Month: June 2009

There are three obvious and two not-so-obvious things which need to be done to get the Internet business growing again. The obvious ones:

• Reasonable, flat-priced (unlimited use) broadband needs to grow. I think the pricing sweet spot is somewhere around Rs 250 for unlimited use for 512 Kbps-1 Mbps connectivity. Actually, the last-mile conenctivity quality is not that much of an issue — in most cases, the pricing is. Metering Internet usage isn’t a way to explode this ecosystem.
• Computing and Internet need to get more associated with education and entertainment. This is where families who haven’t yet done so will start getting them at homes. Services don’t necessarily need to be provided for free — ISPs can bill for “value added services” as part of the bill, and revenues can be shared with the content providers. This ensures that content providers can get subscription revenue and not be dependent only on advertising, and ISPs can get additional upside than just the flat-rate data charges.
• Investments need to start flowing again in this space — the $500K-$2 million kind, which lets companies get started, and have enough runway for 18-24 months to show the business either works (in which case they will be profitable), or it doesn’t (in which case they fold up). A hundred companies need to flower so that we get a few to succeed, and become big.

Much of this is quite obvious to people in the space. I will add two more not-so-obvious point to this mix tomorrow.

A week or so ago, I met a couple of VC friends and we got talking about the Internet business in India. My contention was that this is perhaps a great time to build a hybrid net-mobile consumer media business — if one is willing to invest $5+ million over the next 2-3 years, and think out-of-the-box about what needs to be done.

The current crop of portals (horizontals and verticals) are too few and for the most part, unexciting. They haven’t yet become “utilities” (daily must-visits) in our lives. The content is quite insipid, and there seems to be little innovation happening on the Internet front from the larger players. For the smaller ones, it has become almost impossible to raise any kind of capital from angels or VCs, thus leading to an almost complete stagnation of the Internet base and usage in India. This has been compounded by a fall in ad revenue for many of the companies as the economy has slowed.

What can get us out of this and where are the next set of opportunities? More on this tomorrow.

This was the column that began my Tech Talk columns in November 2000. It was a vision to get India to 100 million Internet users in 3 years. Ten years later, we are still at only half that number. This is what I wrote then:

 There are 5 components to building a mass market Internet and making it a utility service:
– Access Device: Multiple options are becoming possible for accessing the Net. What will be the mode of access? Will it be the PC, TV or cellphone?
– Access Network: The telephone company still makes Rs 25/hour when we connect to the Net — significantly more than the ISP itself! Are there alternatives?
– Community Centres: 1 million telephone lines going into PCOs serve the communications needs of 75% of India. Can something similar happen with the Internet in India?
– Payment Systems: Few Indians (about 3 million) have credit cards, fewer are keen on using them on the Net! Can we eliminate billing and use pre-paid? Are smart cards the answer?
– Applications and Services: How many Indian sites make you visit them daily?

This week’s links:

• On Education: Two interesting posts by Koshy and Atanu.
• Four Pillars of an Open Civic System: by John Geraci. “What we really want (or what I really want anyway) is not simply government transparency, but an open civic system – a civic system that operates, and flourishes, as a fully open system, for whatever level we happen to be talking about – federal, state, city, neighborhood, whatever. And transparency is a big part of that open civic system, but it is still only one part.”
• Jeff Bezos at Wired conference: An interesting collection of quotes. “People over-focus on errors of commission. Companies over-emphasize how expensive failure’s going to be. Failure’s not that expensive….The big cost that most companies incur are much harder to notice, and those are errors of Omission.”
• The Start-up Guru: Inc magazine on Paul Graham. “His company, Y Combinator, is a hybrid venture capital fund and business school that invests in, advises, and, literally, feeds 40 or so early-stage businesses a year. Investments are small — less than $25,000 per company — but Graham supplements the money with smart advice, introductions to later-stage investors, technical help, and a sense of community.”
• The Power of Mind Mapping: from Forbes. “Mind mapping, a form of visual outlining, may seem superficial, but once mastered it provides a powerful tool for managing information overload and the hyperbolic multitasking of the modern world.”

I will remember this London vacation for the time I spent with Abhishek.On work days now, I hardly get to see him since he tends to sleep by 8 pm. In London, it was just him and me for the most part during the day. We would walk together for long stretches, travel on trains and buses, or just sit together eating some food in Starbucks. He was full of questions, and I did my best to patiently answer each of them. He was also a little worried at times that we hadn’t left anything behind in the taxi, bus or train – ever since I lost a bag in a Singapore taxi during our vacation a year ago.

The last day that we spent with my school friend and his family (wife and 11-year-old daughter, Nisha) was also an especially memorable one. When we temporarily parted mid-day (they had a booking to go see London Dungeon), I noticed a tinge of sadness in Abhishek’s eyes – he had gotten so friendly with Nisha. That evening, we sat in their hotel room and watched as Nisha taught Abhishek a few card games – and Abhishek actually learnt to follow the instructions given!

I don’t know what Abhishek will remember of this vacation, but for me, there are many moments which will stay on for a long time.

For much of my life, Vacations were something that I never really bothered about. Now, I am already looking forward to the next one – so I get to spend more time with Abhishek!

Food was one of our concerns given that we eat only Jain food (no onions and garlic) and in Bhavana’s case no potatoes either. On the first day, we ate lunch and dinner at Govinda’s (near the ISKCON temple) on Soho Street. The food was excellent. Dinner for the next three days was with friends – home food on two of the days! Another couple places which we sampled were on Drummond Street (Chutney’s and Ravi Shankar). Both serve vegetarian fare, but the Jain options are very limited.On our first night in London, we had gone to the nearby Sainsbury’s and stocked ourselves with plenty of bread, cereal, fruits, chips and juice, to complement some of the stuff we had taken from India. We’d keep sandwiches with us to eat through the day along with biscuits and nuts.

So, overall, food was much less of an issue than I thought. The kitchen in the hotel ensured that we’d have our full breakfast early in the morning before we set out for the day. It also meant that Bhavana could make her very special self-made Indian tea whenever we were there! And after 17 years, I was back to doing the dishes.

Tomorrow: Memories

I had thought of going to some of the historical destinations in London, but decided to leave it for another time when Abhishek is a little older and better able to appreciate their significance. Bhavana had seen most of these places during her previous visit (while I had done my business meetings).What we did do instead was go to Bath for a few hours. It takes 90 minutes by train and is out in the English countryside. Bhavana had visited it last time and had loved the place. The train ride is very relaxing. We took the Bath sightseeing bus ride to get a flavour of the place. Abhishek fell asleep during the 30-minute tour. Lunch was a picnic in the Garden – perhaps the first time I have done something like this. We ate our sandwiches sitting on the beach-like chairs in the shade of a tree even as some birds hovered nearby.

It was only on the last day that we did a bit more of the touristy sightseeing, as we walked on London Bridge and then to St. Paul’s Cathedral. I remembered some of these places from my 1981 visit when we had done a formal tour of London.

On our next trip, I hope we can spend some time in the museums — especially, the Science and Natural History ones.

Tomorrow: Food

We all had our own shopping agendas – for Bhavana, it was looking for something different and buying gifts for the extended family, for Abhishek, it was toys and more specifically cars (Hamley’s or Imli’s as he initially called it), and for me, it was books. And we found it all in the Oxford-Regent Street areas.On our first day, with no Tube, we walked from our hotel to Oxford Street. Took about an hour and a half. But it was a nice walk diagonally through Hyde Park. Except for a little drizzle on the first day morning, the weather was just perfect through the trip.

I found plenty of bookshops – Waterstones and Borders on Oxford Street, Foley’s (it is huge – five floors of books) on Charing Cross Road, and Border’s and Blackwell opposite it. I wanted to buy a new board game “Settlers of Catan” (had read about it in a Wired magazine article a few months ago), and I found it in Forbidden Planet on Shaftesbury Avenue just off Charing Cross. Border’s had Starbucks in them, so that was a good place for Abhishek and me to eat our ‘tiffin’ every once in a while.

Abhishek’s two favourites were The Disney Store (Oxford Street) and Hamley’s (Regent Street). He had left India with six of his cars to play with, and we augmented that collection by another eleven during the trip.

Bhavana spent hours walking around Oxford Street. We would leave her on her own for the most part, using SMS to co-ordinate when and where to meet again!

The other nice place we liked was Covent Garden. We had visited it during our previous trip. Abhishek loved the Transport Museum.

Tomorrow: Sightseeing

This was my third visit to London. I first visited London with my parents and sister as a 14-year-old as part of an SOTC package tour to Europe. The second visit was about 7-8 years to attend a Development conference organised as part of a UN body. This third one was a five-day vacation with Bhavana and four-year-old Abhishek.We took the day flights of Jet Airways both ways. It was literally quite refreshing to not be flying out of India in the middle of the night! As soon as we landed in Landon, the Tube strike started. It made travel within London that much more difficult.

We stayed at the Citadines South Kensington. Because of our food restrictions (Jain food), we like to do some bit of cooking (breakfast atleast). Citadines has service apartments. It is nicely located, a 3-minute walk from Gloucester Road Tube station. The rooms were a wee bit small. There was an internal staircase connecting the lower level living room and kitchen to the bedroom on the upper level. Abhishek loved going up and down.

We spent most of the days going around London, except for the one day we went to Bath We met with some of my friends (and their families) for dinner. The Sunday we spent with one of my closest friends (we have known each other for 30 years) walking around London and catching up on old times.

Overall, it was a very nice vacation – perhaps a little short! But then that is always the case with vacations.

Tomorrow: Shopping

This one was one of my early Tech Talks (from 2001), and one that I enjoyed writing a lot. It was about the lessons one could learn from watching the movie “Lagaan.” I wrote it on 5 parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5. An excerpt:

Lagaan is about people. Ordinary, average people, who are going about their lives – like each of us. Who, when the moment demands, do extraordinary deeds. It is about the power of a Team – the muthi (”closed fist”). As a team, they were fighting for the future of tens of thousands of their countrymen against a heartless enemy (the British). They had few resources, and little knowledge of the game of cricket. What they did not lack was fighting and team spirit, and the will to win. They were not playing a game; they were fighting a war.

The India of today, too, faces a lot of challenges. If we can learn from Bhuvan and his bunch of motley cricketers, the New India that is being built can be a different place, one which occupies pride of place in the world economy, one which is respected and feared but not ignored, one in which the community and nation come before self, one which Bhuvan’s XI would have been proud of.