Emergic: Rajesh Jain’s Blog

The train journey in the superfast Bhavnagar Express was very comfortable. We were in II class 3-tier Sleeper (‘S’ class) on our way to Songadh, and in I class, 2-tier AC (‘A’ class) on our return. I must say the A-class experiences was truly exceptional. It makes me want to travel more by train - […]

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Last week, I went on a pilgrimage to the Palitana temple near Bhavnagar in Gujarat.  It is considered as one of the most sacred places among Jains. I had last been there 30+ years ago. This year, my mother-in-law is spending two months there, so we decided to go there.
We went by train - the […]

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Idea recently launched operations in Mumbai. It is interesting because it is perhaps for the first time in India that an operator is being forced to focus primarily on SWITCHING users (in an era without mobile number portability)  from other operators rather than just acquiring new ones. This is because Mumbai already has nearly 15 […]

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I wrote a 5-part series earlier in the week. I have put all five articles together in a single post for easier reading.
The Shift from Internet 1 (Portals) to Internet 2 (Search)
The early days of the Internet were all eyeballs and monetisation via banner (graphical) advertising. The business was about creating portals and destination sites […]

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I will be speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco (Nov 5-7). Here is the full speaker list.

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How big can SMS subscriptions be? My belief is that each of us can receive upto 10 SMS daily without feeling overwhelmed. 3-4 of them would be content, but the rest can be either community-related (UGC) or Invertising. Assuming there are 2-3 of each, there is potential to receive 60-90 Invertising SMSes each month. Assuming […]

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Put another way, on the mobile, VAS 1.0 was all about generating revenues from consumers. In India, this is a billion dollar business. VAS 2.0 will be using Free SMS Subscriptions as the anchor for monetising the right of way to consumers in multiple different ways. What will be valuable in this case is the […]

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The next point is: Pull or Push? Or put another way, Search or Something else? Search has succeeded big time on the PC, and so there is every reason to believe it should do well on the mobile also. My belief is that Search needs the mobile web - on SMS, the limitations are too […]

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So, the questions that come to mind are: What will be the dominant model on the mobile? What will create the $30 billion global market opportunity in the next five years?
For the purpose of this discussion, we will leave aside the existing VAS industry which is many billions of dollars in size - and covers […]

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I have put together some thoughts on what I think will be the foundation for the next big opportunity in the digital (internet-mobile) space - the next big evolution since Google created paid search. Over the next few days, we will start with a bit of history and then I will put my thinking on […]

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