Monthly Archives: October 2013

Why Greater Noida is the true city of future?

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Greater Noida is one of the best planned cities in India and living in Greater Noida is altogether a different experience. I am not just saying it because I live there and I have invested in it, but I firmly believe so.

The green cover in the city, the pollution free environment definitely is something difficult to find in big cities. The city also boasts of Integrated sports complex – which is awesome and pretty reasonable if your kid is studying in JP School.

The city has good quality of life, good housing options, cheap land, lot of student talent and huge tracts of land nearby. All these means an opportunity waiting to happen where the easy availability of young talent would attract KPOs , BPOs and IT Services in the city. Wipro with 6000 people is a live example.

Economic activity in the city are showing signs of improvement. Although the Airport got rejected, a semiconducutor FAB is approved in the city. FABs typically spawn an ecosystem around it and one FAB can completely transform the economy of Gr Noida.   I also see lot of office spaces coming up in the city. Regus has recently opened up their business centre in Greater Noida.  AutoExpo is happening in Gr Noida next year.  Ikea might open their first store in Greater Noida.. so lot of action waiting to happen..

The only and only big disadvantage the city has is accessibility. If the Metro comes through, the city will have a direct link and then the economic activity in the city will boom.. Which KPO will not want to open a shop in Greater Noida when office cost is 1/5th of Bangalore and cheap talent is available in plenty.

I also firmly believe that UP Is next growth story waiting to happen given the shear size of population the state has ( same advantage India has over other countries..)

I am not saying it is a city where you can expect quick returns. Greater Noida has been a lackluster performer in terms of real estate appreciation and people who have invested in it In last 7-8 years, have for obvious reasons regretted their decision.  From investment perspective it is a long term call, especially given the supply on Noida Greater Noida expressway.

Can Greater Noida become the semiconductor capital of India? I think it is a story in the making…

Car Pooling vs Pooling on Public Transport

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Car Pooling is one are where lot of startups have tried to create product but none of them have really worked.. As an Idea, it definitely looks very promising and one which has great potential..

A car pooling marketplace would ideally create a marketplace where car-poolers can instantly look for available cars for pooling and take a ride. For the marketplace to work effectively, the car pool supply has to be scale up very rapidly so that availability to the last mile (where the rider) wants to ride the car.  That is a like a chasm which none of the startups have been able to cross.  Culture might be another issue as highlighted in  this article, but I think it is more to do with scarcity of supply to the last mile.

Let us look at the practical difficulty which I think is quite detrimental for the supply to bulge. A car owner would typically need to go out of his regular route in order to pick / drop the rider – Who likes it when you are late from the office and are facing huge traffic.

Pooling of resources in public transport like Taxi, Auto or even chartered buses on the other hand can work in India.

1. Autos ply everywhere in India ( sans Gurgaon).  So last mile is not an issue. It is much easier to find another rider who is going the same way

2. Even if auto/taxi has to take a detour to pick/drop anybody – Taxi guy earns for that, Riders save money… so everybody gains..

3. People who own car in India – are not looking at earning money through car pool. For them  it is a platform where they can share and in return be carried by another car pooler sometime. Now that is difficult as the rules of the marketplace are not between a supplier and a vendor, but are more around sharing and benefiting..

On the other hand, people who are riding the auto/taxi are looking to save money and doing that they also help the economy/environment save fuel…

Some of the interesting startups in this space

GetJugaad.com, Taxi.to ,Sharedcab , Smart Mumbaikar, NTL Shared Taxi

 

Twitter on Airtel TV and its impact on TRPs

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Airtel TV announced a one of its kind convergence product where your tweets can be seen in DTH. Read more to understand the impact it might have in long term on TRPs

While the product perse looks very innovative, I still fail to understand the proposition for the consumer.  Why should a consumer see tweets on a Big Screen when he can see tweets on the mobile phone in his lap while watching his favorite program on TV.  Especially, when he will anyways have to use his mobile phone to re-tweet or reply to a tweet.

Shall we call it a triumph of Social Media, which has compelled Airtel to bring it in its stable apart from channel content, or shall we call it a triumph of Big Screen in India and tweeter wants to use that channel to grow its usage in India.  Confusing !!

Essentially what Airtel TV is telling consumer to fidget with the device and de-focus their attention on mobile device while watching their favorite program on TV.  TV Channels for obvious reasons will not be happy if the product takes off since it would mean decrease in their TRPs in long term…which might not be good for Airtel TV as well in the long run..

And now the big question.. who is paying whom for the activity? Is twitter paying Airtel for increasing the usage or Airtel pays Twitter for bringing in the offering?

For news reference, Read this!

Love-Hate Relation with my Navigator

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Having worked in the mapping industry I have almost an emotional attachment when it comes to Navigators and mapping devices.

When I travel to an unknown place, navigator is the first thing I pack and always have solace that it will help me when I get lost in the new place.

But I must admit that though navigator gives you a solace when in unknown place, 70% of the time you use it in such situations, you actually end up taking more stress, as the navigator lands you in small bylane not fit for car,  asks you to turn on a one-way road and very often you hit a dead-end.

Well over the years, I have learnt to use my TomTom with caution and almost instinctively deciding which instruction to follow and which not to follow, but still end up in embarrassing situation at times… ex.. i was with my family in the car at 3 AM in night on a cut to rampur (jim corbett)  when navigator misguided me to a road completely empty and barren.. it was my gut which said something is wrong and i decided to do a u-turn…

I would not entirely blame the mapping company for that, as it is impossible for roads change so frequently in India – one ways, blockages etc.   No wonder that navigation devices have not taken off in India.  In India it is more apt to look the place in Google maps and use your judgement to navigate to that place…  Exact turn-by-turn navigation is not possible!!

This is not say that navigators are completely useless. They are very helpful when you are navigating on main roads.. but the moment you try to go on the bylanes, navigators loose it.. so you need to depend on your gut for last mile..

For all Google map lovers, let me tell you that google maps have their own disadvantage in terms of no data availability many times and not very comfortable to use while driving.. apart from gps killing the battery completely..

I would like to end saying that navigator has definitely helped quite a few time when i was searching for a resort/hotel in hill stations like Kanatal, Mukteshwar and even Sangla… it was wonderful to see resorts being mapped and navigator also took me 600m close to the resorts…  it also helped me in discovering new routes –  I never knew the route from Gurgaon to Delhi via Chatarpur farms ( not via mehrauli road)..

Get Your Free Sat Nav Here

Truth of Touch

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Weave your experience, to script the beautiful future,

Let the strings play, In harmony with your past,

Simple and Astounding, Lovable and Adorable,

Memorable and pleasurable, Like a painting on the wall,

With Reflections of passions, and Impatience of Success,

But with a touch of candor, and softness of persistence,

When you know you have, the morning has arrived,

Strike the right chord, It is the Truth of Touch!

More Poems

How would snapdeal make money from ReGlobe

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Snapdeal, the online marketplace to day launched Reglobe, the re-commerce site where it takes old laptops and phones from consumers and pay them cash based on the assessed value.

Although, it has been existence in US for a while with sites like Gazelle  been in existence for last 6-7 years, it is for the first time a large e-commerce player has launched in India.

While today a user can sell his used goods on Ebay, ebay only acts as a facilitator/platform enabling consumer to sell the goods based on the market economics and Ebay takes a transaction fee in the transaction.

In the case of Gazelle or Reglobe, consumers need to ship the goods, they are assessed by the company and then paid in cash.

What do Reglobe of the world do with the used goods :-

1. Set up an ecommerce shop to sell the used goods to consumers:-  Sell Snapdeal verified second hand electronic goods. Possible, but user would prefer to shop for used goods on ebay where the user is likely to get a better deal because of platform-> auction etc. In short, ebay has all incentive to make the marketplace transparent because they have no business risk in doing that… but on the other hand, snapdeal would want to maximize the profits from used goods

2.. Sell them back to consumers on sites like Ebay, Amazon: –  Not sure how profitable it is to sell used goods on internet because of the lemon’s problem.

3.  Sell the goods to third world countries / third world markets: This is interesting, because in third world markets, used goods will be valued more.

2. Sell it to scrap dealer / for recycling:-  This is again very interesting, because the perceptible value of a scrap phone ( not in working condition) is much lower than the actual value in terms of recovery post recycling.   For more information read this: Your Dead Iphone is a Gold Mine

The punch line is, there’s more gold in a pound of electronics than a pound of gold ore,

 

 

The Lean Season

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The Lean Season

Once Again it was a lean season,

And both were blaming each other for the treason.

 

The cloud were the Words and mountain was the Music,

Could it have rained without Music rising above the tempo to call for the words?

 

You were the one whose smile refreshed my parched surface,

You were the one under whose shelter I enjoyed the sun and the moon,

You were the one I dreamt of traversing my life with, said the mountain.

  

Recalled the cloud, You were the one in which I could see my shadow,

It were on you I poured all my joys and sorrows.

But were the Words too feeble to reach the Mountain?

 

The mountain blamed the cloud for drifting apart,

But you never did ask… replied the cloud

How could I have stopped the wind when silence is all we had between us

I was at a height blinded by view

But you could have risen above your ego to…

Faith is all we had between us, but it were you who suspected me for other mounts.

 

It was the silence, which separated them,

And it is the silence, which stands between them today.

Music is mute, words are lost…

YouTube on your Idiot box

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It is rumored that Google is talking to DTH providers in India to have Youtube on your idot box.  This is the story on Economic Times

What puzzles me is that how can Youtube be accessed from TV in the current framework of hardware and remote capability. The existing remotes do not facilitate textual search, nor does the current hardware supports 2-way server client communication as it is only a dumb broadcasting framework,

At best, what YouTube can do is that collate Trending videos of the day and have the users choose them and play. That is not interesting and so un-youtube..

Also, if somehow Youtube is able to crack it technically and evolve the DTH architecture, will the existing content providers ( channels) like Youtube and DTH shaking hands.  Afterall, once you have Youtube on your set-top box, all you need is Youtube and no channel subscription because of the crowdsourced ( aka pirated) videos.

 

My IOS Pangs

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IOS is the sexiest mobile operating system on the planet.. Or is it not ??

I have been breaking my head since morning to resolve issues with two of my IOS devices. Have gone through multiple forums, tried all jantar-mantar, but nothing seems to work..

Iphone – Backlight is on continuously. Tried everything but backlight is not off

Ipad – No sound comes whatever I try. But when I put a headphone, the sounds come properly..

Some of the forums mentioned that there is a bug in IOS and they have given a solution to change the settings… but that also did not work… The Ipad sound not coming is a very common issue btw..

Surprised, if it is so, why has Apple not come with any fixes or atleast the bug should have been resolved with IOS7 upgrade…

Save Apple! They are no better than Microsoft.