Some of you who knows me personally are aware that I am extremely crazy about bringing basic services to Rural India (I do have a personal blog in this regard). One of such services is Quality Education. What causes learning? First of all, learning initiation happens through the exposure. For example, if I am watching […]
Opportunities for service providers in education
During the last two weeks I have attended my brother’s engagement and as well as his marriage in Andhra Pradesh. As these were planned on a short notice, I had to travel on busses from Hyderabad to Tenali (via Guntur) and Guntur to Hyderabad. As usual, through the bus window I was observing at all […]
The case of SonimTech – And lessons we can learn
( Some parts of this post may not be totally accurate, I got the info from google and a senior Sonim employee) ” Sonim Technologies (www.sonimtech.com) was founded somewhere between 1999-2000, with a vision to provide Push-to-Talk (PTT) platform over VOIP over major phones. The market was large enterprise sales force which can use PTT […]
Are the Best Years of Outsourcing Behind Us?
Hi, My firm, Venture Intelligence, is organizing a conference, IT Services & BPO Connect ’08, next Thursday (Aug. 28) at Mumbai to explore the above and relation issues facing these key sectors. The event has speakers from the largest companies as well as the most active investors in IT Services and BPO, including: Aparup Sengupta, […]
Lessons for a 1st Gen Entrepreneur – Managing cash flow
I had often heard of the importance of cash flow and thought that I had taken adequate steps in year 1 to guard against running dry. But, when a fully charged technical team is at work, minor details like cash flow are sometimes temporarily ignored or wished away till reality stares you in the face. […]
Business Oriented Architecture
Once primary focus changed from building a product to selling it, i-Create was a different place. We realized that there was going to be no external funding that could help us spend some more time in the comfy confines of the lab and delay diving headlong into the competitive world that is Enterprise IT sales. […]
One year in the life of a technology startup
Once upon a time there was a group of people who wanted to create the next generation Business Intelligence software for the Banking industry. We theorized that there is a lot of data being accumulated and wasted by Core Banking systems which could be used to drive profit enhancing decision making. We set out to […]
Medical Tourism Opportunity
If people thought the outsourcing of IT was significant, then medical tourism promises to be several times larger by the middle of the next decade. The Economist article provides a chart projecting the number of US patients expected to partake in medical tourism. The base case sounds like a 100% per annum growth through out next decade. Start ups in […]
3G – What does it mean for startups?
The promise of 3G is live again, and as consumers, I am sure most of us are looking forward to it. It would be great to get people’s views on what it might mean for startup opportunities. Some of my thoughts: 3G in India is fundamentally about cheaper scalable voice capacity. At a basic level, […]
Call for nominations – Under the Radar Conference
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 […]
Indian SMBs to spend $1.26 billion for Internet services in ’08
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 […]
Two new web security (SaaS) startups
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) […]