I finally picked up Krishan Partap Singh’s Delhi Durbar. Its the second book on my South Asian authors challenge. Once picked, it was difficult to put it down and I devoured the book late into a night in spite of a hectic schedule the next day. KPS (Krishan Partap Singh is such an mouthful of a name) again spins a very well paced yarn. The story again seems very authentic and again draws upon real life persona. However, unlike the last book Young Turks, there seem to be some small holes. Or maybe, I’m getting used to KPS’ craft and starting to see beyond what he wants a reader to see.

Read the book for a a very credible story of a behind the scene “fixer” who does the high value deals for India’s PM. The fixer is good and has the good fortune of inheriting from his father who was the best of the fixers. However, he is faced with situations and people that even he can’t stomach. Also, he has personal problems to deal with. This is his story of navigating the maze of India’s political sleaze and managing to win against the odds.

The protagonists from Young Turks also make an appearance here and there seems to be an implicit promise of everyone getting together in the last book of series.

Economics and Finance

The Long Now of Finance update. An ongoing attempt to see what the world of finance be in 10,000 years from now.

Making it fun to save. A very interesting idea to enable savings products on top of the usual no frills account that financial inclusion typically provides.

The average credit rating for corporation has fallen in last 30 years. This mirrors the rise of Private equity, Hedge funds and LBOs. This also means that premium for a higher credit rating should be higher than before. In other words, while the average has worsened, the standards for good vs bad haven’t.

IT

Bank in a Box. A very good summary of the business and operations models on offer in today’s core banking software market

Startup

Celent’s selection of Financial Technology Start ups.

Start ups from the Mobile Breakfast event

Mobile

Apple’s people centric design

Social Media

How many times should one tweet one’s post. Good post and discussion

Science

A more reliable invisibility cloak. Remember Harry Potter?

Research shows that memory improves while walking.

Aakar Patel, in his Mint column, quotes some very interesting data on culture but draws incomplete conclusions. I think that the real story underneath the data is very different and more complex.

Aakar took Time Out; “the most comprehensive events magazine in the world” and counted the no of cultural events listed in roughly the same time period in Oct 2010. The time span for New York and London was 1 week each whereas it was 2 weeks each for Mumbai, Delhi and Hong Kong. I’ve summarised the Aakar’s research in the table below:

This is good data that quantifies the cultural volume across major cities. It also shows the difference in scale in both absolute and per capita terms. In Aakar’s words:

Two things become clear, and they’re related. One, that we have few events. Two, these are free.

Aakar goes on to conclude that:

No culture is sustained much less advanced by such a poor audience. We assume that other Indians somewhere are carrying the tradition forward. Those who believe culture is happening in the small town are mistaken.

Being modern in India means being uninterested in classical Hindu tradition and ignorant of classical Europe. Our civilization is past.

This is good data but bad research. Let us see why.

First, New York and London score over other cities because they have had a longer history. London’s first landmark theater, the Royal Opera House, started in 1734 and New York’s first landmark theater, the Carnegie Hall, started in 1891. Compared to this, Mumbai’s NCPA started in 1969 and Prithvi started in 1978. In Delhi, Kamani started in 1971 and Sri Ram Center in 1976.  Over time, other institutions and groups have grown around each of the landmark theaters. But this local ecosystem takes time to develop. Given the decades of head start, its not really any surprise that London scores over New York and New York scores over cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Hong Kong.

Second, people tend to care about culture only at higher levels of economic achievements. After all, spending on culture as an expression of refinement is not the first priority for anyone. Historically also, all great cultural movements have come at the zenith of civilizations where peace reigned and wealth was at a height. Again, cities like London and New York have a much higher level of per capita income and a higher no of people with a high level of income; another reason why there are more patrons of culture in these two cities.

The point is that the numbers are actually as expected. Once we realise that culture in Indian cities is actually in its early stages rather than late (an assumption that Aakar starts with), its easy to see why volumes are low and that culture is being promoted and hence a higher proportion of free events. In fact, there is a high correlation between age and the % of free events. Older the history, lower the number of free events. Only New York beats that correlation.

What is happening in India is that the culture itself is undergoing a massive shift. What is classical is not really the culture of the current Indians; as Aakar currently points out. People find it difficult to understand classical music. School curriculum is also more focussed on creating earning capacity in the students than inculcating culture. The new culture is heavily influenced by the popular western culture and Bollywood. This new culture is just coming out and is low in volume. The old culture survives but either as promotion in larger cities or on its own in older cities. For eg look at the tradition of music concerts at the Sankat Mochan Mandir at Varanasi or the Sabhas at Chennai. The older Indian tradition of arts was focused around temples and courts. For example, Ustad Bismillah Khan played Shehnai almost every week at the Kasi Vishwanath Temple at Varanasi. Thus, looking at Time Out is probably an incorrect way of measuring Indian classical culture as neither these cities nor the temples figure there.

I think its easy to sit in Hill Road and write columns that Indian civilization is dead compared to really understanding what Indians see as their culture and how they interact with it. In reality, India is just too big and too complex to be explained in a few columns. Any claim, implicit or explicit, to the contrary appears false to me.

]]> http://adityamishra.in/2010/06/20/misunderstanding-indian-culture/feed/ 0 http://adityamishra.in/2010/06/17/mobile-app-opportunity-on-nokia-phones/ http://adityamishra.in/2010/06/17/mobile-app-opportunity-on-nokia-phones/#comments Thu, 17 Jun 2010 12:59:37 +0000 Aditya http://adityamishra.in/?p=284

There are new Mobile apps coming out every day but inexplicably almost all of them skip the Nokia platform. This could be an interesting opportunity for other developers who could fill in these gaps for Nokia/Symbian platform which arguably is bigger than iPhone, Android or Blackberry.

Foursquare is a good example of a popular and growing service that doesn’t have a Nokia/Symbian play. Evernote promises to connect “all the computers and phones you use daily” but still skips Nokia/Symbian platform. Just yesterday, Amplify launched a new mobile bookmarklet which again is not available on Nokia/Symbian. These are just examples of many products that are focusing on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm and Windows Mobile (in that order) and skipping Nokia/Symbian.

Surely, Nokia and other Symbian based handset users look at these apps and wonder why they are being left out. Some of them may switch to a iPhone or Android or Blackberry but a large number stays with their device. If you look at the data, what jumps out is that forget abandoning Nokia, more users than ever are buying Nokia Smartphones. As per data from IDC, Nokia shipped 39.3% of the smartphones worldwide in Q1, 2010 which is ahead of Blackberry’s 19.4% and Apple’s 16.1%. Android, Palm etc are not large enough to be mentioned by name and are clubbed under Others. Nokia has maintained its market share while Apple has gained at the cost of Blackberyy. The absolute numbers also tell an interesting story. Nokia shipped 21,500,000 phones in Q1 of 2010 which is 50% higher than their own sales. In other words, if the same growth rate continues for another three quarters, Nokia would sell over 100,000,000 smartphones in 2010 alone! Combine this with the already installed base of Nokia and the number is truly staggering.

This begs the question of why so many apps are ignoring potentially the largest market for apps. Some reasons are:

1. On the demand side, no of users doesn’t translate to dollars earned. Some users pay more for the app than other users or their click thrus are more valuable. Once segmented this way the US market comes at the top. US market has a far higher penetration of iPhone, Blackberry and Android devices than the rest of the world and therefore, its no surprise that more US focused companies are developing for these platform. Focusing on US makes sense for an early mover as its a huge market by itself. Even Apple focussed its iPhone in US for quite some time.
2. On the intersection of demand and supply, something interesting has been happening. Apple and now others have promoted the app store heavily. This has led to more iPhone users trying out apps and more developers developing apps for iPhone. Its a virtuous cycle where Apple is ahead and will stay ahead.
3. On the supply side, Nokia hasn’t made it easy for developers to develop apps. First there is a challenge of multiplicity of devices and multiplicity of OS flavors. Second, Nokia has not painted a clear picture for developers and has also failed to deliver on some of its promises. Third, re-orgs within Nokia doesn’t give confidence to developers about Nokia staying the course or its future directions. Having said all these, these are probably less true now than they were a year ago. Nokia is showing signs of resurgence by launch of new models and platforms

The upshot is that large markets are being ignored because the overall market is huge. A blue ocean if you like. But it will take a lot of effort to own the blue ocean and I think justifiably so. So what are the opportunities for developers looking at this space? I think the following could be some themes:

1. Meta Apps which put together several of the web services like Evernote, Amplify etc in one app. A good case study is what Nimbuzz has done in social networking services. Such apps would meet the latent demand of Nokia users who do not have such web services on their mobile as an app.
2. Derivative Apps which build additional layer of functionality on top of another service like Foursquare. These apps would have a better take off in the current scenario as Foursquare itself is not a mobile app on Nokia.
3. New Apps which are inspired by what is happening elsewhere but are made for unique needs of the target segment. For example, Indian urban users have longer commute times than their global peers and mobile serves multiple needs in these long lonely hours. A good example of an earlier opportunity of similar nature is the Chinese Internet market. Global players were slow in moving in as it was not the first priority and had language challenges. It gave ample time for local innovators to localise what they saw elsewhere and to ramp up. Today Chinese Internet is bigger than English Internet in volume and maybe in some time in value too and is dominated by local players.

Arbitrage Apps, apps that provide the same functionality as another one on another platform, in my opinion is not an opportunity most of the time. First, the original one is always ahead in learning curve due to greater adoption and feedback. Second, in copying the original the developer surrenders mentally and never recovers from that mindset. Third, once the arbitrage app shows traction, the original can start competing by launching on the skipped platform. So, no there isn’t an arbitrage app opportunity.

Image Courtesy: The Mobile Phone 1974 by catmachine

Just read Krishan Partap Singh’s Young Turks as a part of the South Asian Author Challenge. Back cover says “pure Jeffrey Archer” and its not off the mark. The story itself has elements of Kane and Abel and the its a political thriller like many of Archer’s books. The story just flows with hardly anything superfluous or underdone. The transitions between the incidents sometimes reminded me Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series also. The language is very simple and yet the story assumes an intelligent reader. So in terms of story telling, this is a very well written book at par with the very best.

The story itself is very Indian. The characters are very real and I love the way they grow with the story. Each of the main characters adds layers in their personality as the story unrolls. One can easily identify with young men in school to a Indian Muslim’s dilemma to several kinds of politicians in the story. In fact, the background of the PM and his choice of words brought up the face of someone I know almost every time. There is a lot of research by the author in real incidents, real people and real trends that comes together in the story. Thus, when he builds the story on top, the mix of fact and fiction reads very genuine. The pace is fast and a lot happens within the span of a few years but it all reads very credible thanks to Singh’s style of writing.

In all a great read and highly recommended. Krishan Partap Singh is a revelation and I’ll be looking out for any books that he writes. In fact my next book is his Delhi Durbar.