The Jig Saw

Rural BPO

2006-05-09T09:08:00.000+05:30

Here's a post from Vijay's Blog on the Rural BPO work that I am involved with:

The Rural BPO team of TeNeT certainly seem to think so and they are progressing well on that end. From simple data entry tasks of converting handwritten application forms into digital entries, to converting english-language multimedia content into regional language content, they have done it and pride themselves in being in par with any work the city whiz kid could do. They are looking to expand and get more projects to further scale their efforts. If you do know of any BPOs that have a SCR (Social Corporate Responsibility) division and want to do something for Rural India, this would be very ideal.

more available here

The Hardest Lessons for Startup's to Learn

2006-05-08T16:13:00.000+05:30

Paul Graham [via Rajesh Jain] writes in his essay:

What you should fear, as a startup, is not the established players, but other startups you don't know exist yet. They're way more dangerous than Google because, like you, they're cornered animals.

Looking just at existing competitors can give you a false sense of security. You should compete against what someone else could be doing, not just what you can see people doing. A corollary is that you shouldn't relax just because you have no visible competitors yet. No matter what your idea, there's someone else out there working on the same thing.

That's the downside of it being easier to start a startup: more people are doing it.

Quote for the Day

2006-04-24T20:37:00.000+05:30

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed.

Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve.

It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or gazelle - when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.

Anonymous

How much do we know about 'unsexy' India

2006-04-10T08:40:00.000+05:30

Here are 2 questions that DNA India asked its readers - was wondering what you think. Do leave your comments or mail me - salonimalhotra [at] gmail [dot] com

Q1 Which recent incident from non-urban India touched you the most?

Q2 If you had to work in rural India, where would it be and what would you do?

Get Ready To Be Bangalored, in Bombay

2006-04-06T11:51:00.000+05:30

Sixty kilometers away from Jallikakinada is the village of Eethakota, Here, in another, recently constructed 50-seater BPO, young graduates or process associates as they are called work two shifts (6 am to 2 pm and on to 10 pm), performing another range of internal processes for Satyam including the filling up of time-sheets for staffers on external projects.

read more about GramIT, Byrajju Foundation's Rural BPO here

Steve Jobs

2006-03-31T18:13:00.000+05:30

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

More quotes by Steve Jobs on Wired

Blood Donation facilitated via the web

2006-03-28T09:05:00.000+05:30

[via alootechie.com] an email and sms based blood donation service for indian cities ... www.indianblooddonors.com

India Rising

2006-03-01T09:50:00.000+05:30

The danger for India is that this moment might not last forever. The world turns and India will have its ups and downs. But today it is India's moment. It can grasp it and forge a new path for itself.
A well written piece on India's rising. click here to read more

GramIT - Rural BPO

2006-02-24T17:55:00.000+05:30

The Byrraju Foundation has taken an initiative to set up a rural BPO unit called GramIT in village Jallikakinada (22 km from Bhimavaram) that employs 100 rural youth, drawn from this and the surrounding villages, using the last mile connectivity provided by Project Ashwini. The Foundation plans to set up one such BPO for every ten villages in the next phase and will thereafter increase the number of GramITs. GramIT currently provides transaction-processing services to Indian corporates and government departments.

Way to go GramIT!

India's first multilingual accounting software developed

2006-02-15T09:28:00.000+05:30

This picture was taken recently on one of my field trips to a village (population 5000 -7000) in Tamil Nadu. I was kind of fascinated to find posters advertising Tally classes in the village. Seems like a large number of young girls who seek work in small town around their village.

With many more people who are not comfortable in English - Tally in Indian languages might be a new opportunity for employment!

MS Announces Rural IT Initiative

2006-02-02T09:00:00.000+05:30

Microsoft India today unveiled a scalable and self sustaining kiosk model initiative, aimed at taking the benefits of IT to rural parts of the country.

A public private initiative, christened 'Saksham', Microsoft will additionally develop a rural portal powered with content and applications aimed specifically for the rural segment, by working with regional and local ISVs to accelerate the adoption of these services.

"We will set up 50,000 kiosks across India over the next three years. This is a great start, but is
only the tip of the iceberg. Our larger aim will be to touch more than 50 percent of the rural population within three years.

IBEX (Indian BPO for Excellence)

2005-11-08T20:06:00.000+05:30

In the pipeline from Lason India is a training academy for the BPO industry called - IBEX (Indian BPO for Excellence).

IBEX will also have separate courses for people from rural areas to impart basic skills required for the jobs in the BPO industry.

Lason was in the news earlier for starting a rural BPO in Tamil Nadu.

Click here to read more

Gmail 96% full

2005-10-19T10:37:00.000+05:30

My gmail account is 96% full .. :)

job profile in a start up

2005-08-10T09:08:00.000+05:30

In Tom Evslin's words “At a startup you’ve got to do whatever needs to get done,”

Domestic BPO in India

2005-08-08T08:52:00.000+05:30

Ajit Sankaran, Manager Software and Service Research, IDC India Limited spoke on `Business Process Outsourcing: Opportunities at Home' at the 18th India ICT Industry briefing session.

The domestic BPO market is worth Rs 650 crore [though miniscule has potential to grow] envisaging that banking and telecom services would remain the major drivers.

The main inhibitors for the growth of the market were the low margins and the 'no-real cost advantage', he said.

Read more

sub 10k PC's

2005-08-08T08:43:00.000+05:30

ET has a list of sub 10k PCs ready to hit the market ..

Encore and CSIR's mobilis
HCL's PC for India
Sahara India's PC
Xenitis' Amar PC
Novatium's Thin Client

Rules of Success - The Path of Least Resistance

2005-08-06T08:31:00.000+05:30

There are certain things in life we all have to do. There are certain things in life we choose to do. Then there is everything else. The things we do to kill time.

In every case, all things being equal, we choose the path of least resistance.

Mark Cuban illustrates how the understanding of this concept is key to making good business decisions.

Distributed BPO

2005-08-05T15:31:00.000+05:30

Economic Times has an article on BPO's going for a multi city back up -

Move over data security, BPOs have got a new buzzword — disaster recovery. And it’s proving to be a money-spinner too. Americans as well as Europeans are today willing to pay a premium of 20% or higher to split the work farmed out to India into two or more cities. And insiders say that banks, finance and insurance companies are pushing it hard.

Having tasted the fury of Mumbai rains, clients are no longer satisfied with the outsourcing vendor having a facility in two cities, but are insisting on splitting each process into more than one city. And BPO vendors in India are now dishing out business continuity plans backing up more and more of their processes into multiple cities. Terrorism and earthquakes are already built in, but the latest disaster recovery roadmap has new natural calamities like rains and floods featuring prominently.

Infoholic

2005-08-05T09:25:00.000+05:30

Since I'm finding less and less time to read blogs or update my own, I was curious to find out how people manage their information. Found something interetsing on emergic.org on how Alex Bosworth manages his information

Every day I wake up and the first thing that gets me out of bed is, gotta go over to my Kubuntu box and check my email and rss feeds.

I have a portable music player and a portable dvd player, I turn something on and go have a shower. The shower is actually the place where I come up with the bulk of my ideas for the day.

I hop into the car and plug in my ipod or switch on NPR. I rarely listen to the same song more than a couple times, paradoxically whenever I listen to music I'm always listening to find something great that's worth listening to again.

At work I'm on email and I keep up with my 'work blogs', I use numbers to track everything, like my bloglines unread count, I never want to have my numbers go above 0. I'm looking at our internal wiki for other people's changes to my pages or shared pages, bug tracking and checkins for Swik, plus I'll also keep open my calendar (currently one of the sources of the most frustration). I also monitor the Swik traffic and edit logs for new contributions or interesting usage patterns, and our community forums.

I've learned to be really fast at scanning these various sources of information; everything that's not email I tie together through RSS feeds, and I am really really fast with the pagedown button to bring my counts back to 0. Even though I get far more RSS info than email, I spend roughly the same amount of time on each because I read email more carefully.

If I see something I need to remember, I'll post it to del.icio.us, add it to my tadalist, clip it using bloglines, or just write a little note to myself on paper or on our internal wiki.

Obnoxious/ Aggressive/ Ruthless/ Selfish

2005-07-31T16:55:00.000+05:30

A conversation about entrepreneurship and the basic qualities that entrepreneurs possess got me thinking ...

"Obnoxious aggressive behavior is essential to a successful entrepreneur. Obnoxious-aggressive is a type neither hosted, nor appreciated, in south Europe, India, and SE Asia. This makes good sense to me: entrepreneurship is fundamentally disruptive. Disruption disturbs harmony, which is greatly valued in southern Europe and India."

Isn't aggression too strong a term to use? Does aggression have a positive connotation? Selfish and ruthless .. yes .. and maybe the aggression is the kind that works towards something positive ..

Training Programs in Tamil Nadu

2005-07-31T16:20:00.000+05:30

Taking to some kiosk operators about the various things they
can do with their computers in their village.

Hands on traning for some village entreprenuers

un/surprisingly

2005-07-31T16:17:00.000+05:30

Opposite the intenet center in a village - a primary school where kids were playing and studying .. un/surprisingly the school does not have a proper toilet!

Snakes - Engaged in Activity

2005-07-31T16:14:00.000+05:30

Fighting/ mating?!?!

Pictures from my Travelogues- Conversations

2005-07-31T16:10:00.000+05:30

Talking to a bunch of high school kids in Modaj village in Gujarat. They knew that naukari.com could be accessed from the Internet Center when they start looking for employment!

Pictures from my Travelogues - Gujarati Wall Painting

2005-07-31T16:08:00.000+05:30

wall painting in gujarati explaining the various services offered in the village internet center

Pictures from my Travelogues ...

2005-07-31T15:33:00.000+05:30

This picture was taken at a Chiraag Internet kiosks in rural Tamil Nadu. The place is remote and probally has one STD phone apart from this internet connection!

Source: news.com

The Open Cellphone

2005-06-25T10:18:00.000+05:30

The Open Cellphone: "The personal computer for the rest of the world isn't going to be the personal computer. It's going to be the cellphone...Communication is more important than computation on the human hierarchy of need."

But before that can happen, the cellphone is going to have to change. Specifically, cellphone companies have to surrender their control over the phone's features and capabilities. If phones had standard ports -- such as USB connections -- innovators could develop their own applications without having to wait for the cellular provider to offer them.

[via elearnspace and Rajesh Jain]

Bulk Buyers of Cell Phones - Low income users

2005-06-25T10:11:00.000+05:30

Nokia's Bottom of the pyramid -

"While there is good demand for high-end cellphones in India, a large number of subscribers from the lower-income Tier 3, Tier 4 and Tier 5 cities would buy the cheaper, more basic models, he added."

click here to read more

Made for India

2005-06-25T09:53:00.000+05:30

Intel's working on a Made for India PC - a “a platform unique for India” and their team has been conducting extensive studies especially in the rural markets on PC usage. According to their findings user's would -

Be more willing to invest in a PC that works for a longer time despite abrupt power cuts
Invest in a PC that would work with the press of a single button, boot up, despite a system failure

However Mr L Wilton Agatstein Jr, VP, channels platforms group, Intel dismissed the view that low price would increase PC penetration; he said that price is rarely the primary concern for most users. The Intel platform would however be cost effective, he added.

Was wondering what’s Intel's definition of cost effective? And don't Indian's love 'low cost anything'?!

click here to read more

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

2005-06-19T03:32:00.000+05:30

Steve Jobs speech at Stanford on life, love and death ..

Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

The New Digital Divide

2005-05-17T19:14:00.000+05:30

Seth Godin's post on the new digital divide talks about choice - and choice is okay when the only person it affects is the one who makes the choice!

But what about the people involved in bridging the digital divide – do they really have a choice? And are they now a part of the new digital divide?

Baring a few [involved in development] who belong to the Digirati – most are either unaware or in a state of inertia to change! And I have one question for them - if you are unwilling to adapt to new technologies/ applications then why would a person on the non digital side of the divide leave his comfort zone?

And since fortunately it's only about choice – and while the world can chose to be where it wants to be – the organization(s) bridging the digital hardly have a choice! Because now it's not just about those who have access to computers and the internet, and those who don't; it is about using the plethora of applications innovatively to bridge the gap.

Blogs and wiki's in local languages, jotspot for project management and skype for areas that don't have good voice connectivity! Or is bridging the digital divide only about adding hardware and making software more affordable? Of having a cold website that is updated occasionally and using email and yahoo messenger to communicate?

The choice is yours!

leapfrogging

2005-05-14T18:09:00.000+05:30

A comment from Dina Mehta's blog

Developing world leapfrogging the 'developed' world :)

I'd like to add another :) to that ..

2005-05-12T21:03:00.000+05:30

gapingvoid: how to be creative (long version) - looong but worth a read! Sneak peak -

So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years:

Ignore everybody.
The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to change the world.
Put the hours in.
You are responsible for your own experience.
Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.
The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.
Don't try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.
If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.
Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside.
The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.
The world is changing.
Merit can be bought. Passion can't.
Avoid the Watercooler Gang.
Sing in your own voice.
Selling out is harder than it looks.
Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.
The best way to get approval is not to need it.
Power is never given. Power is taken.
Whatever choice you make, The Devil gets his due eventually.

Digerati?

2005-05-12T08:50:00.000+05:30

Seth Godin offers some food for thought with his post on the new digital divide -

The New Digital Divide
The Digerati	The Left Behind
Uses Firefox	Uses Internet Explorer
Knows who Doc Searls is	Already has a doctor, thanks very much
Uses RSS Reader	RSS?
Has a blog	Reads blogs (sometimes)
Reads BoingBoing (or Slashdot)	Watches the Tonight Show
Bored with Flickr	Flickr?
Gets news from Google	Gets news from Peter Jennings

As he puts it the new digital divide is based on choice rather than circumstance!

Food for thought - is the development community that is trying to bridge the digital divide now a part of it?

Village BPO

2005-05-11T21:17:00.000+05:30

Lason India is making news with thier village BPO in Kizhanur, Tamil Nadu

From Simputer to Mobilis

2005-05-11T20:02:00.000+05:30

The developers of Simputer have Rs 10,000 computing device[s] in the offing - Mobilis, Mobilis Wireless and Sofcomp.

According to the company Mobilis has been integrated into the dashboard of Reva [the tiny electice car]

Read the story on CNET

Testing Ground

2005-05-07T19:50:00.000+05:30

Red Herring carries an article on Selling to the Poor and how India is proving to be a popular testing ground for new, affordable products in a variety of fields.

Hypomaniac/ Entrepreneur ?!?

2005-05-07T18:45:00.000+05:30

In The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (a Little) Craziness and (a Lot of) Success in America, author John D. Gartner claims that the personality traits that define entrepreneurial overachievers, like exceptional energy reserves, gut-instinct decision making, and an affinity for taking risks, are symptoms of hypomania, a psychiatric cousin of bipolar disorder.

Loband

2005-05-06T09:43:00.000+05:30

A Slashdot reader mulls over a new leaner browsing experience that loband promises to provide and questions if this could be the much "needed stepping stone for users in developing countries"

Created by Aidworld, a Cambridge (UK) based organisation specialising in ICTs for the developing world, the free internet service speeds up web browsing in low bandwidth environments

Loband uses server-side compression and filters images, scripts and plugins while retaining content and basic formatting, and reduces bandwidth requirements by between 5 and 50 times.

Alan Jackson from the Loband project adds "[Aidworld is] looking at Loband allowing variable support for images based on user preferences or available bandwidth."

Aidworld can be contacted at info AT aidworld DOT org

ed·u·tain·ment for rural india

2005-05-06T08:50:00.002+05:30

Swaminathan doles out some advice to Mr Chidambaram about creating a knowledge center in every village [Swaminomics, Times of India] and points out some interesting learnings from NIIT's Hole-in-the-Wall experiment -

Rural and slum children were perfectly happy to play educational games with learning content. Such games are regarded by middle-class kids as boring and avoidable. But rural and slum children have such few avenues of entertainment that they find even educational games exciting.

Masternewmedia.org writes about gaming -
It has been suggested that computer games can incorporate as many as 36 important learning principles. For example, they put learners in the role of decision-maker, pushing them through ever harder challenges, engaging the player in experimenting with different ways of learning and thinking.

Public visibility creates social pressure that discourages undesirable uses (example pornography). No kid wants to be seen publicly watching pornography by passers-by, who may be relatives.

The Corporate Weblog Manifesto

2005-04-30T16:02:00.000+05:30

Microsoft strategist Robert Scoble's 'The Corporate Weblog Manifesto'

Will the 'small box' end [err bridge] the digital divide?

2005-04-30T13:52:00.000+05:30

Boing Boing talks about Ndiyo, a project on thin clients. There is also a recent article in BBC about the non profit organization from Cambridge that is undertaking the project.

Making thin clients more user frinedly seems to be the new new thing! Rajesh Jain has blogged about the concept for a while. His new company Novatium [ a JV with IIT Madras] will soon release the product in India.

Snails are faster than ADSL

2005-04-29T20:43:00.000+05:30

A techie's idea of humor -

Science Writer Ami Ben Bassat compares SNAP (SNAil-based data transfer Protocol(, Wi Fly TCP (Transmission by Pigeons) and ADSL. The results are summerized in the table below -

Technology	Kbps
V.34 modem	28.8
ISDN	128
ADSL	1500
Pigeons	2270
SNAP	37,000

the comments are a step ahead .. :)

Alcohol makes your brain grow

2005-04-29T17:08:00.000+05:30

Thankfully the article says, extra cells might help with learning and memory and that more research is needed to explore the relationship between drinking patterns and their effect on the human brain.

PS - this is for my friends who find excuses to drink ;) Cheers

Bloglines

2005-04-27T19:21:00.000+05:30

Finally I signed up for Bloglines [news feeds] and it absolutely ROCKS!
Preetam Rai has a useful step by step tutorial on how to use the service.

The Selfish Gene

2005-04-23T10:36:00.000+05:30

An interview of Richard Dawkins, author of the Selfish Gene [ published 1976]

On humanity - our humanity is a form of virus in the genetic body?

On Religion - Religion, however, as a kind of organised misconception. It's millions of people being systematically educated in error

Am going to pick up the book today .. sounds interesting

Madness

2005-04-23T08:53:00.000+05:30

Fast Company on embracing the lunatic inside you -

"You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it." -- Robin Williams (1952- ) U.S. Actor and Comedian

Post It Trivia

2005-04-22T22:10:00.000+05:30

The glue that didn’t stick very well was called a failure until Art Fry, an innovative engineer at 3M came up with the Post-It's .. which went on to become a billion dollar product!

New York’s Museum of Modern Art featured it alongside the white T-shirt, the incandescent lightbulb, and 121 other icons of beautiful everyday design in its “Humble Masterpieces” exhibit.

Read more on The Rake

MIT Fab Lab

2005-04-22T18:51:00.000+05:30

Far from India’s tech hubs —Pune at 80 km, is the closest—Pabal is home to one of six worldwide MIT Fab Labs, or fabrication laboratories that try to build ‘‘everything from anything’’.

Manned today by school dropouts and underprivileged children, the Fab Lab is a collection of high-tech tools that can be used to fabricate instruments of any utility and configuration.

Taking care of the present

2005-04-20T11:04:00.000+05:30

A line from Rajesh Jain's series on TECH TALK: When Things Go Wrong: My Failures
"even as we continue to want to grow and have big dreams, we are not taking care of the present"
makes the point, that we need to take care of the present while we dream about tomorrow, in all areas of our life - business or personal.

Great New Product Ideas – DON’T Ask the Users What They Want!

2005-04-19T09:09:00.000+05:30

Tom Evslim writes on how users only provide incremental evolution to a product not the idea that starts it -

"no survey or focus group will ever tell you what the next great thing is going to be. That kind of idea, that kind of product, comes from visionaries who understand a new technology well enough to dream up an unintended use and who are stubborn and skillful enough to implement what nobody even knew to want.

These are the products and services that change our lives."

Link

Effects of outsourcing

2005-04-10T20:44:00.000+05:30

[Via Enginerd] Talking of the role Outsourcing can play in cultivating entrepreneurship, the MIT Technology Review has a very interesting article:

Big outsourcing providers like Infosys may not be fountains of innovation, but their presence will have—in fact, is already having—trickle-down effects. Outsourcing, many Indians argue, is training India’s next generation of tech entrepreneurs.

Long Tail vs. Bottom of Pyramid

2005-04-10T20:04:00.000+05:30

Chris Anderson [via Rajesh Jain] does a comparison:

The BOP model is focused on taking a single product or service and finding ways to make it cheap enough to offer to a larger, poorer, market. This is why I think it's essentially about commodification.
The Long Tail, on the other hand, is about nicheification. Rather than finding ways to create an even lower lowest common denominator, the Long Tail is about finding economically efficient ways to capitalize on the infinite diversity of taste and demand that has heretofore been overshadowed by mass markets. The millions who find themselves in the tail in some aspect of their life (and that includes all of us) are no poorer than those in the head. Indeed, they are often drawn down the tail by their refined taste, in pursuit of qualities that are not afforded by one-size-fits-all. And they are often willing to pay a premium for those goods and services that suit them better. The Long Tail is, indeed, the very opposite of commodification.

So the Long Tail is made up of millions of niches. The Bottom of the Pyramid is made up of mass markets made even more mass. Both lower costs to reach more people, but they do so in different ways for different reasons. They're complimentary forces, but fundamentally different in their approach and aims.

m-learning

2005-04-08T22:29:00.000+05:30

m-learning's target audience includes young adults who are unemployed, under-employed or homeless. Many of these young people have something in common: a mobile phone!

Initiated by the European Commission's Information Society Technologies (IST) programme the project aims to develop prototype products and services which will deliver information and learning experiences via technologies that are inexpensive, portable and accessible to the majority of EU citizens.

The project is exploring how technologies like mobile phones in the hands of these young people, now and in the near future, might be used to engage them in learning activities, start to change their attitudes to learning and thereby contribute to improving their skills, opportunities and lives.

Brainstorming strategy: Don’t settle for the first idea

2005-04-08T22:05:00.000+05:30

Jeffrey Baumgartner is the founder of Bwiti bvba, a Belgian-based company that helps organizations to become more innovative and more creative.

That the best solution is seldom the first to come to mind is one reason behind the effectiveness of brainstorming as a problem-solving technique. Rather than simply taking the first solution that comes to mind, we push our minds further to come up with additional ideas. Typically, the first few ideas will be rather obvious and not very creative solutions. But once we've cleared our minds of the obvious, we must push our minds further to come up with new ideas. This is when creativity kicks in and powers our thinking.

Winners Do the Things Losers Don't Want To

2005-04-08T10:06:00.000+05:30

Via Will Pate

No matter what area you work in "winners do the things losers don't want to" and most often those are the little details.

Same Language Subtitling (SLS)

2005-04-07T11:42:00.000+05:30

Brij Kothari's innovative approach of Same Language Subtitling [SLS] enables people to improve their reading skills as a by-product of what people already do, watch TV and films!

His NGO BookBox is creating TV and digital "books" for every child and in every language, making SLS, "India's contribution to world literacy".

He can be contacted on brij@iimahd.ernet.in

President Kalam's speech at the Microsoft Summit 2005

2005-04-07T11:00:00.000+05:30

Three aspects that would be of interest to India -

1. Any system to reach large portion of Indian people, needs language neutral software. It is vital particularly for the school education system because we have 18 official languages, which are spoken in different parts of the country.

2. For enabling the visually challenged people, a cost effective technology solution is needed at the operating system level (Voice integrated).

3. We need virus free operating system; which is also free from the vulnerability of external and internal attack and ensures the security of data, when using internet.

A Flat World

2005-04-07T08:58:00.000+05:30

[via New York Times] Thomas L Friedman, author of ''The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century,'' -

When the world is flat, you can innovate without having to emigrate. This is going to get interesting. We are about to see creative destruction on steroids.

He talks about the six flattners -
i. Outsourcing
ii. Offshoring
iii. Open-sourcing
iv. Insourcing
v. Supply-chaining
vi. Informing

There is no sugar-coating this: in a flat world, every individual is going to have to run a little faster if he or she wants to advance his or her standard of living.

Made-in-India Nokia

2005-04-06T14:26:00.000+05:30

From Made-for-India to Made-in-India - Nokia is setting up a manufacturing unit for mobile devices in Chennai.

Click here to read more

Indian Telecom reforms

2005-04-06T10:59:00.000+05:30

Kunal Bajaj, a young NRI who is now a full time consultant with Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) talks about some key areas where India needs to push telecom reforms -

A lot of people say that India has been slow in adopting new technologies, but for once this delay has worked to India’s advantage with India adopting the latest technology. India has got the fastest growth rate of GSM and CDMA technology in the world and is way ahead of China.

One of the big initiatives for India would be to replicate the growth we experienced in mobile telephones in broadband and Internet space as well. Broadband is more than talking. It involves, education and governance as well. So we need to push that.

Click here to read the complete interview

Google + Yahoo = GooHoo

2005-04-02T14:53:00.000+05:30

Search Engine Watch has a story on rumors of a Google-Yahoo merger.

Why would these two competitors -- and companies with largely different operating styles -- combine? Fear of Microsoft. While I've written many times before that Microsoft isn't going to walk all over Google -- much less both Google and Yahoo -- the two companies themselves are falling victim to the hype. Search is seen as so important, such a major future money maker, that they want to unite now.

Fool Around

2005-04-02T14:50:00.000+05:30

Google's April Fools Search for everything related to April Fool's Day. :)

Google Glup - The obvious joke

2005-04-02T10:40:00.000+05:30

Google Gulp (BETA)™ with Auto-Drink™ (LIMITED RELEASE), a line of "smart drinks" designed to maximize your surfing efficiency by making you more intelligent, and less thirsty.

But then again - you never know whats coming next from Google!

The Long Tail

2005-04-01T09:37:00.000+05:30

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine blogs about The Long Tail. He first wrote about it in Wired in October 2004.

Three Cheers to the Brazilian Govt

2005-03-31T08:34:00.000+05:30

In the latest update on the Brazilian government's Connected PC program[to help millions of low-income Brazilians buy their first computers] the govt has decided to go with free software only! No Microsoft - not even a low cost version.

Also in a recent letter Walter Bender, executive director of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said, that high-quality free software had proved more effective in stimulating computer use among the poor than scaled-down versions of proprietary software.

Click here to read more

2005-03-29T08:53:00.000+05:30

WIRED [Joseph Jacobson ,MIT Media Lab Asia] writes about 2 promising technologies that will help reduce the cost of hardware -

The first is a thin, folding screen in development at MIT's Things That Think consortium. Unlike typical LCDs, this approach uses rear-projection, and with its fold-away design, a laptop could be quite small. Best of all, a 12-inch screen of this variety could cost as little as $30. [Displays typically costing manufacturers about $170]

The second promising technology would allow us to keep the current laptop form and is based on lowering the cost of thin-film transistors used in LCDs. This approach uses a nascent technique called printed electronics to print transistor patterns with special semiconducting inks. There are about two dozen projects under way at startups like E Ink and Kovio (I was a founder of both), as well as at large corporations focused on adapting the economics of printing to the manufacture of TFTs and displays. These efforts could lead to 12-inch displays that also cost about $30.

What's the story Morning Glory?

2005-03-28T08:30:00.000+05:30

Seth Godin on the Liar's Blog talks about the stories that marketers tell ..

And now Elephants can SMS too ..

2005-03-21T17:59:00.001+05:30

Was looking for innovative ways of using technology in rural and remote areas. And this is what I found - Elephants text their location. An NGO called Save the Elephants is fitting elephants with specially designed GSM/GPS collars in Kenya. The collars hold mini cellphones programmed to send SMS messages to farmers’ mobiles with the latest GPS positions of the animals.

This SMS alerts the farmers when the elephants start moving towards the fields. The farmers can head the herd off before any damage is done.

[via Roland]

EPIC - The World In 2014

2005-03-21T08:41:00.000+05:30

[Via Sidharth Rao]

a neat futuristic concept called EPIC, about the world in 2014 talks about a war between The New York Times and GoogleZon (Google after its merger with Amazon).

The Law of the Vital Few

2005-03-17T09:42:00.000+05:30

For traditional retailers, business will always be where the sales volumes are. Pareto’s 80-20 principle states that "for many phenomena 80% of consequences stem from 20% of the causes." Or as it is popularly been understood in marketing - 80% of the sales should come from 20% of your inventory!

But the online market has its own rules, where storage space for the digital medium is essentially free, enabling online retailers to carry larger inventories and serve a niche market – iTunes, Google, Amazon ….

Source - Excite Query Distribution

The figure shows that Long Tail is about expanding the markets .. to include products and customers that are currently "sub-economic"!

So if Long Tail removes the distribution and information bottlenecks, can it be used as a strategy to address the needs of a scattered rural population? Esp in a place like India where every dialect is a niche market and every state a world in itself?

Tier-II cities are new BPO spots

2005-03-16T13:45:00.000+05:30

Financial Express has a story on tier-II cities in India accounting for 15% of total IT and ITES exports from India?

Seems like the cost advantage of bigger cities is dwindling and with 1.8 million graduates (out of the 3 million India produces) coming from tier-II cities alone the shift seems like an obvious choice.
But what when the cost advantage offered by tier II cities starts fading too?

Mobile phones vs Tele Centers

2005-03-15T16:13:00.000+05:30

Bala comments on my previous post

"The lack of proper service over large areas should be seen as a call for service-providers and the government to improve services and not necessarily a demand for alternatives."

And I so agree with him, but knowing human nature and how things work between realization and implementation there is a huge delay. Also due to the scattered population in some areas it is just not fesible for a telecom company to provide its services. Then there are liscencing and regualtory issues in other areas.

There is no one solution .. there is no one alternative when we say we want to bridge the digital divide ... the solution is an innovative approach sometimes its a new technology that the commercial vendors might not endorse. But what works is a device that can serve a community not only an individual. A device that meets various demands and provides value for money.

Cell phones have their own place and provide what a computer will not. They provide instant communicationin the language of your choice!

Mobile phones vs Tele Centers

2005-03-14T21:47:00.000+05:30

[Via The Economist] "Mobile phones reduce transaction costs, broaden trade networks and substitute for costly physical transport. They are of particular value when other means of communication (such as roads, post or fixed-line phones) are poor or non-existent."

Though we've heard about the numerous stories about mobile phones benefiting rural areas where road are poor and fixed phone non-existent .. in practice many of these areas don’t have network coverage for mobile phones either .. and in some of these places in India tele centers are the only communication link to the outside world!

Is technology a solution?

2005-03-14T21:22:00.000+05:30

The current issue of the Economist has a cover story on mobile phones and economic development and it reads,

"..the debate over the digital divide is founded on a myth—that plugging poor countries into the internet will help them to become rich rapidly."

Is the intention 'quick money' in the villages or is it using ICT as a medium to bridge the gap of income, development and literacy? Isn't it about providing access to basic services that currently the villagers don’t have easy access to? Isn't it a way of providing training and jobs, of letting the villagers know where the world is and what they can do if they have access to technology?

The article further adds, "The benefits of building rural computing centres, for example, are unclear. Rather than trying to close the divide for the sake of it, the more sensible goal is to determine how best to use technology to promote bottom-up development. And the answer to that question turns out to be remarkably clear: by promoting the spread not of PCs and the internet, but of mobile phones."

Mobile phone solves a different need - instant communication! They don't provide educational tutorials for children, ecommerce for farmers or vet service in the village.

Technology isn't a solution but only an enabler .. to make them connect with the world outside and hunt for opportunities best for them ..opportunities that you and me can't think of ..but those that will change their lives.

ICT during Tsunami relief work

2005-03-12T18:25:00.000+05:30

Mr Vivek Harinarain, Secretary IT, Government of Tamilnadu mentioned one of the projects our teamworked on during the Tsunami wWhile delivering his Keynote address at the Dataquest eGovernance Summit 2005 held on March 3, 2005 in Chennai

"Sharing his experience during the Tsunami relief operations, he said that the support from the IT industry immediately after Tsunami is commendable and the maximum use of technology to trace the identity of the dead was in Nagapattinam district."

My friend Megha Rajaram and me wrote a case study too.

Trai slashes international leased line rates by 70%

2005-03-12T08:50:00.000+05:30

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Friday slashed prices of international leased lines by up to 70%.

For 155 Mbps leased lines, tariffs have been reduced by 70% to Rs 2.99 crore per annum.

For 45 Mbps leased lines, the tariffs have been reduced by 71% to Rs 1.04 crore per annum, while for 2 Mbps leased lines, prices have been reduced by 35% to Rs 13 lakh per annum.

“A competitively-priced IPLC (The international private leased circuit) service is fundamental to achieve a higher rate of penetration of broadband in the country, which provides a basis for fundamentally transferring the socio-economic opportunities, particularly in rural India,” Trai stated.

Click here to read more

WordCount™

2005-03-09T08:56:00.000+05:30

An artistic experiment in the way we use language, WordCount™ presents the 86,800 most frequently used English words, ranked in order of commonness.

NatGeo on Bollywood

2005-03-04T18:07:00.000+05:30

Check out the National Geographic's Special Feature on Bollywood

How long can price advantage drive India’s outsourcing boom?

2005-03-03T18:15:00.000+05:30

There is little doubt in any ones mind that the currency differential i.e. 1 US Dollar equals 44 Indian Rupees is the main driving force behind outsourcing boom in India. But the international think tanks have started asking questions as to how long can these currency differentials drive the outsourcing boom in India?

Click here to read more

AP mulls animation academy

2005-03-01T10:50:00.000+05:30

To explore business opportunities in the global animation industry, the Andhra Pradesh government is contemplating the setting-up of an animation academy to train students in drawing and designing. It is also intended to teach animation techniques to rural artisans.

According to Nasscom, the demand for animation is growing at 20 percent per annum, and challenges like infrastructure, funding and marketing need to be addressed.

TCS to launch low-cost PCs

2005-03-01T10:39:00.000+05:30

As part of its social obligation of bridging the digital divide, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is planning to launch low-cost PCs in the country by the end of 2005. The PCs are expected to cost less than Rs 10,000. Apart from this, the company is also working on building software applications in 22 Indian languages. TCS is to launch an operating system, middleware, and applications which would be made available in Indian languages this year.

Click here to read more

India: The next knowledge superpower

2005-02-26T15:43:00.000+05:30

NewScientist.com's top story on India

There's a revolution afoot in India. Unlike any other developing nation, India is using brainpower rather than cheap physical labour or natural resources to leapfrog into the league of technologically advanced nations. Every high tech company, from Intel to Google, is coming to India to find innovators. Leading the charge is Infosys, the country's first publicly listed billion-dollar IT company.

However, there are dramatic problems of poverty and infrastructure. To transform the nation, Indians will have to change their way of thinking about science and technology, take risks in research, and deal with the issues of education, infrastructure, bureaucracy and corruption.

Indian Broadband

2005-02-26T13:20:00.000+05:30

[Via Rajesh Jain] Om Malik makes a point I whole-heartedly agree with: "I find that most Indian companies are offering metered broadband access, treating bandwidth like a scarce commodity. That is a bone headed move only thought up by bureaucrats who are used to playing the scarcity game. Growing up there, getting a phone connection was so hard and often involved baksheesh. That mentality prevails. These boneheads should realize that in order to stay competitive Indians need to have as much speed as they can get for the lowest possible price. Look at Koreans, and Chinese."

I have not seen our bandwidth costs in our business change at all in the past 3 years. I find that hard to accept because supposedly the international and national bandwidth prices are falling all the time. As a business, I need a flat rate for unlimited data transfer -- the cheap plans all come with caps on data transfer. India needs cheap all-you-can-eat broadband if we are going to even have a chance in the digital age. We still don't seem to be learning from our past mistakes -- the digital infrastructure India needs is a not a luxury but a pre-requisite.

India Will become bigger than the US

2005-02-26T09:28:00.000+05:30

Time magazine in April 2004, declared Professor Sachs as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. As the Special Advisor to UN Secretary General Kofi Anan on the Millennium Development Goals, he says, "India is poised to become one of the three large economies of the world. By the mid century I think India could overtake US by absolute size."

Click here to read more

HCL Info launches cheapest PC

2005-02-25T14:18:00.000+05:30

In little over a year of introducing personal computers, PC, at Rs 14,990 plus taxes, HCL Infosystems has launched another one at Rs 12,990 plus taxes. What is more, you could even buy it in installments of Rs 360 a month. It’s a computer that comes with a 1GHz processor, a 30 MB hard disk, 128 MB RAM, a 15-inch colour monitor and even a 52 x CD ROM drive.

Chowdhry added, "We have a very sincere belief, that in this country the bottom of the pyramid is where the market lies. 70% of India lives in small towns and villages. So, if we don’t create products for them, how will we ever grow the market in a big way?"

Click here to read more

Air-charge mobiles, courtesy IIT-D

2005-02-25T11:28:00.000+05:30

[via Financial Express] The specially designed turbine, which cost about Rs 200 to be developed in the lab, is so small that it can be kept in a pocket, said professor Lalit Kumar Das, IIT Delhi.

The primary objective of the device is to extend mobile “connectivity” where there is no electricity. It also saves energy, though not to a significant extent, he said.

The electricity could also be used for other purposes, such as illumination and playing a radio. High intensity light devices (hilds) and radio require low energy to function that could be easily provided by the turbine, he said.

The device is best suited for coastal areas where the wind blows almost continuously. It would help light hilds in areas where there is no electricity, he said.

Click here to read more

Don't multi-task, multi-think instead

2005-02-25T11:18:00.000+05:30

Jeffrey Baumgartner writes on Innovation Tools

This simple action does several things at once.

Firstly, It allows you to maintain your focus on the task at hand. By making a note of your thought, you are clearing your mind of the distracting idea. This can only improve your focus on the task at hand.

Secondly, when the action of performing task A inspires an idea relevant to task B, it is very often the case that the idea is a creative one that would not have come to mind had we been focusing on task B. In other words, multi-thinking often inspires creative ideas.

Thirdly, if performing task A provides inspirations for task B, you may come across synergies between the two tasks; synergies which reduce your overall workload and actually improve your productivity. Such synergies are best discovered through multi-thinking. Indeed, when ideas come to mind. Do not simply write them down. Try to draw links between your ideas for task B and task A.

Click here to read more

Got an old computer laying around? Wanna donate it?

2005-02-24T16:57:00.000+05:30

Computer Aid International is an UK registered not-for-profit working to bridge the divide between the developing and the developed world.
Why not make your old computer a valuable educational tool in a school in a developing country?

Click here to donate your PC

WiMax may reach rural areas first

2005-02-24T16:27:00.000+05:30

[via zdnet UK] BT may launch WiMax in rural areas ahead of cities following the success of its trials of the high-speed wireless technology.

BT's researchers took WiMax to four remote locations in the UK to test it in the most severe weather conditions over the most testing terrain. Seventy-three percent of wireless broadband users in rural areas expressed 'extreme satisfaction' with the service, although Patel said the results may not reflect the service accurately.

Click here to read more

Beaming Into Your PC from Anywhere

2005-02-24T12:30:00.000+05:30

Wildstrom, BusinessWeeks Technology & You columnist writes about 2 new services to access your PC from anywhere -

Two new services, GoToMyPC and LogMeIn, promise simple and secure access to your computer from just about anywhere -- provided, of course, that you leave it on, and online.

Click here to read more

Master Tasking

2005-02-21T11:52:00.000+05:30

[via Michaelh Yatt's Working Smart Blog]
“Master Tasking” is the process of identifying your five to seven most productive, most important work-related tasks. A Master Task List is similar to a job description but more useful. It answers the question, “What was I really hired to do?” Here are some characteristics of master tasks:

They are usually important but not urgent.
They spell the difference between success and failure.
You have a hard time getting to them.
They are things you usually do on your own.
They can be scheduled but usually aren’t.

The purpose of developing a Master Task List is to enable you to focus more easily on those activities that really add value to your department, your division, and your company. Once you have a Master Task List you can measure your performance against it. More importantly, you can schedule these activities so you accomplish the most important tasks related to your job.

President Kalam's Republic Day Speech

2005-02-21T10:11:00.000+05:30

India has approximately 2.3 lakh Village Panchayats. I visualize establishment of village knowledge centers in these Panchayats to empower the villagers with the knowledge and to act as a nodal center for knowledge connectivity for the villagers. The knowledge center from which the villagers would access the information through the village information officer can also be used for collection, digital storage and dissemination of village specific information pertaining to any relevant information to the villagers. This will provide direct quality employment to over one million who will be instrumental in promoting higher level of wealth generation in our rural sector.

Click here to read more

Wi-Fi and Wi-Max: Rural Mexico's Last Train to Development

2005-02-19T10:42:00.000+05:30

Adriana Labardini write about the benefits of new technologies, especially ICT for developing countries and discusses Mexico's legal framwork fro the same.

These technologies -- mainly Wi-Fi and Wi-Max -- can bring affordable, high-speed Internet access to isolated, rural areas. Spectrum is now a more abundant and sharable resource due to technological progress.

Click here to read more

Digital guru floats sub-$100 PC

2005-02-19T10:09:00.000+05:30

[via BBC]
Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and founder of MIT's Media Labs, says he is developing a laptop PC that will go on sale for less than $100 (£53).
He described the device as a stripped down laptop, which would run a Linux-based operating system, "We have to get the display down to below $20, to do this we need to rear project the image rather than using an ordinary flat panel.
"The second trick is to get rid of the fat , if you can skinny it down you can gain speed and the ability to use smaller processors and slower memory."
He plans to be distributing them by the end of 2006 and is already in discussion with the Chinese education ministry who are expected to make a large order.

Click here to read more

A Problem Shared Is a Problem Solved

2005-02-17T17:53:00.000+05:30

On the rise of open source innovation
[via Fast Company]

One new idea is distributed or open source innovation in which customers (or anyone else for that matter) are the co-producers of the products and services they consume.

Open source software development began when one smart individual realized that he wasn't half as smart as all the other people he knew if he put them together.

Recently the idea has been transferred to all manner of projects ranging from an open source encyclopedia called the Wikipedia and collaborative industrial design such as ThinkCycle to open source aeroplane design, cola recipes, film scripts, and beer. The latter was developed with the help of some self-appointed beer aficionados (found on the Internet) who created everything from the name of the beer to its packaging and advertising. Even NASA has embraced the idea by using volunteer scientists (or "clickworkers") to identity and catalog craters on the surface of Mars.

Click here to read more

Obsession with India and the latent potential

2005-02-17T17:40:00.000+05:30

It is probally obvious form my blog that I'm gung-ho about the latent potential that India has. Here's something about me - I'm working at IIT Madras on an experiment to outsource work from urban to rural areas. It is something a few people are talking about, many are skeptical about and no one has proved succesfully.

Comments welcome :) Love to argue ...

The next knowledge superpower

2005-02-17T10:17:00.000+05:30

[via newscientist.com]

Over the past five years alone, more than 100 IT and science-based firms have located R&D labs in India. These are not drudge jobs: high-tech companies are coming to India to find innovators whose ideas will take the world by storm.
---

High-tech is not the sole preserve of the rich. Fishermen have begun using mobile phones to price their catch before they make port, and autorickshaw drivers carry a phone so that customers can call for a ride. Technology companies are extending internet connections to the remotest locations. Small, renewable electricity generators are appearing in villages, and the government is using home-grown space technology to improve literacy skills and education in far-flung areas.

Click here to read more

President's PURA Vision

2005-02-15T09:22:00.000+05:30

Knowledge Powered PURA (Providing Urban amenities in Rural Areas)

President of India, APJ Abdul Kalam's vision for rural India -

More than two thirds of our billion population live in the rural parts of India. The vision of transformation to a ‘developed’ India can only be realized if we launch a mega mission for empowering the rural people. My visits to the rural parts of India have confirmed that the problem of rural India depends on the extent of connectivity available there. The connectivity that I refer to would include four components.

Physical connectivity by providing roads in rural areas, electronic connectivity by providing reliable communication network and knowledge connectivity by establishing more professional institutions and vocational training centers. Schools with best infrastructure and teachers who love teaching, primary health centres, silos for storage of products and markets for promoting cottage industries and business, employment opportunities for artisans are some of the elements of PURA. All this connectivity needs to be done in an integrated way so that economic connectivity will emerge leading to self actuating people and economy.

Such a model of establishing a circular connectivity among the rural village complexes will accelerate rural development process by empowerment. I am sure that removal of poverty will call for Providing Urban amenities in Rural Areas (PURA). The model envisaged is a habitat design that would improve the quality of life in rural places and make special suggestions to remove urban congestion also. Instead of village population coming to urban area, the reverse phenomenon has to take place.

The PURA has to be a business proposition economically viable and managed by entrepreneurs and local people and small scale industrialists, as it involves education, health, power generation, transport and management. Government’s support should be in the form of empowering such management agencies, providing initial economic support and finding the right type of management structure and leaders to manage and maintain.

Click here to read more thoughts

Nasscom chief, Kiran Karnik, reveals the future of IT and BPO in India

2005-02-14T19:16:00.000+05:30

NASSCOM President Kiran Karnik on tier two cities and outsourcing ..

"We are optimistic that the industry is now moving out of the big metros. Metros have been good with great source of human resources and we would like the industry to go to smaller towns, which can be an even better source of talent. Infrastructure has to accelerate so as to be ahead of demand."

Click here to read more