New new world

Call Girl: What I Learned During My Year as a Customer Service Representative: “If you think you’re talking to an expert when you call a customer service center, you’re probably not,” writes Gabriella Paiella who spent a year as a customer service representative for an e-commerce company. Read more here.

Leaving Behind the Digital Keys to Financial Lives: BOB GINSBERG, a retired production manager for an educational publisher, is worried that he does not know any of the logins and passwords for online accounts belonging to his partner or brother and they do not know his. At 72, he said his concern was not about Facebook or e-mail. It was for their financial lives, which have migrated online, making paper account statements anachronistic. Now, when people die without disclosing their financial affairs to anyone, there is often no paper trail for heirs to follow. More here.

Big Data Gets Personal: Big data and personal information are converging to shape the Internet’s most powerful and surprising consumer products. They’ll predict your needs, store your memories, and improve your life—if you let them. Read the set of articles on Technology Review here.

Inc.

Inside Google’s Secret Lab: In this long piece of skillful writing, Brad Stone of Bloomberg Businessweek talks about Google X, the secretive research lab of search giant Google. The inside look talks about self driving cars to polymath engineers and scientists who work there. The company’s moonshots and more. Read the story here.

What Marissa Mayer Doesn’t (and Does) Get About White-Collar Work: When Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer banned her employees from working at home earlier this year, she sparked a culture war over How We Work Today. “Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home,” the head of Yahoo HR wrote in a memo. “We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.”  More here.

Entrepreneuring

How to Give a Killer Presentation: Chris Anderson, the curator of Ted, explains the secret to giving a killer presentation. He writes about framing the story, planning delivery, working on stage persence, multimedia and putting it all together. More here.

10 Eye-Opening Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read: These books reveal the truth of how organizations really work, and it’s not pretty. More here.

Technicolor

The solace of quantum: Eavesdropping on secret communications is about to get harder, writes The Economist. CRYPTOGRAPHY is an arms race between Alice and Bob, and Eve. These are the names cryptographers give to two people who are trying to communicate privily, and to a third who is trying to intercept and decrypt their conversation. Currently, Alice and Bob are ahead—just. But Eve is catching up. Alice and Bob are therefore looking for a whole new way of keeping things secret. And they may soon have one, courtesy of quantum mechanics. More here.

The $1.3B Quest to Build a Supercomputer Replica of a Human Brain: Even by the standards of the TED conference, Henry Markram’s 2009 TEDGlobal talk was a mind-bender. He took the stage of the Oxford Playhouse, clad in the requisite dress shirt and blue jeans, and announced a plan that—if it panned out—would deliver a fully sentient hologram within a decade. He dedicated himself to wiping out all mental disorders and creating a self-aware artificial intelligence. Jonathon Keats writes on neurologist Markam’s quest for Wired. Read the full story here.

What Yoda Taught Me About 3-D Printing: Inexpensive 3-D printers aimed at consumers are toys, not the factories of the future writes Jessica Leber. More here.

Big Picture (420 edition)

Rajat Gupta’s Lust for Zeros: Anita Raghavan puts together an article adapted from  “The Billionaire’s Apprentice: The Rise of the Indian-American Elite and the Fall of the Galleon Hedge Fund,” to be published by Business Plus. The fascinating turn by turn account uncovers the motives behind Gupta’s greed for more. Full article here. Dirty medicine: Katherine Eban, DOris B urke and Frederik Joelving uncover the epic inside story of long-term criminal fraud at Ranbaxy, the Indian drug company that makes generic Lipitor for millions of Americans. Earlier this month, Ranbaxy peaded guilty on seven criminal counts of selling adultrated drugs with the intent to defraud, failing to report that its drugs didn’t meet specifications and making false statements to the government. Read the story here.

Google will store only two types of files. First: The private ones accessible only to you. it will have a snapshot of the Google Buzz public and private post you authored. The second will contain a copy of your Google Buzz public posts. It can be viewed by anyone who has a link and will appear in search results, the company said.

In an e-mail to Google Buzz users, the company also said that comments made on other users posts will be saved on those users files and not yours. Only that user will be able to change the sharing settings on those files. “The new Google Drive files will only contain comments from users who previously enabled Google Buzz, and the files will not contain comments that were deleted prior to moving the data to your Google Drive,” said the mail.

“It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy….”

Ask any geek and they will tell you these lines are from a movie saga whose fan base has expanded and grown over the years to reach a cult status. These are the lines from the opening crawl of the first Star Wars movie, that released on 25th May 1977, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. As this movie celebrates its 36th anniversary today, geeks around the world celebrate Geek Pride Day. This day also celebrates another british cult classic book/TV series/ Film, Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that has a cult following of geeks.

As the world celebrates this  day, we raise a toast to some of the Indian sci-fi movies.

Mr.India

Amrish Puri as Mogambo in Mr India

Anybody born during the 80’s-90’s will tell you that their favourite bollywood science fiction movie is Mr. India. Directed by the famous director Shekhar Kapur, this quintessential science fiction movie gained a huge fan following and cult status over time. Anil Kapoor plays Arun Varma who one day discovers a watch, made by his father, that has the ability to make the wearer invisible once activated. He then goes on to fight one of the super villains from Bollywood history Mogambo played by Amrish Puri. This movie will leave any kid awestruck with its futuristic/fun themes even today.

Shahenshah

Amitabh Bachchan as Shahenshah

Another movie that comes to my mind is Shahenshah [1988]. In the movie Amitabh Bachchan plays inspector Vijay who becomes the vigilante Shehenshah to fight crime. He has a left iron hand with which he pounds the enemies and smash objects,more like Jax’s bionic arm from Mortal Kombat, and a noose with which he flings people or objects around. And to top it up every time he talks the background music sounds like Darth vader breathing.

Endhiran

Rajnikanth as Endhiran

Endhiran: The Robot, that released in 2010, is another recent science fiction movie from Kollywood that gained cult following. The movie stars Rajinikanth, a megastar from the south who enjoys a demi god status. The movie has him playing dual roles, one of a scientist and another one of a robot/android called Chitti, created by the former. The Android goes on to become a villain due to a corrupted chip inserted by the bad scientist but is finally fixed by the good scientist. The movie went on to be one of the top three grossing Indian films of all time and a hit in Japan, where Rajanikanth has a cult fan following.

The cabbie driving the endearing but rattly old Ambassador was new to the city and seemed nonplussed. He said – and I translate and paraphrase a much more colorful use of words – “You have internet on the phone, na? You can see the map on that – and we’ll get close enough and then ask someone.” As it turned out, that strategy had to be employed since Google had shown us a route right through a one way street in the opposite direction, so local information imposed on top of the map came in handy.

But hey, the big story was that the new-to-town-cabbie knew places could be found on a map on the Internet. And even peeked in to try and figure out when we came upon the unannounced one way!

A few months ago, I had a similar experience in Delhi, where taking an auto is usually a pain. I got off the Metro to take an auto to my final destination barely 4 kms away and very deliberately opened the map to checked the distance while starting a conversation with the auto guy. To my query about how much it would be – he responded with a smile – “You know anyway.” I happily paid the 50/- he then asked for. Another time a friend had reported an argument settled through the map with an auto guy in Bangalore. Yep, technology is being recognized and understood!

Olacabs recently introduced the Android app and with it, map based navigation inside the cab! Other cab companies are following suit. GPS based systems are appearing in passenger car fleets, trucks and buses as well.

And thanks to cheap Android phones, everyone has a GPS enabled device now. As data plans get cheaper, many will experiment with apps, and maps as well. Runners, cyclists and a few travelers are already plotting routes – expect many more to join in for a varied, and yet unimagined set of reasons.

A while ago, I’d argued with a close pal working with maps for a major internet company in India that Indians cannot read maps like they can read cities and streets on the ground, and interpret directions from people around. From what I have seen recently, this is surely changing. RouteGuru was early in the game, but today the opportunity to reintroduce map based services might well be ripe.

India – across economic segments and geographies – is starting to get comfortable with digital maps!

Risk Culture – Contextually Defined

Risk.

Everyone takes it to some extent.

“Calculated risk” makes one feel one’s taking a lesser risk.

Equity investments are higher risk than debt ones and so on.

And returns are “risk adjusted”, to be meaningful.

Managing risk is the whole purpose of a B-School student, and professor.

Reducing risk is the aim of most who go through our education system and look to get a good job.

Entrepreneurs, per popular belief, take much more than usual.

And not taking a risk is a huge risk, many believe.

But really, what matters most is your own personal appetite for risk which in turn depends on your perception of risk. That determines the course of most actions in your life – from where and how you travel, how you invest and spend, even who you marry, or don’t, and most certainly the career choices you make.

Very trivially, you do something in either of the two cases

- when you care way too much about the possible outcome to care about the consequences and costs

- when the consequences and costs are small enough that you can afford to try doing it anyway

In other words – you’ll do something when your risk adjusted reward from doing it is high enough! The outcome can again be something that is an outcome or by-product of doing it, or the lack of an outcome of not doing it.

If you’re thoroughly confused by now – that’s ok!

Very few are truly able to assess risk, and react wisely to it. Most of us claim to understand the risks of something we’re getting into but are often unwilling to accept the costs associated with the risk. Risk has a lot of glamor associated with it. In truth, very often we’re better suited to lowering the cost and consequences than going after better outcomes, but the lure of the latter blinds us.

Ask anyone who has burnt their fingers playing with futures and options without truly understanding what the instruments meant. Or embarked upon an adventure trip – a trek or a rough-it-out journey or even a good ol’ bungee jump – only to realize halfway through it wasn’t their cup of tea at all! Or quit their jobs “to startup” and gotten cold feet 6 weeks into “no paycheck”.

And it is especially true for that last bunch – entrepreneurs – for whom the ‘risk’ phase lasts a really long time! The romance of “going it alone” and “being one’s own boss” is all very nice, and the legends of the IPO cashout great to recount, but to what extent are you ready to take the hit of the opportunity cost, out of pocket spends, bottomless sinks of money that promise an uncertain return and even more critically – time spent doing this? Do those intangibles, and the “learning” matter that much to you? Then there’s the tangible losses. To what extent will a specific risk, business investment or opportunity cost set you back? Are you willing to take a wiping out of 20% of your net worth? 50%? All of it? What about the loss of 2-3 good years of earning? This is one reason starting up is considered to be a little easier when you’re younger, relatively broke and have little to lose – opportunity costs are an abstract loss, after all, and smaller in one’s younger days.

But if you understand your own risk appetite, and can follow up honestly and diligently on it, age, or your current financial situation will never be a constraint. Indeed, it can provide that crucial cushion that can enable measured, ‘calculated’ risk taking! Once you’ve built up a nest-egg, and tasted the good things life for a while already, its very liberating to manage to break free of the shackles of the regular income and try something riskier (though often, giving up on those good things in life is easier said than done!)

A good understanding of your risk appetite can also tell you the kind and level of business you can bootstrap on your own, the levels at which it can sustain you and itself (that’s part of the reason for the existence of many businesses – at least initially), the growth path you can take and the point at which you’ll need to worry about funding.

Its the same for your business risks. The risks help you clearly understand when the business is “independent” – that is it is at a stable equilibrium of its own needs, what it supports, and generates. You obviously start to ask what the next state of equilibrium is, and the growth path to it could look like. Should you get to the next one directly? Each such decision is a tradeoff representing a desired outcome versus the potential costs and consequences. In the early days of the business, both the outcomes and the consequences are very very personal as well, both emotionally as well as materially.

Understanding risk very honestly and objectively, both personal and for the business, is very very important for an entrepreneur. And the sooner you start, the clearer the answers to many a question will become as you go along.

“Really! What are you saying?”

His logic goes something like this: Say you finished college and most of your peers are at large services companies like Accenture. By this time, you’ve invested quite a bit of time and energy on the degree.

You’ve gone through some of the toughest entrance exams and cleared 48 papers. Burned the midnight oil, racked your brains and what not. Its time for you to reap the benefits now.

A startup nobody has heard of, comes along and makes you an offer: Some stock options, an entry level salary which is slightly lower than the industry average and a lottery which has a one in 10 chance of winning is on the table. It could go bust, or make it really big. You want in?

The graduate reasons: Infosas is stable. They seem to be wanting me. No chances of going bust anytime soon. I have a girlfriend and want to buy a car next year. The loans are easier to come if I work for a large company. The girlfriend works for the same company. I have friends and money here. There is a fair chance that I’ll go to the US or the UK in a couple of years. That exposure will set me up on a high growth career path. I’ll see the world. If I don’t get a green card, I’ll come back to India, rich and start my own company, or become a top guy at the same company. Maybe the company will get me an MBA in between.

I really don’t care about the stock options that’s too much long term for me. I’ve slogged the last 4 years and its time to reap benefits. Why should I join a startup which will make me work on Ruby On the Rails when everyone seems to be wanting people who work on Java? I’ll be a misfit for the market. Its a different thing that Ruby is a newer language. No one wants it. Java, I’ve already learned in college. Its time to reap benefits.

The startup’s office is most likely a dump and you will have to pull all-nighters when everyone is out partying.

Infosas it is then. You know the rest: EMIs, Home Loans and the regular grind.

That’s for the herd.

The startup guy is different. He thinks different and acts different. Some of them even drop out. The risk is: your friends will be making more money than you do. They will party when you don’t. They will make an easy living while you slog away. Girlfriend? What’s that? Car, yeah. Someday maybe. Who knows baby.

The reward is: For all you know, the startup will have an awesome and fun culture. You’d be working when you like (which is most of the time) and not clocking hourly rates for large companies. You’d own something.

The bonus? If the company makes it big, when your friends career graph plateaus, your’s will be zooming straight up. When they struggle with EMIs, credit cards, family, small car, budgets and a house, you’d have enough money to live it up. The party would have just started and it could go on for a long time.

If it doesn’t, you’d have learned much much more than what you’d have otherwise learned in a big corporate. Your market value (not the one determined by job portals) is much higher than your peers. You’d have learned new technologies, met better people, made thicker friends and lived a story worth telling.

It’s not just make it big or learning. There’s also the thing about creating something you will not have an opportunity to in a corporate setup – a whole product, a customer interaction process, maybe even a sales process, and who knows – an actual brand that you can call “yours.”

How do you start putting a number to that?

The call is yours.

Disclaimer: These ideas are mostly the entrepreneur’s. My startup job came later in my career but that was a very big risk for me to take at that time. In hindsight, I should have done it earlier.

[Come over for such amazing insights @UnPluggd - India's Biggest Startup Conference!]

Samsung Galaxy Star

Samsung Electronics, the number one smartphone provider in India, has launched the Samsung GALAXY Star here. The phone is priced at Rs 5,240 but is available Rs 4,900 on online stores like Flipkart and Infibeam. This makes it the cheapest Galaxy phone available in the country.

The phone comes with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, which is an added attraction for buyers of the phone even though it is one version behind the latest version. As with other Samsung at this price range buyers should be advised that this phone will probably never receive an update as far as Android version goes.

The phone is a dual SIM phone powered by A5 1GHz processor. It has a 3 inch capacitive touch screen and a 2 megapixel front camera. It has 512 MB RAM, which is normal at this price range. It comes with 4GB of internal memory, which can be expanded up to 32GB. It has a 2 megapixel camera and a 1,200 mAh battery.

Since the phone comes with 4.1, it will have access to Google Now and Samsung cross-platform communication service is also preloaded on the phone.

Intelligent Motion UI on the phone allows users shake the device to refresh and update, mute volume by simply flipping device.

Samsung has tied up with Vodafone and will bundle 250 MB per month  of free 2G data for 2 months, on all Galaxt Stars bought before July 31 , 2013 .

This device is the 15^th Samsung to smartphone to be available currently in the country. The Samsung Galaxy S4 is the flagship device and is priced at Rs 41,500.wered by A5 1GHz processor. It has a 3 inch capacitive touch screen and a 2 megapixel front camera. It has 512 MB RAM, which is normal at this price range. It comes with 4GB of internal memory, which can be expanded up to 32GB. It has a 2 megapixel camera and a 1,200 mAh battery.

Since the phone comes with 4.1, it will have access to Google Now and Samsung cross-platform communication service is also preloaded on the phone.

Intelligent Motion UI on the phone allows users shake the device to refresh and update, mute volume by simply flipping device.

Samsung has tied up with Vodafone and will bundle 250 MB per month  of free 2G data for 2 months, on all Galaxt Stars bought before July 31 , 2013 .

BUT.

But, here is a picture that they are missing. And before I share that,  let me walk you through early days of my career.

I worked for a company called Aztec – one of the most high profile technology companies in India in 1999/2000 timeframe and while we had great fun building some technology pieces, the company was also growing massively. As somebody who got ESOP for INR 3, which soared to ~INR 240 after the company went public, you can imagine the highs company went through.

And it all ended.

9/11 happened.

Of course, the company went through its own cycle of survival/discovery and finally ended up getting acquired (and delisted) by Mindtree.

The entire start->finish saga took almost 8 years. And very few (not more than 5%) early employees stayed on during the entire cycle.

CIRCA 2011

Ecommerce in India was happening in a big way.  The starting valuation for anything ecommerce was close to $5mn.

Ofcourse, founders of ecommerce companies came up with crazy (*kart) ideas and managed to raise funding as well.

As part of the initial team, you probably had some great learning – right from setting up the vendor partnership to building the team to creating the infrastructure piece/backend. In a time span of 1 – 1.5 years, the company probably grew by 4-5X (in terms of volume of business as well as employees).

And it all ended.

Series A crunch, Investor’s focus on profitability led to a crisis and if you go by the numbers, only 3-4% ecommerce companies will survive 2014.

Congratulate Yourself

Yes – you probably got the wrong end of the stick, got laid-off, the company was shutdown etc; but frankly, you should know that you are one of the very few individuals in the country who got to see the entire start->boom->bust cycle – all in just 2-3 years of timeframe.

In fact, the emotional part about creating and letting go is a lifetime experience and you must thank your founder/team for the opportunity! An experience like this will create a long term impact in your mindset, in your maturity to understand startup/business space.  In fact, this experience will open new doors for you – because we have very few experts in India who have attempted to solve a local technology/commerce problem.

The good news is that you are seen as a risk taker and there is enough demand for more of you in the current ecosystem (for instance, investors and big businesses are looking for niche skills to help them evaluate companies). Even corporates are looking for EIR/intra-preneurial roles and they are looking outside to bring people who bring fresh experience.

You may not appreciate it today.  You may not have got the instant gratification of $$s, but you will reap the benefits a few years down the line.

Ever thought about why, by default, you click on the website which ranks numero uno (1) on SERPs?

Are you sure that is exactly what you are looking for? How often do you go to the website, hit the back button and come back to the search result to look at more websites? How often do you change the query you put in to filter the ranking websites for a more appropriate set?

Industry reports say that the Click Through Rates (CTR) on Google have shown the importance of the top 3 positions with position 1 getting the highest CTRs and then sharply dropping for position2 & 3.

We dug deeper into this to understand how the Indian consumer behaves on Google and found something which is different from the Global landscape.

CTRs in India are topical. Consumers here are more likely to compare and contrast offerings of different websites in order to get the best deal in the market. This leads to higher CTRs for lower positions as the Indian consumers open multiple websites in order to compare them.

1. Websites with differentiated products / services:

These are websites / companies which sell product / services which (low to high ticket items) are differentiated. For example: Ecommerce websites for lifestyle products, baby shopping, apparels, education etc. The customer needs to do some amount of reading to reason out which product / service is the best deal that can be found.

The CTRs per position are extremely high and erratic in this segment. We see this happening in domains which require research by the customer.

Marketing Strategy to Adopt: As the CTRs are fairly evenly distributed across the positions most companies falling in this bracket should target the 1st page and attempt to rank up anywhere on the 1st page. This will allow the companies to get a significant chunk of traffic. Although the premise of higher the better still holds good.

BabyShopping : CTR-vs-Pos

The average Indian customer is unsure of buying in this market. He / She is also concerned about the quality of the products that is offered by the websites. As a result they 1st open the top 3 results: evaluate them and depending on the decision move onto the rest. The CTRs drop from 40%-50% to 5%-10% by position 10 on the SERP.

2. Websites with commodities / less differentiation

These are websites / companies which sell product / services which can be classified into commodities and have very less or no differentiation. The main use far outweighs the customer’s need for any differentiation.

The CTRs per position are less erratic than the previous segment and follow the general trend seen in developed countries.

Marketing Strategy to Adopt: Companies which in this type should try and rank up in the 1st 5 positions to get a significant chunk of the traffic. The top 3 ranks will command the highest CTRs but the 4th and 5th positions will get a significant chunk of the pie as well.

E.g. 2: Bus Ticketing Service

Top head keywords: Online Bus Booking | Bus Ticket | Bus tickets online

Here we can see that the 1st 3 positions command the highest CTRs which drops significantly from the 5th position onwards reaching 2%-4% by the 10th position on SERPs.

Here the customer knows what he / she wants and does not feel the need to research too much into the offering. The main differentiator in this market is the price and the customer will at most browse 2 to 3 websites to check the price and make a decision. This is the primary reason why the drop in CTRs is significant from the 5th position onwards rather than earlier.

E.g. 4: Mobile Recharge

Top head keywords: Online Recharge | Mobile Recharge | Online Mobile Recharge

This segments acts normally with the 1st positions commanding the highest CTRs and a significant drop from the 1st to the 2nd position and then to the 3rd position. Position 4 onwards we see smaller and decreasing CTRs which drop to 1% by the 7th position.

Marketing Strategy to Adopt: In this market the target customers are indifferent to the service they use as there is hardly any differentiation in these services. So Ranking up in the 1st position becomes important.

We think the difference in CTR patterns comes mainly because of 1 of the following:

1)       Consumers are comparing and contrasting various websites and offers

2)      Search users in India are new and are not yet comfortable with searches and are unaware of modifying queries for better and more specific searches.

3)      A  combination of both.

What do you think? 

[Reproduced fron Hivemind's blog]

Brainy Gainy

The next time you want to get some skill training and find available classes in your locality, give Brainy Gainy, the Mumbai based startup a try. Brainy Gainy is a platform for people who want learn or teach a skill or an art. The service, which currently operates in Mumbai and Navi Mumbai, is a community based platform where you can help each other to build a skill and also earn doing that. The service also has provisions for corporate training where people who wants to train in a corporate can also register with us. Trainers can create a class on the portal and they will market the trainer and the class to the targeted audience through the portal. Enrolling for a class is as simple as creating one, All you need to do is browse through the classes, select one which you are interested in, and enroll by filling up your details.

Sehat.com

Sehat.com is an online health portal that intends to assist patients in various ways to help them make informed health decisions. The service does this by providing patients and users with data of hospitals, doctors, fitness centres and other health related  information through  articles, slideshows, tips, news and other updates through the website. Using this service you can research and choose a hospital or doctor you want to consult or visit. The search features on the portal lets you research about a hospital or doctor based on speciality, services, experience and other parameters. The website is a one stop portal for most of your immediate medical requirements ranging from tips and articles to doctor consultations.

Foppish Mart

Looking for some contemporary and traditional handcrafted fashion accessories or some items to add to your home decor? Try Foppish Mart, an e-commerce portal that offers a blend of contemporary and traditional hand crafted products. Most products on the portal have been handcrafted, either self-designed or procured from artisans or a craftsmen. The website intends to promote and bring up the immense youth talent, budding designers from India. The website also offers beads, butis, motifs, quilling and other raw materials that will help designers in creating  handcrafted products.

2vin.com

Searching from offers from local retailer Give 2vin.com a visit. The Hyderabad based portal provides a platform for startups and businesses to promote their products and services through the website free of cost. The portal offer marketing opportunities like contests,coupons and bidding for the visitors to indulge in and thereby promoting the business or startup. Subscribers to the service can sponsor a contest to promote their product. A product is displayed along with a few questions regarding the product or coupons with regard to the product. Bidding another interesting activity where users can bid for products sponsored by a business or startup. The service provides a platform especially for small business that don’t have a platform to promote their business.

API Data Flow for e-KYC (Image: UIDAI)

Today, the authority launched three Aadhaar enabled services: e-KYC, One Time Pin authentication and Iris authentication. A seemingly naive and potentially amazing use of technology.

The understanding, based on Nandan Nilekani’s statements at various press conferences and public appearances I’ve covered over the last three years, was that the UIDAI will only give a “yes or no” answer to service providers wanting to use its authentication service.

Even now, the UIDAI’s website says: “The UIDAI will answer all requests to authenticate identity only through a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ response.” To concerned citizen, Nilekani’s repeated assurance was it will only verify if you are who you claim you are.

But with today’s launch, its all changed.

The new deal is: Agencies can get details like Name, Address, Date of Birth, Gender, Photograph & Mobile Number, using your Aadhaar number. The safeguard is that it will be shared at the request of, and/or with the consent of the Aadhaar number holder.

This is not just a simple yes or no answer the UIDAI claimed earlier. This is a lot of information about me. Even if I choose to ignore the flip flop in the UIDAI’s stance, I’m worried if there are any other safeguards? You will be more or less coerced into giving them a consent because without that, the service provider or agency will not be able to deliver the service.

Will the authorization I give, used once or for ever? Who has the responsibility to keep my information private? The privacy bill is still not a reality. What are my legal options in case someone harvests my info and sells it to a spammer? What about hack attacks? After all, we live in India where even the top security Defence Research and Development Organisation or the Navy isn’t safe from hackers.

Then there is the larger question of privatization of data. In an editorial three days ago, law researcher Usha Ramanathan pointed out that the government is setting up National Information Utilities based on the recommendations of a technology advisory group headed by Nandan Nilekani. These utilities, will be private companies, strategically controlled by the government which will buy data from them. The Goods and Services Tax Network and four other projects will be set up as National Information Utilities.

I’m not against technology or the Aadhaar project. In fact I’ve even supported the project at times. But this, is just starting to get creepy.

The last date to apply for UnPluggd launch stage has been extended to May 27th, i.e. Monday evening (form embedded in this post). If you have already applied (till yesterday), you must have got an update from us.

Still wondering why launch @UnPluggd? Well, here is what others who have launched/demoed at UnPluggd say :)

A question that has often come up is whether one needs to have a registered company in order to apply for UnPluggd. And the short answer is NO.

Other relevant FAQs:

Qn: Do presenting companies have to pay?
Nothing. Presenting companies DO NOT have to pay to showcase at the event. Having said that, you will have to bear your travel/stay/ticket charges.

Qn: We are still developing the product and plan to launch it by June. Are we eligible?
In general, we don’t want to showcase just prototypes, but we suggest that you go ahead and nominate your startup. If you have a matured prototype (with thought-thru’ use cases), we would surely love to have you at the event.

Qn: We haven’t yet started making money. Shall we nominate ourselves?
Well, it takes a while for product companies to monetize in India. We respect IP (Intellectual Properties) and would love to have your nomination.

Qn: Who are the VCs attending the event?

Pretty much all the known names. Apart from VC firms, a lot of angel investors will be present at India’s finest Startup event, UnPluggd.

- Those who want to block their seat need to buy the tickets right away [follow this link : http://events.nextbigwhat.com].

UnPluggd Details

Date: June 8, 2013.
Venue: MLR Convention Center, Brigade Millennium Campus, 7th Phase J.P.Nagar, Bangalore – 560 078.
Tickets: Block your seat right away (ticketing link)!
We have super exciting agenda for the summer edition of UnPluggd.

- Join UnPluggd Facebook group for more details

UnPluggd Nomination Form

The study conducted by Nokia Siemens Networks, said that a 3G service subscriber consumes about 434 MB of data at an average per month and 2G service subscribes consume 115 MB per month.

3G Adoption Challenges in India

Here are some key insights from the NSN Mbit Index India study:

• Between July and December 2012 3G data growth rate was 3 times that of 2G data growth rate.

• This sudden change was mainly due to 2G subscribers migrating to 3G services.

• 3G tariff reduction in mid 2012 caused significant growth in 3G service subscriber base.

• There was a strong tendency among subscribers in category A circles to access mobile data using smartphones.

• 45% of mobile data accessed by smartphones come from category A circles.

• Half the number of category A circle users are still on 2G services.

• 75% of category B circle users accessed mobile data on 2G services.

• 3G service usage in category B and C circles are much lower than the national average numbers.

Sandeep Girotra, Head of India region, Nokia Siemens Networks said “The fact that data consumption by 3G users has tripled in one year clearly shows the rapid and steady increase in mobile data consumption in India. This translates into the need for high-quality mobile broadband services with improved speed and service quality to satisfy mobile broadband users.”

Data: Indians on 3G postpaid networks spend $43 a month

Recommended Read : 3G Adoption in India : The Real Challenges

1. Process

 2. Timelines

3.  Eligibility for Nasscom 10,000Startups program

4. Partners

 6. Important Links

Amazon’s Android Appstore now available In India, 194 other countries

A month after Amazon announced plans to launch their Appstore in more countries worldwide, the service has finally gone live. The Amazon Appstore app has to be downloaded from Amazon Website, and won’t be found on the Play Store.

This app store brings certain feature like one-click purchase and also has one paid game/app for free download each day. The Amazon app store also has a test drive feature with which users can test an app on their mobile or PC before they download it.

When we checked the store out, we were surprised to find that the apps were not displayed in Indian rupees but US dollars. This is definitely something Amazon will have to look at since both Apple and Google offer this already.

Another thing we noticed was that the number of apps on the Amazon store were definitely limited, so we don’t know if people would actually prefer this over the Play Store. One would need to connect their credit card to purchase paid apps on the store.

There are multiple third-party app stores for Android out there like Getjar.com, AppBrain and AppPoke. But the Amazon store will probably have the widest reach. Some devices that come without the Google Play Store could also install this app to get a wider variety of apps then the pre-installed app stores.

Till today, the Amazon Appstore was available in just 7 markets, but with the expansion will be operational in 195. This beats Apple’s App Store which covers 155 and Google’s 134 where they offer support for paid apps. So while there may not be may takers for the service in India except for the free download of the day other markets might welcome this development with arms wide open. It definitely offers an additional source of revenue for developers all over the world.

To get the Amazon App Store one would have to make sure you have enabled “installation of apps from unknown sources” in settings  and install the APK from amazon.com/getappstore.

Kindle Fire HD Available in 170 countries. NO INDIA!

The Kindle Fire runs on a forked version of Android and Amazon actually makes no mention of Android anywhere. The Kindle Fire HD was announced last year. In India, only the ebook Kindles are available in India through a partnership with Croma.

Both the variants, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 and Kindle Fire HD (7-inch), will be available from Amazon’s website. Pre-orders start today but the device will start shipping only on June 13.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is priced at $269 and $299 for the 16GB and the 32 GB versions with offers been that bring sponsored content on the lock screen. To get a device without the lock screen ads one will have to shell out $284 or $314 respectively.

The Kindle Fire HD 7 is available for $199 and $229 for the 16GB and 32GB variants respectively with special offers and $214 and $244 without special offers.

These tablets have been tied up into the Amazon ecosystems so one will get special content offers on apps, games and e-books.

The 8.9” display on Kindle Fire HD features 254 pixels per inch with a resolution of 1920×1200 and the  7” Kindle Fire HD features a stunning HD display with 1280×800 resolution.

The 8.9” Kindle Fire HD is powered by the latest generation OMAP4 4470 processor and

Imagination SGX544 graphics. The Kindle Fire HD combines dual stereo speakers with the Dolby Digital Plus audio platform to offer a superior audio experience. Amazon claims the Kindle HD offer more than 10 hours of battery life.

While there are countless Indian companies that are launching tablets every second day, Google also officially begun selling the Nexus 7 on the Google Play Store a couple of months back. If and when Amazon does begin selling or shipping the Kindle HD to India, in our opinion the Nexus 7 would be a better buy as you would be guaranteed of more update and also access to the Google Play Store, which apart from providing more apps now also provides movies and books.

Jolla first unveiled and demonstrated the Sailfish OS at the Slush event in Helsinki, Finland on November 21, last year. It also released an SDK that day which consisted of Mer Core’s tools, Qt Creator, Jolla UI components, Sailfish UI framework and Sailfish handset application interfaces.

Apart from creating its own Jolla-branded phone hardware running Sailfish, the company also plans to license the Sailfish OS to other device makers and create customized, branded versions of the software for third parties

The First Sailfish OS Phone – Jolla

The first phone to run the the MeeGo based Sailfish OS will be the Jolla. According to the company, the  phone will have a 4.5-inch screen, a dual-core processor, 4G connectivity, 16GB of internal memory, a micro-SD card slot and an 8-megapixel rear camera.

Jolla also says the device will be compatible with Android apps. However, we will have to wait and see how these apps perform in real life. If the BlackBerry Playbook is anything to go by this may not be a smooth experience.

The highlight of the phone is its back cover, which Jolla is calling ‘The Other Half’, which apart from being interchangeable with various colors has a unique feature which when paired with the phone, activates a different set of preferences and functionalities within the phone. Thus one can have different themes which can be customized both by users and brands. Brands can create covers which when attached to the phone change the background and also ringtones and other stuff. The back cover when changed can also customize fonts on the phone.

Pre-Orders, Cost and Availability of Jolla

The Jolla device is up for pre-order right now for €399. Jolla say that it plans to ship the device by the end of 2013. Pre-orders will only ship to a handful of countries when it is ready and India is not in that list so far.

Also in what looks like somewhat of a Kickstarter movement and to gauge demand for the phone, Jolla is offering three different pre-order packages. The first is the above offer which is a simple, free reservation of a Jolla smartphone, guaranteeing buyers a unit once the rollout begins. The second package is priced at €40, includes a limited edition Jolla device as well as a t-shirt and priority pre-order status. The €100 pre-order package will get buyers a limited edition Other Half, a t-shirt, priority pre-order status and a €100 voucher for the Jolla online store.

There is also a €0 option for buyers to show that there is a demand for the phone. These customers will get a pre-order number.

Jolla has mentioned on its website the €399 price will only be applicable to pre-orders, so the final price could be higher, and that it does not include shipping costs, duties and any local taxes.

The Sailfish Operating System

The Sailfish operating system is based on the erstwhile MeeGo operating system. The Nokia N9 and N950 were the only device that ran MeeGo before the project was cancelled.

The Sailfish user interface definitely looks new and refreshing and not like something that is in the market already. One of the highlights of the new OS will be its multitasking abilities. Users don’t need to enter an app to interact with it. On the home screen are widget-like Covers, which can be controlled directly like pausing a song or starting a song directly from the widget itself.

Presently the Sailfish OS can run 9 apps at the same time but this is likely to change in the final build.

The UI is also packed with gesture-based shortcuts which make using the device much easier. For example, one can just half pan out from an open app to display the homescreen below. Also, the UI seems to work in a top-bottom fashion to reveal more just like in Windows Phone 8.

From the demo video, one of the interesting highlights was the ability to go into the gallery and once you choose a picture you can change the ambience of the phone by just swiping the pulley menu down. Once this is done, the pulley menu as well as the homescreen and default apps takes that image as the background, giving one a consistent feel throughout the UI.

The interface looks fluid and seems to run quite well for a test build. The UI seems to rely much on the ambient image as well as text and one does not see much textures and solid backgrounds.

Just like the BlackBerry 10 operating system, navigating through Sailfish will take some getting used to but will become natural after a few days of use.

Could This be the Next Big OS?

The one thing that Jolla has going for them is a very passionate community. The pre-order page of Jolla is said to have got over 2,00,000 visits within the first six hours, though we don’t know how many of those got converted to orders. The ability to run Android apps and also the pre-release of the SDKs way before the actually release of the phone, will go a long way in gaining the trust of both consumers and developers.

The one main issue that they may face is that the phone will be launched only at the end of the year. By then both the leading mobile operating systems, Android and iOS, would have got their version numbers bumped up by at least one and have a whole lot of new features. Windows Phone 8, which is slowly gaining market share, will be another player that Jolla will have to keep an eye out on. BlackBerry 10 unfortunately will still cater to a very niche market and is unlikely to gain mass acceptance.

Apart from the existing players Mozilla’s Firefox OS which will run HTML5 apps and Ubuntu are also expected to be on phones   by the end of the year. With so many operating systems there are definitely likely to be a few casualties along the way and we hope that Jolla’s Sailfish lives to fight another day.

Raghav Bahl, Managing Director of Network18 said in a statement that the divestiture is in line with the company’s objective of monetizing its investments.

Network18 has been selling its stake in different companies over the last couple of quarters. Two months ago, it sold Infomedia Yellow Pages and AskMe to Getit, the local search and classifieds company.

The group, which runs a clutch of television channels including CNN IBN, CNBC TV18 and Colors had sold a minority stake in Bigtree to Accel Partners for Rs 66 cr.  Accel Partners invested nearly Rs 100 cr in Bigtree, an online movie and event ticketing company which runs Bookmyshow.com.

For the quarter ended 31 March 2013, Network18 posted a profit of Rs 47 lakh on a topline of Rs 683 crore. For the full year, the company made a loss of Rs 105.5 cr on a topline of Rs 2400 cr.

Basically to get a new connection, you don’t have to submit any papers to the operator. All you need to do is to walk into a retail shop which sells reliance connections and provide them with your Aadhaar details. The identity of the buyer is verified online with the Aadhaar database and a connection can be activated immediately.

The Problem With Aadhaar

We don’t mean to sound overly skeptic, but the problem here is simple. Reliance will have your Aadhar number down in their database and will probably store it for as long as they like. So the next time you forget to pay your phone bill, they might just cut your electricity.

Don’t get it? Here’s a possibility.

Say you have a Reliance phone connection, which is linked to your Aadhaar number. You also buy electricity from Reliance. For some reason, you forget to pay your phone bill. The next time you go to pay the electricity bill, a search will throw up the fact that you have also have to pay the phone bill. Get it?

Its the same thing with bank accounts. Crime records, health records, hospitals, insurance agencies and others.

Interlinking of Databases

Interlinking of databases, with a unique key, is one of the situations dreaded by advocates of privacy. Its easier to profile and target people with this. Like all things, interlinked databases (say the crime records and ration card database), can be put to good use or bad. But the fact that Aadhaar enables makes it easy, is disturbing.

While the internet has been a good friend for a while for planning such trips, this time around technology had a much more major role to play in our vacation. Here’s a quick recap of how it played its part.

Of course appropriate train tickets were found and booked on IRCTC, including the one for the mountain railway from Kurseong to Darjeeling. IRCTCs recent changes to open windows for agents, tatkal, etc meant this was a relatively smooth process. Of course, lower berths are still elusive commodities, and since not all tickets were done well in advance, there were some waitlisted ones keeping us guessing. mypnrstatus.com was a pretty useful tool in this context, and kept us in the know as the waitlist moved!

Oh yes, must report that the tickets-on-SMS thing has really caught on – that single move must have saved tons of paper!

Since the trip involved multiple long train journeys, trainenquiry.com was something I used a lot to figure out how late we were running, how far our station was, and even to guess where we could find the next decent cup of chai (sorry, you can have only so much of the IRCTC stuff!) The site actually is very frequently updated – almost to the nearest 5 minutes – for all important trains. And its pretty fast even on a regular 2G connection.

We found ALL our hotels on TripAdvisor! Yes, there was a lot of advice on Facebook, and sites such as IndiaMike.com did play a part in picking the right locations, but reviews of the accommodation options finally sealed it. Of course, this was all subject to availability, and a lot many phone calls were needed before the rooms were finalized. And having the conversation also opened up other ideas, transport arrangements and many minor suggestions from the folks we spoke with; this was something TripAdvisor could not have done and all travel sites have been unable to crack.

This was planned as a walking vacation. The wiki pages for these places threw up a lot many ideas about stitching up a good walk or two in each place. Online fora and help on Facebook also helped pick and drop places based on our specific needs – for instance, we dropped Gangtok from our plans altogether, and picked only a few places in Darjeeling we could walk to! We also found recos for restaurants, places to shop at, and offbeat spots online. Google Places was handy for this more than once.

While on the trip, the weather turned. And given that we were prepared for summer in the hills, with no umbrellas, and determined to walk as much as we could, keeping an eye on local weather conditions became important. Thankfully, weather forecasting has become accurate enough to plan around – and Google gives you the details for many cities on the result page itself - that’s super useful.

One of the guys was an avid photographer – and in his kit was a very interesting storage solution – the Eye-Fi card – that synced with the iPad immediately and the whole pain of having to upload/delete from the SD card was just gone!

Apart from all the utility of the internet before and during the trip, the availability of decent 2G networks – I mostly got a fast EDGE connection even in less known places – and a good capable Android phone (I use the Xolo Q800 – super VFM, very decent battery life and very very fast) meant access to historical and other information, a decent camera and Facebook to share the trip with my friends with. We also recorded GPS co-ordinates to see later on a map the places that we went to.

Of course, connectivity has its downsides – check out one of my fellow travellers admiring the pretty landscape in front of him – on his iPad! ( Just kidding – Sharath was taking some awesome pics even as he enjoyed the walks. But our devices did keep all of us adequately ‘engaged’ – to put it nicely :) )

Its almost unimaginable to plan a trip into the unknown without the internet. I personally love adventure, exploration – but it still helps to have a sense of place to do that around – and when traveling with kids, predictability needs to go hand in hand with adventure. Somehow, on this trip, we managed the delicate balance of the two.

But there’s surely a gap. Most sites sell deals, and travel is sold pretty much like electronics are or grocery is. The experiential quotient is low – there’s precious few out there with a real love of travel or an understanding of what a traveler is looking for in various situations. The tools exist, but unless you come with a fairly certain bent of mine, you have rather common-denominator choices to pick from.

Being the travel entrepreneur I’ve been for a few years, that’s given me an idea! Of course its early days, but the domain has been registered and a couple of coffees had with potential co-conspirators :)

Some of the startups and tools we’ve covered before

iXiGo launches trip planner – Now planning a trip becomes easier than ever

Trip tern makes you to do end to end trip planning with minimal manual intervention

Startup Traverik Makes Planning A Trip Easy & Fun

How to make your travel easy using your mobile phone

Rediff’s revenues also went down marginally to $3.54 million in the quarter. On an annual basis, revenues declined 21% year on year to $15.66 million for the year ending 31 March 2013.

Take a look at Rediff’s Revenues & Losses over the last 9 quarters.

This time around, Rediff says that revenue slowed because of the decline in company’s Newspaper Publishing business and India Advertising.

While Rediff, led by Chief Executive Officer Ajit Balakrishnan, has been trying to improve margins by controlling costs, what it really needs is a solid relook at its business. Back in the day, when the company listed at Nasdaq, its shares were priced at $12 apiece. It now sells at about $3.

According to Balakrishnan, the company is working hard to improve “functionality and look and feel of our site.” Rediff’s home page, an important source of income for the company, recently underwent a pinterest like redesign. That didn’t go well with the existing users.

The company is also going to ramp up its ecommerce offering. “We believe this strategy will position us for future growth in the coming years, especially with the expected improvements in broadband infrastructure in India,” Balakrishnan said.

As it bides for the broadband revolution to come its way and make everybody high happy, Rediffmail is a shadow of its past. Just like its share price, which peaked at about $18 in April 2011.

As we had written some time ago, its just that as a company, there seems to be a lack of direction, or coherent strategy. Any one product (of the many it launched) could have been a winner.

But at Rediff, there seems to be too much happening, in too many different directions.

Investors bid for 15.76 crore shares while 1.35 crore shares were on the offer, according to data on Bombay Stock Exchange.

At an issue price of Rs 470- Rs 543, Justdial’s promoters and investors including Sequoia Capital and SAP Ventures sold their shares in the company at the issue.

The IPO was subscribed 50% at the end of the first day of its opening this Monday but on Wednesday, the last day of the IPO, investors rushed in to buy into the JustDial story.

Shares of JustDial, priced at a multiple of 66x its earnings per share in FY12, was considered an expensive buy by many analysts. However, the markets seem to have gone the other way on this.

Retail investors, who were offered a 10% safety net bid 3.5 times the allotted shares while Institutional investors and qualified Institutional buyers bid for 22x and 10x respectively.

Internet Companies Must be Happy

The success of the IPO proves that the market has appetite for Internet and technology companies. While the company is largely a voice call based business, the management perceives that its future and competition lies in the Internet (especially mobile). JustDial’s was the first of its kind. There are more IPO hopefuls like HomeShop18 and Bharatmatrimony owner Consim Info in the wings. The JustDial IPO, despite being mostly used for paying off venture capital investors, was oversubscribed betraying signs of a highly positive market for Internet companies.

The multibagger exit for Sap Ventures, Sequoia Capital and SAIF partners, which invested in the company will encourage venture capitalists to make more bets on Indian Internet companies.

Also see: Exotel Launches JustDial App to Help You Call a Lead Quickly

If you’ve been reading the tech/start-up news lately, you must have met Desi Mark Zuckerberg aka Pushkar Mahatta by now.

He runs India’s homegrown social network (WorldFloat) with apparently 6 million users (will cross 10 Million by June … that’s just few days away) and is valued at $300 million.

Yes ! that’s Three Hundred Million USD and you’ve never heard about such company before, at least I never did. But this is what TOI, The Hindu, Economic times, NDTV and others are saying.

Like anyone, I got curious reading such bold headlines claiming that “finally India has arrived” and the founder (who is a real estate guy actually) rejecting the buyout offers of $300 Million.

Wooo!!! this looks big – by now, I stopped spinning my chair and was on the site -worldfloat.com.

A login page with apple & android logos for no purpose and a video that makes no sense.

I logged in with Facebook and landed up on a page having Taj Mumbai as the background and a dozen profile pics floating all over, like the windows screensaver of the last decade. I wasted nearly 10 minutes to figure out what it was … but I couldn’t

One thing was clear though, I wouldn’t buy it for even 300 bucks (that’s INR).

But then – Eureka !!!

I noticed that floating profile pictures were all unknown, I clicked on one profile and it showed me all the info -> Profile picture, Name, Age, City, Country and even the EMAIL ID.

How can the next big thing from India show my email id to someone unknown ? That’s stupid.
I dug deeper, checked few profiles, analyzed the site and thought to put it to some reality check.

I applied a little Jugaad  (tiny hack) and asked SK (The Python bear at BearShop) to write a small script and run it for the night.

Two hours later the while loop concluded and execution was over lot earlier than expected.

We had the results and Mr Desi Zuckerberg just got BUSTED.

The Results

1- Total number of registered users till last night - 81,110 from all over the world.

2- Geographical Distribution (in %)

3- The best one, a site with 6 million users has only 3 lac visitors. Oops ! they missed the counter on the footer

It is sad to see that all the leading news portals – TOI, The Hindu, ET & NDTV have covered this story, and they’ve cooked it up good enough to fetch them 80K users.

I have often heard that valuations are airy, but this airy ?

[Note to Desi Zuckerberg - Buddy, you need to hire better engineers.]

[This article was re-blogged from Puneet Kumar Sharma's blog. Puneet is the founder of BearShop, a price comparison website.]

[Adds NextBigWhat team: this is precisely why we take pride in our standards of reporting and have even published our 10 commandments for you to question us on!)

It’s far tough than what one can imagine.

But then, the market opportunity is really big for one to enter this space that do fence sitting.

So here are we : QuickHeal founder, Kailash Katkar will be speaking at the summer edition of UnPluggd.

Quickheal sells antivirus products to SMEs and before starting up QuickHeal, Kailash served as a maintenance engineer at Data Star Electronics. When Kailash’s younger brother Sanjay Katkar came up with a highly reviewed project on Computer viruses during his post grad, he encouraged him to take a step further by diversifying their core capabilities into the creation and development of antivirus solutions.

Both brothers founded Quick Heal Technologies in the year 1994 and focused solely on the in-house brand ‘Quick Heal’, creating marketing strategies and reworking on operational strengths to build a dedicated Research and Development center and a strong ground-support team that now spans over 30 cities in India (and 60 countries).

What do you want Kailash to talk about?

UnPluggd is a lot about community – and we are opening up the QnA for Kailash. Please hop to the forum and ask your question/suggest topic here.

What aspects of QuickHeal journey would you like to know? For a company that managed to sell a product to customers who were not even buying original copies of Windows, what was the sales cycle like?

Share all your queries to Kailash here.

UnPluggd Details

Date: June 8, 2013.
Venue: MLR Convention Center, Brigade Millennium Campus, 7th Phase J.P.Nagar, Bangalore – 560 078.
Tickets: Block your seat right away (ticketing link)!
We have super exciting agenda for the summer edition of UnPluggd.

For startups who want to launch at UnPluggd, the deadline is May 23rd (use this link to apply for the demo slot).

- Join UnPluggd Facebook group for more details

Currently people looking to rent and buy flats in all four cities can post their requirement and post which they can get the details matching their requirement over email and phone. Flat owners can also list their property by following the similar process.

Unlike other property listing portals, Housing.co.in taken a data and map based approach to real estate hunting. It gives you information on the location like the amenities around it and other details such as pictures, rental, security deposit and other details overlayed on a map so you can decide even before actually visiting the place.

The company has also recently introduced buy and sell features on its platform. The startup charges a subscription fee (bi-annual and annual) to brokers which allows them to upload unlimited listings on the website. As of now, listings for landlords is free.

To track total number of hits and queries for each flat, Housing.co.in uses metric, which is primarily number of leads generated per listed home and not conversion because the latter depends upon knowledge, expertise, responsiveness and negotiation skills of the broker in question.

Earlier in March this year, Housing.co.in raised second round of funding from former Network 18 CEO Haresh Chawla. Prior to that venture has raised undisclosed amount of seed capital from Zishaan Hayath, the co-founder of Chaupati Bazaar.

SootSwap will provide a mobile based monitoring device to facilitate individuals and communities to use clean cook stoves instead of the traditional biomass or firewood burning cook stoves. The idea is to measure reduction of carbon emission using SootSwap and exchange it for carbon credits.

The SootSwap app being tested with a Cook Stove

Cleaner cooking technologies like better cook stoves can reduce the exposure to harmful smoke usually found while using firewood for cooking. This thereby improves the health of women and children especially in rural areas where using firewood for cooking is a very commonplace.

How SootSwap app works

The application was developed to address these challenge of efficiently adopting cleaner cooking technologies.The mobile app works based on temperature sensing. A thermal sensor that connects to a Brew CDMA or an Android phone is activated every time a cook stove connected to the sensor is fired up. The temperature data is uploaded from the cell phone to a server via a mobile data network for analysing the temperature data & remote verification of stove usage.

This analysed data is then made available to carbon market investors to verify the reduction in carbon emissions. Based on this they can purchase the validated credits and transfer money, the incentive for using clean cook stoves, to the families.

Over the past 3 years the app was being tested through labs and a pilot project involving more than 100 rural Indian homes in villages around Jagdishpur in Uttar Pradesh. The app was developed in partnership with Nexleaf, The Energy and Resources Institute New Delhi (TERI), Project Surya and the UK Department for International Development (DFID)

To make it even easier for Indian SMBS to work in the cloud, we’re now making Google Apps for Business more affordable, Judy Change, Product Manager for Google Apps for Business wrote in a blogpost on Wednesday.

“New and existing customers based in India will now pay Rs 150 per user per month if they’re on the Flexible Plan and Rs 1500 per user per year on the Annual Plan,” the post said.

Earlier in December, Google had killed the free version of Google Apps, which simply meant that everyone now had to pay for the service which was earlier free for up to 10 users.

Google Apps Old Pricing in India

Google Apps New Pricing in India

Google Apps offers solutions for web mail, calendars, cloud storage, and video meetings through Google’s consumer products, Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, and Hangouts.

The case registered under section 153, 290 and 504 of the Indian Penal Code and Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, demands action against Facebook for not taking down a group which goes by the name Ao Mil Kar Kaatein Gaai (Let us come together to slaughter cows), The Hindu reported.

The group openly urges and glorifies cow slaughter and uses abusive and dirty words against two religions, said the complainant.

Facebook seems to have taken down the group as we can no longer find it on the site.

Cases against Facebook and other large Internet companies in India have been on the rise, especially since the new Information Technology act has come into effect. The act mandates intermediary websites such as Facebook and Google to take down objectionable content within 36 hours of receiving a notification from the user.

Last year, in a similar case, the Delhi High Court summoned Google, Facebook, Yahoo and 18 other sites for allegedly promoting enmity between classes and causing prejudice to national integration. The summons was issued based on a petition which said that the websites had many pages that promoted enmity.

About six months ago, the police arrested two young women  from Maharashtra for a comment on Facebook which objected to the statewide bandh called by a local political party after their chieftain’s death. The case was booked under section 66A of the IT act.

Following widespread criticism of such arbitrary arrests, the Supreme Court and Government directed the police  that they need approval of a high ranking police official before making such arrests.

The number of Facebook users in India  touched 71 million in December 2012.

Finally a Wooden IEM (In-Ear Monitor), with a Made in India tag. Must be really good! Those were my first thoughts on seeing the new C-12 Elements IEMS by Signature Acoustic, a Pristine Note product, that arrived at my desk.

Pristine Note, the Navi Mumbai based company, has been in the audio business for some time and have experience with dealing in high end audiophile brands. A product not just endorsed but made by them should be good, was my second thought.

Here is a brief review of the product from the experience than ensued.

Elements C-12 Packing & Build Quality :

The monitors came in a well packaged box with the polished brass carry tin inlaid in the middle. The first thing that caught my attention was the well detailed wooden enclosure with the branding engraved on the back. It felt a bit lighter compared to the other models of IEMs in the market.

The other interesting fact about the monitors were the cable. They look well built and sturdy, and have a premium finish. The company says that the wire is made up of 10 strands of wide copper wire and this will ensure better bass and reduce microphonics.

The IEMs came with ear-tips in varying sizes, a pair of filter to clear the treble and a wire clip to keep the wire in place. The ear-tips though didn’t look like of great quality, had very hard feel, and looked cheaper than the Samsung S3 OEM tips I got with my phone.

Even though the polished brass tin is a looker, its heavy and certainly not for your travel pack.

The company also offers a 12 month warranty on the product.

How the C-12 Elements sounds :

The monitor played the mids well and gave an overall warm sound. The bass was tight and did not sound jarring like some of the cheaper OEM earphones. The point where it lacked was in treble. Even with EQ tweaking and tuning with the 180 and 250 micron filters that it came with, the treble was not up to the mark.

The monitors sound a bit suppressed initially, but eventually tends to feel more open over time. The sound was overall well suited for the Hip-Hop, R&B and dance music genres, with their heavy use of lows, and not really for the classical or instrumental genres, which give importance to the treble as well.

Microphonics has always a big concern for earphone manufacturers and this new cable design seems to have solved the problem to some extend. The microphonics was considerably reduced compared to the other IEMs in the market.

The ear-tips that came along with the IEM did not provide much noise suppression and could do with a some quality improvements as far as the feel is concerned. On prolonged use, they did not feel as bad as they looked and were quite comfortable to use.

Conclusion

At Rs 2700 the IEM feels a bit pricey for the sound, but the build quality and overall feel makes up for it. The ‘Made in India’ tag did add a good feel to the product and I’m sure it will be a good buy for the listeners of the bass heavy music out there.

C-12 Elements Specs