money from the venture funds and performing good. Chirag provided another insight that a company should focus on the core product rather than trying to do short term gains for the numbers and this is what they learn't from their US VC.
In both these cases, the initial company formation was in US. So weather those are indian companies or US companies with india operations, its hard to draw the line. This was what even Kiran Karnik said in the first panel discussion. What is meant by an Indian company? Is it a company incorporated in India with global operations; a global company with 90% of its workforce in India or a company focused in Indian domestic market? Its hard to draw the line.
Third Panel Discussion:
Learnings recap : Moderated discussion with 3 members of the VC representatives, Frederick Bolander, Jorge Del Calvo & Ann Ralston on their experiences and learnings in India moderated by Vivek Agarwal, CEO, Liqvid eLearning Services Pvt.Ltd.
Some of the US venture funds are now trying to look into early stage ventures in India. Their experience about India has been very positive. But on the other hand they haven't got any breakthough or disruptive ideas from the people. Most of the people are pitching for low R&D cost which they say doesn't succeed in the long run. Secondly the idea has to be big enough in order to appeal.
This part of the talk was interesting and also led to my second question of the day! Apart from venture money, the key thing that young entrepreneurs need is mentorship. I am myself an IIT Delhi graduate, running a startup, know other 5-6 startups incubated in IIT Delhi, but in India there doesn't exist an ecosystem for startups. How are venture firms or other firms helping startups in that? There are no forums or not at the scale of what exists in silicon valley.
For that, some person from the TiE association told me that TiE has a mentorship programme for young entrepreneurs.
I was happy to know about it and I thank him. But I think that was not an answer to my question. so I raised a follow up question:
If people want to get together and discuss technology or want to mature their idea, where should they go? If I am in a university or a young entrepreneur, I want to do something, my efforts might not lead to a successful company at the moment - there is no platform or not at the scale what exists in silicon valley to discuss.
I didn't get an answer except that TiE provides mentorship activities. I appreciate what TiE does and its a brilliant forum. But I think we need not one TiE but perhaps 100 more TiE's. These have to be accessible to general people. Like easy access to capital, "Easy Access to Mentoring" is very crucial. Along with some business meetings in Taj, some workshops need to be conducted in campuses, lecture theatres, hostels.
Last Panel discussion was about Opportunities in Chandigarh. Being myself from around Chandigarh, I wanted to see it develop as an IT hub. I think government policies in the past have screwed it in a big way. Let's hope things change for a better in the future. Good to know there is an incubation center in PEC(Punjab Engineering College) which is incubating 8 companies.
Last but not the least it was a wonderful day, met some many nice people. Had some discussions about my own venture, Wirkle. Thanks to TiE and all the other people for arranging such a nice event. Hope such activities are arranged much more often.
The day went on quite well and I met quite many people on a single day. Was quite different from my usual day doing and writing software code.
The day started with various panel discussions. All the panel discussions were quite good, led by extremely talented people.
First panel discussion: Where is the Indian IT Industry headed moderated by Kiran Karnik, President, Nasscom with panelists Ajai Chowdhry, Chairman &CEO, HCL Infosystems, Dan Sandhu, CEO, India & Head of Offshore Business, Vertex, India, Atul Dhawan, Deloitte Haskins & Sells.
One important thing that was part of the overall discussion was "scale". Companies in India growing at a massive rate and that was important to make India a global hub. People talked about statistics comparing India and China and talked about growth potential of Indian domestic market in hardware, internet (creating broadband content) and software (SME, health services and education). Dan Sandhu had an interesting perspective where he said indian operations should have "scale, scope and depth" in order to succeed.
The panel discussion and Q&A mainly dealt with India offshore operations, IT, BPO. I was happy to see the rising numbers but it made me ask my first question of the day! So in Q&A I asked:
What holds for technology startups in India? How can agencies like Nasscom and others help young entrepreneurs? When will we see the next google, amazon or ebay coming from India?
The answer to my question was mixed. And I think people know that there are lot many problems that still need to be solved. Some of them which they already talked about in the panel discussion. But this fact pinches me personally at times, we have such a big software industry, why isn't google, amazon, ebay really happening in India. Perhaps this is because of the fact that I am running my own startup, trying to establish my own small niche.
The second panel discussion:
Q&A with companies with investments from US based VCs on their experiences and expectations moderated by Bimal Sareen, Founder & CEO, Avaana and panelists Sushil Gupta, Vice President & MD, Atrenta India & Chirag Jain, VP & Head-India Operations, firstRain Software Centre Pvt.Ltd.
The discussion focussed around the issues of an Indian company getting funding from US VCs. The most important tip is: Get funding from where your customer is. If a company has customers in US, try to raise funding from US VCs as they will provide you with much needed contacts, networking and valuable information of the market. Both Avaana and First Rain raised good amount of money from the venture funds and performing good. Chirag provided another insight that a company should focus on the core product rather than trying to do short term gains for the numbers and this is what they learn't from their US VC.
In both these cases, the initial company formation was in US. So weather those are indian companies or US companies with india operations, its hard to draw the line. This was what even Kiran Karnik said in the first panel discussion. What is meant by an Indian company? Is it a company incorporated in India with global operations; a global company with 90% of its workforce in India or a company focused in Indian domestic market? Its hard to draw the line.
Third Panel Discussion:
Learnings recap : Moderated discussion with 3 members of the VC representatives, Frederick Bolander, Jorge Del Calvo & Ann Ralston on their experiences and learnings in India moderated by Vivek Agarwal, CEO, Liqvid eLearning Services Pvt.Ltd.
Some of the US venture funds are now trying to look into early stage ventures in India. Their experience about India has been very positive. But on the other hand they haven't got any breakthough or disruptive ideas from the people. Most of the people are pitching for low R&D cost which they say doesn't succeed in the long run. Secondly the idea has to be big enough in order to appeal.
This part of the talk was interesting and also led to my second question of the day! Apart from venture money, the key thing that young entrepreneurs need is mentorship. I am myself an IIT Delhi graduate, running a startup, know other 5-6 startups incubated in IIT Delhi, but in India there doesn't exist an ecosystem for startups. How are venture firms or other firms helping startups in that? There are no forums or not at the scale of what exists in silicon valley.
For that, some person from the TiE association told me that TiE has a mentorship programme for young entrepreneurs.
I was happy to know about it and I thank him. But I think that was not an answer to my question. so I raised a follow up question:
If people want to get together and discuss technology or want to mature their idea, where should they go? If I am in a university or a young entrepreneur, I want to do something, my efforts might not lead to a successful company at the moment - there is no platform or not at the scale what exists in silicon valley to discuss.
I didn't get an answer except that TiE provides mentorship activities. I appreciate what TiE does and its a brilliant forum. But I think we need not one TiE but perhaps 100 more TiE's. These have to be accessible to general people. Like easy access to capital, "Easy Access to Mentoring" is very crucial. Along with some business meetings in Taj, some workshops need to be conducted in campuses, lecture theatres, hostels.
Last Panel discussion was about Opportunities in Chandigarh. Being myself from around Chandigarh, I wanted to see it develop as an IT hub. I think government policies in the past have screwed it in a big way. Let's hope things change for a better in the future. Good to know there is an incubation center in PEC(Punjab Engineering College) which is incubating 8 companies.
Last but not the least it was a wonderful day, met some many nice people. Had some discussions about my own venture, Wirkle. Thanks to TiE and all the other people for arranging such a nice event. Hope such activities are arranged much more often.
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