Tag Archive for 'mobile'

Join us to learn about the opportunities and success stories of Indian Digital Economy

Published by Avinash on July 30, 2010 in News/ Events.
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More than 300 executives from start-ups, emerging companies and especially those developing mobile, internet applications will converge on New Delhi on the 25th of August for what is the definitive event for an IT start-up in India – the EMERGEOUT Conclave to understand “What it takes to build a successful mobile, internet company from India?”.

Learn from the industry thought leaders on new opportunities and interact with people who built and are building successful mobile, internet companies from India. Also many emerging company executives who attend to brainstorm their ideas, free wheeling discussions and networking all of which are especially pertinent for small to mid size companies trying to become game changers.

Technology, often disruptive in nature is at the heart of a start-up’s differentiators to make them game changers. No surprise then that EMERGEOUT has in the past been themed around Cloud Computing, and that the current theme is “The Mobile Internet & AppStore”.  This makes the event a must attend for the technology and business strategists.

Over the past four editions, the EMERGEOUT Conclave has become ‘the’ event on the calendar of a start-up CXO. Given the number of senior executives and CXOs the event attracts, in their wake come the Research Analysts, Bloggers and Media, who track and report on the sector.

Attending the Conclave gives a visitor a clear sense of where the action is in the emerging companies space and hear their stories, learn from companies building successful business cases. And in keeping with the ‘catch them young’ strategy, the Conclave brings in Investors looking for the next big idea and the next little company that will implement that game changing idea. Register now!

For Sponsors, its hard to find a more focused target audience. Nor a more responsive one…..the level of debate, interaction and buzz is not seen at too many other conferences!

EMERGEOUT has something for everyone — Now, you cant find an excuse for not attending. Join Us!

Concepts and Clients : The eternal challenge

Published by Upendra Namburi on November 12, 2008 in General.
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Over the last couple of years have come across several entrepreneurs and new start ups presenting product and service delivery models on the Internet and mobile channels. This blog being an extremely vibrant forum for both groups, would like to outline a few observations and challenges faced in converting these propositions to business models and consumer reality. ( and this from a client’s perspective)

1.Detail : It always comes in handy to have a crisp minutes document circulated post meetings. This ensures clarity for all concerned, espescially if new concepts are involved. A detailed product specs document may be submitted at a later stage, but critical that the core proposition and offerings are articulated clearly upfront in the early stages.

2. Target Audience : A critical ingredient in marketing which often gets ignored in B2B sales is in clearly defining and understanding the target group within the client organization. Chants of USSD & J2ME to sections of a client audience struggling to send SMS messages can be rather disenchanting.

3. Adaptability : A key desired benefit of working with young and lean outfits is in being adaptable wrt business models, product roll outs etc. This should ideally be a key USP in the current environment. Re-engineering is critical. There have been several instances where the larger relationship opportunities have been sacrificed as the services required to be re-packaged. Re-engineering can be a complex challenge, but needs to be in the genetic code.

4. Business Model : In the event of both parties clearly sharing their business objectives and revenue streams, the resultant business and pricing models may take on new un-chartered dimensions. Fairly transparent exchange vis a vis cloak and dagger pre-negotiation tactics works rather well. A chunky upfront license fee in the last quarter may just not work!

5. Participative Product Development Process : Let the pre-sales process commence at the product development stage itself. Invite potential clients to participate in the product development process. Invite them in their individual capacities and not merely from the perspective of closing a sale. This could augur well for the client as well potentially resulting in lower lead times to commercial launch if a sale were to materialize.

This also comes in extremely handy to access the clients insights into industry and end consumer trends. Consumer reasearh can be expensive and an extremely time consuming process for start ups, so please feel free to piggy back.

6. Understand the Sale Process : I had an enchanting interaction with a vendor a couple of months back. He constantly reinforced the fact that he was an empaneled and certified supplier. This translated into client speak, meant that the NDA, agreements, vendor verification processes and payment codes had all been sealed or set up. This in effect could save over six weeks of processing time and hence time to market. Quite a unique USP!

You may find some of the observations to be rather rudimentary, but you would be surprised with the consistency with which they are not practiced.

Would welcome your views.

We Really Don’t Dream Big Enough.

Published by Vijay Anand on November 2, 2008 in Ecosystem and Musings.
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I grew up with a poster in my room saying “The size of your world is as big as your dreams”. It was always there when you woke up to remind you to think beyond the box. It still hangs there in my room at my parents place. It’s the thought that came into my mind when I was browsing through the net, listening to some of the folk’s interpretation of Entrepreneurship.

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

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

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

Mobile Development Report

Published by Saurabh Garg on July 19, 2008 in Ideas & Companies and Musings.
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PCO

I recently came across this report titled “The Mobile Development Report“, published by CKS on a research commissioned by Nokia for developmental use of mobile networks in emerging economies.

The report focuses on social transformations around a new technology and its adoption. The report beautifully documents lives and ways Indians in tier 2 cities and towns use mobile phones. One of the best reports, a few highlights for me are

  1. The East-West Divide: If we draw a line connecting Delhi and Chennai, the western India has seen most of the developmental efforts. East of this line still exist opportunities and possibilities. And this has largely been ignored by most of us (entrepreneurs, students, professionals, academicians etc.)
  2. Understanding of India as a country. The report gives a very deep understanding of Indians and their communication behavior. What makes this one different and special is that CKS talks about the entire India - not just metros or towns or villages.
  3. Classification of towns and villages. CKS has done a very good job in classifying towns and villages according the now famous pyramid by CK Prahalad. The report further classifies these rural citizens in terms of their purchasing power. Probably first such effort in India?
  4. Opportunities in Rural AND Urban India. Everyone is ga-ga about opportunities in rural India and largely . While reading this report, it dawned on me that even the urban and semi-urban population is more than 500 mn. This number is more than the population of US and UK combined and there is a strong case of a business flourishing here also. Agreed that urban markets are difficult to crack considering they have plethora of options and they are picky. But is too large a segment to be ignored and is waiting to be tapped.
  5. Insights from research: CKS has gone beyond regular data collection and have come up with insights such as elevation in social stature, increased credibility, ease of use of mobile phones as communication device compared to an Internet-connected PC, personal and societal welfare etc. And how does an access to a mobile communication tool helps people make their lives better.
  6. Possible Applications: in micro-commerce, making travel easier, access to information, education (one of the examples look uncannily similar to latest Idea Cellular advertisement) etc. This can be coupled with findings from Jan Chipchase (more on him later) to identify new and possibly revolutionary businesses. Simple example could be use of airtime as currency and if someone can regulate this, its a huge huge market waiting to be tapped.
  7. Case Studies: The way they have chosen their subjects, the methodology to conduct an interview, the detail in which they have gone while researching, they have captured the entire life of the subjects. With the kind of detail available, you can easily create character maps of these subjects and derive the way they live their lives and how they interact with brands.
  8. Photographs: Awesome collection of photographs that the team has taken during their study.

The report also mentions at one point Jan Chipchase, a Nokia employee whose job is to travel the world and observe and document novel ways in which people use and interact with mobile phones. This is his wonderful talk on TED on how we use our mobile phones.

Coming back to CKS report, one might argue that they covered only three districts and have extrapolated the data to come up with findings and recommendations. And that report was released in early 2007. But regardless of these reservations, this still remains one of the best research reports I have read in a long time.

Apart from the focus on mobile phones, the report is that detailed that you actually get tons of ideas (another post on this later) while reading it. Congratulations to CKS team for this awesome effort.

P.S.: The font size is way too small and there are 226 pages of information, worth its weight in gold.
P.S..: If anyone else is keen on serving the information and entertainment needs of a community and can foresee (or already has) a business in this domain, please contact me. You never know what might come out of a discussion.

Crossposted: Saurabh Garg Blog | Image Credits: manoogupta via Flickr

Start-up Ecosystem : Mobile Monday Bangalore

Published by Lalit on March 13, 2008 in Ecosystem, General and Musings.
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I have been participating in Mobile Monday Bangalore for an year and half now. What started as a few geeks in a cafeteria event is currently a huge community commanding respect from everyone. Today, speakers from all over the world vie to be part of of the community !

But that’s not what I call success, there are plenty of such “eco-systems” currently mushrooming in India.
What I like the most about Momo Bangalore is that it has still managed to retain it’s original form as a “By Entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs” organization.

Lot of the credit for that is due to the organizers. They have remained the very friendly and easily approachable face of Momo Bangalore throughout all it’s transitions.

Let me just talk about ourselves. We at Mobisy started as just another start-up with an idea around a year back.
Getting any attention or help in any other “eco-system” was proving a tough task. Momo Bangalore acted like a true “Mentor” to us. Right from finding information regarding standard start-up processes to getting a demo arranged, networking with VCs, Partners, Customers… We were offered help at every single step. All that with a smile and no cost ! How many organizations can claim to provide such a level of altruistic service to budding start-ups in India?

In my personal opinion, we need many such organizations to spur on real innovations here.

May the ‘Momo Bangalore’ spirit live on.

Disclaimer:- I am just a participant in Mobile Monday Bangalore and have no vested interests whatsoever with it ! Opinions expressed here are completely personal.