I once used to have the question in my head as to why cant we create a product and brand like the Mercedez in India. And then we got the Nano. Not at all the same thing, is it?

I cant stop by sit back and think what would be the scenario if we had indeed launched a car that ranks shoulder to shoulder, or even beats the quality of a Mercedez. Why Benz, lets make it beat a Bugatti Veyron, if our fancies need to fly a little. I am not so sure we would have succeeded. Am sure the first question and comparison that would come out, is the price. And India has been so successfully been marketed as a low-cost Utopia that even if we make a Mercedez, we would have to make it cheaper than the Benz.

Now is that technically feasible? Yes it is. And that is our End game in a lot of ways. But where do we start? We start at low-cost.

A lot of people get very upset and turned-off at the notion that we were, and in a lot of ways still the low-cost destination. And so should I – if that is the end game. But it isnt. Let me give you examples.

HCL once used to be nothing more than a pure outsourcing arm for Cisco in the telecom division. Today they have moved up the value chain to establish a joint-venture with Cisco (Setting up HCL-Cisco) that they co-own, and in some cases license patents and IP to Cisco. And trust me, that doesnt happen overnight or by chance. It takes leadership, strategy and direction to make that happen. Which is why I am hoping that entrepreneurs, especially startup entrepreneurs will get to hear this, cause you have to start thinking that way to get there.

So look at the Nano. Tata owns Jaguar, and Tata owns the Nano. Amazing, I must say, and it all makes sense. In order to make the Mercedez, you first have to make the Nano.

Why? Because building a brand takes time, and enroute to that, you have a brand to break – the brand that India is low-cost. And how do you do that? Thats what “Disruptive” technology stands for – by definition. Anything that can Disrupt people’s normal, everyday thoughts in terms of a breakthrough in technology, thats capable of breaking business models as well – thats also more or less the reason why technology entrepreneurship is so glamorous. Because it can bring down prices, do sexy things, grab attention and make people take notice.

So seriously, whats the link from a Nano to a Benz? The Nano is important, because its a crucial step to get to the Benz, and the crucial step and mindset breaks when you get people to say the first Wow. And the Tata Motors Company, has successfully managed to do that. Get the world to say a Wow. And that is the first leap for any of our companies, be it whatever domain to do. The wow could be quality measures, cost, design, Interaction mechanism, or the simple science behind it. But it has to begin with the Wow. Get that in, into your product somehow.

The second bit is the value engineering. How do you mass manufacture something, and still manage price points and quality. If you think this is a mechanical engineer’s curse, think again. Most web companies will bleed and die because of their “cloud” bills. That silly recursive function that takes that extra compute cycle, will come to bite you in the wrong place, if you dont fix it. This is where specialists kick in. This is where experience comes in, and this is where price point remains still. This is definitely India’s second move. And I’m already starting to see plenty of companies do this.

The Third move will be in Feature Engineering. Whatever you did in the first bit, you want to do the reverse of that, with the supervision of the second phase engineers. You want to put stuff in, but not the old stuff, make a leap and bring in the next generation of things that make it easier on the user, the manufacturer and everyone who comes near a ten foot radius of it. And this is where the next generation of Benz, Jaguar, and Bugatti’s are born.

The interesting point will be that, without step one, we would never have step three, because the evolution of talent, processes, and engineering will simply not be there. And If we try to jump directly to step three, what we will end up will be a fake imitation of a luxury product, twice priced, and having to fight the mindset of it being in the wrong place (it should be low-cost instead).

I remember standing on the stage at Proto.in in 2007 asking where are our companies that can make a Merc and Ipods. The Answer – They are coming, and the first generations of them are just born. To be in India, to be in the products space, and to thrive in it, it helps to keep this in mind. It took me a while to get this, but thats also cause I see this trend happening around me – Playing out in real life.

I can imagine the look that you have on your faces reading this. Where is our market then? Isnt the US the most wealthiest market to go tap into? Am sure you have that look on your face, judging me for that. You might want to sit down for this. I think there is a strong misconception. While the western “developed” markets might be the richest, the emerging markets are the biggest – they make for 5/6th the world, and make up in large numbers. It’s almost the long-tail in the truest sense of the word and according to the definition of Pareto distribution (Economic divide on the 20-80 rule). And listen, if it works in India, it will work in most of the emerging markets. And fortunately for us, the high cost of innovation, the inability to grasp emerging markets and the masses, all play against the research labs of the far west.

If anyone can make it happen, and playing with the advantages that we have in terms of the ability to communicate better with the rest of the world, the collaborations we have with abroad, the support that we can garner from the govt (alright alright, we can improve on this bit) and most importantly, our inherent need to innovate, we are probably the best suited for it. And if we are bold enough to take that first step, our journey has finally begun – well hurry up, cause there are already folks getting a headstart on that – Mark my words, the Nano will lead the way to the next generation of Jaguars!

Satisfaction = Reality – Expectations. (Thanks!)

And they would be right.

I remember a call from my dad’s friend about a year ago, to come over to his house to check out his new computer that his Son had gotten for him. His children live in the US and they had gotten their parents a computer so as to take advantage of Skype, Webcams and all those cost effective ways of communicating, which would mean more long hours and detailed conversations amongst themselves. His complaint was that the computer sales guy sold him a slower computer when he marketed it as the fastest computer available in the market.

A little bit of clicking around, and lo and behold, it was a duo core, bloated with RAM, hard disk space and a nifty 19″ monitor, bundled with the entire multi-media suite. All was right here except for the expectations.

When I did mention that, this does seem like a fast computer, his simple question was as to why it takes so long to “turn on”. His comparison: “I push the button on my TV and its on, in about five seconds max. I doubt its as fast as they claim these computers are”

This certainly is a serious case of expectations set wrong, but I believe is also an insight. If we are serious about the next one billion, then we need to address this. The reason why India has more cellphone users than computer users, is also because mobile phones in a way did give people the “instant on” reaction that they were expecting – which might not last for long, now that we are getting more complicated OSes into mobile phones and also taking it down the same route as PCs.

Technologists often quote that the mobile phone is the New PC. I think that entire ideology is wrong. PCs have to become what Mobile phones were, and hopefully are still. We are still far away from computing becoming a utility. If it has to evade every household, it has to become what the television is. Thats the expectation we need to satisfy.

It seems  to me as if there are a couple of theories floating around these past few weeks.

a) Entrepreneurship is overrated. Entrepreneurship is romanticized, and the often tweeted and retweeted phrase seems to be “My son is without a job, ah! he is an entrepreneur”. Well, That’s probably pushing it far, and yep, perhaps we are breaking the elitism that was once associated with being an “entrepreneur”, but isn’t this what we wanted with all the publicizing that we did and urging one another to chase their dreams? I do see that this could dampen the ones that pride in elitism, but as far as things go, there will always be a gulf between those who can dream, ideate and implement, and those who just wear the badge and do nothing. And really, the more the merrier in this party.

b) There is also this other camp, that seems to think that, Entrepreneurship is too Web 2.0-ised. I can emphatize with this camp.  I dont think entrepreneurship in India is equated with a venture in the web 2.0 world, but most of us derive our first impression from the media that we consume and web 2.0 is essentially Media and new age consumption of those content. You get hit by it in the face over and over again, till you find something interesting. That doesn’t mean that there arent other sort of ventures going on out there. Manufacturing is still one of our strongest sectors and there are plenty of neat things cooking up in that camp. So for those of you freaking out with the thought of drowning in Web 2.0 Gyaan, take heeed, there is a bigger world out there – you just need to step out more.

c) There is a third theory out there that there are a lot of NRIs returning home. And Rajiv Gandhi is rightly quoted that whatever happened a few decades ago was not brain drain, but brain banking. Along with those returning is returning a renewed sense of nationalism, pride, and a whole lot of global interaction practices, that really help us get our quality of work a notch higher to match global capabilities. The complaint is that, along with them comes the baggage to convert the cities of India, into New York and Boston, or London. They do have a point. But sooner or later as these fresh entrepreneurs hit the Registrar of Companies to get their incorporation work done, they will know that things work slightly in a different order in this country.

So, really gentlemen (and ladies), there is not much to fret. You can relax and enjoy the process as our landscape changes before our eyes.

We Really Don’t Dream Big Enough.

What I want to talk about really is not the concerns, but my own concern as to how we aren’t dreaming big enough.  I came across a video at India Interacts, an interview with Gopal Srinivasan of TVS yesterday. There seems to be mention of all the orgs out there, including some blip about “The Proto.in Mindset’. Following the interview closely, I hear him saying that there are lots of Indians trying to do US businesses here in India and its simply not working. That is a very good point and something I strongly believe in. As part of the work at TeNeT and RTBI in IITM, we do incubate companies that aim at Rural India. Trust me, when I say that my heart sinks when people try to fit super-sized urban technologies into that space. Technology has to invisible when it becomes a solution – as for it to really become part of the lifestyle. It’s a mantra i’ve really tried to live by.

What worries me is that the examples that he quotes, the poultry example, or the hospital example are just one angles of entrepreneurship. I agree that education and healthcare are the biggest intervention areas that we need to work in India, but creating any radical change will mean that we need radical policy changes. There are 700 million Indians in Rural India without much health care, but they aren’t dying. They are all getting treated by Rural health professionals (in other words, unqualified doctors, or by trained nurses also diagonising and treating, or pharmacists who are prescribing). We need to find a way to incorporate these things and formalize them as a system. Tell me which Venture capital firm, is willing to stand with a venture that will have to change the way the government thinks? Yet, we do that in IIT. But trust me when I say that it is quite a uphill task and one cant expect changes before three to five years. Most of these investors would be expecting a return and a profit by then. You see what I mean? Change, especially basic lifestyle change will also mean a longhaul game. Are Investors dreaming big enough?

I also think that Technology has to be nurtured. Yes we can think about solutions for our own country, and create poultry farms and money-spinning hospitals, but really how is that going to give us a leverage for us in the global arena? How are our aspirations to become a global nation going to come close to that. The issue with Poultry and Healthcare is that, at the rate the world is moving, there is always going to be a group of people who are going to fall behind. The question is. Are we going to take a stance to have our primary focus taking care of them, or keep our primary focus higher to reach a global audience, find a solution to some of our global problems (climate, energy, finance, communications etc), and then find the means to solve the problems of the lower pyramid?

If I sound a bit too far fetched, let me try this: Take any of the technological advancement or anything that you have, own or find entrenched in your life. Everything from computers to music systems to radios to mobile phones to aircrafts, to submarines to energy, came into our life because someone invested in them. Most of these technologies find their roots in either Military or Space research. Thats the reason why our first step into space is quite a critical one. But some might call that a “Baggage attitude” as well  perhaps. The question comes down to, are we going to outsource all the mainstream innovation to the west and remain a consumer for ever, or are we going to get into the game or not.

I think it is common knowledge now that the two greatest threats that we face are energy and climate. The financial crisis will solve itself – its all a matter of time. The worst that can happen is that we’ll go back to our ways of growing our own crops and working in the farm,but that doesn’t sound so bad as the world shutting down, and us gasping for breathe – or worse, drowning in the molten icecaps. What I fear even worse than that is our children and the generation that follows them taking the flak for what we’ve done to this planet.

I would say that we are already far behind in the investments that we should have put in these areas. If we had focused and invested on terraforming, we probably would have an answer to atleast avert some of the greenhouse effect that we are trapped in. If we had started imagining how we would fuel our cars once we reach mars (where there is no gasoline), we probably would have started to develop engines that can run on Helium and Hydrogen much before its too late.

I do not think we have the liberty to just play a catch-up game anymore (atleast not just that alone. We need to balance both). I am sorry to break that news to the old-timers, but thats the world we are in. We have an opening and a window to design the way this world is going to be tomorrow. We need social responsibilities (I totally agree), but we also need to invest in technologies that can make our lives efficient – not productivity wise alone, but also consumption wise, and that means we need people who can try, test, experiment and learn so that we can do that iterations faster.

We need entrepreneurs who will give this country its vision for the next twenty to thirty years. Where will our dreams be in terms of space, defense, lifestyle, and how will be take care of the poor and the weak amongst us. And more than all that, we also need investors and visionaries (like the likes of Khosla, who can think ahead of the curve), and not take sides of the spectrum, but be supportive and think long term as well.

With the economy slowing down a little, I guess the 3G talk is going to be dampened a bit here in India. But I dont think it should be. The consumerist trend hasnt slowed down and Indians have woken up to enjoying the usage of digital media, devices and services, that 3G as a service could very much consolidate and bank on. This post is partly written with the knowledge I’ve gathered being on both sides of the camp, as part of the Telecom group (and the plans that they are making with IMS – IP Multimedia Subsystem) and where the web, and industry have evolved.

Lets start with a Picture.

Ubiquitous Computing, will not be just a term anymore. Centralized, easily accessible, and convergence. I think that’s the three keywords which are almost mantras in the new lifestyle that is emerging.

Trends:

Follow the numbers on the diagram with the explanations below.

1. Your mobile phone is not just a phone. Ask Nokia and they will tell you that. If we start with the way of 3G, its also the means to a broadband pipe, and 3G is just the beginning. HSDPA, LTE, and all the planned roadmap of the GSM Data Network, seems to be only getting faster and faster. Now, why would I advocate relying on my mobile’s data network as the crucial pipe for everything?

Simply because its personal. I wouldnt use most of these devices on this diagram, unless I was home. Secondly, the “Base” would have an inbuilt GSM device, that would continue the connection even when the device is removed. The Device, if inserted will enable the SIM card, and hence authenticating the user being “home”

2. There are already Cordless devices available from Siemens and the likes who allow you to “add” as many handsets as you want. I’d imagine that the Home Communications device would be something like that. When you come home and plugin your Communication Device into the base, that would configure the Home Telephony system to handle all your phone calls. I think this is where the beauty of Social networks come in. Do you realize why OpenSocial, and especially Dataportability makes a lot of sense? Partly cause of this. Spam. Imagine, you knowing someone and them knowing someone else. If Person C calls you, you might want to pick up the phone. If a random person who has no connection to you in your “Social Map” calls you, there is a high chance it might be a spam. The VoIP Gateway, will be smart enough to also have a routing engine, which will put such calls directly into the voicemail. When you are home, you wont be bringing work home, especially the calls. There will be provisions for different profiles – such as Busy, Family Time, Free and Available Etc, which will allow a person to configure their settings.

There will also be another capability for this system. Notice how there is more than one “Base” in the architecture? The extra bases are for other members in the family. If the spouse comes home and puts his/her PCD into the base, whenever he/she gets a call, the Home Telephone System would pick up the call, and do the same thing, except with his/her settings, and will ring with a distinct ring. Wouldn’t that be neat? No more running around the house searching for your mobile to pick up a call.

Note: Iotum used to have something named a relevance engine to do this. Servion, an Indian Company, has a product named UQE – Universal Queuing Engine which does call routing based on rules as well.

3. The Shared Media Server concept is already happening. I used to be working on a Smart home project sometime back, and the first and foremost thing was a shared Media Server. Sony, along with its Vaio range of products offers a software that can access shared resources. The Songs that you purchase, be it from iTunes, Amazon, or anywhere, will automatically reside on the shared media server. It will also have the podcasts that you are subscribed to, both video and audio, the Television Shows that you have bought from iTunes, the Movies that you have rented over the net from the likes of Netflicks or Bigflicks, and will also be the storage for your Slingbox, or time-place shifted Television programs.

4. Television. Its nothing more than a screen actually. The only difference is that it will have an IP input (most televisions are starting to ship with it), instead of a Cable, and it will have the capability to directly interface with the media server or go online. Another option to configure this would be to allow your Xbox, PS3, or Apple TV Box to do the IP interface and connect the output to the television and shift the intelligence to the Box. With most Gaming consoles coming with an IP interface to go “Live”, and all of them obviously eying for this space in the system, they most probably will make it there.

5. Gone are the days when one used to have clunky and huge music and entertainment systems. I doubt we’d be buying those huge devices which can play music in the masses. There will be a need for such specialized hardware, but if you have a portable device, that is most probably going to go into a dock that can amplify the sound. That’ll pretty much be the extend of the use for home theatres and music systems. The portable systems would have the ability to purchase, download, and navigate to the internet to initiate a purchase/rental download to the media server and some integration to access the media on the Media server.

6. Computers. You will most probably not feel a difference at all. The computer has been the most flexible sandbox as technologies have evolved. The interaction mechanisms obviously would evolve, as touch, voice based technologies mature and become mainstream.

Other Scopes:

We will soon have centralized speaker systems and controls that would allow us to listen to music all around the space, and also zone off areas where we want to listen. Wireless speaker systems will play a part in all this.

RFID controls will factor in somewhere. If I do set the control to “follow me”, the music should follow me whichever room that I go to. RFIDs will also be a basic element for Smart homes.

Smart homes are definitely on the way in. Biometric keys, computer controlled lighting,  automatic curtain open settings, burglar sensors, vacuum robots, Digital Picture Frames, etc are already available in the market, and it wont take long before they all go mainstream.

Smart Toys, such as the Nabaztag, the Chumby are going to get more and more in the face, until people start adapting them. These devices apart from giving the impression of a rich-spoilt-brat, will also be aids for older people, assisting them, taking voice commands and getting things done for them. In markets like Japan where the population is more old than the young will especially go for such products – which is also the reason why there is heavy investments into robots. I’d give it another ten to twelve years before this becomes mainstream. But the Geekery toys are on their way much sooner for sure.

If you look closely at this system, most of them are already around us in some form or the other. It just needs to evolve a step further to become a reality – and that too not too high of a step. That’s where there is a lot of opportunity for startups to focus on. Perhaps that will happen, and we wont look at 3G as just a fat pipe, and keep scratching our head for more Value Added Services to appear to make it viable. Since the Subscription for the services such as the Gaming Console “Live”, the Music Store, the Television, Internet Access can be authenticated using the SIM card, there is a scope for Mobile Phone operators to leverage that. That’d be the secret to the ROI dilemma, in my opinion.

Ofcourse, this is just the first draft. What are your thoughts?

Download: Higher Resolution Image of Diagram

“Yahoo could emerge with an edge, if they leapfrog into other verticals following the same web-based advertisement network.”

For a company which has entrenched itself in the media space, managing advertisements networks i probably the holy grail. I wouldnt recommend that Yahoo give up that leverage. Instead of going head on with Google and losing out on that battle, all they need to do is leverage that asset in a different vertical.

I wrote about perhaps using advertising networks, especially multimedia (audio/video) ads in Radio and television networks. One could argue that the ad server requirements, the infrastructure requirement and cost of operations would significantly vary because of the medium. I’d agree to some extent. But there is also a way to deploy the already existing asset, as-is, into different verticals. Read on.

I am not sure how many of you are aware of the CSCs coming up. The Community Service Centres, or Common Service Centres, are essentially Internet kiosks, each fitted with a fairly decent hardware and broadband connectivity, and the idea is to utilize those as hubs to deliver services into Rural India. It could be anything from eGovernance, health, Banking, Telecommunications, etc etc. There are a lot of private bidders who have won the tenders for regions (so the service delivery will be upto par on standards), and organizations in the likes of 3i Infotech, Reliance, Comat etc have come into this.

So Whats the opportunity for Yahoo or Google in all this? Well, there is a computer and its connected to the internet. Find a way to build a lightweight application that acts as a screensaver, which would display advertisements – pulling it from the internet – when the computer is idling. The advertisement can be focused to the rural space, and there is everyone from the likes of HLL, to your Cellphone companies, dying to get the attention of that market share.

The reason why the operators would be open to this idea is simply because everyone is trying to figure out how to break even in this business. As you could imagine, Rural India and technology are like lotus leaves and water drops. They just dont have a history of blending so far. And there is going to be that initial adoption curve issue for these services to pick up. And as a means of ensuring that the Kiosk Operator has some viable means of keeping at it, advertisements, and complementary services begin to play a role.

I believe there is a company which recently started in this space, and got funded by Sequoia. But yep, its definitely a market to explore.

Even in the midst of all that, it does seem that a lot of the Startup Companies are hardpressed for resources here in India. Here’s a solution.

A few of us have been talking about putting together a centre that trains people (as blank slated as freshers) on the common technologies that people use while building products – the usual PHP, Python, AJAX, MySQL, etc etc and getting them upto speed on mashups, APIs, documentation, and moving forward. That is the level of skill that most of the startup community folks are looking for it seems. Or am I wrong here?

If I am right, then there is a simple way around it. Every chapter of OCC in the country is doing quite well. I heard from Santhosh that Pune is a 300 people group now (though I do suspect that the turn out ratio would be still less), but who knew Pune had 300 people who would be open to being part of a community right? And the same case has gone on with Bangalore, Kolkatta, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi, and even now and then with Mumbai.

Here’s the thought. What if in one of the OCCs a dozen of the startup companies, especially the folks who can code and code really well, commit that they will run a two month training program for people in these languages? It is going to take a bit of time and commitment, but there are a lot of resources already on the web, and with a couple of screencasts, and proper documentation, you could essentially also use it as training material for the next batch of people that you hire in your company later on.

What I am proposing is that a batch of technology entrepreneurs, each taking a week to cover different aspects of the course, could put their hands together to collaboratively solve an issue which is haunting a great many of them.

So if you could fix one of the startups offices as the centre for this activity, Put up a wiki where people can sign up for this course, and these 12 startup entrepreneurs/programmers get a chance to do a round of questioning and if they think that the candidate would be able to perform with some guidance, then the community as a whole comes together to train these few candidates and at the end of it, can assimilate them into the company.

There are a couple of reasons why I think this can be made to work:

1. Most freshers are scared of working for startups. The first question I face all the time is “Will they train us?”

2. People who do undergo any sort of training, usually go for some MS Certification and those courses are expensive. Its not like you can afford to get the developmental licenses anyways, and since they have themselves invested in getting trained, the salary expectations are going to be higher from you.

3. At the moment there are very few people who can talk about these technologies for the mass community to learn from. Perhaps contributing to the general knowledge of the masses to improve their skill level, if reached critical mass, will start churning on its own.

4. More people trained on OpenSource Technologies (that’s really what enables Startups), might also slightly increase the chances of people contributing back to Opensource. *fingers crossed*

5. I also think that most startup founders struggle to explain what they have in their head to others. And teaching concepts to others gets you to that level where tomorrow when you need to grow a community around your product, you can converse in a manner that the people can comprehend.

And ofcourse, none of this has to be done for free. I’d strongly suggest that the teams charge the candidate 3000 – 4000Rs a month for this. That is also additional revenue, so its not technically charity either.

So, there is only one question that lingers. Worth giving it a try? What do you think?

A friend of mine and I, over some conversations were discussing about some of the bigger brands that we see around us and something along the topics of Return on Equity. Not sure if you are aware of, but Microsoft has a 52% return on equity. Yahoo has roughly about 7% and falling drastically and Google has one which stands at around 26% – and growing steadily. Whatever you may say, Microsoft has played this game with a whole new set of balls and one most people simply won’t understand. And if you ask me, they are a much better company in terms of strategy and products compared to Google, anyday.

Yahoo could emerge with an edge, if they leapfrog into other verticals following the same web-based advertisement network.

But that’s not the focus of this post.

The conversation was that, if a company has Advertisement as its core strength and has built a competence in it, then its going to be very hard for the company to drop that and adapt the advertising network of its partner/rival. Well, for the case of survival they might, but since they do have the core competence, the resources and the minds that can think in that direction, what could they possibly do, was the question.

Fact: Yahoo makes most of its money via advertisement, and that too on banner ads.

This becomes an issue when you have so much internet portals and properties, but just simply have to fill them with advertisements in order to make them viable. And in this day and age of APIs, nobody might even come visit the site to get hit by the advertisement. You are forced to rethink in terms of strategically placing the advertisement within the content, but thats a very very hard thing.

My Take: I think this is probably the same route as making fiber out of rocks. There might be some way to do it, but whatever it is, its one rare, long process.

I’d say, flip the coin, and lets look out to the horizon. Go after other streams, television and Radio… to be precise.

So go down memory lane and you will remember how there was a time when all the internet properties used to have a sales team to go chase after advertisers and get them onboard and once the term was over the havoc began all over again. Most of them knew that they could make more money if they managed the deal directly with the advertisers, but the cost that went into chasing orders, and managing the clients was too much an ordeal that when the concept of advertisement networks came about, people were more than glad to give up a marginal cost to have these services “managed”.

It happened for the web medium, and it can happen for the television and Radio network as well. Because they face the very same problems.

If you don’t believe me, check out this company. There is a company named Spotrunner. What they do is that they build an inventory of ads that the local television operators, while doing the programming, can draw advertisements out of. I think thats a very neat bloody idea. I know of people who are running campaigns and they get the sweetest deals out of this television networks during “off seasons”. And when its off seasons, oh boy, the inventories are really bad that they’ll run just about anything to keep those media streams flowing. During rainy seasons, nobody wants to sell or buy cars, consumer goods etc, and that usually is what constitutes a large chunk of the advertisement revenue. So, they usually fill it up with fillers and Awareness Advertisements.

But imagine if… a centralized network would manage all the advertisements with vendors, create an inventory, and as broadcast partners sign up, all they would have to do is enter in the keywords for the show, and they’d see options of which ads they can play. They can pick, and queue it and go about their work. When the ad gets played, whatever amount was agreed upon with the vendor gets deducted from the advertising account – this could technically even be a prepaid account. Now this totally leverages the broadcaster, since he has options of playing an ad of a sponsor that they have, and use the flexibility of the ad inventory to fill whatever is required, and hence maximizing his revenue potential. If laziness is one to bet on, eventually they’ll scrap their sales force, and resort to doing programming with most of these advertisements running in.

This is also brilliant, cause imagine if there is a talk show happening and knowing how most programmers can flip through the show quickly, they can even generate keywords – manually, or there could be a simple app that extracts out the audio and picks up keywords, and can “suggest” advertisements that would make the most sense. THAT would be relevant advertising indeed.

I think television stations get away with it, by a little bit. But Radio stations really struggle. If you do the same for them, with just audio, they’d keeel (spelling intentional) over themselves for it. I have closely observed how some of these radio stations work, including the popular and well known ones and having friends in that circle, one only hears one thing over and over again – finding sponsors and advertisers is a tough job.

So you’d start with something like this, and move on to the second phase, and then there is even a third. That, we’ll talk about tomorrow.

But Yahoo, I really hope you’ll see this, and more so, I’d like you to come back to your former glory. I think my first email account ever was a yahoo one, and perhaps that bit of loyalty still runs.

Mahesh Radhakrishnan, a friend of mine who is behind MOAD and is one really talented architect and I often meet to discuss about something we can do to solve these issues.

One latest such initiative is to setup something like this in Chennai. We are going to need some hands on this, but if and when it comes out, it will be quite something to boast about. What do you think?

This is an installation done in (Helsinski) Europe. We are planning to build the same at a fraction of the cost.

Youtube Link of the Wall in Action.

Energy is a Pressing Matter and Hot Topic in all Circles, but I think the basis of our problem isnt focused on.

So I was sitting through a Sustainability Conference in IIT Madras today and there was one talk on Energy Consumption. The talk essentially mentioned how we ascertain energy demands by our peak hours. The problem being we need that at the most, and at times when its not the peak, we have to “shed” the load, and it usually ends up being dumped into the grid, and thanks to our grids not being designed properly, it usually ends up overloading half of rural India. That’s a different story all together.

The hint was in a passing by comment that the problem with energy is that it has to be consumed as and when its produced. There is simply no way to store it. If you want to store it in batteries and such, its simply not viable for large quantities, since its very expensive.

I have no idea what happened for the rest of the talk, apart for when he showed graphs and numbers – which always catches my attention, but he also mentioned that they were not accurate, which made me go “bleh” and back to my thinking process.

The Idea:

So Energy. The basis is that all energy is created from one form or the other. So Lets accept that we cant break this rule and make newton roll over in his grave. Knowing limitations are a plus point.

Lets learn a little bit of inspiration from biology. We take food, we break it down into amino acids, the smallest and easily metabolic form of food, and then the system burns it into energy as per the demands of the body. Compare it with however it is that we create energy, saying that one form of energy – coal or whatever is converted into energy which is converted into electricity which is probably the simplest form of energy.

If you look at biology, the food that is intaken, if the broken down food is more than the “demand” of the system, then the system quickly converts them into FAT and stores them all around the body – which is what provides all those funky love handles that people put so much energy to get rid of. But quite strictly speaking, its just the systems way of saying that we are consuming more than we need, and it is storing it away for a rainy day. The first signs of starvation and thats the storage unit that the system starts feeding off of.

Whats the FAT version of electricity? That’s the question.

Now, I am thinking that there is a possibility here that one cannot go directly from coal into  free flowing electrons. And we are probably missing a middle step that might help us with efficiency.

Secondly, there must be a way to join these electrons to become something that is more passive and with a trigger break them down into simpler free flowing electrons again.

And you know what? If that is possible… you and I would never have to wait for ages for our phones or ipods t get charged. We can technically dump these “FAT” into our devices, and let the device trigger these substance into electrons so that we get a full charge. But the deal is that, just like it doesnt take the body more than a few enzymes to break down FAT back into Amino acids and use them, we have to have these in a form that the devices themselves can transform without elaborate machinery – aka. combustion chambers and engines.

I think it should be possible. These are days when I wish I was a physicist and a chemist put together. But if, and I think it can be, it is possible, then technically we should be able to catch “energy” as and when it happens – from the lightnings, to tornadoes, to cyclones, save up all the energy and use it for when we need it. We can harvest all of the Sunlight hitting the earth and probably setup plants that can fight some of the global warming, and probably use energy in a way that is not as harmful to the planet as our current barbaric ways are.

"What do Startups need" is the Question asked these days.

Seems like that’s the kind of question a lot of companies which are looking to support, nurture and grow alongside Startups are asking themselves these days.

I’m invited to be part of a fairly small panel that is to discuss on this very topic tomorrow in Bangalore in a short meetup that Sun Microsystems is putting together.

The more I think about it, I think the sheer number of pages where business opportunities, support systems, efficiencies can be made all seem to just go on and on and on.

I think the key element that it comes down to is not “selling”, but “enabling”. Really, if you think about it and put all the power law distribution to  a graph of economy (financial status and revenues) versus size of the company, it’d be quite easy to see the bigger corporates easily contributing to 80% of the economic wealth that is being garnered. That’s almost a no brainer.

I think the insight is this: An average startup entrepreneur is young, imaginative and full of ambitions and dreams. The key is to enable them. Not sell to them, but help them achieve their dreams. Its going to be pretty much the same way that you would want to support artists to come out with more creativity.

Someone wise once said that the role of a supporting organization to a startup should help startups make truck loads of money and make a small slice out of it. We need to tie in our success with that of the startup. Everyone wins in the end.

So now, most organizations are not gonna want this headache. Go after all the small companies, give them that additional support and handholding, just for 20% of the revenue. But isnt 20% quite a lot? I dont think it would ever make sense for a company to focus on just this 20%, but if they were already saturated with the market share in the corporate world, a 20% extra market share will give these companies a lot of footing, wouldnt it?

Now obviously, the number of companies very much increases. The queue of companies to support would almost be as long as the infinitely long tail itself. Thats when shared resources make a lot of sense. Technology helps to scale. Thats what it does beautifully. And if a technology company says that it cannot cater to this group,.. they woe.. something is truly terribly wrong.

Related Posts from Before:

Selling to the Unaffordable – Part I

Selling to the Unaffordable – Part II