Emergic: Rajesh Jain's Blog

The Mumbai Terror attacks and the inadequacy (and at times, sheer stupidity) of the politicians we have elected to power contrasts dramatically with the team that is now taking charge of America under Obama. Here are some of my writings on this theme: Reinventing Indian Politics: how mobiles will create an opportunity for an Indian [...]

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The terror attacks in November happened just a few kilometres from home in South Mumbai where I live. I wrote three posts about the attacks: Terror in Mumbai (on Nov 27) Mumbai: What Now? (On Nov 28) Mumbai: Why This Time is Different (on Dec 1)

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A few of my better posts which entrepreneurs may like: C2 R2: on the need to cut costs and ramp-up revenues in difficult times Watch the Cashflow: one way to prevent business failure What can Cause Us to Fail: think multi-monetisation Crucible Moments: those which  transform us, and shake and shape our lives Talking to [...]

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It is now called Software-as-a-Service and the more fashionable Cloud Computing. Back then, we called it Application Service Provider. I wrote this series in May 2005: Even as globally ASPs are making a comeback and software-as-a-service seems likely to define at least a part of the industry, in emerging markets, the opportunity for both SMEs [...]

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This weekend’s links: Cringely’s 2009 Predictions: His last column for PBS. Mobile’s Tectonic Shift: by Cyriac Roeding of Kleiner Perkins Time to Reboot America: Tom Friedman’s article on what the US needs – also applicable in parts to India Rethinking Computers in the Classroom: from Business Week. “What’s needed, say educators and technology advocates, is [...]

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It is the last week of 2008, and time for some re-runs. I re-started this as a daily blog in August, so there’s only five months of material to choose from – and it may seem quite recent. Here goes — a selection of what I think were some of the better blog posts that [...]

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To show the huge gap that exists between China and India on the Internet front, here are the latest numbers put out by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology: 290 million, as of end November This is up 37 million in 5 months 80% connect via broadband connections, of which half are over ADSL [...]

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Last week, during my visit to Surat, we visited a Jain temple in Miyaganj Karjan, about 100 kms. from Surat. We went by train – the journey took 1 hour 45 mins. On our return, we decided to take the bus since the next train meant waiting for 2 hours. In the end, it didn’t [...]

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9. Emergence of Mobile as a Mass and Targeted Medium: Today, the Mobile is one of four new media that ad agencies and business look at along with FM, Out-of-home and the Internet. Given the user base that is already there, the mobile is ready for breaking out of the pack. It has the attributes [...]

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7. Mobile Payments and Commerce will come into vogue: This will happen via three mechanisms. First, the mobile cash balance with an operators could be used for payments. Second, a credit card or debit card could be linked with a mobile phone or number, enabling only an instruction to be issued for making payments. Finally, [...]

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India needs more local content, something I call PIN-News. I have written about this multiple times in the past. Here is a post from Jan 2007: Do-it-yourself publishing can create the content, while subscriptions can help deliver to the interested people in near real-time on their mobiles. In this world, events will start becoming the [...]

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This weekend’s links: Death of a Salesman and other Elite Ironies: Tarun Tejpal writes on the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks A Trillion-dollar Industry: Tomi Ahonen on the mobile industry Display Advertising as compared to SearchAdvertising: Fred Wilson analyses a ComScore report Lost In the Crowd: David Brooks writes in The New York Times about [...]

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5. Flat-rate Data Plans will drive the use of Mobile Internet, Social Media and Rich Media: The US leads the way here. From being a laggard in the use of mobile data, the US is now showing the way with all operators having flat-rate data plans. In India, the right price point, according to me, [...]

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3. Operators will focus on VAS and Data Services in the Red Market: Voice, SMS and quality of network can no longer be used for differentiation – they are now hygiene. The Red Market subscribers got a phone in the first decade of India’s wireless rollout between 1995-2005. They have been using Voice and P2P [...]

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1. Subscriber Growth Continues: India is now growing at about 10 million new mobile users every month, and that pace of growth will continue. We will probably be close to 450 million subscribers by end of 2009. Four factors will drive growth of the mobile subscriber base: footprint expansion by existing operators especially in rural [...]

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Mint asked me for ten key trends in the Indian mobile space for 2009. Given that I like these year-end lookahead exercises, I sent them the brief list they wanted, and also elaborated on each of them. 2008 was an exciting year in the Indian mobile space. The user base has grown by about 100 [...]

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Watching “Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi” in the multiplex and “Taazre Zameen Par” on TV over the weekend brought out the difference between the ordinary and extraordianry. RNBDJ was disappointing fare, considering that it was made by Aditya Chopra. The story just did not make sense, and even though Shah Rukh Khan did his best [...]

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I am going to Surat next week by train, and that reminded me of this post from June 2004 when I took the train from Delhi to Dehradhun. There is that romance that trains have that no planes or automobiles can match. I still remember the train journey I took across US from New York [...]

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This weekend’s links: Economist Special Report on India: “An elephant, not a tiger” A school for $6 a month: Private sector education in India’s slums (from Forbes) 2009 Mobile Messaging Predictions: Chris Lennartz writes on 160characters 2009 Consumer Internet Predictions: by Jeremy Liew from Lightspeed Ventures

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Bhavana, Abhishek and I go out to eat once a week or so. Jain food is what we need, so the choice of restaurants is quite limited. (If we can help it, we also stick to vegetarian-only restaurants.) There are plenty of options around Kemp’s Corner where we live. Our favourite is Soam, at Babulnath. [...]

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