Momo Delhi had their first event yesterday. Great show, and I hope this become an ongoing activity. Personally, I would prefer a more discussion oriented format — 5-6 10 minute presentations on new ideas, and then one specific discussion, with participants who can rip apart that topic, and something thats actionable.

I was part of the panel discussion with Manoj Dawane/Airtel, Vish Bajaj/Valuefirst, Karanbir/SVB, Arvind Jha/Monsoon Multimedia and Chirag Jain/Webaroo. Manoj was very patient and I appreciate his honesty in explaining how operators look at the VAS space and innovation in there. There is wide dissatisfaction with the barriers one has to encounter to innovate and to make money through telecom operators, and Manoj had an interesting perspective, including that operators might be open to outsourcing VAS. However, in my view the issue is not whether operators or another firm manages that process (i think current operators are very competent), but whether consumers get to decide what they want (and not some centralised decision maker) — I think this is what spurred the innovation on web — anyone could launch a site without having to get permission. Something that resonates even as we see publishing moving towards community content.

Look forward to more of these…

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