Learning to Fly

Long journey that ends with Indian Railway

noreply@blogger.com (Chhavi Gupta) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 04:15:00 +0000

Like a good traveller we started morning 4:28 am from Noida for Ajmer/Pushkar

Mobisy blog has a new home

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 05:11:00 +0000

We have moved this blog now to our domain server.
You can access it from now on at http://www.mobisy.com/blog/
Cheers,
L.

MobiTop powered, 160by2 mobile application Beta is now available!

noreply@blogger.com (Chhavi Gupta) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:15:00 +0000

We have rolled out Beta version of an exciting application powered by MobiTop platform with our colleagues from www.160by2.com

One can use 160by2 mobile application to send unlimited SMS all over India over data connection/wifi.This application uses mobile handset's SMS inbox, editor and allows user to reply, forward options for all his SMS.

With technical jargons, 160by2 application is best example of Mobile 2.0 services, where we have merged web service and native mobile service seamlessly and user gets best of Mobile and Web.

if you are avid user of www.160by2.com and accessing its wap site, you might already see a link for application download. Alternatively, you can request for Beta invitation to us at beta@mobisy.com and we will send you invite.

we will be happy to hear from you so let us know what you think about application. Please send your suggestions and issues to us at feedback@mobisy.com.

So if you have data connection and S60 3rd Edition phone...your SMS bill is all set to be zero. Enjoy!

Here is wishing you and your family a Happy Diwali!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 06:39:00 +0000

Mobisy Survey report

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:03:00 +0000

Mobisy is currently trying to understand the dynamics of Mobile application users in true web 2.0 way by listening to it's consumers. One of such efforts resulted in a Survey held amongst urban youth. The results were very interesting indeed !
Check it out yourself !!

Mobisy Survey Report - Free Legal Forms

Couple of thoughts from me

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:02:00 +0000

In Mobisy we have a famous joke, "after a year of entrepreneurship, you start becoming philosopher". In the same vein, I recently posted my thoughts on couple of leading technology blogs in India. The Alootechie post is more related to technology or market trends while the pluggd.in post is more on emotional note. Let me know which one you liked better.
Cheers,

Mobisy's Spam Manager is now FREE!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Gurpreet) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:13:00 +0000

Yes it is. After getting maximum number of downloads and collections in Mosh, and winning Nokia N95 phone in Nokia's Mosh Challenge, we have made Spam Manager for Nokia 3rd edition devices, absolutely free. No registrations, no activation keys, just install and go. Wanna download, Click Here

Unveiling ZMO...

noreply@blogger.com (Gurpreet) — Fri, 23 May 2008 10:01:00 +0000

Do give us a visit, if you are planning to be in Startup City tomorrow!!!

Belling a cat is out, teething an elephant is in:)

noreply@blogger.com (Gurpreet) — Fri, 23 May 2008 09:46:00 +0000

Wonder what happens, when around a dozen technocrats come together for an almost impossible task, yeah "teething an elephant". Well, I'm talking about our monthly event that happened last week. We had this event at our office and as usual, it was full of fun. Started with a team lunch, we had plenty to games like Dumb Charades, pinning a monkay's tail, pictography and ofcourse drawing elephants teeth. Filled with lots of laughter, and with a change from packed schedule, these monthly events@Mobisy are always cool.

Tadiyandamol

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:04:00 +0000

Once a month all us Mobisians try to have fun together ..
This month we decided to go for an adventure boy was it an experience .. May be Sandeep , Nihar and Pankaj have more to tell about it.
Tadiyandamol is a beautiful peak in Karnataka and camping on the summit is surely an experience no one should miss ..
Here are couple of my picks from the pictures we took there

MoMo Global Peer Awards 2008 Barcelona coverage @ PluGGd.in

noreply@blogger.com (Gurpreet) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 04:47:00 +0000

Lalit's guest post at PluGGd.in, most vibrant blog for startups in India.

"It was an excellent vibrant event where all players in the Mobile ecosystem including operators, phone vendors , VC's and start-ups participated with equal enthusiasm and the event itself was planned immaculately ! I must congratulate Momo global community for arranging such a wonderful experience."

See full coverage "here".

We are @Barcelona

noreply@blogger.com (Gurpreet) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 14:25:00 +0000

We will be attending "The Mobile World Congress" from 11 - 14 February, 2008 in Barcelona. Lets catch'up, if you happen to be there.

Mobisy nominated in the MobileMonday Global Peer Awards 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Chhavi Gupta) — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 05:50:00 +0000

Celebration time and this time it is BIG !

We are proud to announce Mobisy has been nominated as a finalist for the Peer Awards 2008, the event organized by MobileMonday, the global open community of mobile professionals, at Barcelona in the context of Mobile World Congress.

Watch out this space we will post more details soon..

We are Nokia's MoshUp Challenge Winners!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Gurpreet) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 10:40:00 +0000

Yes, thats absolutely right. People normally say that Monday is the worst day of the week, but for us, today's a 'wonderful' day. At 13:03 hours today, we received a mail from Forum Nokia Asia Pacific, that we have won their MoshUp Challenge. We had submitted our most popular application "Spam Manager" for this challenge, and it got collected and downloaded the maximum number of times.

And the winner takes home a brand new feature packed 'Nokia N95'. Cool, isn't it!!

Thanks to you all who liked our application and collected/downloaded it from Mosh. Without you, this feat was not possible.

Also, in the meantime, we have successfully launched "Spam Manager for S60 2nd Edition". Please give it a try, if you have a S60 2nd edition phone.

Knock Knock!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Gurpreet) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 08:13:00 +0000

Last three months we went into a deep stealth mode, working overtime but energetically for our product "Mobitop". And now we are back again with a BANG!!!
First of all, let me wish you a very "Happy New Year", followed by some updates.
Starting this year, we moved to a new bigger office, as we are scaling up now. We do have open positions, and the details are here.

Now about the events that happened over last weekend(18-19,January,2008):
We presented "Mobitop" at two events, 'Proto, Chennai' and 'HeadStart, Bangalore!'. Both the events were full of energy, and we are happy to see such an ecosystem building in India at a vast pace. If you happened to be there, and saw our presentations, we would be glad to receive your valuable feedback. Also please feel free to send us your opinions/suggestions here regarding mobitop as well as the innovative applications that can be built on it.
We are waiting!!

An Unforgettable Monday

noreply@blogger.com (Gurpreet) — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 14:38:00 +0000

Yes, it was indeed an "Unforgettable" Monday, reason being that India emerged as Twenty20 champs. That was awesome!!!. We had one more reason to cheer about. No prizes for guessing....it was the "Mobitop Launch", the same day at MoMo.
To our surprise, we were received by an audience of 35-40 enthusiastic people, inspite of the Twenty20 Finals going on at the same time.Since our platform enables the developers to add features to their mobile application on the server and deploy on web(without re-flashing/installing it on mobile),we capitalized on that and added the "Latest Cricket Score" feature for that "Special Day":), just before the demo(in few seconds).
Watch out this space, as we will be uploading the video of the Mobitop/iContactBook demo soon....

PS: We missed the Twenty20 Finals, but got a chance to see the last 7 balls on the large screen, and that were the ones that mattered most:) Well Done,India.
Oh Boy!!!It was an action packed Monday.

'Mobitop Launch' around the corner...

noreply@blogger.com (Gurpreet) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:49:00 +0000

Dear friends,
It's my pleasure to announce the launch of our much awaited platform, i.e. Mobitop.

“MobiTop, is a mobile phone application development platform with which application developers, device manufacturers and operators can easily develop and deploy new breed of applications with Web 2.0 features. Key challenges faced by today’s mobile application developers are, “Device incompatibilities” and “Ineffective application delivery platforms”. We @ Mobisy are trying to address these major issues by providing a platform to develop applications quickly in standard web technologies like AJAX and limiting the porting issues. Further, we are enabling Internet based deployment of applications, which provides security at the same time avoiding complicated and lengthy, signing procedures. We also provide native device access capabilities(like Call,SMS, Contacts), offline mode and many other key features to watch out for.”

As a first step, we will be giving a demo of our showcase applications on Mobitop in "Mobile Monday(Bangalore Chapter)" event, on 24th Sept,07. Find out more details about this MoMo event "here".
See you on Monday @ MoMo.

"Mobisy's Spam Manager" ROCKS!!

noreply@blogger.com (Gurpreet) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 18:59:00 +0000

Well, last some days we were really excited to find out response to our first product, i.e. "Mobisy's Spam Manager". Every single morning we used to check our mails, for the number of downloads that happened last nite. It feels great to share with you all, that the response has been simply "awsome":). Till now,Spam Manager has been downloaded for more than 300 times, and that too only from "Handango".
If we sum up downloads from other sites, it can simply be doubled(i.e.600 downloads in just 3 weeks).

We also have uploaded "Spam Manager Ver 1.0 for S60 3rd Edition Devices" at following places:
1. "Nokia Software Market"
2. "MobiHand"

We got nice reviews, another reason to feel proud. We were also contacted by a reporter from 'Selular Magazine', Indonesia. It seems there's going to be an article on our "Spam Manager" in their October Edition.

Do go out, and try "Call and SMS Spam Manager for S60 3rd Edition" from Mobisy. I bet, its 'The Cheapest' and 'The Best'.

Mobisy's Call/Sms Spam Manager is Alive n Kickin!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Gurpreet) — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 18:52:00 +0000

We@ Mobisy are proud to annouce the release of our first application, "Spam Manager Ver 1.0 for S60 3rd Edition Devices". Its a nice application to keep spam callers/smsers at bay. Now stopping junk marketing calls and smses is in your own hands. Just add that annoying 'Number' in Spam Manager's Spam List.We will take care of the rest. Peace at last!!!

Lets download "Spam Manager(Trial Version)".

For more info, have a look "here".

Mobisy's Head Shoulder and Foot

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 07:26:00 +0000

I came across this extremely good blog today. It basically tells you how important it is for a start-up to find a Wise Head to question everything, a Broad shoulder to weep and generally to support you when you need, and a strong foot to kick you in the butt when you need it !!

I agree with almost everything mike says here. It matches quite well with my own experience. It got me thinking about who would be the head , shoulder and foot of Mobisy if we have one and turns out we already have those positions filled ..:-).

Chhavi and sometimes Bhupender act like our wise heads, they want us to cross check everything and assume nothing !! Also we have some nice advisers from the industry who help us keep our own head on the shoulder.
The shoulder job is more divided and is done by all of us from time to time. Obviously it helps that in addition to being co-founders of Mobisy we are firstly great friends of each other and that chemistry helps to pull each other up when things do not look as well as they should.
As far as foot is concerned, similar to mike, our respective spouses do that job extremely well. They will not let us fail or accept failure.

iPhone, Google gears and Mobisy

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 20:50:00 +0000

Last few weeks have been sort of turning point for Mobile Internet.

iPhone is phenomenal for us in Mobile Industry. I feel it would be awesome for consumers as well.
You may have already heard the hype
1.iPhone means tail wagging the dog
2.it means a completely new era in Mobile industry,
3.It is special since it's a laptop convergence device running a full OS X
All of above is true but from our point of view the biggest impact iPhone will have on mobile industry will be as an internet device running a full web browser. A first mobile phone vendor which dares 3rd party developers to develop applications 'only' based on their Safari browser.
“Safari” is the key. BTW like many other innovations in iPhone, iPhone is not the first device running full Safari browser on a mobile device. Nokia has been doing it for more than a year now, what's more they have even open sourced their Symbian port. Steve Jobs declaration in Apple WWDC really changes the rules of the game. To give you an idea, we in Mobile Industry struggled with following application development environments till now

1.Native (Symbian, Microsoft Pocket PC, BREW etc) :- These are extremely powerful in terms of technology but completely un-portable across devices and operating systems
2.Java/J2ME :- This is moderately powerful and moderately portable.
3.Flashlite :- A new entrant in the area and a good competitor for J2ME in games development area.
4.Micro browser based :- These have very limited functionality but are portable provided you do not use any AJAX/ Web 2.0 technologies.

iPhone promises that today we can develop all the AJAX applications we want with the hope that tomorrow Apple will make the browser based environment more powerful by giving it device access.

This brings me to second life changing event in Mobile internet area, advent of Google Gears. Google gears basically enhances your PC browser environment by enabling developers to give cool features like off-line access to application data. And bringing this development to Mobile phones has excited many analysts in the world as you can see here and here. I feel it's only matter of time.

I still haven't talked about how does it all affects Mobisy, I mean why the hell am I ranting about it?
Hmm.. if you don't know us probably you may not know, we started talking about Mobisy with a vision of reinventing Mobile Internet around an year ago. Our whole idea is of a scripting based fully customizable and personalized simple User Interface platform for Mobile Phones(Mobile Easy). No wonder the product we are working on is also in the same area !!! iPhone and Google gear validate our concept today. And that's why we take this opportunity to talk about our product publicly. Not to mention, it also saves us some effort of explaining basics ..:-)
We are working on a product which complements the visions of Apple, Nokia , Google to the core. We are building an application development platform for mobile phones which will enable developers to develop internet applications with capabilities of a native environment with off-line access!! Sounds impossible? Not quite.. We already have some private demos and proof of concepts working, so watch this space for more details in future.. If you can't wait to know more, feel free to drop me a line.

The iPhone vs Infineon

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit) — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 12:59:00 +0000

Here is a nice post about how iPhone will impact our ex company Infineon in a positive way. A good read as always from Sramana Mitra.
Main points to be taken are :-
iPhone and it's nearest competitor PRADA are both based on Infineon chips and hence its money for Infineon on both sides of the fence no matter who wins. I find it a little difficult to believe the revenue numbers for Infineon since I do not think modem chips can be sold for that much in today's market. All the same, fact remains that Infineon seems to be turning a corner with iPhone.

Hurray !!!

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit) — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 06:10:00 +0000

Our first application is ready for Alpha testing. It is the coolest way to keep marketing calls and SMSs at bay.
Here is the link to the demo of the application. So any of you / your friends family etc have a GPRS enabled Symbian Series 60 3rd edition phone, please get in touch with me. It's completely free !!(At least for the time being)
This link may help you find the device compatibility.

Technology vs Business Case

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit) — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 14:38:00 +0000

Coming from technical background we all tend to think with our technological spectacles. When someone asks us simple questions like btw who is your customer and how are you going to sell this thing, we tend to fumble. Our thoughts start from cool things we can achieve with technology at hand and tend to end with how users will benefit from it. Which means user perspective is sometimes the last thought on our mind. After talking to plenty of people in the industry I came to realise that this phenomenon is not only limited to us technical people, we have been able to successfully infect all the marketing ,sales and finance guys who work with us as well. You know what if you look at some funded companies in India you may get the feeling that VCs love cool technologies too. (see all the funded companies in the area of IMS, WiMax, and so on...)

BTW here is a nice article explaining the advantages of ignorance in start-ups.(wink)

As usual there is other school of thought from people coming from non technical backgrounds like finance, marketing, sales or people who have really seen the world and know many things.These guys tend to believe that an idea should start from a business case, we need to know what is the market, whom and how we can sell our product and eventually how we can make money from it from the beginning. Like someone told me the other day, you can do a start-up in two ways first, where you do what you love to do and believe in it, this way you may succeed but chances are low. Other way is where you try to know as much as possible in advance and then be flexible enough to start loving something which you know will sell, this way you may not be an outright success, but the chances are more that you will not fail completely.

Now with time, I have come to realise that the later kind of people do have a valid point after all. It is eventually how you want to do your start-up. If you do it as a business, you should listen to these guys and should create something which you know will sell from the beginning. But if you are doing it for your own pleasure, you can have a luxury of venturing in to something completely unknown.Here is a nice read about mindset of current bunch of entrepreneurs from Sramana Mitra.

Obviously the best case scenario is that these two kind of people converge on something they are both really convinced about and that's when you get the Woz and Jobs combination.

Programming is beautiful

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit) — Mon, 28 May 2007 07:44:00 +0000

So, I am coding again. Trying to learn all the things which I somehow unlearned in recent past.
That's one of the things you get to do as a part of working for a start-up even better when you have co-founded it. You get to do everything in fact you 'have to' do everything. In last few months, I got to clean my office ..:-), Got to talk to some investment bankers, Some VCs, Got to participate in the long term and mid term strategy of our company and products, did a demo to a customer, and most importantly for a good part of last few months I spent in designing ,coding and debugging software.
Software is my passion especially when I am doing it for mobile phones. Debugging is something I like to do even more. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I still get the 'kick' out of fixing difficult issues or designing something cool as I used to get when I was a young engineer. It is an amazing experience.
It was really a breath of fresh air for me after 2-3 years while I was away from actual implementation details.
Coding is where my roots lie. As much as I love managing teams, evangelising our products and ideas, trying to get feedback from other people about our direction, etc, I do not get the complete feeling till I have actually implemented something on my own , however small it is.
For me it is like poetry or music, a way of expressing myself. No amount of processes will make it mundane for me. I am not sure how many people are left in the industry like me. But I think there are plenty otherwise the open source communities would not be thriving so much. I am also very lucky to have found my co-founders who share similar passions about work.
I loved this industry from the first month of me joining Wipro as a young programmer. Till then I was not really aware that this is something I am so much passionate about. Going back to the days where I am part of building something from scratch, I cannot describe the pleasure in words.
May you all find a way to experience similar pleasure.