Emergic: Rajesh Jain's Blog

This week’s links: 10 Emerging Technologies of 2009: A futuristic look from Technology Review. Why Great Companies Get Started in a Downturns: by Matt McCall. “Innovation does not take a holiday, and in fact, thrives during difficult times when pain & need are greatest.” What vs How: by Seth Levine. A mistake many of us [...]

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I came to Pune yesterday for my cousin’s wedding. This is cousin #4 of 7 (the children of my three mamas) who is getting married. All my mamas live with my grandparents in one big joint family, so it is always fun to spend time with everyone. Last night, my aunt, Saroj (Kering) launched her [...]

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One habit I have is making extensive notes. Most people who know me will rarely find me without a notebook (the paper one). I use by notebook to make meeting notes, write ToDos, make lists, and most importantly, think. Over the years, this habit has gotten more and more ingrained. I have standardised on the [...]

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It has been almost a decade since I created a website. Today, the “Friends of BJP” website will be officially launched. How times have changed. Using WordPress with a free theme and a little assistance from a couple colleagues, we got the site to look reasonably like we wanted. And as I used many of [...]

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The past month has been quite an experience in doing multiple things at the same — something I have not been particularly good at in the past. Spending time on “Friends of BJP” is almost like doing a startup. There are about 6-7 of us who are all putting in time whenever possible to get [...]

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Since writing the “I Support the BJP” post a month or so ago, many of us have been working together as part of a group called “Friends of BJP” with the underlying belief that India Deserves Better. The goal is to galvanise the youth and professionals to engage with the political process to bring about [...]

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This series from Oct-Nov 2005 is about an evening with CEOs of IIT-Madras’ Tenet group companies. “The topic for discussion was on what are the worries that each one had as CEO of their company or on a personal level. The job of a CEO can be a lonely one; so the idea was to [...]

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This week’s reading: Top 30 Innovations of Last 30 years: from Knowledge@Wharton. Smart Roads, Smart Bridges, Smart Grids: from the Wall Street Journal. “If we are going to spend billions of dollars to fix our ailing infrastructure, let’s make sure we do it right. Here are the technologies to make that happen.” India can also [...]

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Eliyahu Goldratt is known for his Theory of Constraints. His latest book is “The Choice.” In it, he explains his fundamental system of beliefs (and to his daughter through a variety of business situations and conversations. I read it fairly quickly once, and need to spend more time reading it again (and again). Chapter 2 [...]

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We had a meeting with members of Vodafone’s Value-Added Services team yesterday. The meeting turned out to be inconclusive, with both sides re-stating and clarifying known positions. Vodafone’s key issue: their (perceived) loss of business – past, present and future – if their subscribers switch to our free services. Besides, they don’t make any money [...]

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Following up on yesterday’s post, I first wanted to thank everyone for their support and suggestions. Besides the comments left on the post, various other blogs have also discussed it. Medianama discusses Content vs Carriage. WATBlog asks what it will take for the telecom operators to change their attitude. Pluggd.in and Atanu Dey have also [...]

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Today’s Business Standard has an article about Vodafone blocking our shortcode to stop people from subscribing to our (MyToday) opt-in SMS services. The real unstated reason for the block is that Vodafone believes our free SMS services are competitive to their paid services (Vodafone Alerts). So, rather than let the market and consumers decide, they [...]

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Here is the presentation I did as part of my talk at CDAC Hyderabad’s Decennial celebrations: Emerging Technologies and Entrepreneurship View more presentations from rajeshjain.

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I wrote this six years ago – and the idea still lingers, though it is coming alive in different shapes and forms on the Web. …Imagine if each of us could build out…personal directories – outlines of topics and connections to other directories, people and documents. Much of this would happen automatically as we browsed [...]

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This week’s links: New Middle Class in Emerging Markets: Special report in The Economist. “For the first time in history more than half the world is middle-class—thanks to rapid growth in emerging countries.” What ails Entrepreneurship in India: An interesting persepective by Gaurav Mishra. “Let’s look at two inter-related demand-side issues that are holding back [...]

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Bringing about change in any situation is not easy. Part of the problem arises from complacency – people in their comfort zone happy with the status quo. It is in this context that John Kotter’s book “A Sense of Urgency” can lend perspective on how to effect the change that is much needed in organisations. [...]

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I am speaking at CDAC’s Decennial celebrations in Hyderabad on Saturday. My talk will be on Emerging Technologies and Entrepreneurship. I plan to cover the following: views on tomorrow’s world how India can play a leading role in creation of some of these enabling solutions how entrepreneurs can build the building blocks for the future [...]

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I try and not miss reading The New York Times Opinion pages daily. And that quality of journalism is what I miss in the Indian dailies. We need better, more thoughtful, less biased agenda-setting writing. The Indian Express still has perhaps the better of the op-eds, though there is a lack of consistency in the [...]

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Sramana Mitra wrote to me saying that Forbes has requested her to write a series on Entrepreneurship / Innovation in India, and she was keen to get more inputs from me and Emergic’s readers. Here is a discussion on her blog about the theme. My thoughts: Entrepreneurship is happening in India, but there isn’t enough [...]

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As both the major national political parties sounded the bugle for the forthcoming elections over the weekend, it was depressing to see none of the them articulate a vision for India going forward. None of them is saying why we should elect them and what’s different about them. We keep going back in time even [...]

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