Global Financial Crisis/Economy Crisis

I was pondering a minute whether the title of the post should be a financial crisis or a economic crisis..then, I settled for both..Well, it indeed is the crisis of both finance and economy across the world. There is no dearth of headlines, articles on this subject in the newspapers and internet and probably this is also the time the folks who were the least interested are also getting interested.

One of today's businessweek article states:
Home to just 304,000 people, tiny Iceland is emerging as the biggest casualty of the global financial crisis. On Oct. 9, the government took control of the country's largest bank, Kaupthing (KAUP.ST), and halted trading on the Reykjavik stock exchange until Oct. 13. Authorities also used sweeping new emergency powers to hive off most of the domestic assets of the country's second-largest bank, Landsbanki, into a separate entity to be called "New Landsbanki" that will be fully owned by the government.

The above probably is one of the worst examples of the cascading effects of the crisis looming the world at the moment. At least for me, I cannot fathom a country declaring bankruptcy, leave aside the banks or the institutions that one is dealing with. There is lot of hue and cry about India's own bank - ICICI bank, whose stock crashed 20% today on account of some rumors.

Can we imagine something like a ICICI bank declaring itself bankrupt ? Theoretically, Yes..Practically, I'am not sure..Hopefully..NO.


Though I'am not an expert in either finance or Economy but I certainly view that there have been excesses in the last few years..Below are some examples:

20X leverages on loans, mortgages ( A fresher/1 Year exp engineer who just is landing with a job taking a house loan of 30 Lakhs )

Supply creating an virtual demand ( Banks creating an artifical demand )

60 Lakh for a 3 Bedroom Apartment.

Stock price doubling within a week ( There is no reasoning, The company is still the same )

A software Engineer having 3 offers and still not decided on the company he is going to join. He actually dumps all the three and joins a fourth company

Person having no clue about the stock market creating a demat account. ( because he hears that his neighbour has done it )

Person investing 30000 into a stock because of a 'tip'. He neither knows the industry the company is in or the company itself ..

Well, above are some of the examples that come to my mind when I read about the current crisis..I hope to add more posts on this topic..Keep reading.

Belief and Sprituality

In the last fortnight, I have been involved with many things to do with spirituality and the art of living..I read a book by Robin Sharma - "The Monk Who sold his Ferrari". I felt that this book is the westernized book that has captured the essence of what is stated in Bhagvadgita and some of the Hindu Scriptures. I have not read anything in detail either about any religious scriptures or "The Gita", but I have heard similar thoughts at various times in my life from the Hindu Pandits/Swamiji's when they deliver their religious speeches. Its a nice book and I recommend this..Its a small, compact book and captures some little but important things in Life !!!

Coincidently, I also attended the course on "Art of Living" this week, which has been very calming experience. The Pranayama and the Sudarshan Kriya are the key elements apart from some of the important but key Sutras:

- Live in the present moment, not worrying about either the past or future

- Present moment is Inevitable.

- Don't look at intention behind others mistakes, else you will be in tension

-Don't let your mind become a football because of others opinions, because opinions change every now and then.

The course is really effective and can bring about some change and relief to one's mind. Below is something that is stated in the "www.artofliving.org" about what one can expect in the 6 days:

--

* Practices that heal and harmonize the body, mind, and spirit
* Skills for handling negative emotions and situations
* Practical wisdom for improving work and relationships
* Insight into the laws that govern the mind and emotions
* Stretching and low-impact yoga for health, circulation, and body stillness
--


I recommend everyone to undergo this course to seek some change in perception about Life..

3G Policy annoucement

Recently, the 3G policy in India was announced. This is going to be a important moment for several players:

Existing telecom operators
New operators who want to enter the telecom space
Foreign players who want to enter the Indian shores
VAS providers
MVNO ( Those who dont own the network and infrastructure but still can be a part of the ecosystem by paying certain sum to the Govt.

The spectrum will be auctioned in blocks of 2×5 MHz in 2.1 GHz band. There can be a maximum of 10 players in any circle and in most cases the number will vary between 5-10 players. The license will hold for 20 years and besides 3G license fee firms will have to pay spectrum usage charge

The Govt is going to raise around $10 B in Auctions, which is a huge sum.

Interesting SMS services

The phones keep getting smarter but that does not stop the innovation at the bottom of the pyramid. I'am talking about the innovation in the SMS applications. This is very much relevant to the countries such as India, Philippines where SMS rules ..Below is another interesting SMS play in Italy ..

Users fire off a message to the SMS Consumatori service, and they get a response showing the average consumer prices in different parts of Italy, as well as wholesale prices. Interesting — another example of mobiles being used to spread information so markets function more efficiently. We’ve seen several examples of this in Africa, where farmers and fishermen use mobiles to check on market prices and get other information. Reuters is testing a similar mobile market information service in India

I feel that there is a definite scope for a similar aggregating service for India and I believe something like this is easily achievable. The key in not technology but the business model..I always believe this for a success of any product ..

Downloadable app Vs Browser based app for Mobiles

This is the the most common controversy that exists in the mobile application development. There are several views/contra views on each side..Just felt that I could add my views in this post. In one of his posts, David Wood of Symbian summarizes the following:

• Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) has been asking the Google Mobile team why they only make one app release every six months, whereas development of apps for PC web-browser happens much more quickly
• Downloadable apps for mobile devices are fraught with problems - including BIG issues with device fragmentation
• Taking Google Maps for mobile as an example: there are 10+ platforms to support, requiring 100's of builds in total - it all adds up to PAIN
• There must be a better way!
• The better way is to deliver services through the mobile web, instead of via downloadable applications.

Towards the browser apps, the drawbacks are as follows:

• Mobile web apps suck too!
• Javascript takes time to execute on mobile devices, and since it's single threaded, it blocks the UI
• There's often high network latency
• The mobile web apps lack access to location, the address book, and camera, etc.

Further, he states...

Four challenges facing mobile web apps

The four factors I generally highlight as limitations in mobile web applications vs. downloaded apps are:

1. The UI provided by a web browser is general purpose, and is often sub-optimal for a more complex application on the small screen of a mobile device (an example of the unsuitedness of the web browser UI in general is when users are confronted with messages such as "Don't press the Back button now!" or "Only press the OK button once!")
2. Applications need to be able to operate when they are disconnected from the network - as in an airplane or during a trip in an Olde World London underground train - or whenever reception is flaky. On a mobile device, the user experience of intermittently connected "push email" from the likes of BlackBerry is far more pleasant than an "always connected web browser" interface to server-side email
3. Web applications suffer from lack of access to much of the more "interesting" functionality on the phone
4. Web applications are often more sluggish than their downloaded equivalents.

So, where do we stand ? Guess, it is the choice the product managers need to make and not the developers ..

Nokia buys Symbian

One of the highlights of the last week was that of Nokia buying Symbian for 210 M Pounds. Symbian has a rev of around 150M Pounds and hence the valuation is not even 2 times the rev of Symbian ..

Nokia intends to make Symbian opensource. Key thing to be seen would be on how many manufacturers will go that way ..The competitors to this would be LiMo, which has been leading the opensource mobile OS movement so far ..

Android, iPhone are slightly different from what I understand. They consist of hardware, sofware partners apart from the OS itself ..While Android OS may be opensource, iPhone OS is not opensource ..Both of these can be considered as EcoSystem ..They certainly will have an impact on how applications are developed, deployed and how money is made ..

As we see the events, the mobile industry is going the similar way of the pure software industry ..Earlier software license used to be a significant cost, then it was reduced, then reduced even further..later it was made free ..then came SaaS concept ..Service costs started becoming important ...

If we draw same paradox to the mobile devices, we may have a free devices in the years to come ..and companies will make money through the services..

This is also similar to the newspaper industry ..We pay Rs 1.5 or slightly more for a newspaper, whose paper only costs will be more than that ..Companies make money through advertismensts and same relief is extended to the user through a *almost* free newspaper ...

Does the IPL model make sense?-Special Report-Sunday Specials-Opinion-The Times of India

Now the IPL has been a success, it may be worth getting to know the business model behind it..I already hear that it has been taken as casestudy in some business schools. The interesting aspect of the IPL has been that the owners who bid the lowest ( Emerging Media ) have been the most successful. Their team - Rajasthan Royals have already entered the finals and may eventually win tomorrow if they play like what they did yesterday..Apparently, they will break even in the second year itself while it may take atleast 3-4 years for other owners ..

Does the IPL model make sense?-Special Report-Sunday Specials-Opinion-The Times of India:
"To get a fix on the answers to these questions, let's start from the source of the river of moolah. The IPL - read BCCI - has four major sources of revenue. The first is the sale of media rights for the matches, which will fetch the board $1 billion over a 10-year period. The second includes things like title sponsorship of the tournament, licensed merchandise and so on. Put together, these form what the IPL calls 'central revenues'.

From the sale of media rights, IPL will keep 20% for itself, give out 8% as prize money for the tournament and distribute the remaining 72% evenly between the 8 franchisees. These proportions are valid till 2012, after which IPL’s share goes up in two stages by 2018, with the shares of both prize money and franchisees declining.

The second stream - other central revenues - will be shared between IPL, franchisees and prize money in the ratio 40:54:6 up to 2017 after which IPL’s share will increase to 50%, the franchisees’ share will drop to 45% and the remaining 5% will go for prize money. The third major source is, of course, the amounts bid by the franchisees. The fourth stream comes from the revenues generated by the franchisee rights, of which 20% will be given to IPL.

From the franchisees’ perspective, while the share in central revenues will be a given, they can raise money on their own by a variety of means. These include selling advertising space in the stadia for home matches, licensing products for their team like T-shirts, getting sponsorship for the team uniform, advertising on tickets and so on, apart from the gate money. As already mentioned, 20% of all of this will then go to IPL.

What do the players make? Apart from the annual fee contracted with the franchisee, they get a daily allowance of $100 through the IPL season, which lasts about a month-and-a-half. The total amount spent on player fees for an IPL team cannot be less than $3.3 million each year and is actually expected to be significantly higher. In other words, players will earn about Rs 80 lakh or more per season on average, though the amount would vary from one member of the team to another.

Players could also get bonuses from the team owners and perhaps even the prize money that the team wins by virtue of where it finishes in the tournament. But it is for each franchisee to decide whether these payments are made to the players or not.

Even in the case of the annual fee negotiated between a player and the franchisee, not all of the negotiated amount may actually go into the player’s pocket.

This is because the IPL is reaching two different kinds of agreements with players when it gets them on board. Under one arrangement — called the "firm agreement", the IPL commits a certain fee to the player. If a franchisee bids more for that player in the auction between franchisees for different players, the IPL gets to keep the excess. Under the other - the "basic agreement" – the player gets whatever is bid for him. Not surprisingly, most players so far have opted for the "basic agreement".

iPhone - Kleiner's first investment

Kleiner Perkin's first investment on the iPhone fund as been on a LBS service offered by Pelago. Read on ...

That's the idea behind Pelago, the first company funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as part of the $100 million iFund the venture capital firm announced in March at Apple's last big iPhone event. Pelago's software, called Whrrl, ties the mapping capabilities of the iPhone and other smartphones with the ability to find information about places where you, your friends, or anyone has been. Say you're lost in Las Vegas and need a restaurant recommendation. With iPhone in hand, you can scan the locations of nearby restaurants, just Italian restaurants, or just those recommended by foodie friends. Or you could search for the highest-rated bars or kid-friendly activities recommended by friends from your social network. There's going to be a "what's going on around me right now" button, says Kleiner Perkins partner Matt Murphy. "You're always one button away from that immediate context."

Top 10 tech trends: Smart phones, alternative energies, Boomer technologies » VentureBeat

Below is an interesting analysis of the ten top tech trends predicted by "churchhill club" of silicon valley, which includes folks like Vinod Khosla and other reputed people from the investment community.

Top 10 tech trends: Smart phones, alternative energies, Boomer technologies » VentureBeat: "Trend 1: Customer data stored by different service providers will be combined to create more intelligent services. Josh Kopelman, managing partner at First Round Capital, a seed-stage venture fund, who founded online retailer Half.com (sold to eBay after a year for $300 million) said such customer data includes your financial records, dinner reservations, preferences in the iTunes store, random searches on Google and much more. In this way the Internet goes from satisfying explicit user needs (like searching for a friend to add on Facebook) to satisfying implicit needs (like telling who you should add and why adding them would be helpful to you).
Audience: 95 percent voted “Yes”.

Trend 2: Oil will have increasing difficulty competing with biofuels made from cheap non-food crops for transportation. Vinod Khosla (pictured left below, beside Kopelman), founder of Khosla Ventures, which focuses on alternative fuels and green technologies, said coal will become less competitive compared to reliable solar thermal and other alternative energy sources.
Audience: 90 percent voted “Yes”.

Trend 3: Water technology will replace abating global warming as a global priority. Joe Schoendorf, partner at Accel Partners, previously vice president of marketing for Appl" said the world is running out of usable water and this will kill millions more people in our lifetime than global warming.
Audience: 80 percent voted “Yes”.

Trend 4: The mobile device industry’s migration to smart phones will produce great disruption for big industry players. Roger McNamee, co-founder of Elevation Partners together with U2 lead singer Bono, and early private equity investor in technology, said the disruption will exceed what the PC industry experienced as it moved from character mode to graphical interfaces. Shifts in the competitive balance will hurt Motorola, Microsoft and probably LG Electronics, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. Apple, Nokia, Palm and RIM will do better. [McNamee's firm is an investor in Palm]
Audience: 75 percent voted “Yes”.

Trend 5: Booming market for healthy aging technologies Steve Jurvetson, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson and well-known for his founding investment in Hotmail, said a booming market in such technologies will allow people in their 60s and beyond to continue working and living a good life. Every 11 seconds, a baby boomer from the 1940s turns 60. These people have time and money and are Internet-savvy, so they represent an enormous market for services like mental exercise programs and online education in various topics. It fits into a larger vision that could also include an eBay for information services that exceeds the market for physical goods.
Audience: 70 percent voted “Yes”.

Trend 6: Four-fifths of the world population will carry mobile Internet devices within five to 10 years. Schoendorf said mobile Internet devices are rapidly becoming the leading device category.
Audience: 50 percent voted “Yes”.

Trend 7: Algorithms will be constructed to develop new industrial chemicals, new biofuels and eventually artificial intelligence. This was Jurveston’s prediction.
Audience: 50 percent voted “Yes”.

Trend 8: The mobile phone is your most important device. This prediction by Khosla is similar to Trend 6, but he predicted an even more intimate connection with the phone: Mobile phone applications will extend beyond e-mailing to include a virtual credit card, your ID, access to location systems and personal information filing systems. If you lose your phone, your data on it will all be backed up on a network so that you can load it all on to a new phone. Ten years ago people thought it would be ridiculous to have a camera in your cell phone, in two years you will have two cameras per phone – one for taking photos of yourself, and one for taking photos of others.
Audience: 40 percent voted “Yes”.

Trend 9: There is going to be a venture capital shakeout. Lower costs and barriers to entry for startups will have a dramatic impact on the venture capital industry and lower returns. This was Kopelman’s prediction.
Audience: 40 percent voted “Yes”.

Trend 10: Within five years everything that matters to you will be available on a device that fits on your belt or in your purse. This was McNamee’s prediction, and it’s similar to Trend 8. This will cause a massive shift in Internet traffic from PCs to smaller devices.
Audience: 30 percent voted “Yes”.

HighContrast

One of the best casestudies during my Bschool stint was one on IDEO, which is a company known for its design and innovation. Recently, I came across a article on the same and found it interesting to be blogged ..

HighContrast: "Focus on Desirability

The core of the IDEO philosophy starts with a focus on desirability. Come up with something people want then figure out how to optimize the technical and business aspects of it. Keep in mind that designing for people means designing for a journey through the product/service lifecycle.

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The presenters told cautionary tales about clients who come up with a vision of something that people want but then cut so many corners to get feasibility and viability where they want them to be that the end result deviates substantially from the original vision.

The lesson here is to stay true to your vision. Apple under Steve’s inspired but at the same time occasionally ruthless leadership is probably the best recent example of a company doing everything it can to stay true to its vision. The teams building the iPod and iPhone jumped through a lot of hoops to build great products. Apple even took the risk of launching the iPhone on the relatively limited AT&T network rather than compromise their vision in dealing with larger mobile operators. Microsoft’s Vista is an example of a product that comes from a company which has lost some of its vision.
The Process

The IDEO process goes from observation to solution through intermediate three steps (a) synthesis, where observations get abstracted to a core form of knowledge and understanding about the domain, (b) th"

WebGuild: Social Networking and Mobile

Every interesting post on the intersection between online social networking and mobile. It is imperative that one does not overestimate this opportunity.

Also, interesting to note that browser based access accounts for close to 77% of data traffic and remaining is through WAP. Also, WAP traffic is going to see reduction in numbers as browsers start becoming more powerful..

WebGuild: Social Networking and Mobile

India Entrepreneurs - why they do not scale

Interesting thoughts on why Indian Entrepreneurs have not scaled up ( in an article in businessweek by Krishnamurthy)..I have personally seen some of this aspects..I agree to all the points mentioned ..

Treating the business like a family—almost literally: this might come as a surprise to those in the developed countries, but promoters of small businesses develop an emotional attachment to everything about the business, including the people. The leadership style is patriarchal. A significant majority have not fired anyone in their business. Performance orientation is lacking and a comfort with the status-quo is palpable.

Inability to prioritize: entrepreneurs engaged in small businesses are in a perennial "fire-fighting" mode. Everything appears to be a crisis. Considerable time and effort is expended on trivial matters often at the expense of growth, creativity and innovation. Strategy is conspicuous by its absence. Not surprisingly, the business remains small.

Inability to delegate and empower: the CEOs of small businesses find it extremely hard to delegate. Even after two decades, they want to be the ones to sign a cheque even if it is for only a few dollars. They want every little detail in every domain—how many units were produced, how many were sold, how many people were absent for the day, how many phone calls were made. As a result, they lose sight of the big picture. They are unable to envision a grand future. They cannot dream big.

Aversion to risk: what we witness in small businesses can be termed "Destructive Paranoia". There is a constant dread of what might happen next. Competition seems to send a chill down the spine. Getting into uncharted territory is anathema. Obstacles or downturns, that are bound to occur in any business, are looked upon as bad omens. This kind of hyper-conservatism blocks the generation of new ideas.

The learning curve—what is that?

Entrepreneurs running small and medium enterprises fail to keep pace with change—be it technology, be it customer expectations or processes that can transform their businesses. One is astonished to see the number of entrepreneurs who feel a sense of "mission accomplished." That is a euphemism for tunnel vision—I have a house, a car, a decent bank balance, business is OK, why should I bother learning new tools, techniques, and new ways of doing?

Sure, there are external constraints as well. Finance is a major issue and interest rates are high. Again, though this problem appears to be external, it has more to do with the mindset. small and medium entrepreneurs seem to think that the only way one can obtain finance is through debt. The fact that some of the best organizations in the world are zero-debt companies comes as a surprise to them. Nearly 95% of small and medium enterprises are either proprietary firms or partnerships. Just 6% are in the corporate sector and here again, a vast majority are closely-held (not listed on any stock exchange). Equity is seen as being both risky (sharing ownership) and difficult (who will subscribe to our shares?).

How to Change the World: Ten Things You Didn't Know About Facebook

How to Change the World: Ten Things You Didn't Know About Facebook: "#

You can syndicate your blog. Through Facebook Notes, you can import one RSS-syndicated site, and items fed via RSS will appear on Facebook, to all your friends via the News Feed. This can also be done for each Facebook Page you create, in the same manner as your regular Facebook account. For information, see my blog post on the subject.
#

You can post images and set your status via your cell phone. Just add the 'Mobile' app, and soon you will be able to add photos you take with your cell phone's camera, by simply sending it to mobile@facebook.com and registering your phone with Facebook. You can also receive and send statuses directly to Facebook via SMS. SMS features are supported by almost all carriers but T-Mobile, and even with T-Mobile you can still send photos and check Facebook through your cell phone's web browser.
#

You can post 'Polls,' or 'Surveys' to different demographics. Click on the 'Business' link in the footer of your Facebook account, then click on 'Facebook Polls,' and you'll soon have access to create your own polls, of which you can target towards certain age groups, interests, and other demographics, and track the results. You can even set a budget of how much you want to spend for the entire Poll. Polls are $.25 a response. You can"

Insurance Companies Offer Mobile Payment Options To Customers

Things are hotting up in the Mobile Payments space in India. Lot of activity happening with companies like mCheck, Paymate, Obopay, Atom leading the race ..There are several others trying to get a pie from this booming area ..While each works on a different business model, the sucess of the company in a longer run would be based on the following factors:

- One that leverages the critical mass ..( at the bottom of the pyramid )
- Ease of use
- Distribution
- Compliance ( RBI, security etc ).

Insurance Companies Offer Mobile Payment Options To Customers: "atom PayBuzz, from atom Technologies Limited, a Financial Technologies Group venture, has tied up with ICICI Lombard General Insurance and Reliance General insurance for accepting payments over a simple phone call originating from any landline or mobile phone. Customers will now be able to pay their insurance premium amongst other things over a simple phone call by using their credit cards. atom Paybuzz which has arrangements with insurance establishments across India, is a secure mechanism for payments based on touch-tone IVR technology."

Ads ..Difference between Google and others

I was reading a few posts and couple of thoughts crossed my mind.

- Google has been extremely successful with AdWords and their Ad model. They can pay for the users as well.

- The other guys like Twitter, Facebook or any other social networking platform has not been all that successful though the level of relation with the end user is much higher.

The difference is that Google is a intermediary while others are just a platform.. This helps Google to charge fees and also to provide some back to the users. If we are able to break away from this difference, I feel there may be a new business model that may emerge for the social networking space.

Paper Is Out, Cellphones Are In - New York Times

We have been discussing about Mobile Ticketing for a long time. Its very nice to hear that it coming mainstream ..

Paper Is Out, Cellphones Are In - New York Times: "But so far, Continental is the only carrier in the United States to begin testing the electronic passes, allowing those travelers to pass through security and board the plane without handling a piece of paper. Their boarding pass is an image of an encrypted bar code displayed on the phone’s screen, which can be scanned by gate agents and security personnel."

It may be used later for various purposes as mentioned below

The mobile check-in may well be the first step in direct communications between airlines and passengers as they travel. Ultimately, Henry H. Harteveldt, a vice president with Forrester Research, said he expected airlines would use mobile messaging to communicate with passengers about on-board services, rebooking options, baggage pickup and ticket purchases.

smart phone stats

Some interesting bit of smartphone market statistics in terms of trends in usage vs geography vs devices. This has been published in a recent report from AdMob.

According to AdMob’s data, RIM’s BlackBerry 8100 Smartphone has the greatest percentage of worldwide traffic with 34% of Smartphone traffic share. Nokia’s Smartphones followed in second with 29% share of the traffic and Motorola’s Smartphones came in last with 1% traffic share. In the United States, iPhone traffic flattened slightly during the month of February, consistent with the theory that people use new devices a great deal in January, only to have traffic slow down in the following months.

Manufacturer share trends were included in February’s report as well. Nokia held the top spot worldwide with 29.4% of ad requests, in India with 66.7%, South Africa with 35.5% and Indonesia with 49.3%. In the United States, Motorola was the top device manufacturer with 35% of all ad requests and, in the UK, SonyEriccson claimed the top spot with 37% of all ad requests.

The BlackBerry remains the Smartphone with the highest traffic in the United States with 39% of US Smartphone traffic share. In India, the UK, South Africa and Indonesia, however, Nokia’s Smartphones become the clear leaders with 89%, 67%, 89% and 86% Smartphone traffic share respectively. The top devices in AdMob’s top five markets remained the same: the Motorola KRZR in the US, Nokia 6030 in India, Motorola v360 in South Africa, SonyEriccson K800i in the UK and the Nokia 660 in Indonesia.

Leadership

I liked the below definition of a leader that I read on the web.

We define leader as an ordinary human being
with both
• a commitment to produce a result whose realization would be extraordinary given
the perceived current circumstances, and
• the integrity to see this commitment through to its realization.


Leadership involves:
• Establishing direction
• Developing a vision for the future along with strategies for producing the changes needed to achieve that vision
• Aligning people
• Communicating the direction so that those who are needed to fulfill it understand the vision and are committed to it
• Motivating and inspiring
• Keeping people moving in the right direction despite the barriers by appealing to basic, often
untapped human needs, values and emotions

Aspects of Leadeship

CREATE VISION: Establish a vision that goes beyond what current know-how provides the means to accomplish and therefore requires breakthroughs for its realization
• ENROLL others in voluntarily committing to the realization of that vision
• IDENTIFY BREAKDOWNS: Create systems that identify and communicate the gaps between the committed vision and what will predictably happen
• MANAGE FOR BREAKTHROUGHS: Create an environment where people renew their commitment to the vision in the face of breakdowns so that breakthroughs can occur

SOURCE: John P. Kotter, A Force For Change: How Leadership Differs From Management, The Free Press, New York

Microcredits go mobile as loans for the poor head towards $25bn - Business Analysis & Features, Business - Independent.co.uk

The independent has a interesting article on Microfinance and how it is changing..This got my interest since there is something happening here in India itself..

Microcredits go mobile as loans for the poor head towards $25bn - Business Analysis & Features, Business - Independent.co.uk: "Microfinance – making loans of just $100 to people earning a dollar a day – was pioneered by Bangladeshi Professor Muhammad Yunus (pictured) with his Grameen Bank. So far, banks have lent to microfinance institutions, leaving them to advance money to the poor.

But now hundreds of Indians have become attached to a mobile bank manager, which means they can be in direct contact with lenders. Using smart cards and handheld biometric fingerprint readers, Indian banks such as ICICI and Punjab National are now taking their services direct to India's 350 million once un-bankable people.

These cards, made by an Indian company called Fino, are revolutionising microcredit. 'This has huge implications,' says Moumita Sensarma, head of microfinance in India at ABN Amro. 'The microfinance institutions aren't borrowers from the banks – they are agents to the banks. The record appears instantly on the books.'

ABN, which lends more to Indian microfinance companies than any other bank, began developing an electronic banking system for rural India last year.

Financial institutions have invested $4bn (£2bn) in microfinance, a figure expected to hit $25bn by 2015. Private equity is also"

Further analysis on FINO suggests the following from the site www.fino.co.in

India’s only true Biometric enabled multi-application
Smart Card based e-Payment Sectoral Resource for Banking, Micro Finance, Insurance & Government Sectors

Financial Information Network & Operations Ltd. is a pioneering Application Service Provider (ASP) based out of Mumbai, India. Using cutting edge technologies like Smart cards, Biometrics and a basket of support services,FINO enables Financial Institutions to conceptualize, develop and operationalize projects for Financial Inclusion and support sector initiatives such as General Credit cards (GCC) and Kisan credit cards (KCC) aimed at enabling the rural and remotest un-banked parts of the country to enjoy the benefits of formal financial products and services.

Positioned to act as a sectoral entity and backed by hundreds of man-hours of knowledge capital & Financial Institutions,FINO today is helping many Banks, Micro Finance Institutions, Government entities to manage and support large integrated mission critical pan India project rollouts, at incremental costs, while sharing the benefits arising out of economies of scale with all its business partners.FINO through its contemporary and robust solutions aim to deliver three key benefits to its clients:

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed

Picked this good split between ad spending Vs Medium from Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed

Google Gears / Mobile Browser

We have long struggled with mobile handset applications for issues such as security, signing of certificate, access to native applications/data etc. Some of the recent happenings on the Google Gears, Webkit etc will ease some of the above aspects. It may also lead to mass market applications without the overheads/headaches of the current application development-launch lifecycle.

Ajit, in his opengardens blog writes the following, which beautifully captures the context ..

In the mobile world, what have we done? We created a series of elegant technology platforms optimized just for mobile computing. We figured out how to extend battery life, start up the system instantly, conserve precious wireless bandwidth, synchronize to computers all over the planet, and optimize the display of data on a tiny screen.

But we never figured out how to help developers make money. In fact, we paired our elegant platforms with a developer business model so deeply broken that it would take many years, and enormous political battles throughout the industry, to fix it -- if it can ever be fixed at all.

Meanwhile, there is now an alternative platform for mobile developers. It's horribly flawed technically, not at all optimized for mobile usage, and in fact was designed for a completely different form of computing. It would be hard to create a computing architecture more inappropriate for use over a cellular data network. But it has a business model that sweeps away all of the barriers in the mobile market. Mobile developers are starting to switch to it, a trickle that is soon going to grow. And this time I think the flash flood will last.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm talking about the Web. I think Web applications are going to destroy most native app development for mobiles. Not because the Web is a better technology for mobile, but because it has a better business model.

Think about it: If you're creating a website, you don't have to get permission from a carrier. You don't have to get anything certified by anyone. You don't have to beg for placement on the deck, and you don't have to pay half your revenue to a reseller. In fact, the operator, handset vendor, and OS vendor probably won't even be aware that you exist. It'll just be you and the user, communicating directly.

Until recently, a couple of barriers prevented this from working. The first was the absence of flat-rate data plans. They have been around for a while in the US, but in Europe they are only now appearing. Before flat-rate, users were very fearful of exploring the mobile web because they risked ending up with a thousand-Euro mobile bill. That fear is now receding. The second barrier was the extremely bad quality of mobile browsers. Many of them still stink, but the high quality of Apple's iPhone browser, coupled with Nokia's licensing of WebKit, points to a future in which most mobile browsers will be reasonably feature-complete. The market will force this -- mobile companies how have to ship a full browser in order to keep up with Apple, and operators have to give full access to it.

4 Technologies for Portability in Social Networks: A Primer - ReadWriteWeb

Very interesting article on data portablity. The social networking space will have more of such formats/technologies to interoperate for easier exchange of information as well as use of usage. The formats discussed are

Hcard - Contact related
XFN, FOAF - Friend of a Friend
Google Social Graph related API
OpenID, OpenSocial

I believe that anyone developing social networking applications has to understand these technologies better and try to use the ones that suit their application/service purpose.

I would like to understand more about this in context to the mobile social networking angle..

I will post more when I read more :-)

4 Technologies for Portability in Social Networks: A Primer - ReadWriteWeb: "hCard: Providing Your Contact Information

MicroformatsUsers are tired of repeatedly entering profile information over and over again. This problem is solved by the microformat hCard. Leslie Chicoine, an Experience Designer at Get Satisfaction, talked about how her company had created a sign up process for their web application using hCard. (see screen shot below)

HCardGetSatisfaction
XFN & FOAF: Who are your contacts

SocialGraphAPIAnother microformat, XFN, and the FOAF project are techniques for embedding relationships in links. This allows social networks to recommend contacts that should be shared, without scraping web based email clients. Recently, Google introduced a Social Graph API, which 'index[es] the public Web for XHTML Friends Network (XFN), Friend of a Friend (FOAF) markup and other publicly declared connections'.

Something very interesting that I wasn't aware of until today's panel was that both Plaxo & Six Apart were working on something similar before Google announced OpenSocial, according to Joe Smarr and David Recordon. However, once Google started focusing on this they were happy to hand it over to them - because Google 'has the web on a hard drive', so it makes the crawling component of this far less difficult. For a good overview on Google's Social Graph API, check out"

Dean Bubley's Disruptive Wireless: Standalone Mobile Apps vs Web Apps on Mobile

I pretty much agree with Deans views wrt Native mobile applications. There are specific instances where native applications make sense like VoIP. Games is another area where Native apps might have certain advantage..

Dean Bubley's Disruptive Wireless: Standalone Mobile Apps vs Web Apps on Mobile: "In particular, the following use cases remain for native (or virtual machine) device applications:

* Pre-installed applications at the factory.
* Pre-installed applications by the operator or other service-provider (eg RIM)
* Pre-installed applications by the retailer or distributor
* Certain markets are a bit more application-savvy (eg the US, with its history of PDA users), although other markets still view installing (or even thinking about) handset software as a geek-only activity.
* Applications installed by enterprises for their end users
* Applications like VoIP that need access to underlyig device APIs and capabilities like codecs.
* Applications (maybe IMS apps) for which carriers are able to design & enforce a complex over-the-air automated download & install process. Likely to only work in situations where the user has a deeply-customised phone, rather than a 'vanilla' device.
* Games, and even then only by certain demographics.
* End-to-end services coupled to specific devices or a limited range, rather than generic handsets (eg BlackBerry, Amazon Kindle)"

GE - Green - Immelts idea

The Issue: Immelt's Unpopular Idea

Talks about how Green initiatives in different units in bigger org can come under one one umbrella/strategy..

Insurance Industry going Green

In my last weeks post, I had provided thoughts on the Greenery in Mobile sector..This week, I read something interesting thats happening in the Insurance business.

In a very interesting article by BusinessWeek, Anne Tergison talks about how the insurance industry is gearing up to the eco bandwagon.

It shows up in the auto sector, real estate, general insurance..

mobile data services - handset market segementation

We often have this discussion about the market size of the mobile software industry, mobile app market ..Most of the times we do not end up sizing the market correctly. My own feeling is that the market size is different from where we see it ..I mean are you a services company or are you a product company or are you system integrator or xxxx ??

One particular blog that caught my attention was wrt handset applications ..and how could the segmentation be ..

via mobileopportunity blog...

Here's a little detail on each of the three mobile data segments:

The entertainment-focused users are generally younger than average; many are in college or their 20s. They see a mobile device as a lifestyle choice, and they're willing to pay extra for a device that'll help keep them entertained. Different people want different forms of entertainment, so there are sub-segments in the entertainment mobile market. The biggest division is game-playing vs. media (music and video). But entertainment can also include things like social messaging with your friends. It's anything you do for fun rather than a paycheck.

The communication-focused users are extroverts who live to communicate with others. They're often in people-facing jobs like sales. They're willing to pay extra for a mobile device that lets them keep up with others in multiple ways. E-mail, SMS, voice, conferencing, video calling -- basically, anything communication-related is compelling to them, and they will pay extra for a device that does it well.

The information-centric users are more introverted. Rather than focusing on their dialog with others, they tend to do a lot of thinking on their own, and want their mobile device to be a memory supplement and a means to capture new information. They're not by any means recluses, but ideas rather than social interaction are what really gets them energized, and so they're willing to pay extra for features that help them capture and remember ideas and information. What they really want is a brain extender. They often work in information-heavy jobs like medicine, law, science, and academia.

Of course, there's always some overlap between markets -- for instance, you might have a doctor who also wants to stay entertained when off work. So if you draw the three mobile data markets, they overlap a bit, like one of those Venn diagrams you drew in primary school:

Green - CeBIT

This is my third post on Green-IT ..Hope to have more coming ..

iPhone SDK Beta release

The much awaited iPhone SDK has been released. This is the feature snapshot:

- Independent developers can develop applications. Apps can be free or commercial. Developers take 70%, Apple takes 30%

- Distribution of applications is ONLY through iTunes, AppStore

- No VOIP applications

- Push Email possible. Apple has licensed Microsoft's ActiveSync so that it can connect with the MS exchange.

-Parental controls will be coming in the next releases.

- Native Application Access possible.

- One of the VCs Kleiner Perkins has announced dedicated 100M fund for iPhone apps.

Green and IT services ?

New business ideas always are crafted and one such thing could be the one that links Green movement and IT.

Just like Y2K era of the last decade, there may be some business potential in the overlapping space of IT consulting and Green. I believe that there is a business landscape for 2 kinds of companies

1) The IT tech majors who have consulting practices. They can create a new consulting practice on "Green IT"

2) Niche startup companies whose core expertise lie in advising, consulting its customers towards 'Green movement', Carbon credits etc ..

The above market is expected to be around $ 4.8 Billion by 2015 and this year around $500 M.

From the Zdnet Blog -

Forrester’s green IT analyst, Christopher Mines, believes there are three primary stages to green IT projects:
- An assessment to collect information on energy usage and carbon footprint; this can take two to 10 weeks and cost between $30,000 and $100,000 depending on scale
- A planning engagement to set parameters for green IT procurement, data-center efficiency measures and other IT projects that could feed into a company’s larger corporate agenda. This phase would take six to 20 weeks and could cost from $50,000 to $400,000
- And, finally, implementation, for which your company might pay $300,000 to $2 million for the services alone. (Not including the moo-lah you would have to lay out for new hardware and/or software.)

Isnt this a big enough to bet your horses on ??

Google Gears - New approach to offline mode of working

Google has released 'Google Gears Beta' - It is a open source browser extension for web applications that can work in offline mode.

It can help solve the following issues:
- Caching
- Latency
- Offline to Online
- Sync

It currently is available for Windows mobile 5, 6 devices, MAC and Linux while it may surely be available on Android in the coming months..

From the google website FAQ -

Google Gears is an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline. Gears provides three key features:

• A local server, to cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) without needing to contact a server
• A database, to store and access data from within the browser
• A worker thread pool, to make web applications more responsive by performing expensive operations in the background

Google Gears is currently an early-access developers' release. It is not yet intended for use by real users in production applications at this time.

If you're a developer interested in using Google Gears with your application, visit the Google Gears Developer Page.

If you wish to install Google Gears on your computer, visit the Google Gears Home Page. Please note, however, that Google Gears is not yet intended for general use.

ZOPA - refreshing look at banking

I came across an interesting company - ZOPA that's existing in UK and it talks about a new model of lending, borrowing ( banking ). It takes a audacious step of eliminating banks !!!

I became more interested in this when I tried to think retrospectively in the Indian context and how it applies here ..

From its website ( http://uk.zopa.com/ZopaWeb/public/about-zopa/big-idea.html )

Social Lending is a smarter, fairer and more human way of doing money. It's like borrowing and lending with your friends and family - except there are thousands of people you can lend and borrow with.

Both lenders and borrowers get better rates, because Social Lending is more efficient than the traditional banking model. Banks have massive overheads, with thousands of employees to pay and hundreds of branches to maintain. So they have to take large margins on the money that passes through them.

An online marketplace where people meet to lend and borrow has huge cost advantages – which is why Zopa members get a fairer deal when it comes to their money.

Zopa was the world's first lending and borrowing marketplace. By demonstrating that Social Lending works on a large scale, Zopa has changed the financial sector for good.

In Zopa's wake, copycats – such as Prosper in the US, Smava in Germany and Boober in the Netherlands – have sprung up across the world.

Social Lending is a financial category of genuine and increasing importance.

Green Mobile Networks

An interesting read that caught up my attention. There has been lot of discussion and debate on green, renewable energy. I was reading something for the first time that connected this with the mobile networks.

With the pace of growth that is expected in the coming years in the developing economies, green energy is something that will have a lot of impact in these times. The developing economies are the places where there is severe shortage of energy

Read on this interesting article ..


http://www.mobile-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=58495&bcsi_scan_CD03E7C163FF38A2=0/udJcHy+AlMNov2YnFGYwMAAABbkaAA&bcsi_scan_filename=story.xhtml

Steps for innovation

These are some of initial steps towards the creation of a product enterprise in the technology space.

• Idea conception
• Brainstorming, User Group discussions, Lead user discussions
• Martket Research; Validation
• Angel funding
  
• PoC; Creation of a small team
• Idea protection;Patent
• Licensing; Go to Market Strategy
  
• First Customer
• Partnerships
• Sign More customers
• Make the Income statement, Balance sheet and Cash-flow ( all or atleast either one of them healthy
• Look for Series A ( if required )
  

This process works very well in the western context ( silicon valley and other such regions ); However, the industry is not as mature in India though things have improved significantly than the earlier decade. However, Seed and Angel stage from professional setups is probably still a struggle in India..But surely improving !!!

mobile operators - approach to customers

We have seen tremendous growth in the mobile industry in the past few years in India. This industry must have grown much faster than any other industry in the last 6-7 years. This can also be derived from the fact that the stock of Bharti Airtel IPO stock was around less than 100 INR but it now trades at 850 INR on the Indian stock exchange ( I'am discounting any stock splits, if they have happened )..Easily a ten fold growth !!!

Pause for a moment and think how have you been personally treated by any of the operators considering the below facts:

- The rates have been gradually coming down ( from around 8 INR per minute in late 90's to around0.5 INR per min currently )

- More Value added services exist for the operators/users

- users have been paying less for voice but has been made up by expenses on the data side ( sms, ring tone etc )

- Pre Paid model has been a great success.

Now, by actually thinking back ..I feel that operators have been arrogant and not taking care of its loyal customers.

-Do you wonder why the new subscribers always end up getting the better rates ?

-If you are a post paid customer, has your monthly bill actually reduced though the rates/min have reduced ?

-Do you always struggle to get best deal for yourself ?

-Do you to always tell the opearator that you are a loyal customer OR have they ever come back to you because of loyalty ?


It may actually hurt you if you are loyal ....Just Pondering ..

shopping Vs Buying

In the online world and that includes the mobile world..fine line of difference that would be very important between 'buying' and 'shopping'

-Shopping is one stage earlier to buying
-Shopping is the intent to buy and later the technology ( read search ) enables one to actually perform 'buying'

iPhone

IPhone has been a great hit eversince its release...My own view was it is going to be very popular with in the consumer space while I was not sure of the impact in the enterprise space.

The latest findings state that iPhone has been a great hit in the enterprise space as well as seen from the below link from zdnet:

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-6232280.html

59% satisfaction levels in the business customers is a great achievement for the recently released mobile phone, which leaves RIM to the second place, which has been a established player in this space.

My own assessment is that iPhone is going to change a lot of dynamics in the coming months in the Mobile ISV and Enterprise space considering that iPhone SDK is not yet available. ( It should be available soon - next 2-3 weeks ).

Following activities are bound to begin in the next few months:

- Porting of application on other platforms to iPhone
- New applications ( using enhanced features of iPhone )
- More and more partnerships !
- Market share of each of the incumbents changing significantly forcing them to innovate or partner.

In my view iPhone and Android are key happenings moments in the mobile world ....We will need to still see if they can turn out to be the 'defining moments' ...

Introductory blog

I intend to start the blog postings that reflect my own experiences in Technology, Business and Economy. I'am not an expert in any of these. I feel belittled when I compare myself with some of the other folks that I have interacted in these areas. So, my postings will not be an expert opinion but my own thoughts or imagination ..and hence the title of my blog - thoughts, paradoxes, Contemplation ..

Technology landscape will be continuously changing. I have been part of this change since last decade or so. The change has affected the way we perceive information and act on the information. The world suddenly looks a smaller place that what it used to be earlier. For instance, the mobile phone revolution is one example of technology and its effect on everyday life. We can keep pondering about the same ..Imagine our life in 90's and compare it our life with or without mobile phone in 2008.

World is continuously under the influence of new business models, new businesses, new business ideas..I also observe that business environment is cyclic ..old 'unsuccessfull' models can suddenly become successfull in a new environment. I will try to provide some of my inferences through the postings

Economics - When I had this as a subject in my engineering ( B.E ), I probably had no clue about what it means or what it is intended to mean ..However, I have been having more interest in this topic for the last 6 years ( by no means it is is significant time ). My studies at Asian Institute of Management, Manila has furthered the interest in this area.