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(2 votes, average: 1 out of 5)
Loading ...Jumpstart your Enterprise is going to be held on November 5, 2008 at the ISB Campus as a part of the TIE ISB Connect 08.
This is a serious day long learning session for “experienced professionals, starting entrepreneurs”. It is a day to step back and learn…an investment in your entrepreneurial career.
Click on this link to learn more…
See you in Hyderabad…
Greetings from Entrepreneurship Cell of IIM Kozhikode!
ECell at IIM Kozhikode fosters entrepreneurship and encourages students to build on their original ideas and business-plans. In the same spirit, IIMK Ecell organizes its first ever ‘Startup Fair’ scheduled to be held at the picturesque IIM Kozhikode campus on October 4 and 5, 2008. The basic premise of this fair is to provide students with a platform to interact with successful entrepreneurs. Both students and startups stand to gain from healthy interactions and can also explore summer internships for first-year PGP students interested in Entrepreneurship.This fair would also help startups enhance their brand visibility and will also give them an opportunity to mentor budding entrepreneurs from IIM Kozhikode.
For details, please visit http://sites.google.com/site/iimkstartupfair/
or write to ecell@iimk.ac.in
Naresh Agarwal (On Behalf of E-cell, IIM Kozhikode)
(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5) Loading ...Under the Radar is inviting mobile startups from across the globe for their conference on November 12, 2008 at Microsoft Campus, Mountain View, CA. Apply here before August 15th.
Under the Radar: Mobility is a one-day conference in the Silicon Valley that will uncover 32 bleeding edge mobile startups from across the globe that have launched within the year. Selected startups will present in front of a panel of expert judges (including representatives from T-Mobile, Verizon, the iFund, Motorola, Sprint, Comcast, Microsoft and more). Over 350 industry influencers, executives, press and VCs attend.
Past Under the Radar companies include startups from Germany, Spain, Israel, Sweden, UK, India, Canada and beyond. Success stories include Flickr, Loopt, LinkedIn, MobiTV, Photobucket, Blinkx, Glu Mobile, Sling Media, Userplane, Zimbra and more. Past mobile presenters have gone on to raise $430 million in financing, while others have been acquired or inked strategic partnerships.
(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5) Loading ...A report by market research firm Access Markets International Partners estimates that Indian SMBs will spend $1.26 billion on Internet-related products and services in 2008, an amazing 35% increase from the last year. Considering the fact that data security and compliance is generally the third or fourth factor in the priority-list of SMBs (after things like infrastructure and accessibility), I am just wondering how much of it can be tapped by non-intrusive and hassle-free models like security-as-a-service? SMBs are still sticking to contemporary offerings due to the lack of awareness. Even a small chunk of the pie will be plentiful. Security companies need special action plan for India now.
(2 votes, average: 2.5 out of 5) Loading ...I was just waiting for something like this to happen. Purewire and ZScaler will be upping the ante in the lucrative managed services market. The companies are backed by security superstars like Jay Chaudhary and veterans from CipherTrust and ISS. Prices range roughly from $1-$5 (per user per month) and $30 (per user per year) for ZScaler and Purewire respectively. Way to go!
(12 votes, average: 2.25 out of 5) Loading ...I had the opportunity to check out the TiE India Retail Summit 2008- not all of it—but a few hours towards the end and I’m using this platform to put down a brief account of the same—all comments, questions, suggestions and queries are welcome, either here or by mailing me on nsnsns(at)gmail(dot)com- also, incase you’d like me to add to this article, if you want me to make corrections or if you want me add specific details I may have missed out, please feel free to mail me.
For information on author’s copyright, reprint-permissions and mirrors of this article, please scroll to the notice at the end of this post.
The TiE India Retail Summit 2008 was held at the Sheraton Hotel, Saket, on August 1st 2008 and it had one main conference session, with numerous simultaneous workshops, and focussed on various aspects of organized retail in India.
This is by no means a complete account of the event- but rather a synopsis, followed by some of what I saw and really liked about the event.
I’ve attended a lot of tech events but not many on retail, and I’m blogging this account to benefit people like myself who wonder how’s TiE’s retail event would be- from a human perspective, beyond the networking-value and beyond what a layperson or a journalist would talk about. Also, since a picture is worth a thousand words, I’m posting here a few snaps I clicked there.
The session kicked off at 9:00 in the morning, and the schedule as per the pre-published program mailer was as below:
Introduction and Opening Remarks
• Arvind Singhal, Chairman, Technopak Advisors
Keynote Session – The India Story
• William Bissell, Managing Director, Fabindia Ltd
• Arvind Singhal, Chairman, Technopak Advisors - Chair
Learnings from Indian & Western Retail Models
• Viney Singh, Managing Director, Max Hyper Market India
• Mark Ashman, CEO, Marks & Spencer
• Andrew Levermore, CEO, HyperCITY Retail
• Himanshu Chakrawarti, COO, Landmark (Trent Ltd). - Chair
Tea
Hot New Retail Stories
• Rajiv Agarwal, CEO & Director, The Mobile Store
• Ashutosh Garg, Chairman & Managing Director, Guardian Life Care
• Kamal Oswal, Cotton County (tbc)
• Anurag Batra, Editor –in Chief & Publisher, exchange4media Group – Chair
LUNCH
Workshops
• TiE - Milagrow: How Small Will Become Bigger
Rajeev Karwal, Founder & CEO, Milagrow
Sanjay Shani, Director, Ritu Wears
• TiE - KPMG: Retail Financing
Narayanan Ramaswamy, Executive Director, KPMG Advisory Services
• TiE - IBM: Retail IT
Rafiq Shafi, Retail Industry Solutions, IBM India
Tea Break
Workshops
• TiE - Technopak: Retail Operations
Krishna Kumar, AVP-Retail Operations Practice, Technopak
• TiE - Cushman & Wakefield: Retail Property & Infrastructure
Rajneesh Mahajan, Director, Retail Services, Cushman & Wakefield
• Guru Session/Mentoring Clinic
Venue: The event was held at the Sheraton Hotel, Saket. A great venue that offers superb ambience. There was a session happening in the Dynasty ballroom with 3 other parallel tracks happening simultaneously.
The Sheraton, Saket was earlier called the Marriot, Saket. In it’s current avatar as the Sheraton- a Starwood Property- this hotel definitely lives up to Starwood’s legendary standards of elegance, ambience and hospitality- which are world-class.
Event: I showed up sometime after the tea break; and after running through the Tea Break, I had the chance to attend the session on “Retail Operations” by Mr.Zahir Abbas, Mr Kostubh Rishi and Mr.Bikram Chatterji of TechnoPak.
Takeaways:
Informative Sponsor driven sessions are often long and theoretical, but this “Retail Operations” session; though 120 slides long, was one of the most informative and thought provoking.
Zahir spoke at length about key factors, choice points, criteria involved in the organized retail industry.
Subsequently, Kostubh, spoke about a consulting assignment in which technopak had helped a major retail chain expand and set-up stores in South Indian cities that involved selling farm produce and groceries among other things to Sec-A and Sec-B households, where-in the retail chain depended to a extent on the local milk-men and newspaper-sellers to fulfil orders.
Just summarizing Zahir and Kostubh’s responses to some of the “after-session questions” will give the reader a idea of the sheer depth and hands-on practicality of the session:
When asked by a IT professional for a example of the role of IT Infrastructure in Organized Retail ?
Zahir’s Answer: If you have a pen-and-paper note-book type of accounting and billing mechanism, a item gets sold, and it takes over a month for information about the sales-figures, transaction-times and selling prices to reach head-quarters if at all, while if you have a point-of-sale (POS) system with a centrally accessible database, someone managing operations and sitting in another city can instantly or at the end of the day see, who bought what, at what price and what quantity remains in inventory- which is important because 80% of the sales comes from 20% of the items in stock.
A interesting answer I must say, and refreshingly simple and totally free from all the jargon we hear today about SCM, CRM and ERP- even though the description provided would encompass all these buzzwords.
When asked by a professor of retail marketing from IIM-Lucknow about whether connecting with the consumer through milkmen and newspaper-boys is a good idea- might not it be better not to connect to consumers through government census data and vehicle registration databases ?
Zahir and Kostubh’s Answer: Milkmen and newspaperboys- because they deliver daily and show up with bills each month, typically have better information about the socio-economic status of each household than most surveys and statically collected data- and moreover if a retail chain wishes to distribute a free-sample or introduce itself, then the milk-men and newspaper-boys would have better and freer entry into the house-hold than say a team hired to survey the neighbourhood or a team hired to sell or distribute free-samples which does not already have a existing business relationship with each house-hold.
Technopak incidentally talked to and collected information from over 1000 such milk and newspaper vendors for this particular consulting project.
New Products and Brands:
I saw a product called VFConnect, which lets retailers use Bluetooth wireless networks to connect with consumers- send consumers a image or text about their shop/retailing outlet- which it broadcasts to consumers mobile phones as they walk past a shop or cinema-hall, and the a person can see the picture/advertisement OR text on their mobile which tells them about the shop/brand or about special offers available.
NIIT I had assumed was out of the training for retail space after it sold off NIS (National Institute for Sales) to Reliance, but I was pleasantly surprised to see a new brand called NIIT Imperia- in collaboration with the IIMs, NIIT Imperia tries to provide “advanced higher education” to those who’re already working.
Whenever I surf to shopping.Indiatimes.com or to MagicBrix.com, I assume these companies have in-house developer teams working on their online shops—so I was pleasantly surprised to learn that these names, and others actually depend on a company to provide the software backend for their virtual shops- and ANMSoft – a Mumbai based company is the one that provides the e-commerce software backend for these sites.
Presence of Academia: Another thing I found interesting about TiE’s retail conference compared to other similar industry events was the visible and active presence of youngsters and faculty from a cross section of academia, famous-name colleges, but also colleges I haven’t heard much of but which are actively absorbing what’s happening in the world and in the process actively building their brand, and this is one thing I really liked and appreciated.
And active as-in really active, both in asking questions and in trying to go beyond the answers of the speakers to volunteer answers to audience questions.
Some of the colleges present included:
(1) BIMTECH – Birla Institute of Management and Technology- This is primarily a MBA college, which to encourage interaction with industry has a Center for Retail, a Center for International Business and a Center for Insurance and Risk management, and the student attendees from the Center for Retail it seems had been notified about this event by their inhouse mailing-list- interesting. To say the least
(2) Design and Innovation Academy – This college in Sector-58 Noida teaches students design- all the various facets of design which include jewellery design and multimedia, amongst others—definitely sounds like a interesting course atleast to me.
(3) NIFT – yes indeed; the National Institute of Fashion Technology.
(4) IIM Lucknow- that’s right, there was Professor B.S.Nayyar, Professor of Retail Marketting from IIM Lucknow attending and he’s the gentleman who I mentioned earlier in the bit about the question-answer session.
Some Photos from the Event: (a picture says a thousand words- and if you want, you can click on many of these photos to see larger sized high-resolution pictures)
Click Here for Photo
Here’s one session I would have loved to attend but which I regretfully missed, anyone know of a blog that covers this OR if you have the slides from this, do drop me a mail!!!
Click Here for Photo
VFConnect: This company makes Bluetooth advertising technology- broadcasts to the mobiles of passer-bys information about a retailer’s shop or about special offers
Click Here for Photo
A Upcoming TiE event
Click Here for Photo
Lounge Conference: As the conference proceeds, the lounge area is filled with folks interacting and networking
Click Here for Photo
Tea-Time- The rush for food.
Click Here for Photo
A Cross Section of the Attendees at Tea time
Click Here for Photo
Pradeep Sonthalia (Langham Capital) and Avinash Aggarwal (RouteGuru.com) pose for a photo at Tea-time
Click Here for Photo
Vishal Singhal of CellStrat looks on as Tea-time proceeds in the background.
Click Here for Photo
Mr.Ranjit – of the Indian Venture Capital Association takes the stage before Technopak’s 120-slide long (but extremely interesting) presentation on retail operations commences.
Click Here for Photo
Zahir Abbas of Technopak presents- while Bikram Chatterji and Kostubh Rishi (sitting, also from Technopak) Look on
Click Here for Photo
A Member of the Audience takes the mike as a very informative and lively QA Session proceeds.
We are all students- of life!!! but here’s a snap of some students of the Design and Innovation Academy who had come to attend the TiE Retail Summit 2008- was great seeing active student participation at a event like this– see article above.
With most events, I tend to be atleast a bit critical, suggest something for the better, but this is one event which I found perfect; and I’d like to compliment and commend Ms.Geetika Dayal (Executive Director TiE New Delhi, geetika(at)tienewdelhi(dot)org) and Mr.Nitin Aggarwal (Assistant Director TiE New Delhi, nitin(at)tienewdelhi(dot)org) of TiE New Delhi for a job well done.
Also, my special thanks once again to Mr.Nitin Aggarwal of Tie New Delhi.
Author’s Note: This post and accompanying photographs are copyrighted by the author; and any unauthorized replication, storage or publishing of this material without the author’s express written (and signed on paper) permission is prohibited.
The author has been in the High Tech industry for over a decade; and can be reached on nsnsns(at)gmail(dot)com or mobile: 9811109407 and is happy to attend and blog about events, product launches and technology news; please feel free to contact him with your questions, comments, opinions and info about tech events.
This post is a mirror of a article I published on my Delhi Voice Blog.
I look forward to seeing your comments about this post, you can post comments here, at Venturewoods.com itself or you can mail me..
(1 votes, average: 1 out of 5) Loading ...We at Mobisy always strive to build concepts & applications that would put a smile on your face. As a part of understanding user preferences for mobile applications, we’d like to hear from you about what excites you as a user. We would really appreciate if you take the on-line survey here. We heartily welcome your suggestions. As a token of appreciation, the most interesting and useful suggestion/ comment will win a Nokia S60 3rd edition handset from Mobisy. I will also post the consolidated results of survey here once the survey is complete. Thanks a lot for your time.
*only the responses received till Monday 11th August will be considered for the prize.
(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5) Loading ...Glad to announce that iYogi 
has raised their Series B investment of $9.5M led by SAP ventures, with follow-on investments from Canaan Partners and Silicon Valley Bank. You might remember the $3.1M Series A investment last April - the company has progressed very well since then. What is really encouraging is that iYogi, along with companies in online tutoring space, has proven out the viability of taking offshore services down to individual consumers (also called personal offshoring now in buzz!) That opens up a whole slew of opportunities for technology-rich services companies.
(2 votes, average: 2 out of 5) Loading ...I am happy to share that we have led an investment round of $6MN in UnitedLex with Helion. UnitedLex is a legal consulting and outsourcing firm. Sahad has covered some numbers on broad KPO market in his posts.
Since last 12-18 months, we came across many companies in the broad KPO market - Legal Outsourcing, Financial Analytics, Market Research etc. We believe that ability to scale and sustain growth will become a key success factor in the KPO space. While on sales side, one needs a good sales engine which can close deals in the competitive and fragmented US market. W.r.t delivery, you need ability to drive efficiency by bringing more and more processes on a technology platform. UnitedLex has been able to excel both on sales and delivery front and we hope to help build this into a big business.
-Mukul
(6 votes, average: 3 out of 5) Loading ...Author’s Note: This post and accompanying photographs are copyrighted by the author; and any unauthorized replication, storage or publishing of this material without the author’s express written (and signed on paper) permission is prohibited.
The author has been in the High Tech industry for over a decade; and can be reached on nsnsns(at)gmail(dot)com or mobile: 9811109407 and is happy to attend and blog about technology events and technology news; please feel free to contact him with your questions, comments, opinions and info about tech events in delhi.
Also, before everything else, my heartiest compliments and thanks for a great job done— to Vijay and team (Sudhir, Divya, Kiruba, many others whose name I wasnt exposed to)– my only complaint :-))) — u cud do it bigger!!! 10 times bigger next time guys!!! :-)))
Also, the main reason I’m posting is because I googled around; but couldnt find any articles that did justice to the awesome event that proto.in 2008 at IIT-Del was…
This article will also be posted on my DelhiVoice Blog… http://delhivoice.blogspot.com –> and I encourage you to visit that blog too…
Hi Folks…
I was there at proto.in at IIT Delhi on 18-19 July 2008.
This was my first time at Proto.in- as earlier I wasnt sure if it’d be worth it- since I’m not actually looking for any funding from VCs nor do I have a product idea for which I need to create a buzz- but anyways, some college buddies who’re also ex-Trilogy God programmers were here in Delhi showcasing their startup’s concept and I took the liberty of hanging around them, feasting my eyes and ears on the intense startup and ideation action around me.
It was a amazing, awesome, mind-expanding experience- to understate it and to put it mildly. It was something everyone in the tech industry should check out– even if you’re not even remotely looking to interact with VCs and even if you have no entrepreneurship thoughts even from a distance.
Here’s a bit of what I saw that inspired me to make the above statement.
(1) You heard “Allah ke bande has de” from the Movie Waisa bhi hota hai ?
You seen the Quick Gun Murugan commercials on your fave music channel ?
—> Shashanka Ghosh… the guy who conceived and executed both of the above was there talking about his filmmaking experiences and on the perspectives he got to hear from folks like Ram Gopal Verma when he presented his ideas to them. Furthermore, beyond any book on writing business plans, he shared his thoughts on getting funding; interacting with financiers and why he took some of his ideas only as far as he did– and not as far as they could have gone.
And he did it all in a talk that was peppered with humour and a projector showing rushes from some of the movies/commercials he has done and some which are upcoming…
(2) There was Kiruba Shankar… one of India’s premier podcasters competing with everyone else in the quiz and taking his shot at running the ideation session… a idea jam… where people would grab the mike and spout forth on ideas; as others expanded them and took things forward…. a lively entertaining session; which incidentally was surprisingly fruitful in generating some ideas on changing the shape of Indian society and indian politics… which kept the audience on it’s feet and entertained throughout and which (surprisingly!) gave out prizes to ideas that generated the maximum momentum - and momentum was judged and measured in a surprisingly objective way.
(3) There were startups too; with loads of great ideas, presenting their concepts… and pushing their buttons and there was a session where all the startups were asked to sit on different tables in the luncheon area and attendees were encouraged to stroll by and talk to whoever they wanted to and see whichever demo they fancied seeing…
I personally had a pleasant surprise learning that one of the hot idea start-ups had as it’s CTO a guy who was once one half of a team whose other half… it’s chief marketting officer & CEO I had interacted extensively with over Ryze and over yahoo messenger… always great to learn it’s a small world… and the world is round too!!!
(4) Food and coffee flowed freely and the ambience of IIT-D added to the atmosphere… but for me atleast, what really brightened up the atmosphere was the pleasure of running into and meeting a whole bunch of hot-shot techie faces I had heard or read about…
There were indeed a whole bunch of interesting people. There were folks who’re agewise kids compared to me but who I respect as upcoming God programmers. And there were people I have heard and read about in techie circles but have never met. And then there were individuals I knew at college years back as God-programmers who are now senior technologists. And many others whose acquaintaince I will cherish… there was everybody… a electric mix but in a very civil garb… and a pleasure to rub shoulders with and interact with…
I’m sure the startups presenting their products must have got their mileage too; for I saw people wearing badges of various incubators and every Seed-stage and mid-stage funding company I could think of and a few I had never heard of and I saw lots of interesting potentially lucrative products being presented… but yeah, I thought I’d share my take on stuff as a attendee– so that folks that wonder abt the value of buying a pass to proto.in and attending– but who are doubtful about showing up or doubtful about spending money see the value and do show up next time.
Some of the startups / attendees / people I met at proto.in 2008 included: (I hope my posting your names is ok- if any comments for additions/deletions, please mail me)
LifeBlob http://www.lifeblob.com
ApnaBill http://www.apnabill.com
SocialWebFactory http://www.socialwebfactory.com
iStrait http://www.istrait.com
Eko - Mobile Financial Azadi http://eko.co.in
WebEx http://www.webex.co.in
Mustseeindia http://www.mustseeindia.com
Inkfruit (a t-shirt publishing company!) www.inkfruit.com
Muziboo http://www.muziboo.com
Lords of the odds http://www.lordsoftheodds.com Correction: Lords of Odds http://www.lordsofodds.com
Pureplay Media
Medianama http://www.medianama.com
2i Capital India Pvt Ltd
… and many more… this was just a sampling from the names I remembered and the visiting cards I collected…
Posted below are some photos I shot at the Proto.in Delhi 18-19 July 2008… I hope ya like them… reach me on nsnsns(at)gmail(dot)com or on 9811109407… and I’d be happy to hear your comments…
Also, Lets make a flickr photo-pool of Proto.in snaps or if there is; please do inform me…
Also, finally, my thanks to Mr.Bakshish Dutta (dbakshish@hotmail.com), General Manager - Startups and Emerging Markets (Web 2.0) at sun microsystems; who when I phoned him and asked him if proto was worth it and if he had a extra pass for me; strongly advised me to show-up and check out the atmosphere– even if I showed up for a few hours…
A plug for Sun: Guys if your startup needs servers or if your web application uses a database; chances are you will be using MySQL- which while still free; is now owned and supported by Sun– and I strongly advise you to atleast talk Sun Microsystems; enquire about their offerings and their prices– they are doing a lot of interesting work to encourage startups… and a lot of their offerings beat the grey market/nehru place offerings fair and square; and their price includes the extremely valuable advice/information they share about servers, technology and technology options!!!
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