Technologies for the Indian audience

More details about TED India unravelled

2009-03-25T23:09:00.006+05:30

Its official now. A TED conference is to take place in November this year between the 4^th and 7^th in the Mysore campus of Infosys. I had earlier blogged about rumours regarding the location and its presentees. This is the first time that TED is taking place in South Asia. The theme for this year's TED is "The future beckons".

To quote from their press release, the speakers at TED India will include:

+ one of Bollywood’s most exciting directors
+ the entrepreneur whose emergency response team became heroes during the Mumbai terrorist attacks
+ an educator in the slums whose students outperform private-school kids
+ a best-selling novelist redefining the borders between East and West
+ a photographer documenting India as it's never been seen before
+ a fashion designer taking Indian aesthetics onto international runways

And, the topic discussed will revolve around:

+ Who are the young thinkers and doers capable of shaping the future?
+ What local innovations are destined for global impact?
+ Can there be economic advancement without environmental destruction?
+ Can a pluralistic democracy survive in the face of rising fundamentalism?
+ What should we learn -- or fear? -- from China’s investment in Africa?
+ Do we have enough water for everyone?
+ How do we keep our youth challenged and our aged healthy?
+ How can anti-poverty solutions be brought to scale?
+ Which ancient traditions can illuminate modern life?

Attending TED India is going to set you back by 2400 USD. 2000 USD for the conference itself and another 400 USD for the 4 nights of lodging.

If you want to see the entire press release, I have uploaded it to http://prashmohan.googlepages.com/ted-press-release.txt. More details of TED India to follow as and when it comes out :-).

P.S. Pattie Mae's presentation on technology developed at the MIT which is very similar to the Sixth Sense movie has been making the rounds over the internet world. Make sure to catch the video at http://www.ted.com/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html.

Edit: Tom Rielly comments on the post to additionally add about TED Fellows:

Hi, thanks for writing about TEDIndia. We're so excited about the conference. The $2400 price tag is correct. I wanted to let you know that we open applications for TEDIndia Fellows April 20th. We seek to bring 100 outstanding individuals to TEDIndia as Fellows (we pay expenses), in addition to our attendees Complete details will be at www.ted.com/fellows on the date. Questions fellows [at] ted dot com.

Tags: TED India, TED

Interview with BankBazaar.com - a personalized loan finder

2009-03-08T16:51:00.005+05:30

DesiTech: Can you tell us how BankBazaar came into being?
Arjun Shetty: I was looking for a home loan in Chennai in early 2007 and found it really hard to get a good deal. I had to go to bank offices during working hours, stand in line and fill in forms to get a quote. Once I got the quotes, I still found it hard to compare them as banks quoted interest rates in different ways and they never spelled out the various fees associated with the home loan. Additionally I learnt that banks didn’t usually start-off offering me the best rate that I was eligible for. They’d usually try and charge me a higher rate, and I had to bargain hard to get them to lower their rates. At the end of a week, despite wasting a lot of time researching loans, being a good bargainer and being reasonably knowledgable about finance, I still wasn’t convinced that I was getting the best deal on my home loan. Many people I spoke to had had similar experiences. My wife, Rati and I brainstormed on whether we could make this process significantly more convenient, and we became convinced that we could. We looped in my brother Adhil, who was then working for Deloitte Consulting in New York, and we founded www.bankbazaar.com.

DT: How does BankBazaar solve this issue and how you intend to make money?
Adhil Shetty: Bank Bazaar makes it possible to get a great deal on any loan product including home loans and personal loans within 15 minutes, whereas doing so in the physical world requires about a week of work. On bankbazaar.com a customer can get customized rate quotes from all of India’s top banks instantly, compare the various offers using our easy-to-use tools and apply online. The end-to-end process literally takes less than fifteen minutes, and does not require any phone calls. Plus, because many banks are competing in a neutral marketplace, customers get very competitive pricing. The Banks pay us a fee for working with BankBazaar.com - however the economics of this channel works out better for a bank than distributing products via the traditional brick and mortar branch network- this benefit is shared with the consumer.

DT: Online financial products still appears to be in it's infancy in India. How big do you expect the market to become?
Adhil: Banking experts estimate that 20%-30% of India's retail home loan and personal loan distribution can be channeled online - BankBazaar.com's revenue numbers over the last six month's indicate that this estimate is correct. In times such as these consumers are becoming more price sensitive and discerning in their loan selection. In spite of the global credit meltdown I feel pretty confident that we entered this market at just the right time- we are quickly cementing ourselves as the de-facto loan marketplace in India.

DT: Online financial products seem to be a happening space currently. You have thick competition in the avatars of PolicyBazaar (recently acquired by Naukri), ApnaLoan and so on. How do you compare yourself to the competition?
Adhil: These are two different players - the former offers insurance comparison which is also offered by a bunch of other players in the market. Insurance is a good market to be in and BankBazaar.com will offer insurance products later this year.

Apnaloan is a loan referral player. Here’s how loan referral players work: they merely generate leads for banks i.e. they sell users’ contact information to banks. These banks then call the customer and try to market their product. So customers still need to provide their detailed information to each of these banks individually to receive customized quotes, they still need to bargain with each of these banks and they still have trouble comparing the complex offers they are being given. The bankbazaar.com model adds significantly higher value to the consumer as it offers an end-to-end solution i.e. the consumer gets to do everything online, right from getting customized rate quotes, comparing the offers and applying online directly to the bank. Another thing that distinguishes BankBazaar is that we are completely neutral i.e. no bank owns any part of us and we have absolutely no financial incentive to favor one bank over another.

DT: A large part of your work must deal with interacting with the Banks, and Banks are famous for being closed and secretive about their dealings? How did they react to being approached by a startup to do business with them?
Adhil: BankBazaar.com has a very senior Advisory Board that helps us with our banking interactions - our Board includes Mr N Rangachary, retired Chairman IRDA, Mr V.P. Shetty, retired Chairman IDBI, Mr Suresh Talwar, Partner, Talwar Thakore Associates and Dr Arvind Panagariya, retired Chief Economist ADB and professor Columbia University

DT: With folks hoarding up more and more money in these tough times, how are the people reacting to loans? Also, are the Banks holding their money closer to themselves?
Adhil: Yes Banks are extremely cautious with credit risk and Yes, folks are extremely cautious when taking loans. In such difficult times only truly differentiated products will survive the crunch- all copy-cats and non-innovators will die. BankBazaar.com was born in the midst of the world's toughest credit crisis since the 1920s and I have seen revenues double over the last few months - I think this is a true test of our differentiation - the same way Google was tested by the dot-com bust.

DT: While your current focus appears to be on bank loans, your business model readily extends itself to other financial products. Which other products is BankBazaar planning to provide in the recent future?
Adhil: Insurance will be our next move

DT: Personalization for individual customers is the basis of your business model. How do you compare your computerized customization to the current model of a teller helping you choose a product?
Adhil: Personalization is a pre-requisite for our business model - prior to BankBazaar.com this team ran the world's largest online credit channel for Amazon.com-Chase Bank in America, and strongly believes in the importance of providing a superior online customer experience. When a customer looks for a home loan re-finance product on www.BankBazaar.com we give them a personalized comparison of the switching costs involved with pre-paying their current loan and kick-starting a new loan with new processing fees, etc. However we provide users with multiple options and give a transparent comparison of the various costs, time to close, and customer service ratings - we NEVER recommend a particular product - that's for the user to choose. I believe in total personalization - however like Amazon.com and Google - my team believes that online innovation can drive personalization rather than one-on-one human interaction which is not scalable and has its own challenges.

DT: Can you share any tid-bits about your valuation :-)? Also what are your comments on the Venture Capital scene is in India?
Adhil: BankBazaar.com completed Series A in Q3 FY 2009 at a USD 10 Million valuation involving both Indian and Foreign Monies. We deal with a handful of VCs in both India and Mercia, and have a strong network of Angel and Strategic Investors who have also expressed an interest in Series B. The number of VCs in India is smaller than in the US - but provided one is able to bridge both worlds and also tap into Angel's there is a lot of opportunity for a differentiated idea.

DT: Finally, how do you see the economic slump affecting the startup scene in India?
Adhil: Only truly differentiated products will survive this slump - everyday suppliers will ask "why should I work with you and not cut your margins to nothing?" and buyers will ask "why should I buy from you and not a cheaper competitor?"- the answer to both is differentiation- can the start-up offer something that is so differentiated that suppliers and buyers will keep coming in return for the value they are getting in spite of this slump. BankBazaar.com has cracked that problem- we are the ONLY online marketplace in the world offering instant rate quotes on loans from multiple banks and we are out to make a difference in this world.

[Ed Note] Adhil is also on the look out for talented engineers and sales & marketting executives. Head on to http://www.bankbazaar.com/careers.html for more details.

DesiTech on Twitter

2009-02-15T19:34:00.001+05:30

DesiTech is now on Twitter. If you want a channel to voice your opinions on how the blog is shaping up and how you would like to see it shape, connect to us on twitter.

http://twitter.com/desitech

Tags: twitter

TED India!!!

2009-02-14T16:12:00.005+05:30

So it is confirmed now. TED is finally coming to India! If you don't know what TED, DAMN! Head over to http://ted.com first thing and check out their site. TED (short for Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a series of top quality conferences which goes by the tag line "Ideas worth spreading". And worthy they are! Speakers at the February edition of TED (at California) include Bill Gates, Nandan Nilekani, Tim Berners-Lee and Seth Godin. Previous speakers also include Bono, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, the Google founders, Richard Branson, Richard Dawkings, Jeff Bezos, Bill Joy, Clifford Stoll, and so many more interesting personalities. Each presentation at the conference lasts only 18 minutes, making it crisp and beautiful.

As TED descends to the Mysore campus of Infosys this November, if you are thinking of squeezing into the conference, be quick about it. TED has one of the most over subscribed conference registrations. Also, they are supposedly reducing their registration fees to 2000 USD (~1 lakh INR) from their usually hefty 6000 USD (~3 lakhs INR). However, don't be dejected. All of these high quality talks are posted online on http://ted.com. There is also an iTunes podcast for those interested.

Who is going to speak is anybody's guess. But given that it is held at the Infosys campus and Nandan Nilekani has already spoken at the February edition of TED, all eyes are on Narayana Murthy. And we can probably also expect a larger than usual focus on the developing worlds and how they are evolving.

Technorati Tags: TED, TED India, Infosys

Interview: CinnamonTeal founder Leonard Fernandes

2009-02-08T17:59:00.001+05:30

DesiTech is starting with an Interview series: We’ll talk to founders about their companies and motivations and publish it in an interview format. I met Leonard at Headstart 2009 in Bangalore recently, where he was showcasing Cinnamonteal – a Publish-on-Demand (POD) service. We had a chat over the phone:

Q: Could you give a brief account of your history prior to starting Dogears etc. and CinnamonTeal?

I did my engineering from Goa and joined Tata Infotech back in 1999-2000. I worked there for a while and then moved to Ohio State University to do an MBA. I worked for a while in the financial sector and in 2004, I came back to India with my wife Queenie to start Dogears etc. Concurrently with our company, I teach at the Sri Sri Institute of Management Studies.

Q: From what I understand through your website, Dogears etc. is an online book store and CinnamonTeal is a Publish-on-Demand service. Is that correct? Can you also tell us about some aspects which make these businesses unique in their respective domains.

We started Dogears etc. when we moved to India. The idea behind Dogears was to have a web portal to facilitate trade of books, especially used ones. At that time, there were some online book retailers/stores but all of them were B2C; we saw an opportunity to do a C2C model in India. But this didn’t get the penetration required; basically people were reluctant to trade books online. So we came up with CinnamonTeal, which is as you said a Publish-on-Demand service with a lot of useful pre and post publishing services available to the author.

Q: Lets now talk about CinnamonTeal in a little more detail. What market are you trying to cater to with it? I feel POD is strongly biased towards regional/local books published in small or medium volumes.

We are targeting 2 broad sectors: Corporates/Companies wanting to publish brochures and manuals, and amateurs. We also have the capability to print in many regional languages and are aggressively looking to help authors publish in these languages. Some regional languages are dying due to lack of readership. Some have only 1 active author writing in the language. POD makes for a great model to help such people publish and sustain the language and it’s literature.

Q: What services can a potential author avail?

What CinnamonTeal offers is the option to publish a book without knowing any details of publishing. An author can just come to us with an idea of a book and we will help him take his idea to a marketable book and even market it. The services an author can avail are broadly in 2 categories: Pre-publishing and post-publishing. Pre-publishing covers stuff like editing, cover design, manuscript design, formatting etc. Post publishing covers getting the copyright, marketing the book through our partners, putting up a webpage and blog for the book, print-on-demand etc. We also get the book an ISBN number, and the book will be listed as published by CinnamonTeal. Though the author has the alternate option to acquire the ISBN number himself if he wants to be listed as the publisher.

Q: Marketing is a big part in ensuring success of a book. How do you compare against other POD services like Amazon's BookSurge, which obviously has a huge marketing advantage.

We have tie-ups with big Indian online retailers like Flipcart and Indiaplaza to sell our books on their properties. We are also looking at getting into the offline retail marketing space and are exploring partnerships in that domain.

Q: Also, there is some domestic competition in Pothi and also Lulu, which has a very strong team. How do you differ from these offerings?

We offer a comprehensive set of services, both pre and post publishing. We also have a vendor network all over the country so we have a very short turnaround time for publishing books. Our backend is entirely vendor driven. We have freelancers, mostly professionals who help the client with his editing, design requirements. This allows us to offer a bigger portfolio of services to our clients.

Q: What controls does the author have after publishing? Does he/she retain rights? Can he/she market the book independently to online as well as retail book stores?

Unlike the traditional publishing industry, the author retains full rights of his work and can also market the book independently from our network.

Q: What is the size of your company?

It’s just me and my wife. Our entire backend is vendor driven which allows us to scale and operate efficiently at a national level.

Q: CinnamonTeal is a very interesting name. How did you come up with it?

There’s no big story behind it. We wanted a name that has a nice ring to it and felt this name suits our requirements.

Q: Have you considered moving out of Goa to some other city? Why or why not?

It doesn’t make much difference where we are situated because of our national network. We can easily travel to other hubs in the country depending on periodic requirements.

Since this was a phone chat, I reproduced the conversation using my notes and thus I will not quote Leonard on any of the answers. Those are my recollections of his responses.

Technorati Tags: Publish on demand,booksurge

Weekly Readings

2009-02-02T00:45:00.001+05:30

I read 2 interesting articles I’d like to share:

1. After Credentials by Paul Graham on his site: Paul discusses how we as a society are slowly but surely moving away from credentials such as university degrees and repute of university attended etc. to a more performance and merit based evaluation criteria. He collates this trend to the rise in people aspiring to own or work for startups as compared to jobs in big bureaucratic companies. It makes an interesting discussion in the Indian context too, with the over-emphasis we lay on an engineering/management degree, and IIT vs other colleges, working for a known big brand company etc.

2. Sorry Google, You Missed the Real-Time Web! by Bernard Lunn on readwriteweb: He talks about his take on “Real-Time” web, especially Twitter (more specifically, it’s real-time search), and why this could prove to be Google’s Achilles Heel. We also wrote about Vertical Search being Google’s Achilles Heel sometime ago.

Bhavish

Technorati Tags: Twitter,Search

Engineers for Social Impact 2009 Fellowship Program

2009-01-31T02:49:00.001+05:30

Engineers for Social Impact, a program started by NITK alumni and present students, has launched it’s 2nd Fellowship program. The aim of the organization in it’s own words “is to connect the best engineering talent to the most credible for-profit social enterprises that drive market-based solutions to development in India”.

The fellowship will be given to 10 undergraduate students selected from the top 15 engineering schools across India (IITs, NITs, BITS etc). The selected fellows will then be able to work with for-profit social enterprises in areas as diverse as microfinance, low cost power solutions, rural healthcare etc. The network of partner organizations is diverse with some very innovative and impressive companies like SELCO, Ujjivan, DhanaX and Vaatsalya.

Social Entrepreneurship is a very misunderstood area. A lot of people have a strong urge to work for the socially backward but very few consider the path of for-profit enterprises to work towards this aim. Many narrow their view of organizations working in this domain to NGOs or philanthropic efforts. One of the first to actually prove the model of for-profit Social Entrepreneurship was Muhammad Yunus, who built the first profitable microfinance institution, won a Nobel Prize and whose model has been recreated the world over in domains very diverse from banking. As an aside, I would strongly recommend his autobiography to people who what to learn more about for-profit social enterprise. It is a bit drawn out with a lot of Bangladeshi history and context thrown in, but is enlightening.

This would be an excellent opportunity for undergrads to connect with some of the huge challenges and opportunities in India and work with people passionate about social enterprise. Though I am not sure that selecting only engineers, and that too from only 15 colleges is the right strategy. Some colleges, like DA-ICT have a compulsory rural “intern” program and could have had strong potential aspirants.

Bhavish

Technorati Tags: Social Entrepreneurship,Microfinance

Weekly Readings

2009-01-23T03:20:00.001+05:30

I follow Rajesh Jain’s blog and he has a weekly post on interesting readings over the past week. I decided to replicate that on DesiTech. This weekly column will list 3-5 articles that I read over the past week and found to be insightful and interesting. The content of the articles will be allowed to vary across the Technology Business space and the genre would be leaning more towards opinionated and analytical posts rather than news coverage and reporting. I’ll publish this post weekly on Friday/Saturday.

This week readings are:

1. Comments on TRAI Paper on MVAS Growth Recommendations by Rajesh Jain on Emergic.org: This post is about Netcore’s comments on the TRAI paper on MVAS future and organization in India.

2. The Future of Book Retailing in India by Abhaya Agarwal of Pothi on Pluggd.in: Abhaya compares the Indian physical retail and e-commerce scene with that in the US, concluding that the trends in both markets are very different. Physical retailers in the US are facing pressure from e-tailers/e-commerce sites whereas in India, the physical retail sector has just started getting organized.

3. Let’s Spend on Broadband and the Power Grid by Samuel J. Palmisano, the current IBM chairman and CEO on The Wall Street Journal: This article discusses the benefits of investing in smart infrastructure projects in domains like Healthcare, Broadband and Power Grids in terms of sparking economic activity, rather than investing in traditional infrastructure projects like civil works like bridges and highways.

Bhavish

PAN IIT 2008 - IIT Shining

2009-01-06T10:59:00.001+05:30

[Ed Note: Krishna Mehra is an IIT graduate turned researcher turned entrepreneur. His latest passion is his startup - Capillary which focuses on mobile based reward programs for small enterprises. Being a Calcuttan (if that is even a word), his craving for milk sweets is legendary. More about him on his blog.]

I was in Chennai from 18-22 Dec, esp. for PAN IIT 2008. As I already pointed out earlier, we covered all the SMS based notification and search applications for PAN IIT, and hence had to be there well in time to setup the system etc.

The way the event had been structured was that there were 5-6 tracks: Research, Rural, Entrepreneurship, Innovation and so on, and a galaxy of speakers was lined up for each session as a panel. Although unfortunate that you couldn't be at two places at the same time, it left something for everybody.

The event started with a bang. We participated in the Business Plan Conclave so didn't get to see the Opening Ceremony, where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was streamed from New Delhi. The highlight of the day had to be Hema Malini. I remember as soon as we sent out the notification about Hema Malini being around, half the place got deserted and people crammed into the hall to catch a glimpse. It almost seemed that the alums who'd passed out two decades ago, couldn't resist the sight of Dream Girl ;-) A big disappointment was the Cocktail party being cancelled in the wake of protests from the political lobby about IIT Madras being used as a bar. A bunch of us left for the nearby Besant Nagar beach, cramming 11 people in an Auto!

The second day had some interesting sessions by Raghuram Rajan, Steven Cohen, and the COO of P&G. One thing that kept coming up was the current economic crises and the recent Mumbai terror attacks. The highlight of the second day has to be the Cocktail party at the Chennai Trade Center - some 30 Km from IITM from what I heard where we all filled up in buses and went.

Similarly, the last day started with quite a few activities at the Students Activity Center (SAC) - Steven Cohen and Kishore Mahboobani, and a session on social networking by Orkut Buyukkokten of Google. The closing speech by Amartya Sen, however, took the cake thanks to his scholarship and well prepared rhetorics. The question and answer session was extremely entertaining and informative, with Sen completely overshadowing the ceremonies - one classic was (not verbatim):

Q. How do you think India can become a superpower?
A. I don't wish for India to be a superpower. I hope Indians can be happy and reduce poverty.

It seemed a little ironic that both the opening ceremony of a ballad on IIT was done by alumni of Delhi School of Economics - but overall, it was a great show in terms of content. The organization, however, was lacking. There were hardly any volunteers to ask for help, nobody seemed to be accountable for the proceedings, people were denied food -- it seemed there were too many delegates and too few volunteers.

Overall a great show. One thing really humbling was seeing celebs from the business world (and some outside) at a extend-your-hand-and-touch distance. I almost bumped into Nandan Nilekani en route to his book signing session, and we found Chetan Bhagat ambling near Gurunath's Canteen with his family. It was above all a celebration of IITs and their contribution, and in this, the event fully succeeded.

So long till Chicago 2009.

-Krishna Mehra

Technorati Tags: IIT,PAN-IIT

Entrepreneurship is living life the way most people can't

2009-01-02T21:06:00.001+05:30

Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.

[Source: Empowered Quotes]

Technorati Tags: Entrepreneurship,Quotation

Book Review: Entrepreneur Journeys (volume 1) by Sramana Mitra

2008-12-30T03:22:00.001+05:30

I chanced upon a review of Sramana Mitra’s book over the web and decided to order one from Amazon (That is the only way you can get one – she has self-published the book with Amazon’s Print-on-Demand service BookSurge). Sramana describes the book as an attempt to discover the common threads among ideas, strategies and choices that led to successful technology startups and inspire readers to achieve similar entrepreneurial success.

Sramana is a technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley. She writes a blog and is a columnist for Forbes. I started following her blog after reading her book and am hooked on to it by the depth of her posts and insight.

The book details 12 startups and their founders, grouped by the different paths they followed (Bootstrapped, Taking on existing giants, Disrupting business models, Addressing unmet market needs, and Tackling planet scale problems). All the startups are technology based and nearly half have an important Indian connection, through a founder, or base, or even target market. Sramana regularly profiles startups and their founders on her blog and the book is a selection of interviews from her recent blog archives.

I really admire the way a lot of layered and complex details come out from these interviews. The interviews cover the whole range of questions from the history of the founder to his motivation for the startup to the early days and to future predictions. One also gets a detailed picture of the market the particular startup is operating in, along with an analysis from the founder itself. She writes about how Sridhar Vembu, through his company AdventNet (parent company of ZoHo), is bootstrapping his way to building India’s first big product company and how vertical ad networks powered by Adify along with vertical search engines like Kayak and SimplyHired can give Google a hard time in the coming years. She details how important the Software-as-a-Service delivery model can be, especially in the SME segment through the success of Qualys, an On-Demand Enterprise Network Security firm and Concur, a provider of On-Demand Employee Expense Management and Vendor Payment Software. She talks about how HotChalk convinced wary VCs to invest in technology for education, a market which doesn’t excite VCs because of the large gestation period of investments.Finally, the book tells how Obopay with it’s mobile microfinance offering and Harish Hande, with SELCO’s solar lighting systems, are attempting to change the lives of millions of rural and bottom of the pyramid Indians.

I’d recommend this book highly if you are interested in technology businesses. Order here. If buying the book is not viable, you’ll find all the contents of the book scattered over her blog, along with many more excellent articles.

Some details of the book are:

Title: Entrepreneur Journeys v.1

Author: Sramana Mitra

Publisher: Amazon BookSurge

Price: $16.95 + shipping

Technorati Tags: Sramana Mitra,Entrepreneur Journeys

A Student's Take on HiPC 2008

2008-12-28T14:45:00.006+05:30

[Ed Note: This is the first of our contributed articles. Vijay Chidambaram is a student at the College of Engineering, Guindy (Anna University). He claims his sole interests in life to be computers. Also, he is graduating soon and will be in job market, so this is the right time to spam him with your job offers. You can read more about him on his blog]

I braved the chilly weather for the past one week to attend the 15th annual IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing (HiPC 2008), held at the Taj Residency Hotel in Bangalore. The event drew students from colleges all over India, professors from universities around the world and a variety of companies interested in High Performance Computing (HPC).

HiPC is intended as a forum for discussion on research on HPC. Every year, world renown academics and senior executives from the industry attend the event. This year, the keynote speakers were Dr Wolfgang Gentzsch, Dr David Peleg, Dr Mary Wheeler and Dr Laxmikant Kale. The crowd, especially students, surrounded the speakers asking for autographs!

On the first day, workshops and the student research symposium was conducted. The research symposium provided an excellent opportunity for students to showcase their work to professors and the industry. Intel, IBM, Infosys, AMD and HP were among the companies that visited the poster session. Dr Vittal Kini, Intel India Research and Dr Mohan, IBM Research addressed the students before the presentations started. Dr Kini explained how the market affects industrial research and the additional constraints that developing for a market impose upon a researcher. Dr Mohan stressed the need for researchers to develop people skills and market their research effectively for maximum impact.

The workshops were on a variety of topics, from Grid Computing to Wireless networks. There were also 2 tutorials - one for CUDA and the other for Hadoop, by teams from NVIDIA and Yahoo respectively. In the evening, the reception included a talk by Mr Vishwanath Madhugiri, GM Research Alliances, Infosys. Mr Viswanath explained about research in general at Infosys and how the research teams communicate with the government and various universities.

From the second day onwards, the core technical sessions started. Researchers from various universities such as Rutgers University, University of Melbourne, Osaka University and Tsinghua university presented their work on topics such as performance optimization, parallel algorithms and scalable computing. Senior researchers from organizations such as IBM Research Center also presented their work. The best paper award went to Tameesh Suri and Aneesh Aggarwal from SUNY Binghamton for their work titled “Scalable Multi-core with Improved Per-core performance using Off-the-critical Path Reconfigurable Hardware”. Awards were also given for best poster and best poster presentation in the student symposium and also for best papers in the workshops.

Several User/Industry symposiums were also conducted. Among the topics covered in the symposiums were emerging storage trends in data centres, system management solutions, MPI parallel application development and web-scale data processing. The symposiums included senior researchers and executives from companies such as NetApp, Dell, IBM, Google and Yahoo. There was also a very interesting panel where the relationship between High Performance Computing (HPC) and Cloud Computing was debated. The consensus was that the future would likely see both the fields combine together for optimal performance. The Indian Top SuperComputer Sites were also launched at the conference, with the EKA supercomputer at CRL securing the top place.

The conference also involved a demo by various companies showcasing compilers for high performance researchers, multi-core tools for various platforms and even entire solutions for high performance computing.

Apart from the technical feast presented at the conference, it also provided an excellent opportunity for networking. World renown professors and senior researchers mingled with undergraduates. It afforded the chance to forge connections with professors and industrial researchers in your area. Many of these people were so high profile that the possibility of talking to them at a personal level is well nigh impossible outside the conference. The whole event was excellent and achieved its goal of bringing together students, academia and industry in a large way.

A special thanks to Thanumalayan for sharing the photos.

-Vijay Chidambaram

Inviting guest articles

2008-12-28T14:30:00.003+05:30

Hello Readers,

DesiTech is starting it's invited articles column. If you think you have
something interesting to write about and would like to use the DesiTech forum
to publish it, do leave us a comment on this post (with a valid e-mail address)
and we will get back to you.

-The DesiTech team

Google’s Achilles Heel

2008-12-16T22:33:00.001+05:30

Even as we wait for a Microsoft buyout of Yahoo to create some semblance of competition for the search giant, I came across an interesting analysis of the long term weaknesses of the Google model of search and advertising.

Sramana Mitra writes on her blog and in her book – Entrepreneur Journeys (which btw is an excellent read if you are excited about technology businesses, and I’ll be posting a review soon) that Google’s main weakness is it’s rigidness on the one-search-bar-for-the-world interface. She says that verticalization of search domains, and subsequently of advertizing networks could prove to be a big challenge to Google 5-7 years down the road.

To illustrate, she takes the example of the Travel industry. 15% of Google’s ad revenue comes from travel related advertisements. But a search engine like Kayak.com makes the user search experience much more comprehensive by allowing the user to specify advanced search parameters which the one single search bar on Google doesn’t (at least not in a user friendly way). Because the user experience is much better, more users go to Kayak for their travel requirements. Advertising in this vertical can also lead to better returns and targeting for the advertiser and the publisher. For example, an airlines like British Airways buys ad-words on Google, say “flight” and “Paris”. A user search of “flight Paris to Mumbai” might show the British Airlines ad even though they may not fly on that segment. Whereas on a vertical search engine like Kayak, the context of the search can be better used (because it’s a single vertical) to give more relevant ads. Such a vertical Ad network would be valued much higher in terms of targeting and context.

This seems like a very interesting argument, and as of now, I tend to agree with Sramana that the future would see more verticalization. We’ve seen the growth of verticals like Travel and Hospitality, Job Search, Matrimony etcetera and even some vertical ad networks like that of LinkedIn and DivaNation, Tonic Tag closer to home in India. The future holds exciting promise!

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: Vertical Ad Networks,Google,Travel Search

Entrepreneur Blues

2008-12-16T03:24:00.001+05:30

I stumbled upon this “movie” (4 part video below) which details the journey of a bunch of Indian web startups (TringMe, RedBus, LifeBlob etc). Although quite amateurish, with a lot of fluff and even the Top Gun background score(!), it’s a commendable effort and something you can watch if you have 15-20 minutes to spare and a fast broadband (to skip through all the fluff!)

On a related note, one of the best talks I’ve seen on startups in general has to be David Heinemeier Hansson’s (creator of Ruby on Rails) presentation at StartupSchool 2008. It really puts all the hoopla around “free web apps” and “the google advertising model” into perspective.

Technorati Tags: Entrepreneur,Startup School,David Heinemeier Hansson

Startup events headed your way

2008-12-13T22:41:00.001+05:30

December and January is jam packed with startup events.

WATblog Wednesday in Bangalore – 17^th Dec '08

WATBlog Wednesday is a networking event where in professionals (has to be a focussed group i.e. techies, advertising or startups) be come together on a wednesday evening network and have a drink! Unlike conferences WATBlog Wednesday is a casual networking event which lets you be yourself and interact with a focussed group from this Industry.

TiE Entrepreneurial Summit 2008 – 15^th and 16^th Dec '08

TiE Entrepreneurial Summit (TES) Asia’s largest and most preferred Summit - bringing together people from practically every walk of life. This will include entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, policy makers, academia, industry, thought leaders, and all other stake holders. TES will focus on unlocking entrepreneurial energies, which will power the fastest growing economies in the region.

HeadStart 2009 – 9^th and 10^th Jan '09

HeadStart showcases innovation in India. HeadStart brings together all the stakeholders of the innovation ecosystem - entrepreneurs and startups, researchers from industry and academia, early adopters of new products and investors - at one place for showcasing innovation and networking.

Proto.in Jan edition 2009 – 23^rd and 24^th Jan '09

Proto.in, Today, is about giving entrepreneurs a platform to express their visions and showcase their imagination, with a working prototype, for the world to see. It’s about increasing partnership, collaboration and mindshare among a distinguished, qualified and well-connected audience. Proto.in provides a unique platform for promising startup talent to communicate their creativity and innovation potential. As a meeting place for the smartest entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and professionals, Proto.in stands true to its mantra “Create, Contribute, Collaborate.”

Technorati Tags: WATblog Wednesday,Proto.in,TSE,HeadStart

Last few days for proto.in nominations

2008-12-10T08:53:00.001+05:30

Proto.in is a platform for entrepreneurs to showcase their works at a central forum. The next avataar of proto.in is scheduled for Jan '09 following the immense success they had in last 3 offerings. Also special this time is a special workshop called "Pitchcamp" on how to present to Venture Capitalists.

The nominations page is up for grabs. Register your startup for a demo or a presentation at proto.in right away. The last date is the 15^th of Dec. And needless to say, we will be there to cover the event.

Technorati Tags: proto.in,startup

What makes an idea not suck?

2008-12-05T08:20:00.001+05:30

How to start a talk on Startups? Here is a neat quote from Nick Hanauer:

If everyone thinks it’s a great idea, it probably sucks.

If people understand it, you’re too late.

If people don’t like it and don’t understand it, it probably still sucks.

So entrepreneurship is a dangerous field, he said. “The difference between being an idiot and being a genius is very, very thin.” And keep in mind, he pointed out, “you can be very successful without being socially disruptive. Great fortunes have been made doing incremental things. Burger King, which came after McDonald’s, was not transformational, despite what they tell you…But they made a great fortune.”

[Source: http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2008/12/03/how-to-spot-a-breakthrough-tips-from-early-amazon-investor-nick-hanauer/]

Technorati Tags: Nick Hanauer,Amazon

A photoreview of foss.in

2008-12-03T00:27:00.001+05:30

For those of you who were not able to attend foss.in this year. Kushal Das announced a very impressive photoreview of foss.in! Grab your copy here:

Technorati Tags: Foss.in,Kushal Das

Imagining India – Part 2

2008-11-29T11:06:00.001+05:30

(Image from ibnlive.com)

Being at Nandan Nilekani’s book reading event for his book “Imagining India” in the backdrop of the Mumbai horror, one felt that there was a need for each of us to re-imagine the India we want to live in, and to make sure our dreams are never held to ransom again.

The perpetrators for this act, wherever they are, will have to be brought to book. But let us also look inside ourselves, on where we as a nation have gone wrong. Let’s imagine India once again.

Imagine an India where a brave officer like Hemant Karkare will never be ostracized by a opportunistic polity. Rather they will focus on getting the best equipment to the police so that they are not left facing AK-47s with mere .303s.
Imagine an India where we shall never again tolerate a politician being opportunistic and using a tragedy like this to forward his goals.
Imagine an India where the media will not call this India’s 9/11 just for sound bites but would rather make sure that our politicians and our responses measure up to what the other democracy put up.
Imagine an India where we stop all the bickering amongst us, where we are united in our dreams for ourselves and our country so that no one dare look at us with deadly designs ever again.
Imagine an India where people relate to each other on the basis of their dreams and aspirations, not on the basis of misguided religious and regional fervor.
Imagine an India where other nations would never be able to raise fingers at a delayed response.
Imagine an India where we shall never take something like this lying down.

Let’s get involved in our communities and localities. Let’s get out and vote. Let’s get out and debate. Let a Deve Gowda never again be allowed to choke a city with his rally and then respond unapologetically that he didn’t care as Bangaloreans didn’t vote anyway. Let’s all log on to www.jaagore.com and be the change we want to see.

Let’s pledge to work hard in our own spheres. Let’s look inside ourselves, improve our deficiencies rather than blaming someone else for our woes. Japan was rebuilt after ww2 into the 2nd largest economy not by attacking the US but by every citizen working hard towards a common goal – to make their country great.

Let’s educate the rural masses so that they are not misled by communal forces. Let us all start questioning and demanding more from our politicians.

Let’s stop fighting amongst ourselves and reclaim the tolerant image we as a culture had, but which has been long lost. Let a Raj Thackeray or a Narendra Modi never get mileage out of dividing the country. Let us remember the people who put down their lives for Mumbai were not only Marathi manoos but also came from Bihar and Bangalore; The people who were killed were not only Hindus but also Muslims and Jews and Christians.

Let’s start to respect the other’s viewpoint and not to resort to arms whenever a river’s water is disputed or a statue defaced.

Most of all, let’s not once again let this anger and frustration within us die down; Let’s not get satisfied with the clichéd “Spirit of Mumbai” tag. Rather let’s ensure that this emotion makes us work towards ensuring that such an incident is never repeated again on Indian soil, ever.

Bhavish

Technorati Tags: Mumbai,Terrorism,India

Imagining India – Part 1

2008-11-29T04:13:00.001+05:30

Nandan Nilekani’s book “Imagining India” released this week. Today I went to a book reading and interaction session with Nandan himself organized by Crossword, Residency Road Bangalore. The title couldn’t have been more poignant in the backdrop of the ongoing horror in Mumbai.

Nandan began by describing his motivation behind the book – Many books have been written about Indian history as a sequence of events, or on important people. So he decided to write a book on ideas crucial for India, as he felt each civilization had grown by having a safety net of ideas to pull from. Ideas like health care, innovative energy solutions, merit vs caste etc. were crucial to our future as a nation. He mentioned that the economic reforms in 1991 had led the nation on a path of moderate growth – around 5-6 % GDP growth p.a. which had been inflated during the past 5 years due to a global liquidity bubble to around 8-9%. Now that the bubble had burst, we were falling back on the more realistic growth rate of 5%.

He was particularly caustic about the present lot of politicians, saying that at the time of independence, our leaders were ahead of the public and built institutions like democracy, justice, universal franchise, the legal system, IITs etc but the present lot had fallen way behind the public and lost sight of the larger goal. They had introduced vertical divides into our society as means of developing voting constituencies, whereas the need of the hour was to tap into the vast horizontal unity of our country – the person in a village dreams the same dreams and has the same aspirations for his loved ones as does the person living in the cities; the villages in Chattisgarh face the same terror as the hotels in Mumbai.

He ended by mentioning that the book was meant to ignite debate on the issues highlighted rather than the frivolous debates presently ongoing in public life.

Bhavish

More Pictures below:

Technorati Tags: Imagining India,Nandan Nilekani

Book Review: Stay Hungry Stay Foolish by Rashmi Bansal

2008-10-30T19:08:00.001+05:30

I’ve been following Rashmi’s blog for a year or so and although I don’t entirely agree with her style of blogging or the interpretations she draws, I’ve still kept at it. I read about her debut book and looking at the subject matter (Story of 25 IIMA alumni who started their own ventures) couldn’t wait to get my hands on one. That wasn’t so easy as it isn’t so readily available in all bookstores, except crossword.

Very obviously, the title is stolen from Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford. Rashmi is gracious enough to acknowledge that in the preface but I feel the book deserved a more imaginative and thoughtful title.

The book tells about 25 IIM Ahmedabad graduates who at some point of time in their life started their own companies. The collection of entrepreneurs is diverse and covers various industries (IT, Retail, Finance, Consulting, Agriculture etc), IIMA batches (Class of 1970 to Class of 2004) and people who started out at different stages of their careers (Straight out of IIM or after 26 years in a company!). It shows a diverse view of the entrepreneurial dream and succeeds in painting across a broad canvas.

Another positive is that the companies founded by these grads are very much alive and active in today’s economy and are playing a major role in shaping the Indian growth story. A few examples are Subhiksha, Makemytrip.com, Naukri.com, India Infoline, Mphasis etc. I found it interesting to learn about how these companies were born and how they handled previous economic crises to get to where they are today.

But where this book falls a little short is the depth to which each company and entrepreneur is analyzed. Most of the profiles sound very similar and there is a lot of glossing over. Sometimes it seems Rashmi is awestruck by these bigwigs and doesn’t probe deep enough. For the 2000-2001 bust, the author just writes “we really had a hard time but stuck it out” for all the profiles.

Given the speed with which IIM/IIT books are lapped up by the public, this one is also set to be a runaway hit and I’m sure it’ll inspire a lot many young college grads and students to consider the alternate path. It’s a great read if you are into startups or even otherwise. Grab one at your nearest Crossword Store, it’s 3rd on the Bestsellers list there!

Some details about the book are:

Title: Stay Hungry Stay Foolish

Author: Rashmi Bansal

Publisher: CIIE, IIM Ahmedabad

Price: Rs 125

Bhavish

Technorati Tags: Book Review,Startups,India

The Knight News Challenge

2008-10-25T23:10:00.001+05:30

This announcement isn't exactly geared towards the Indian audience. However, for all you guys out there in the US.

The Knight Foundation is $5 million for innovative ideas in the areas of online news media. To quote from their website:

If you have a great idea that will improve local online news, deepen community engagement, bring Web 2.0 tools to local neighborhoods, develop publishing platforms and standards to support local conversations or innovate how we visualize, experience or interact with information, we’d like to see it! You have the opportunity to win funding for your project and support within a vibrant community of media, tech, and community-oriented people who want to improve the world.

Head onto http://www.newschallenge.org/ for more details. The clock is ticking and only a little more than a week left...

Technorati Tags: Funding,Knight Foundation,News Challenge

Startup success stories

2008-10-24T20:21:00.001+05:30

Sitepoint has a recent post detailing some very inspirational stories about how entrepreneurs went on to startups often turning down very coveted job offers.

Head on to http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/10/24/10-inspirational-how-i-did-it-stories/ to read more about them.

Technorati Tags: Startup,success story

The foss.in controversy

2008-10-09T14:12:00.001+05:30

Source Wikipedia

If you are active in the FOSS community in India, you are sure to have heard about foss.in. It is among the premier FOSS conferences in India usually teeming with hackers as well as wide-eyed enthusiasts (I gave a talk at foss.in in 2006, so you know where my loyalties lie ;-). The roots of foss.in have been questioned quite a bit in the past. But, this post will not attempt to discuss the controversy surrounding the ancestry of foss.in (about which you can read more about in the discussion page of foss.in), but rather apprise you about the latest controversy caused by the "Omlette Post"

Atul Chitnis (lead organiser of foss.in) recently posted on the foss.in blog announcing this year avataar of foss.in. The posting makes it clear that the main objective of this year's offering of foss.in is not increasing FOSS awareness in India or catering to the newbie enthusiast but instead choosing to focus on a clique of developers who are looking to move up the software value chain. Although, the community at large seems accepting to the idea of gearing foss.in towards a technically advanced audience, there are certain wording in the announcement that has caused an uproar in the community. To quote a few of them:

Also, FOSS.IN is NOT a newbie event. A “newbie” is defined as someone who has no skills or knowledge or experience that would allow him or her to immediately contribute to FOSS development.

Most new contributors focused only on low hanging fruit, such as translations, and distro-specific packaging. If people got involved with code, it was usually bug fixes and code maintenance.

Our event is meant to highlight Indian contribution to Free and Open Source Software - not just bug fixes, but real code contributions, real innovation, real projects.

The omlette post generated backlash in the community and you can read about some of their points of disagreement here, here, here, here and here. The main points of argument seem to revolve around the blatant undermining of other forms of contribution to the FOSS community such as submitting bug fixes, translations, etc.

However, to offer my personal opinion in the matter. India has largely been at the bottom of the IT value chain pyramid. India is a force to reckon with in the IT industry, but in terms of intellectual capital being generated, India is no where close to that of the US. The way I see it, what foss.in is proposing to do is to encourage Indian FOSS developers to move up the value chain so that they contribute to projects' new features and perhaps start successful new projects. While translations and bug fixing are all essential to the FOSS movement in India, that is not enough. India is one of the largest consumers of FOSS software and gone are the days when you could claim to support FOSS by merely using FOSS software. India has a relatively large number of FOSS contributors. However, if you look at projects where these individuals have made a significant impact, the statistics are dismal. From the top of my head, I can think of Anjuta started by Naba Kumar, Debian is supported by 6 Indian DDs (Debian Developer), GNUSim8085 by Sridhar Ratna, Karunakar of IndLinux fame, LDTP by Nagappan and a few others. Although, I am sure the contributions of all the developers are in fact extremely useful, to be a rockstar, you need to move up the value chain. And you do that not by just contributing bug fixes, but by actually adding creative value to the software.

There are a number of other FOSS conferences in India which focus on spreading FOSS awareness among the public, promotes generation of translations, bug fixes, etc and what foss.in is trying to do is carve a niche out for itself by catering to the segment of developers who are looking to work on creatively more stimulating work.

We will be there at foss.in this year to cover the events and talks in more detail on at least some of the days. If you are going to be there at foss.in too and/or involved with the project days, do let us know if you want us to showcase your views in this forum.

-Prashanth

Technorati Tags: foss.in,FOSS,India

Technologies for the Indian audience

More details about TED India unravelled

Interview with BankBazaar.com - a personalized loan finder

DesiTech on Twitter

TED India!!!

Interview: CinnamonTeal founder Leonard Fernandes

Weekly Readings

Engineers for Social Impact 2009 Fellowship Program

Weekly Readings

PAN IIT 2008 - IIT Shining

Entrepreneurship is living life the way most people can't

Book Review: Entrepreneur Journeys (volume 1) by Sramana Mitra

A Student's Take on HiPC 2008

Inviting guest articles

Google’s Achilles Heel

Entrepreneur Blues

Startup events headed your way

WATblog Wednesday in Bangalore – 17th Dec '08

TiE Entrepreneurial Summit 2008 – 15th and 16th Dec '08

HeadStart 2009 – 9th and 10th Jan '09

Proto.in Jan edition 2009 – 23rd and 24th Jan '09

Last few days for proto.in nominations

What makes an idea not suck?

A photoreview of foss.in

Imagining India – Part 2

Imagining India – Part 1

Book Review: Stay Hungry Stay Foolish by Rashmi Bansal

The Knight News Challenge

Startup success stories

The foss.in controversy

WATblog Wednesday in Bangalore – 17^th Dec '08

TiE Entrepreneurial Summit 2008 – 15^th and 16^th Dec '08

HeadStart 2009 – 9^th and 10^th Jan '09

Proto.in Jan edition 2009 – 23^rd and 24^th Jan '09