Emergic: Rajesh Jain's Blog

I spent Diwali in Pune this year after probably 20+ years. There was a time in the first half of my life when almost every vacation was spent in Pune with my maternal grandparents and three mamas and their families — all living together. My sister, and my nine cousins (mother’s side) were all there [...]

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I remember four distinct phases of my life associated with Ice Creams. The first is as a kid in Pune going to the shop on East Street (I forget the name now) for the Vanilla Ice Cream. They used to give some stickers or collectibles with every cup and I remember  stocking up on them. [...]

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Three years ago, I thought 3G was about a year away. Today, it is probably still a year away. What has happened in these intervening years is that I (and the rest of us in Netcore) have discovered SMS. Or to be more precise, SMS subscriptions. It has been a fascinating experience building up MyToday’s [...]

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It is the Festival of Lights once again in India. Diwali is also the time when we do a little puja at home, and my father will write out a detailed review of the past year covering the lives of all of us in the family. It is a tradition that goes back as far [...]

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I have had plenty of opportunity to use the new Netbook that I bought a couple weeks ago. So far, there are more things to be happy about than to complain about. My biggest issue is with the placement of some of the keys on the keyboard. While the keys themselves are okay in size, [...]

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A post from January 2003 which is as relevant today on the dilemmas that an entrepreneur faces: The life of an entrepreneur is a confused one — full of choices to be made and paths to be taken (or not). Every day brings forth its own enigmas, leaving the entrepreneur is a perpetual state of [...]

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This weekend’s links: MIT’s Technology Review on mChek: “An Indian startup thinks that the right software can make cheap phones a financial lifeline to hundreds of millions.” When Your Company SHOULD Spend: Tom Evslin writes about the right uses of cash in a slowdown. Seth Godin Interview about his new book, Tribes. Guy Kawasaki Interview [...]

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Even as there is talk of someone like Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, possibly becoming Chief Technology Officer of the US in an Obama administration, I think we in India need to start thinking beyond the politicians we have to get professionals into leading positions in administration.For starters, look at the complete mess that is [...]

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Following our launch of NayaNaya.mobi, Nikhil Pahwa of Medianama suggested the following: What I found most interesting about MyToday.mobi and NayaNaya.mobi, is that they’re displaying the entire content from a particular article, within the MyToday ecosystem. Take a look at content from Rediff, Afaqs, and Glamsham. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if entire articles [...]

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One of the principles I have followed through my career as an entrepreneur is an openness to talk about the business I am doing. I have found that this has more rewards than risks. Yes, there is a risk that someone may ‘steal’ an idea but if it were that simple to create a replica, [...]

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We have recently launched NayaNaya.mobi and a number of related mobile portals (NayaNews.mobi, NayaBiz.mobi, NayaCricket.mobi, NayaTech.mobi, NayaMovies.mobi…). They complement our MyToday.mobi. They are all for primary consumption on the mobile phone, but are equally useful on the PC also. While MyToday is a deep and wide portal, the NayaNaya family of portals is all about [...]

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I recently made a day trip to Amby Valley near Lonavla to give an invited presentation to a company we are working closely with. It was the longest talk I have given in recent memory — just over 1 hour 40 minutes. I covered a wide variety of topics in the digital space. (I will [...]

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I wrote this Tech Talk series – An Entrepreneur’s Early Days – about five years ago. Here is how it began: An idea fertilises with a mind to give birth to an entrepreneur. The life of an entrepreneur is not an easy one. Extinction in the form of death is always lurking around the corner [...]

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This week’s links: A more rational view on the financial crisis from Benchmark Capital Deep insights from Nouriel Roubini into what the financial crisis and what is coming — from someone who foresaw it all A short history of modern finance: From The Economist Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy: by Paul [...]

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The past few days have seen plenty of back-and–forth on commentaries by VCs about the impending doom and gloom for entrepreneurs and the capital raising scenario. Presumably, they are going to have twin challenges of drawing down on the commitments made by their LPs (limited partners) and meeting the needs of their existing portfolio companies [...]

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Continuing the thread on my experience in buying the Lenovo Ideapad S10, I walked in and out of Croma without them attempting to build a relationship with me. They could have used Invertising (which we offer to our enterprise customer base) to reduce the cost of next contact with me and build a hotline with [...]

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I bought the Lenovo Ideapad S10 from Croma (near Chandan cinema in Mumbai). Their tagline is “We help you buy.” They can surely do better on that front. The S10 was being promoted with a Tata Indicom CDMA USB modem free (worth Rs 1,999). The actual purchase of the S10 itself was easy and smooth. [...]

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“Mom, I had gone to some malls and did some shopping.” “So, what did you get?” “A laptop.” “WHAT?” “Yes, the smallest, cheapest, thinnest (almost) laptop.” This was the conversation I had at home on Sunday after buying a Lenovo Ideapad S10 for Rs 25,000 ($550) from Croma in Mumbai.  I had been looking for [...]

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I first came across the phrase “BHAG” in Jim Collins’ book “Built to Last.” It stands for Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals. It is something entrepreneurs need to embrace as they seek to build out their ventures. If one is going to spend the next few years doing something, one might as well try and change [...]

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Every Sunday from now on, I will link to one of the posts from the archives. This will point you to some of the writing I have done through the years that I think is still relevant and topical. Wherever possible, I will also provide a small commentary to place it in perspective in today’s [...]

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