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Oystor: Cloud based offering to simplify your world

by Paul Joseph January 31, 2012 Featured

Over the years, investments in IT has facilitated large companies to manage data, files and information better, but that knowledge has not been extended up to a desired level to individuals and small business owners. This issue is being tackled by m9 Tech Solutions with their product ‘Oystor’. “Data today resides in many forms which make it difficult to manage. We see the need for secure point-to-point document transaction and retrievals and want to fill in that gap for businesses and consumers alike”, says Krishna Prasad, founder m9 Tech Solutions. We got in touch with Krishna to know more about Oystor. Key Features  Omnipresence:   Oystor is a secure online document and information management system that helps busy families and small businesses manage what matters most precious documents like birth certificates, education certificates, health records for the family or finance, legal, customers, employee records for the business. It is one place that is accessible anytime, anywhere from your PC. Scan: Every organisation or even a family has lots of vital information stored in paper documents. At Oystor, we strive to provide a robust solution that not only encompasses storing and sharing, but digitization services as well. Our partners will help to scan and upload your documents at their retail outlets or for businesses, onsite at your premise. Share: The Share aspect of Oystor makes transacting with your real estate, doctors, insurance agent or lawyer easy. You can quickly find the documents you need and share it with them. Store and simple search: Oystor is a safe warehouse where you can put in all your important files and documents with a sense of security. By simply filing your documents into common and intuitive categories and adding tags or details to them, search is pretty easy. Media also has a separate category. Other features include collaboration, centralized administrative console, enhanced search and total synchronization. Tell us a bit about yourself, your background and work experience. A true Bangalorean, graduated in commerce from St.Josephs College having more than a decade’s experience in Sales, Call Center Management, Operations, Business Process Improvement, Training, Logistics and prior to Oystor, was working with Dell as Supply Chain and Logistics Manager for India Consumer and Retail and am a certified PMP and Six Sigma professional. Where are most of your customers from?  Oystor is already delivering value to a number of professionals and businesses. Oystor has been successfully deployed at law firms, accounting firms, design studios and IT companies. A good example has been that of Oystor being used as a billing system.  Instead of mailing or emailing invoices, they simply upload invoices and other supporting documents onto Oystor and share it with their clients, logistics providers, accountants and employees. What was the technology used to build the platform? We use Cloud technology. It’s not so much about following trends as it was about what makes sense.  The cloud is a smarter, sensible and more convenient architecture.  It gives us flexibility to deliver a solution to a wider spectrum of users, be it enterprise, small and medium businesses or consumer. This technology, coupled with the rising capabilities of smart phones, tablets and laptops, helps ensure that everyone in and out of the office is able to access the most updated information. This is especially so with the way businesses are no longer bounded by the four walls of the office. There are a few other products with similar offering. How do you differentiate? It’s important to have documents and data readily accessible to facilitate important events such as University admissions, Property buying or selling, Loan applications, to name a few.  These processes touch large corporations like banks as well intermediaries like lawyers, brokers and agents, as well as the end customer. Along with our technology and service partners, Oystor provides a single platform that allows Secure Storage Sharing (with access rights), Collaboration, and Workflows Business Networking And Information Management, all in the cloud. How does the revenue model work?  Our business model is based on an annual subscription model which is On-demand, meaning the user can select the features, plan and the storage requirement. How big is your team? Where are you based? We are close to 20 people, majority of them in the development center located in Chennai, while our marketing team works out of Singapore. We are currently hiring in Bangalore and other metros for business development and are partnering with technology clients and scanning solution providers. Which cloud platform are you hosted on?  We are hosted in a robust infrastructure provided by Singtel as well as Amazon. What are your views on the digital world increasingly moving on to the cloud? Having an infrastructure designed to digitize, store, search, retrieve, reproduce, authenticate, validate and publish the data to facilitate some of the process mentioned above will produce huge efficiencies for both the provider as well as the requester of the data.  This data will be managed with all the features of security, privacy, standards-based, back-up as to make it useful and accessible whenever and wherever needed.  To move it from its point of origin to any point of need quickly and efficiently—is imperative to support the various demands that will emerge in the future. Oystor is currently offered Free for individuals to try and give their feedback. Also, there is a referral prize with a chance of winning an iPhone4S. Log on to Oystor.com for further details   

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Why A WordPress website is good for your business?

by Paul Joseph January 30, 2012 Featured

Most of the websites my company creates these days is on WordPress. We highly recommend using WordPress for your company website or to revise your static brochure style site. This article explains why we recommend WordPress and how it can help your business. What is WordPress? WordPress is basically a content management system (CMS) and it allows you to create perfect website or blog for your business or personal brand. It is a semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards and usability. The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers and there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine. Over 60 million people utilize WordPress. Benefits of Using WordPress 1. Open source – Available free of cost It is often said that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time. A WordPress theme is easily available under $100 and there is lot of free themes that you can choose from. You save a lot of money in comparison to what you would need to spend to get a custom design for your website. 2. Ease of Use If you can send an e-mail or work on Microsoft Word, then you can use WordPress. The process of creating a website is such that even those with limited technical knowledge can setup a WordPress site. WordPress is installed on your server and is accessed through your domain name. It lets you create or edit your website by just login to the site from a web browser and access the admin panel (Dashboard). The entire management of the site can be done on the dashboard. You can add new pages pr posts, change themes, edit and approve comments and a lot more. 3. Do It Yourself As I had mentioned earlier, the fact that even with limited technical knowledge you can create a fully functional website, is WordPress’ main USP. From updating content to making changes to other aspects of the site, you can do it all by yourself. This results in saving you time and money. 4. Better Search Engine Optimization (SEO) WordPress makes it easier to optimize your search engine results. A WordPress website is optimized for easy publishing and changing content. Fresh, unique content is essential for getting good search engine rankings. 5. User Management WordPress allows you to give access to update, edit the website to members of your team by creating a new username (login details) for them. WordPress allows you to create role based access and your team member/s can access, edit only those sections that you give them permission for. You can also give someone administrator access or editor. WordPress Features WordPress Themes — WordPress has a wide range of free and paid themes to choose from. These themes make designing everything from the simplest blog to the most complicated webzine a piece of cake. You can even have multiple themes with totally different looks that you can switch between, with a single click. Comments — Visitors to your site can leave comments on individual entries and through Trackback or Pingback can comment on their own site as well. You can enable or disable comments on a per-post basis. Spam protection — WordPress comes with very robust tools such as an integrated blacklist and open proxy checker to manage and eliminate spam comments on your blog. There is also a rich array of plugins that can take this functionality a step further. Full user registration — WordPress has a built-in user registration system that (if you choose) can allow people to register and maintain profiles and leave authenticated comments on your blog. You can optionally close comments for non-registered users. There are plugins that allow you to hide posts from lower level users. Easy installation and upgrades — Installing WordPress and upgrading from previous versions and other software is also very easy. Intelligent text formatting — If you’ve dealt with systems that convert new lines to line breaks before you know why they have a bad name. If you have any sort of HTML they butcher it by putting tags after every new line indiscriminately, breaking your formatting and validation. Our function for this intelligently avoids places where you already have breaks and block-level HTML tags, so you can leave it on without worrying about it breaking your code. Multiple authors — WordPress’ highly advanced user system allows up to 10 levels of users, with different levels having different (and configurable) privileges with regard to publishing, editing, options and other users. Plugins — Plugins can extend WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine.There are thousands of plugins that extend what WordPress does. Our favorite plugins include Twitter & Facebook integration, share & follow, recpatcha and contact form 7. Widgets —WordPress Widgets are WordPress Plugins that add visitor visual and interactivity options and features, such as sidebar widgets for post categories, tag clouds, navigation, search, etc. They were originally designed to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress Theme to the user in the sidebar, which is now available on properly “widgetized” WordPress Themes to include the header, footer, and elsewhere in the WordPress design and structure. Widgets require no code experience or expertise. They can be added, removed, and rearranged on the WordPress Administration Panel.

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Developing & Making your Applications Submission Ready for Windows Phone 7 Marketplace

by Paul Joseph January 30, 2012 Featured

Sidharth Sehgal had the unenvious task of engaging an audience post lunch at Windows Phone Camp held in Hyderabad on 28th January. He stated his objectives for the session early: Learn, see, experience . This session was a live demonstration for developing applications. The demonstration highlighted a few of Visual Studio’s special features, including panorama control, which allows seamless horizontal scrolling between application pages. Pivot control is similar to panorama control, but allows user to tab through pages Using ‘launchers,’ the presenter demonstrated a simple GPS application that launches an email application. The code was fed a launcher task, EmailComposeTask to email current geographical location to a specified address using only four lines of code. A ‘chooser’ is a set of tasks that launches an application and feeds information back to the application. An application can be configured to use the camera, for instance. Using a few lines of straight forward code, Sidharth created an app to capture images using a camera, retrieve it and then created a live tile for it on the start screen. “What are the advantages of developing apps for Windows Phone, over established devices like Android or iphone?” This was a recurring question through all the sessions, asked by the developers. Ujwal Kumar presented the benefits of Marketplace in the final session for the day. Some of the salient features of Marketplace were outlined. Developers can build an unlimited number of apps, with a restriction of 100 free apps per developer. The updated Marketplace allows soft key access to all apps, all games, all music or all podcasts It features a new Beta distribution service , a service that provides for a maximum of 100 beta test users to test the app and provide feedback. Another feature is the new Private Distribution service . A developer can use this service to restrict visibility and availability of an app to specified email addresses and organizations. Marketplace Test kit includes a comprehensive design guideline for making apps look better. Ujwal recommends following the Metro design philosophies to ensure consistency. Each app submitted to Marketplace is subject to test criteria pillars. They are checked for reliability, efficient use of resources, absence of malicious software, interference with phone functionality and Microsoft’s global content policies. The monetary incentive for developers is that they keep 70% of the revenue generated from purchased apps. If you are a mobile app developer waiting to explore Windows Phone 7, do then do click here

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iAccelerator launches 11 Startups into the world

by Paul Joseph January 30, 2012 Featured

CIIE, IIM A run iAccelerator in Ahmedabad presented 11 internet and mobile domain startups on its Demo Day on 28 th January, 2011. The select 11 startups that were unveiled on Demo Day were- (in chronological order): AlmaConnect Colored.by Croak.it Framebench Ideophone Innovese Makehappy.in mangoReader Mobiotics Votodo Zuuvu The iAccelerator program is specifically targeted towards entrepreneurs in the internet and mobile domain, to equip the startups to establish well run, technically excellent and profitable companies. This was the 3 rd batch of iAccelerator programme consisting of 11 startups that stayed on the campus and worked together in a constructive environment from 1 st November 2011. The startups where provided with working space, IT Infrastructure, seed capital, mentoring from a team of industry experts, inorder to showcase their final prototype in front of the world on the DemoDay. The programme was ably supported by Tata Communications.  Speaking on the Demo Day, Harjit Singh VP , Tata Communications said, “Innovation is imperative to economic regeneration which is the need of the hour today. Tata Communications partnership with iAccelerator is an initiative that reflects our emphasis on innovations and entrepreneurship”. The Demo Day also saw some of the leading VC’s and angel investors supporting the startups and giving critical inputs on their products/services, business plan, etc. We will bring to you the story of these budding entrepreneurs shortly.

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6 Startup Leadership Lessons From a Gym

by Paul Joseph January 30, 2012 Featured

Rajiv Jayaraman ( right ) with his trainer Startup leaders are primarily in the business of cheerleading: energizing people inside and outside the organization. In order to be an effective cheerleader, a start-up leader needs to exude positive energy, be in great spirits and above all, be in great physical shape to sustain the energy. This year, I decided to hit the gym with the help of a trainer to become a better “cheer leader”.  I signed up for a 1-year membership, promptly evoking a stifled laugh from my friends and colleagues, hinting that I am being overly optimistic. I told myself that I would be just fine since I have the propensity of putting myself in challenging situations and enduring pain (why else would I become an entrepreneur?). As I started my gym sessions early this year, I realized that a gym is a perfect training ground to learn great startup leadership lessons and very soon, my trainer became my management guru, unbeknownst to him. The following are some key lessons from the gym that a startup leader can use while managing the team. Lesson 1: Know your purpose The very first question that my trainer asked me was ‘What do you want to achieve by joining the gym?’. Your motivation to join the gym drives your exercise routine and helps the trainer help you reach your goals. In the startup context, it is important for the leader to ask the all-important question to a prospective team mate, ‘What do you want to achieve by joining us?’. Similarly, it is important for the leader to talk about the raison-d’etre of the startup so that the employee is clear on what the company wants to achieve. Lesson 2: Start from the heart The first thing my trainer focused on was my cardio vascular health. He put me through a battery of cardio exercises that tested and pushed the envelope on the efficiency of my heart. He explained to me that only when the heart performs efficiently, blood flows through all the veins of the body and consequently, the body and the mind get warmed up for the uphill journey.  In a startup as well, it is important for the leader to start from the hearts of the team mates, appeal to their passion, get them to see the big picture and prepare them for the uphill journey. A teammate with his heart in the business tends to be relentless and strives for excellence even during hard times (which tend to crop up much too often in a startup) Lesson 3: The importance of discipline Very early on, the trainer instilled in me the importance of being disciplined about managing time and maintaining a routine that works. He also emphasized the value of meticulously following the agreed plan. Needless to say, in a startup as well, where timelines are extremely short and the team members don multiple hats, it is imperative that the startup leader reinforces the importance of time management and sticking to the plan. Without financial and operational discipline, the startup can very quickly burn its resources and find itself in a tight spot. Lesson 4: Set Stretch Goals On my first day when I was huffing and puffing on the treadmill, my trainer calmly walked up to the machine and bumped up the speed, much to my chagrin. He constantly pushed the limits and tested my mettle. By setting stretch goals, he made me go out of my comfort zone and stretch my capabilities. As Mark Cuban would put it, employees in a startup have to learn to punch above their weight class. This is possible only when the leaders set stretch goals for the team and constantly challenge and motivate the team. Lesson 5: Know your limits, Stick to the thread When the trainer saw me getting carried away with early successes in my routine and trying much harder exercises that were not part of the plan, he was quick to advise caution. This situation is akin to startup leaders getting carried away with initial successes and squandering away precious resources in activities that make them lose focus. I am reminded of an advice that Sanjay Anandram of JumpStart had given me –“For startups, focus is spelled as ‘NO’”. Lesson 6: Persist by Dealing with Negativity One fine morning, the trainer walked up to me and said, “Today you will do 600 calories”. The maximum I had done in my life before this was 250 calories. The first thought that came to my mind was, “This is impossible”, and when the trainer bumped up the intensity when I was struggling, I thought “Boy, can this person be any more cruel?”. As I toiled hard, I started experiencing an intense tussle between the mind and the matter. The mind comes up with amazing reasons for quitting the drill. What worked for me eventually is the age old saying, “What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger”. I told myself, what could possibly happen if I actually pushed myself all the way?  The thought was truly liberating. I am sure a lot of startup leaders have dealt with this emotion at some point in the life of their startups. Startups operate in highly uncertain and often daunting situations but what carries a team forward is the ability to reframe the situation, look at things in a positive light and keep pushing ahead. There are plenty of real life situations that offer valuable startup leadership lessons. What are your sources of startup leadership lessons from real life?

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Rachel Chan, Co-creator, MaD Asia and Founder, Service Design Consultancy Innofoco

by Paul Joseph January 30, 2012 Featured

From January 6 th to 8 th , I attended the Make a Difference (MaD) Forum in Hong Kong. Organized by Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture and co-created by service design consultancy Innofoco, MaD is the biggest event of its kind bringing almost 1,200 young changemakers from all across Asia together. I caught up with Rachel Chan, who as the cofounder of Innofoco is one of the key people behind the event to learn more about MaD Forum. After spending 15 years of her career working with the public sector, first with Hong Kong government and then the trade body called Hong Kong Trade Development Council, Rachel decided not spend the next half of her career in a public sector organization but had no idea what she wants to do. So she took a break to study at London Business School for one year. While in London, she was introduced to service design. Back in HK working with the trade council, design was always limited to products, fashion, architecture, and manufacturing but never services. “When I was in London I met a lot of amazing service designers. Basically service design combines a design company with strategy-consulting, providing innovative solutions to service delivery, from strategy, process to touch points. You need to combine different skill sets and work with people across various disciplines. When I came back to HK, I realized that despite being an economy which is very service oriented similar to India, we hardly had anyone doing service design. It was an alien concept in this part of Asia” says Rachel. “I decided that I should create a market for this, create a new paradigm on designing for services. This is how Innofoco was born.” When she set up Innofoco, she set out with a very clear vision – She wanted to promote creativity and innovation as she thought they were key to her business and society at large. 4 yrs ago, at a dinner meeting sitting next to creative education guru Sir Ken Robinson who happened to speak at HK design education forum, Rachel was talking to him about the lack of an innovation centric culture in Hong Kong and he advised her to pursue what she was doing as there was definitely a need, since no one was doing what she was doing. “He said if you want to promote creativity and innovation, you should start with young people as these people won’t have any baggage and will be receptive. This idea sort of stuck with me. I have always been following TED talks and have been inspired by them. But it is not easy to be part of TED conferences. I thought maybe we could also have a platform to promote creative and interdisciplinary learning in HK for young people. I was looking for partners and we partnered with HKICC and we got sponsorship from HK government through Create HK” adds Rachel on how MaD was born. MaD is a novel collaboration – public, private and non-profit sectors coming together. It has been growing each year with more cities being represented. In the coming years they hope to have more young Indian and South Asian changemakers taking part. “Going into the future, we need more people to realize their dreams, to take action. We want to facilitate collaboration by providing a platform for various people to interact and work with each other. This is our major opportunity and challenge” adds Rachel. Other than co-organizing MaD, Innofoco provides consultancy services related to design, innovation and branding. They are also a think tank and do research for the government and public sector. “We are very interested in collaborating with likeminded people outside HK. The future is in Asia and we need to work together. We want to encourage people from various Asian countries to take part in the MAD forum. We get support from the govt because they see MAD as a channel to showcase HK as a destination for young, creative, entrepreneurs and we want to use MaD as a platform to showcase that” adds Rachel as parting message. Click here to find out more about MaD and click here to visit Innofoco website.

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Muckati Aims To Make Design Alive and Devices Living!

by Paul Joseph January 30, 2012 Featured

Anjan’s decision to take up a career in art and creativity was probably in the 2nd or 3rd grade. Add to this, a passion for technology, be it electronics or automobiles, and he had a winning combination. From creating and distributing comics and flip books in primary school to assembling pocket transistor radios during cricket season in high school, he had an entrepreneurial streak in him. Branded as extremely creative by everyone he interacted with, he started his career in animation while still in college. His career growth was very quick and by the age of 26, he was heading a team of more than 2000 artists and animators and went on to direct two animated feature films that qualified for Oscar nominations. He also bagged many other prestigious awards during his career span. Reaching a pinnacle and not seeing the kind of growth that he desired, he decided to quit his job and started his company Muckati. Being an early adapter, he made good use of technology to create innovative and interactive content, the latest being a (patent pending) GPS system for off-roaders and a support website to display these recorded trails. Muckati Sentient Design and Devices was started with a vision to use creativity without boundaries. Currently their work spans across Interactive, Design and Screen. Muckati is an amalgamation of art and technology. They develop pioneering concepts and ideas that include intellectual property such as media content, design and inventions. They have contributed so far to media (original animation, game and other interactive content), automobiles (life-saving active safety systems and proprietary web enabled GPS systems), computers and packaging industries. In the three years of its existence, Muckati has seven patent pending products to its credit. As a business model, Muckati focuses on leveraging these IP through licensing. The biggest challenge that Anjan Cariappa faced on the interactive front is from mediocre work that comes out of some organizations that end up portraying all Indian work as sub-standard, he notes. “Add to this, organizations that fail to deliver client projects up to standard and in time and we have a grim scenario.” Muckati strives to change this perspective by trying to be an example of high standard and creativity. “Muckati targets niche markets in which we personally have a passion.” says Anjan “While I was climbing the ladder of success in animation, my passion for automobiles which was latent for long, surfaced. We developed an Active Safety System for automobiles called PACA-brake, which broadly is a driver to driver interactive system. Very simple and innovative, PACA-brake when implemented can save millions of lives on the road. The system was showcased at the prestigious “International Transport Forum” held last year at Leipzig, Germany, to an overwhelming response. We are currently in talks with safety organizations and automobile OE manufacturers around the world to bring this system into the mainstream.” Seeing the simple yet very effective concept of PACA, they were approached by the director of European Rail to design a customized safety system to monitor rail lines and level crossings. This led them to invent a revolutionary safety system dubbed “3rd i”, which currently is being prototyped. Being an ardent off-road enthusiast, Anjan founded the first and only Jeep and off-road club in India, “Jeep Thrills”. Driving his World War II Jeep to work, he noticed that there was immense interest in people to know more about Jeeps and Jeep owners themselves did not know the true potential of their vehicles. This made him start Jeep Thrills initially as an online group to give enthusiasts a common platform to interact. This in turn created a revolution in automobile sports in the country. The club which is six years old now has more than 800 members. Jeep Thrills now boasts of chapters all over the country and conducts off-road events on a regular basis. Seeing great potential in this niche market, Anjan developed a first in the world concept, Incline Data GPS or ID-GPS for short. Regular GPS devices display flat maps that don’t help off-roaders much. Their patent pending ID-GPS on the other hand records each and every climb, descend and banking that an off-road vehicle tackles and this data can be uploaded to a dedicated support portal for off-roaders. The trail is displayed on the world map. Currently, ID-GPS is offered as a free app for the iPhone and iPad as “Trail Ranger”. Trail Ranger crossed 1500 downloads in the first few weeks of its launch. Revenue generation would be through advertisements, in-game sales on the device and the web portal.  They are also working on developing a dedicated device to be fitted on off-road vehicles. Other projects in the pipeline include games and applications targeted at specific user groups. “I have not restricted my creativity to any particular field and have 6 more patent pending products that range from active safety systems for automobiles to innovative packaging techniques.” Anjan Cariappa was the finalist of British Council’s Young Interactive Entrepreneur Awards, 2011. To know more about the Young Interactive Entrepreneur Awards, click here . Follow the Young Creative Entrepreneur Awards (YCE) on Facebook

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Battle of the Smartphone Apps in India : Google leads the pack

by Paul Joseph January 29, 2012 Featured

The growth of Android since entering India last year has it taking the leadership position in terms of shipments last quarter. Google properties occupy the top spot in five of the top seven genres, by reach. Facebook and Nimbuzz lead the social networking and chat genres respectively. A Nielsen Informate panel found smartphone users in India spending more than 40 percent of total active time on their smartphones on data-centric activities. A full 25 percent of users’ time with apps is spent on those developed by Google, with the Android Market, YouTube and Gmail leading the way. Google apps dominate in terms of time spent for streaming video, GPS, email, and search. 94% of time spent on streaming video goes to YouTube, while 86% of time spent on GPS is with Google.

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Think India Conference 2012 at IISC Bangalore

by Paul Joseph January 28, 2012 Featured

This year’s ‘Think India’ conference is being held at the Satish Dhawan Auditorium, Indian Institute of Science (IISC), Bangalore. This two day event (28-29 Jan) has a list of eminent speakers from across the nation. The event, inaugurated today by Sateesh Reddy, Director of Inertial Systems, DRDO, has a thought provoking agenda. The inauguration speech paved the way for what would be an interesting journey for young students, social entrepreneurs and all those who believe in the motive of the conference – A vision for a vibrant nation . Amidst the greenery and calm of the beautiful IISC campus, the setting is perfect for an event of momentous nature and stature. The inauguration was presided by ABVP National President, Milind Marathe, who had an interesting take on the NGO’s. “Today, people proudly say that we are an NGO. But my question is that why take this stance wherein a government organization would be deemed inefficient. Why not just call it a ‘voluntary organization’? You’re doing it voluntarily so why not call it what it is? Why not work within the government and see your efforts bear fruit?” said Prof. Milind Marathe. The next session was anchored by IIM Lukhnow’s Prof. Awasthi and Sri Bal Apte, an eminent MP spoke about India, its past, present and the future. The post lunch session which usually ends in a drone had something special in store. A noted thinker, Shri Ram Madhav kept the audience enchanted with his strong views on India’s adversary , China. The two pronged theory being adopted by China wherein it engages with India on one front and on the other front, it geographically encircles India from all the sides to gain strategic advantage was thought provoking. “India has had enough of peace rallies and soft approaches. It is high time we take a strong stand and the youth of India has to play the biggest role to help India achieve what it envisions”, encouraged Mr. Ram. The following sessions were speeches by real-life models wherein Anand Kumar, the founder of Super 30 gave an impressive talk to the budding entrepreneurs in the distinguished crowd. The crowd comprised of students and alumnus from Institutes of National Importance like the IIT’s, IIM’s and NIT’s. Sunday also has a luminous speaker line-up comprising of the likes of Shri Shraddhalu Ranade who is a scientist and a renowned educationist and Dr. Y.B.Ramakrishnan who is the chairman of Bio-Fuel Task Force, GoK. As an integral part of the event, there are six running competitions which include an essay competition, a photo competition, paper-presentations with Idea Impact, street plays and poster competition. The organization committee has done a commendable job with the event and more initiatives like this will definitely keep the wheels of the young Indian minds churning. – Jubin Mehta

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Huge Opportunity Awaits Internet Startups : G-20 Internet Economy to Double by 2016

by Paul Joseph January 28, 2012 Featured

The Internet economy of the G-20 is projected to reach US$4.2 trillion in 2016, nearly double the size it was in 2010 according to The Boston Consulting Group. G-20 includes Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the EU, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the U.K., and the U.S. The biggest driver is the dramatic increase in the number of users around the globe, from 1.9 billion users in 2010 to a projected 3 billion users in 2016, about 45% of the world’s population. The rise of the emerging markets, the popularity of mobile devices, especially smart phones, and the growth of social media are also compounding the economic impact of the Internet. India, with a rapidly growing economy and an ever increasing mobile subscription base will account for a big chunk of the pie. The “new” Internet is different in many ways from the old Internet according to the report: Its center of gravity is shifting. The Internet has become interactive and participatory. It is moving from fixed access to ubiquitous access. No longer limited to developed markets, it is growing by leaps and bounds in emerging markets, as well. And these countries are increasingly driving innovation. It is now an “Internet of everything.” IBM predicts that 1 trillion devices will be connected to the Internet by 2015. The Internet of everything can radically change the ways companies interact with customers and run their supply chains. It also allows new entrants to attack the foundations of traditional industries. It is about ecosystems. The Internet is increasingly being shaped by ecosystems orchestrated by companies such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, but also by companies such as Baidu and Tencent in China and Yandex in Russia. It is generating tremendous economic value. Across the G-20 nations, the Internet economy amounted to 4.1 percent of GDP, or $2.3 trillion, in 2010, larger than the economies of Italy or Brazil. In some leading economies, it is contributing up to 8 percent of GDP, powering economic growth and creating jobs. It has gone local. The Internet experience has become an ingrained feature of everyday life, reflecting national characteristics as well as economic, political, and social influences specific to individual countries. A new generation has grown up on the Internet. The “Millennials” have vastly different expectations as employees, consumers, and citizens. The Arab Spring protests and grass-roots “occupy” movements in the West are only the most visible manifestations of the power of the Millennials to shape society and commerce.

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