Month: August 2010

We did the climb up to the temples on Sunday. The 3,200 steps seemed much tougher to climb than the last time I did them. I stopped many times en route, even though the common wisdom is that one should just continue. Bhavana made Abhishek walk-and-talk and set a fast pace, and they made it to the top faster than all of us.

The toughest part of the climb was from steps 1,000-2,000 – the middle path, as it were. The destination is still away, and one is tired from the first part of the climb. After that, it is a countdown to the top.

There was a slight drizzle as we did the climb. At the heights, the low clouds made it almost surreal. Inside the temples, there was no artificial light. The rituals being done now were probably exactly how they have been done for hundreds of years.

In a sense, not only is one climbing up, but one is also going back in time.

Like we had done two years ago, we went to Palitana in early August just before Abhishek’s school re-opened. Abhishek was the one who was keen to go, and my in-laws obliged him!

Palitana is one of the more well-known Jain temple sites. The main temples are situated on the Shatrunjay Hills. The climb is quite an arduous one (more on that later).

We took the overnight train (Bhavnagar Express) from Mumbai. We reached Songadh next morning on time at 10:30 am, and then took a 45-minute auto-ride to the dharamshala we were staying at. The monsoon season created the green and cool setting, which made it quite nice.

We spent the next two-and-a-half days there, a day longer than the previous visit. That made it a very relaxing visit. The dharamshala we were staying in was extremely comfortable. As I remarked to Bhavana, this is the kind of ‘vacation’ I would love to do – peace and quiet, away from Mumbai.

From a series I wrote a year ago on the challenges of being an entrepreneur:

For me, every year as an entrepreneur is one to be savoured because of the learnings.  Just because I did something right in the past does not guarantee success in the future. Building a business is hard. There are moments of joy – but there are many more moments of pain. However experienced one is, situations are different and have to be dealt with accordingly. More than anything, one has to be optimistic and keep the big picture in mind for what one wants to do. It is that vision of the future that keeps the enthusiasm and morale high even during difficult times. For me, the journey matters as much as reaching the destination.

This week’s links:

• Information Overload is Nothing New: by Peggy Noonan (WSJ). “Step back, or aside. Think what you think, not what they think. Everyone is trying to push. Don’t be pushed.”
• A Smartphone Retrospective: by Marco Arment. How the mobiles have evolved in just 3 years – in pictures.
• The Future of Internet Search: by Esther Dyson. “When people search, they aren’t just looking for nouns or information; they are looking for action.”
• Taking the Mystery out of Scaling a Company: by Ben Horowitz. “If you want to do something that matters, then you are going to have to learn the black art of scaling a human organization.”
• PM and The Speech-Writer: by Chetan Bhagat. The state of our nation and our leader. “Talk about poverty, reducing it, of course. And education. And stuff like we won’t tolerate injustice and inequality. Oh, and use the word superpower a couple of times just don’t mention a specific issue or put a real opinion.”

To create a micropayments infrastructure, we need to build on what already exists. Mobile operators in India have created an amazing network of points of presence where one can buy airtime. They know how to handle cash that users pay. (Cash remains the preferred payment mechanism given the low penetration of credit, debit and cash cards in India.)

Today, mobile operators cannot use the cash balance that is there with them for purposes other than voice and data services. Besides, the high incidence of taxes (10% service tax and 15% spectrum and allied charges, for a total of about 23% on what the end users pay) makes it difficult to use the cash balance for real world transactions.

Suppose, we were to change this and allow the cash balance that operators have to be used for third-party non-voice services for a fee of say 10%. Credit card companies charge merchants about 2.5-3% for transactions. Operators could play a similar role for small transactions (say, under Rs 250 or Rs 500).

This would be a game-changer in India. Application and service providers could now create services and leverage the cash balance that users have for collecting their payments. Consumers already know how to refill their accounts with cash given the ubiquity of the mobile prepaid infrastructure.

If we can even imagine India’s top 20% (10 crore) mobile users spending Rs 50 a month on new services, it creates a new annual market of Rs 6,000 crore ($1.3+ billion).

More importantly, it will create interest in computers, software and the Internet amongst the youth, and out of that we could see the emergence of India’s Tencents and Googles.  A decade ago, many in India were fired up with the potential of the Internet only to be disappointed by the market. This time around, the potential of the market can delight many in India.

I have written on this topic earlier. I needed to write a brief note recently – so I took some of the earlier ideas, and updated them.

As voice becomes a commodity on mobile networks, the action is shifting to mobile data services. In this context, India’s user base is only second to China. This availability of a domestic market can help India become a large market for mobile data networks as networks become faster (3G and 4G), and as devices become cheaper and better. Since mobiles and data services are a global phenomenon, Indian companies can also emerge as global leaders by leveraging technology platforms, content and services they create for the large domestic market. India thus has a unique opportunity to create an industry in the next decade that can replicate the success of IT services in the past two decades.

To make this happen, there is need to encourage the creation of off-deck mobile data ecosystem. There are three pre-requisites that need to happen to drive this ecosystem:

• a guarantee of Net Neutrality, so that operators cannot arbitrarily block services they believe compete with them
• remove the WLL and spectrum charges of 13-15% that are levied for VAS, so that the cost of mobile data comes down
• the operator’s billing platform to be available as a service for a fee of 10% or so for micropayments, a la Docomo’s i-mode in Japan

Taken together, they can drive innovation like what has been in Japan and some other countries.  The first two will open up the creation of new services, and the third will give service providers a way to monetise by making available a micropayments infrastructure leveraging the cash balance that mobile users in India already have.

Continued tomorrow.

I had taken some photos on Aug 3 of the potholes on the road in the context of the Bandra Terminus story I had written yesterday.The pictures tell the story.

There is Shenzhen Train Station and then there is our very own Bandra Terminus. I happened to pass through both in the past month, and the experience is instructive for all who think India is on its way to becoming another China.

Shenzhen Station has a massive access area, no traffic jams due to taxis, direct linkage to the subway system, cleanliness and high-speed trains. Not to mention a road.

Bandra Terminus, which is becoming increasingly the point of arrival and departure for long-distance trains on the Western line, has none of the above. Case closed.

I want to dwell further on one aspect – the lack of a road to connect it to the rest of the city. There may have been a road once upon a time in Mumbai – right now there are only potholes. One has to drive on the road to see how bad the situation can actually be. Of course, this is a recurring situation since we citizens don’t hold our corporators and politicians to accountability, and keep voting them or slight variants back to office.

Excerpts from my interview in MobiGyaan about MyToday:

Why did Netcore introduced Premium (Paid) version of MyToday?

Our focus is on direct-to-consumer services. There is so much more which can be done with SMS. We want to create a publishing and micro-payments platform through MyToday that can spur innovation, create new monetisable moments for publishers and content providers, and present consumers with a much wider array of choice. Much like the AppStores have done.

What are the target number of subscribers you are aiming by the end of this year for MyToday Store?

This is a unique model and a first-of-its-kind service. We will take it month-by-month to see how it grows. The opportunity for such services is very large, but there are many things that need to fall in place for them to succeed. Our focus is on making that happen. If we can provide a very good experience for consumers with the content and the publishers via the platform, then we can create a positive feedback loop in the months to come.

From a post I wrote last August:

What kind of data services would the Data MVNO offer? Here are some starting examples:

• SMS subscriptions (push-based microcontent)
• Voice portals
• Content downloads (mobile games, apps, etc.)
• Video downloads / streaming
• mCommerce

What is common to all of these services is that consumers pay for each one of them. Offering them free in the hope of getting ads is not going to be a business – as has been seen in the Internet space in India, where the top home-grown portals are losing in excess of Rs 150 crore a year even after 14 years of the Internet in India.

There are three things which need to come together to offer such a service in India:

• Reach: distribution and relationships to reach the top 100 million target audience
• Cash Balance: enabling people to pay to create prepaid accounts independent of the mobile operator
• Open Publishing Platform: to allow content publishers and service providers to create content. This is similar in concept to the iPhone AppStore.