Barc[4.0]mp Delhi - Planning experience!

This Barcamp is so special to me!

Attending Barcamps earlier I never realized how involving does coordinating an event like Barcamp can actually be!

It so happened that my trip to Gangotri got cancelled on 8th and thus, I started looking forward to BarCamp. Soon I realized that the Delhi Edition is really in a mess. No sustainable community to look after it. The next day I realized how much have I gained from Barcamp(s) that I attended in Bangalore and thus decided to build a sustainable community even if it takes some tangible time out of my Business. I feel so great that I thought in this direction.

From nothing in place, only 7 days at hand, with lost interest among the participants and nobody to guide, the task looked extremely daunting but all seems to get sorted out now. Today we have almost 10 dedicated volunteers, In fact all of them were so much self driven that all they needed was someone to rope them all into a single thread.

Within a day we got New Domain Name, New Wiki, New Blog, New Logo(s), extracted past camper’s mail Ids, started online discussions and brought the interest and faith of everyone back to Delhi barcamp again. I feel so good to see all this happening within just 5 days. Almost 300+ people are being sent regular mailers, 200 have already registered, people are flying from Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Germany etc.

In the whole process, people who connected to me are actually my earnings. I think the love for Barcamps has strenghtened even more with this edition. And I know with the evening of 17th coming soon, It’s the time to plan BCD5 for Delhi - The Winter’s Edition.

I’m really looking forward to this edition and perhaps all the editions henceforth.

It’s time to call ourselves as Serial Barcampers!

Details on BCD4 - Home  |  Register  |  Mailing List  |  Blog  |  Twitter

Experience: Talk delivered at BarcampNSIT

Yesterday I delivered a session at “Netaji Subhash Institute of Technology (NSIT)” , a premium Engineering college (an extension of Delhi College of Engineering) at Delhi. Before I get into the details, I have to acknowledge that the NSIT campus is really beautiful for it embraces a lovely ambiance, lush green beauty around and the great infrastructure. Lucky are these students …

Now Let’s enter the Auditorium. It had a pretty neat ambiance with an audience beyond my expectations, with almost 50+ in number, though, I didn’t expect more than 20-30.

Vishesh Bajaj, Cofounder of GeoBeats, (a close friend), who also came, initiated the session and I decided to follow. It is sometimes a good idea not to take the lead presentation with an unknown crowd. While Vishesh spoke about GeoBeats, his startup experiences in general with an emphasize upon the latest technologies usage in startups, I picked up the student’s reactions, which helped me create an agenda-on-the-fly to feed myself with a confidence to face them, and it really paid.

I primarily spoke about “Why should one join an early stage startup” with a cool presentation, followed by the vision and reason for RouteGuru to exist. What does the partnership between RouteGuru and NSIT brings to both the entities?

Students extended a warm response with their active involvement throughout the conversation, few of them approached me even post session to ask a few questions and complementing the presentation. Though I was supposed to take the session for about 20 minutes, at the end of it I realized that it went on for almost 1+ hour and still fell short of time for the Q/A round.

Later, all the students gathered on stage for a group photograph, both me and Vishesh were also requested to be the part of the group. I just liked being a kid for sometime, standing among students, surrounded by their funky/ encoded language.

The fact that even the photographer behaved with great manners, I extend my true appreciations to him.

The Fun Part

1. While I was grabbing the light snacks post session, two girls came up to complement the presentation and a bit to me as well. On asking their branch, year and interest, this is what the conversation looked like:

me: Thank you! May I know which branch are you from?
Girl 1: I’m from Electricals sir but in my first year, so I only know C that too fundamentals and not a master at any technology.
me: Alright, That sounds interesting, you are still at the event, I appreciate that. What are your further plans?
Girl 2: (With a wicked smile) I want lots of money and lots of fame.

(Now all of us are sharing a smile)

me: Hmmmm, even interesting, but you know, all this doesn’t come without lots of efforts and hardwork, after all everyone is not as lucky as Shahrukh Khan is, though he too puts a lot of hardwork now.
Girl 2: Yeh I know but then (pointing to her dimples), there are lots of Pretty Zinta(s) around.

All of us went bananas but the fact is that I din’t really have any answer to it, however, I liked the smartness of the girl. Wish I too were as smart as the students are these days.

2. I had distributed a Questionnaire to all the students for some feedback. On asking the organizers about the sheet collection later, they came up with a wonderful answer, “Sir, They made aeroplane of the sheet which was being distributed“.

Though I was surprised for a moment and disappointed but the next moment I smiled and felt the fun of it. After all students are students and they proved it. Awesome! The behavior of students really remains so universally constant, Just loved that later as reminded me of my college days for a moment.

All in all a great experience, fed with some fresh insights, energy and great feeling. Look forward to share the stage once again with a students community.

BarcampNSIT - Student’s Unconference

IEEE students chapter at NSIT (Netaji Subhash Institute of Technology) is holding first ever BarCamp at their campus this Wednesday (16 April ‘08).

I met up with the organizers yesterday (Ankit Anand and Ayush Jain). It was a pleasure to talk to these young visionaries. Where Ayush has already made his mind to be an investment banker, Ankit wants to be an entrepreneur soon. My adrenaline level was so high talking to these guys that our meeting time overshot by almost 90 minutes and I had to cancel the immediate next meeting I had planned.

But it was still worth.

Anyway, the point is that unconference(s) are rapidly becoming a suitable platform to network with the like minded people even when it comes to college students trying to find their summer internships.

Cool. Ain’t it?

I’ll be sharing a session on RouteGuru’s vision and technology with these future leaders with a hope to learn something from them (read fresh minds).

Interested to be a part of this student’s community? Please register yourself here.

“On-the-Go (SMS)” - India’s First SMS based service to make driving easier

RouteGuru’s innovation engine executes yet another “First of its kind service” for the Indian Market.

- If you are tired of ‘asking around‘ for the Route-Hints™ while driving or while being driven, or,

- If you do not want to be wrongly driven by the genuine people with ingenuine direction sense, or,

- Do not have access to the internet (No laptop/ No GPRS), or

- There’s no-one to call/ ask for the hints?

What do you do?

RouteGuru’s “On-the-Go (SMS)” service is what you are precisely looking for. Now you need not worry but Simply “RG”!

Whenever you are in the middle of the road and need Route-Hints™/ the total distance between the two locations/ the approx. Auto-Fare. All you need to do is to send:

rg source-location to destination-location (to 56767)

e.g. I sent a message “rg hyatt to shankar road” to 56767 and received a message response within 30 seconds to my surprise. Wow! what better than this, it will surely take me more time than this to roll-down my car window and ask for the hints.

The message encapsulated the following information:

1. Route-Hints™ i.e. the major roads, landmarks, Points of Interests to follow while I’m driving towards the destination.

2. Distance of each of these landmarks from the start of the journey. Therefore, the distance after the last landmark tells the total distance between the source and destination.

3. Left-Right Information i.e. where to take Right or where to take Left. Great! This information is very precise and helped me reach my destination with immense comfort.

4. Auto-Fare - Finding the approximate auto-fare was simply a charm. Now I don’t really need to depend on the mercy of the Auto-Drivers and pay them more than the approximate money.

This also helped me track, where the Auto-Driver was taking me as I kept cross-checking the major landmarks which were falling on the way.

Awesome! Very very useful service. Isn’t it?

For more details, tutorial and explanation on how to use this service effectively, please visit RouteGuru online.

Should you have any feedback, suggestions, advices. Feel free to drop in a mail to me or simply leave a comment on this blog. Be assured to hear from us (Of course, even if it is a complement )

Till then, enjoy driving with RouteGuru!

Startup Lunch - But no one to eat

Delhi hosted first startup lunch yesterday. Almost 20+ Entrepreneurial bloods had their presence marked at the venue, however, it was a pretty tight situation with eight employers lobbying for one serious candidate. People were not left with an option but to celebrate when someone introduced himself as a potential candidate, with the introduction session coming to its close

Attendees Breakup:
While startups like RouteGuru, Tyroo, Zoomtra, Alabot, TenCube, OnDaMo, StudioSmile contributed 11 attendees. Media groups like Mint, it Magazine, IAMAI had their presence with 1 attendee each. Of course there was one serious startup joiner (who enjoyed most of the attention) and also a freelancer. With about 5 people who came over to get the hang of what is startup lunch all about.

Quite a few went back disappointed but in my opinion it was not all that disappointing because 1) turnaround of 20+ people with almost zero publicity is not bad 2) it gave us the learning as to how it has to go further.

Also three people, who hooked up after the meet and returned back home at almost 4.00 am today. Never had seen a lunch starting in the evening and ending up so early morning :).

Startup-Talent-Lunch

Quite interesting it is that the last article itself I talked about the Talent crunch and now I talk about a solution to a part of it, the un-conference way!

Fundamental problems often need a fundamental approach for them to resolve. Startup Lunch is one such fundamental approach towards aligning right Entrepreneurial blood on the one side, keeping early stage startups in focus.

It’s simply an ad-hoc lunch(ing) concept for the startups/ wannabe entrepreneurs/ startup enthusiasts to get together and reduce the bills for the talent acquisition consultancies, who says that they understand the startups needs (and even early stage ones), yet do not work on a success based model. However …

This is Vijay’s one of the several initiatives that he keeps cooking in his head. I think, Vijay is one of the guys who is starting to become the “the guy next door” for the startups community. His focussed alignment of the thought process to completely one side of the entrepreneurial community is something quite interesting because with lots of experience and exposure there comes a desire to solve even complex problems and not the fundamental ones or at least any problem not the fundamental way.

Quite looking forward to this focussed meetup. Plz. crawl back for the updates on the Delhi Startup-Lunch date and venue.

Dates Announced for Ist Delhi Startups Lunch - Thursday, 27th March, 2008

Business Idea: Solving Entrepreneurial Talent Crunch

Scarcity of talent is not a new paradigm especially if you are an early stage startup. You don’t need to believe me, rather keep 10 entrepreneurs in a room, shoot this topic and you will find the answer.

At RouteGuru also we keep accepting resume’(s) but it is seldom that we find someone competent enough to call for the interview process. No Job portal for that matter comes to savior, even more, they offer the problem of finding the ‘Needle in the haystack‘. Startups can’t afford to do that often.

Recently, I felt so stressed to have this problem that I thought of visiting some campuses for the programming classes on weekends, to find someone with good aptitude and programming instinct. Though this may solve the problem w.r.t. freshers, how to solve the need for hiring right experienced talent?

Brainstorming through this idea I realized that this being such a big problem offers even big a business opportunity as well. But then there are so many innovative ways people are trying to solve this problem already like Linkedin, techTribe, Consultancy firms, unconferences and the coffee meetups etc.

Consultancies on one hand becomes an expensive affair, while other means demand a lot of time, effort and diversion in focus. All that an early stage startup struggles to save. Thus, arises the need to find references by the network of people you trust.

Lets say X trusts 10 people named 1 … 10. In today’s scenario X requests all these 1 … 10 people to find one suitable person. Should X be fortunate enough, he finds a reference about Y from one of these 10 trustworthy connections. Now it is between X and Y to finally decide if they would want to work together. Typically it demands several meetings between X and Y to communicate about the startup better and to arrive at a decision whether Y can/should join X or not!

Not all the time X & Y meet at X’s garage office and thus, Barista(s), CCD(s), Five star hotel lobbies, Pizza corners etc. offer them a solution. Over a course of at least 3-4 meetings, X realizes that he has spent over thousands of rupees and so much of the precious time, yet Y is not sure of join him at all. Doing so much of investment with no return guarantee is definitely not good for the health of the startup.

Now should X be fortunate enough (again) Y joins him. Though fortune doesn’t offer so much modesty to many of the startups. Thus, this too seems like an inefficent method of hiring for the early stage startups. If you are struggling for the next month’s salary, even worse.

This model gives so much space for the fortune to play, I wonder if there could be a better model, where an early stage startup can just plug n’ play with small investments (even higher) but with the return guarantee, without investing much of their time and focus?

This reminds me of the “VidyaMandir Classes (aka VMC)” that I heard a lot about during Engineering entrance preparation days. VMC is known for accepting very limited but right students (with good aptitude) for their classroom batches. It is metaphorically said that almost every classroom batch student gets an extraordinary rank in the premium engineering entrance exams, more so in IITs.

How about some Engineering classes like these? Pickup students from campuses with the right aptitude, offer them practical technology learning, P.D. sessions. Focus on writing better algorithms to solve real-time problems, developing good software development practices, helping them master at least one programming language and keeping them abreast of the technology habits that they should develop like writing and reading blogs, using RSS feed readers, attending unconferences etc.

Do not offer them a job opportunity, rather inspire them to be an Entrepreneur some day. Do not hire big time faculty rather, arrange lectures by entrepreneurs themselves. Perhaps this looks like a very fundamental model but understanding the ground realities, such models offer the real potential to solve the real talent crunch startups face these days.

One might say that NIITs and Aptech(s) are already solving this problem. IMO they are almost 1 light year away from such a concept. Firstly they charge so much amount upfront from the students, secondly, ask their students, how good their faculty is? Even if someone responds positive, interview them, you’ll realize how good actually the education was.

Still unsatisfied? Visit the institute’s website and you’ll realize who developed it, which reflects the real competency of their students. They are just monetizing this opportunity because none else is actually solving it right now. In fact, they are a good testimony to the fact that there is a huge opportunity for this business to flourish.

In my elementary feasibility study, I see a pretty good potential and decent revenue model around it (which is so inevitably transparent). If someone finds this problem interesting and wants to take it further, I can help in terms of strategizing, execution planning, figuring out the innovative business model etc. without any monetary benefits, lest the problem be solved.

I’m sure you don’t really need to be a B.Tech./ M.Tech. in CS/IT or MBA from a top B-School to become a world class technologist or to be an Entrepreneur. Such platforms ensures to nurture the entrepreneurship as well.

Location India 2008 - 3rd int’l Conference

Yes, the 3rd International conference on positioning and navigation “Location India 2008” is happening in another week to come i.e. on 7-8th February 2008, organized by GIS Development.

Whats so interesting about it?

One, all the interesting personalities from the India GIS industry will be again available together for the first time this year like Rakesh Verma (MD, MapMyIndia), Manoj Misra (CEO, AUGTICS Systems), Ashutosh Pande (Corp VP & MD, SiRF Technologies), Amit Prasad (Founder, SatNav) etc.

Another good news is that Avinash is one among the invited speakers for the conference. He will be speaking on “Navigation - the good old way“, punchline similar to RouteGuru’s - Directions … the good old way! He is scheduled to speak on 8th feb in the 16:30 - 17:30 slot.

Not so interesting?

The registration charges are little on the higher sides for the individuals to attend. The charges range from Rs. 2000 to 7500 from students to private corporate professionals respectively. It seems they don’t even issue free passes to the event

I would urge these conference guys to give at least some modest consideration towards the students and start-up guys. The amount is way too high for these non-salaried individuals. More details on registration are here.

If you are game for getting confronted to the next biggest trend in the Indian GIS industry or may for what is running through the minds of the top guns of the world’s best and biggest GIS companies, this conference should be a boon for you.

Lets catch up again there!

Of bloggers, winters and meet around Bonfire!

Just returned from Delhi Bloggers meet at Westend Farms. As usual with lots of insights, learnings, thoughts in making, few concerns and utilizing an opportunity to network with some great people yet again.

The structured thought process, efforts and the broader vision of the organizers was surely impressive and worth a sight.

In my opinion (relative to my limit of understanding) , the meet was highly educative in nature, the convergence of different sections of society did influence those un-stretched gray cells once again.

What I never knew before this meet!

1. Japanese language is the top blogging language, followed by English and chinese respectively. So to say, Asians have hijacked the the Blog and new media channels.

2. There were approx. 900 blogs written in Hindi till July ‘07, however, the number has grown to approx. 2100 as in Jan ‘08 and is expected to grow at the rate of 400% in another two months to come. 2008 should therefore, be seen as the revolutionary year from the regional blogging perspective.

3. People like Shailesh Bharatwasi, Ashok Chakradhar and Rakesh etc. are dedicated to make Hindi blogging a phenomena in the country. Which is a commendable task, however, there is still an ambiguity as to what is the actual vision behind the activity, I’m sure, they must be having some good reasons for engaging themselves into.

4. One person whom I admired quite a lot is Hon’ble Delhi District Courts Judge Mr. Talwant Singh. He too enjoys the blogging weather. Mr. Talwant writes a comprehensive blog on “Cybercases“, which is definitely a niche area. He also extended his possible help to the young blogger’s community across the country, my 2-cents worth appreciation to him. I think he is one of those few dynamic personalities who definitely needs a special mention. Why? Doesn’t this leaves you thinking?

5. 95% of the internet population uses blogs. It is as simple as that 95% population on internet uses search, therefore, its not possible for you to not get confronted to blogs, thus, direct or indirect influence of blog is very much transparent today. The case study by Mr. Rajesh Lalwani put the audience in splits with his ecstatic speaking skills and the insightful talk. If I observed correctly, I may look forward to engage with him soon.

Surprises

It was simply a surprise to see Shivku present at the venue. For the simple reason that he came all over from Bangalore, the place which I still live in my thoughts.

About the Meet

The meet was actually an eye opener to the people like me. Though I follow hundreds of blogs, podcasts etc and believe that I understand this space appreciably well but it was still a pleasant surprise to have those hundreds of perspectives through people look at it (and all of them were still not present) and the kind of effort and visions people are still cooking.

If you still think that Blogging is only about information aggregation, ranting some personal thoughts or some more crude views, you shouldn’t afford to miss next meet. If you don’t gain anything new, you never lose anything except that precious personal Saturday (which will come in another 6 days anyway!)

Concerns

One of the major concern that dominated through the day was, ‘How to bring Hindi at the forefront of blogging scenario?’

But Why?

What was not clear out of the conversations was ‘Is it just for saving the nation’s pride?‘ or ‘Just to have some figures to say to the world that Hindi is no behind?‘. May be it got miscommunicated to me but it felt as if lot of us are into some race.

Having more Hindi bloggers is not a problem, in fact it would be an eternally good feeling to have a higher number, but above all its the orientation and the innovation that matters the most than any crude number. Don’t know if someone has ever thought about:

‘How to promote readership in the blogging system or to say someone already working around it‘ or

‘How to bring entrepreneurial context to the blogging system‘ or

‘How to make this new media society an effortless medium through self-content generation?’ etc.

We talk about identifying many good bloggers but do not talk about creating an entrepreneurial blogger. Its just the orientation difference. A structured blogging approach was protrayed to be little lesser important to these great visionaries. However, I may be wrong and it would be a great feeling to have myself wrong.

Appreciations

Ajay jain kept everyone involved with his talks. Ashish’s adaptation to Hindi on-the-fly is also commendable, he is also a very helpful person by nature. Humble gestures of Abhishek Kant and Abhishek Baxi made the whole meet a very fulfilling experience over all. Thanks guys!

Look forward to learn more from you all again!

Are you blogging from Delhi-NCR region?

Delhi Bloggers Convergence!
Its time that Delhi Bloggers too come together to build a meaningful platform and innovate on to the nascent phase of the Indian blogging era.

However, it would be interesting to observe as to how does blogger’s meet make any sense at all! Something which has always been beyond my understanding.

Interesting Sessions:

• 1.30 pm: Significance of stakeholder collaboration in blog and new media space.
• 2.30 pm: Blogs/New media and corporate communications
• 3:00 pm: Blogs/New Media: Tips for Beginners & Advanced Users
• 4:00 pm: Open House: Working together and growing in the future
• 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm: Structured Networking

If you are attending, then blog about the event:
In the words of a fellow blogger, “Please notify the blogger’s meet on your blog, failure to comply with the above will not be tolerated, especially by those bloggers who would be attending. There tea will be sugarless (or with too much sugar) and they would be made to sit as far away from the bonfire as possible.”

Delhi Blogger’s community details:

Visit Homepage | Read the Blog | Subscribe to Mailing List

RG enjoys christmas with Cybermedia

By and large it is always motivating to see your child making news, so is the motivation for us to see RG finding a place at Cybermedia.

Click for the detailed article.

Why should you join early stage startup?

What does an early stage startup mean?

Though the definition would mean different to different people depending upon how many and how closely they have observed startups, In my association with four startups at different stages, I believe three of them qualify to be early stage startups broadly, and how do I define them are:

• At the idea stage, where the team & fundamental ingredients are getting into place.
• At the prototyping stage, also called bootstrapping and may be seed-funding stage.
• Or already bootstrapped but still Pre-Angel or Series A Angel/VC stage.

Here’s the reason “Why should you join a startup at an early stage!”

As I had mentioned earlier that I’ll be presenting this BarCamp at Delhi, I owe an apology to all those wanting-to-be-attendee(s) for canceling the presentation on the spot.

The concept is taken from a book called “Life of Pie“, where the author discusses about the science behind the dilemma of lion while coming on to the stage.

Analysis: Early stage startup strategies!

In the world of the phrase “the only thing constant in the world is the change!” everyone seems to be changing, so are the strategies around building the companies. However, there are subtle patterns visible.

Patterns to observe:
1. With the exponential increase in the consumer facing internet applications, clearly defined “barriers to entry” has shrinked to one or two killer features in the product.

2. Earlier investors talked about revenue figures, today they like to see “user traction“.

You can only build sustainable viral user traction only when you have clearly demonstrated the barriers to entry to your game. It is so often an illusion as to what does “barriers to entry (bte)” actually mean?

Lets extend this phrase - Barriers to entry is something that doesn’t look to be obvious. Let the whole bunch of competition look down at you to see what you’re doing & say “hey! is that difficult? Even I could do that, probably in a week!”, its only that the more work they do to try to copy your solution, the more they realize that how farther they are from what you’ve accomplished.

While it makes sense to have barriers to entry clearly marked, you never know when a competitor (even in the womb) sizes up the obstacle course & discovered a way around getting from point A to Z. Therefore, where barriers to entry should inevitably be a part of the game, having marked them clearly could again be strategic i.e. identify the barriers to entry early but refrain to open for the public to fathom the depth of the game, we can probably call them as the “hidden/ invisible barriers to entry”.

With big barriers to entry, there comes a high possibility for the competition to underestimate the level of monetary, human or commitment capital required just to compete with you (leave the industry aside).

Look at Google Maps for example. It is so easy for a potential competitor to think about cloning GMaps with having data sourced from known global data vendors & tweak around to build a clone, however, the barriers to entry is that the data is not available just from a single vendor, every country may have one, every city may need a different one, you will need permission from the govt. of the respective countries for several specified areas and lets say you figured out the way to do it, how good would it be to have realized later that the heart(data) of your solution still remains closed with the third party server boxes & making it difficult for you to build a competitive advantage. Further, while you were busy cloning the GMaps, Google was busy collecting its own data. Where do you go now?

While barriers to entry were many, hidden barrier to entry was to have complete control over the data & have it in your own lovely defined model & format.

However, if we observe, figuring out the hidden barriers to entry makes sense only if you pioneer a concept or lead the game else it is most likely to work against you as you’re going to be spending more time looking over your shoulder & less time innovating & driving the market forward.

Further Patterns to observe:
1. It is clear that VCs love to talk about viral traction also known as “Network effect“.
2. Emergence of many ethical & useful ways to build the traffic to your site e.g. paying the bloggers, online gadgetization etc.

There is no dearth of examples to explain the implications behind Network effect. YouTube, Facebook, Skype, eBay, Monster, Flickr, Delicious etc. simply changed the rules of the game. So doesn’t it makes sense to figure out the ways to achieve this Network effect for your lovely product? Don’t you think so? Actually its not that you will not think so but you will have to think so.

However, it may perhaps be the insanity to think so!

We’re yet to see a company that executed just as it planned in the beginning. If it ever happened with a company, it would have been more because of chance than better execution. Network effects accumulate to most of the companies by chance, as an artifact of something they were doing that led to Network effects.

It takes time to figure out the right path, especially in the early days of the company, its not transparent where any network effect can/ will come from, even if it is obvious its only theoretically easy to have them leveraged to your advantage. In reality we only forecast the user base but if it works against you, there’s no come back. Its seldom a case that you actually know as to how to make it work for you?

Lets look down at it. Access to email & IM comes at priority for me early morning than anything else. That should also mean that it should be same for many millions of users like me, therefore, email & IMs are the huge platforms for Network effect. Lets say I use Gtalk, Avinash too uses GTalk & we both know Rajesh, therefore, it doesn’t make sense for Rajesh to use Yahoo. In reality what happened is that rajesh was using Yahoo, MSN & Gtalk already and then me & avinash both started using all of them as well. I wonder if the network effect based on human tendency of depending on other humans was ever considered when there was no competition? if yes, was it at all serious?

The first mover in a new space can generally monetize network effects by selling quickly before they have to drive profits (Skype in VOIP), but it’s not at all clear that the first mover has any long term strategic advantage that could drive value. So does it make sense to spend lots of time thinking about the strategic advantage you can gain from the network effects?

But VCs love it, bloggers talk about it, advertisers pay for it & obvisouly you have some figures to mention in your business plan. What could you possibly do otherwise at an early stage?

Patterns to observe around Social Networking

Its no hidden fact that we actually need events like Barcamps, OSScamps, OCCs etc. to meet like minded people & there isn’t any substitute to it. (talking only about like-minded people, not team building or professional networking which is a very niche space & refuses to be called as social networking!) And most of the audience in these events is from technology world - the creators of Social Networking (SN) concept.

An interesting pattern here is that while we still need these events, doesn’t it mean that social networking doesn’t seem to actually help the “creators of Social Networking” itself?

Be it any event today, I needn’t exaggerate but most of the talks are around Social Networking. Almost half of these guys are just crazy about replicating a success story with at most one or two killer features. Not to deny the fact that this domain has a good potential to generate huge business (which actually has been forecasted to be some billion dollar in a few years to come.)

Another interesting pattern emerging is that in order to build one success story or to say make some good bucks quickly, the innovative ideas unbiased with SN are becoming rare to see. In fact whole “idea generation engine” in our minds is ubiquitously influenced by the viral fever of SN. Sometimes I wonder if India is really becoming a hub for innovative products or just a plain jungle of good business intellects betting around social networking?

Reality check?

• Identify any young passionate guy, aspiring to be the next genre entrepreneur, ask him to pen down ‘5′ ideas he’s cooking in his head & then safely bet around for if ‘4′ of them aren’t around Social Networking :).
• Hear ‘10′ conversations at any of these events cooking up in some corner, bet around for if ‘6′ out of them aren’t around social networking.

Today, we actually live & breathe social networking. Start around any topic, it eventually ends up around social networking.

Sometimes it does come to mind if the world is at all beyond social networking?

Where are the products around robotics? cryptography? …

Barcamp Delhi 3

Barcamp season is back again with the winters mesmerizing the Delhi-ites.

However, once you have gained the habit of spelling it out as “Barcamp Bangalore” over several instances of the event, it is so difficult to spell it out as “Barcamp Delhi“. To me Barcamp somehow means BCB subconsciously, therefore, this BCD3, I’ll be all engrossed in silent observations & comparisons with some fabulous editions like BCB2. (Pardon me for that though!)

Not to forget that I’ll be sharing a ‘10 minute story telling session’ on “Why should you join an early stage startup“?

It will be in a presentation format with a very simple story morphed with a few relevant pictures. When I gave the final touch to the presentation, I myself uttered “impressive” with a hope to make sense to many others. Do join me for some thought provoking slides.

Looking forward to network with the creators of New India concentrated around Delhi & to encounter a rocking Barcamp.

note - Presentation will be available for reference post this event, so please check back!

ET pens RouteGuru as a High Flier

RouteGuru finds its way on Economic Times as a High Flier.

I was actually left confused after reading the article. No idea if someone noticed but its inevitable for the founders to note that their names are played around with, Avinash Agrawal turned to “Avinash Garg” & Rajesh Ragavan turn to “Rajesh Bhatia”.

Though I personally survived on this front but wish is these reporters work a little harder to find the right information. Irony is that they say “Finally the search end here”, but they still lack right information which is so widely available.

RouteGuru seeks Business Dev/Alliances Guru!

Are you the one who has tasted the joy of closing deals at least a hundred times?

And the frustration of being rejected at least a thousand times?

Alliances and sales, we believe, is the art of using each rejection to conquer our fear of getting rejected. As the layers of fear are driven away, what perhaps shines through – is an ability to withhold a product/service vision and articulate its features and value.

But, that is not enough for closing the deal. Deals, we believe, are closed by hearts, not by intellects. So, you must have a whopping sense of humor as well.

Now, add to this the wisdom and tenacity needed to create and lead a great sales force.

And, before we forget, let’s stir the above with a ‘keeda’ (Hindi for ummm… ‘extra-ordinarily insane drive’) to work in a Google-like innovative, agile, technology-driven, perpetual start-up environment.

If this cooks up to be YOU (or you can smell this to be somebody you know well), it may help if you have (or he/she has) the following mortal qualifications:

. Years of experience in alliances/sales in leading companies in the Consumer Internet domain (read: Google, Yahoo!, Indiatimes, Rediff, Sify, AOL India, InfoEdge (Naukri), People Interactive (Shaadi)). The experience should justify your aspiration to lead alliances/sales for all-India operations at a promising product start-up company in the Consumer Internet domain in India.

· Experience in creating alliances/sales channels for GIS-enabled consumer-facing products/services, will be an added advantage (read: Alliances/sales experience @ MapQuest (USA/Europe), TomTom, Tele-Atlas etc.)

· Post-graduate Management degree in Strategy or Sales or Marketing, from a premier institute (read: Harward, Kellogs, INSEAD, ISB, IIMs, XLRI, SP Jain, NM).

 

· Graduate degree in Engineering or Mathematics from a premier institute (read: IITs, BITS, RECs).

If you know someone who fits right, please feel easy to bridge the gap between us. If you happen to find yourself the one, nothing like it!

Kindly email us at letsconnect@routeguru.com or just leave a comment.

Driving directions launch by Yahoo - An analysis

Although the GIS consumption in India is almost negligible, the pace with which the landscapes are moulding, cities are expanding outwards to the greener belts, heavy traffic conditions, emergence of giant flyovers/ Clover leaves, internet & mobile penetration etc etc has brought the need for better driving directions.

Till date the data collectors in India have survived only with the Govt. projects or the enterprise needs & this is the reason why they still lack decent consumer oriented data. Inspite of all this the GIS industry has seen a paradigm shift with some players moving up the value chain. While MapMyIndia offered a service first time relevant to the Indian boundaries, RouteGuru pioneered the idea of driving directions based on landmarks, however, today almost everyone has landmarks to offer while driving the consumers.

Detailed analysis of Yahoo India Maps & Driving Directions
Yahoo’s entry to the focussed driving directions in India at first seemed to be some sort of competition to me but soon I was delighted to realize how things are going to change in this sub-continent very soon w.r.t. GIS demand, consumption & acceptance.

After examining Y!’s recently launched service, it is apparent that they too suffer the several data related issues as does MapMyIndia. No wonder its only the same data vendor behind both of them, however, MapMyIndia still leads here because of the comprehensice feature set they already have & the support of their in-house data no doubt Y! has its own community to back them.

As per my observations, the driving directions by Y! are just average & only good for the Bird’s eye view through maps. Aspects that needs more attention are:

1. Providing landmarks is not the only solution, its the relevancy of the landmarks that eases the navigation. In my experiment with almost 10 routes in Delhi/ Bangalore I struggled to see any decent landmarks. Even if you carry the print-out of the current landmark based directions, it will even be difficult for the local auto-drivers to comprehend where the user is actually routed to? Relevancy of the landmark is something they need to work a lot around.

2. I was left surprised when it din’t recognize the Forum Mall in Bangalore, further trials for other famous POIs revealed the lack of POI names in the database, thus, the landmark names are relevant to the lines (roads) & Polys (localities, sub localities) but not points. Wondering what prevented them from including the point database?.

Also do not be surprised if you find a name for the road next to your house, which you always believed never existed. Now the question comes is, whether is it really helpful in navigating you from one point to the other?

Validation: A route from Kalkaji Mandir to Sukhdev Vihar in Delhi - Anybody can tell you the major landmark between the route is “Modi-Mills Flyover” but Y! tells “Bhakti Vedant Swami Marg flyover“. I have no idea if even the local street hawkers would know about that? Its not only in this particular route but a common problem.

3. On close examination, the shift in the satellite & graphical map images is also quite transparent, which is bound to happen as the data sources for both the images are different. Again wondering what sense would it make to the company?

4. Turn restriction information is something which they also struggle very badly with. It is so common a problem with almost every player today, I urge the data vendors to work little more onto it, however, I’m sure Yahoo must be pushing CEI to enhance the data with such information but then again the relationship between both of them need to be seen owing to the fact that CEI’s arm MapMyIndia stands in direct competition with Yahoo Maps now.

5. The selection of the POIs in the search field is quite non-intuitive & the fuzzy logic too doesn’t impress much.

6. They seem to have fixed this problem now.
The directions w.r.t. the roundabouts is again confusing. Lets say I have to take the 4th turn on the roundabout after I merge onto it from the road I’m coming from, the solution always guide you to take the further next turn i.e. 5th roundabout. This problem is so consistent everywhere that either they have considered the leaving road also as one turn or something which I couldn’t figure out. May be if someone can help me out with this!

7. Looking at the current service, another thought that sorrounds me is that this service is still motivated as a strategic move for the internet major rather than solving the problem in its own respect. Lack of any of the new killer feature surely disappointed me. I was quite sure to learn something new from their release. Anyway!

Some of the interesting things to notice are:

1. Faster Map rendering - The speed with which the map rendering is done is fantastic. This year (during May) Yahoo announced the discontinuation of De-Carta map engine RME to deploy an in-built Map rendering engine. This aspect is surely impressive & feeds confidence in Yahoo’ offering.

2. Soothing UI - Except their own dark red colored image on UI, it is innocent & immitates simplicity - a trend caught attention after Google’s homepage publicity.

3. Via Routing - Shoot a query “From A to B to C” takes the Via-routing considerations. Though it is no big deal but still makes it impressive with the initial offering.

All in all an average service, only good for the bird’s eye view for a route. Dependency on the names of POIs is highly debatable.

How Yahoo Maps will motivate competition?
While Y! Maps have done a good job than what is actually reflect in the analysis, what is to be noted is that it is actually the replica of something that is already in existence & nothing new (something strongly not expected from them & disappointed me). Rather than shrinking the opportunities for others, this offering will actually favor the startups operating in the similar space. Innovation in landmark based driving directions and to capture the confidence of the Indian audience are still a distant achievement.

It also signals an obligation for other horizontal portals like AOL, MSN, Indiatimes & recent entrant MiH to either tie-up with the major (which looks less likely) or to build partnership with the smaller players or may be to completely acquire some promising startup in the space, all of them will now have to pull their socks up!

The other interesting thing is that the landmark based driving directions will now become another phenomena not only in India but globally, we’ll soon have some benchmarks & interesting figures coming from Indian GIS industry in the consumer domain for the other countries to follow. Local search & travel search won’t mean anything without the integration with good driving directions.

More GIS startups, acquisitions & partnerships should soon be seen.

My personal Congratulations & good wishes to Yahoo Maps team!

Note: The views presented here are personal to the blogger & do not in anyway reflect that of the organization he works for.

Anatomy of successful products & an unknown soul!

(Trying to knit several unstructured threads of first hand real-time experiences in an unpolished manner. Firstly because I’d like to see & remind myself time & again about them, secondly people like me might relate something with them as well - yes all those better entrepreneurs in the making!)

Note: It is no wisdom, which is not already known, however, presented in different words & examples.

During the college days, while working with Stendek R&D, I mingled up with few finest of the techie minds around, therefore, discussions about great problems yet to be solved among several fields was quite a common phenomenon. It was these discussions that helped me in building a good philosophical attitude towards developing myself as a problem solver (or rather a problem analyzer with a solution oriented approach).

It was only during this time my confrontation with real techie/ engineering temperament happened (given the multi-kind of activities I observed those techie guys getting indulged into day/night). And yes it was natural to develop some beliefs & learn from the ambiance which many times is no more than the misguided learning. Yes misguided learning!

Misguided learning - Almost every programming stud believed (and also forced me believe) that writing “One killer program or application” is what it takes “to establish yourself to eventually start your own company” or in more optimistic/ marketing terms “to actually become famous”. People like Sabeer Bhatia, Alok Mittal etc. have even proved the theory and thus, it’s not easy to turn this perception the other way round.

Heck … if you dare!

Meaning to write on this for long, just that after attending Proto, Barcamp, OCC & some VCs in quick succession, the desire finally grew intense enough to give a meaningful structure to all this wisdom.

Two broad thought processes dealing with WHY & HOW for starting up are now followed further.

Fame Vs Credibility

Today almost everyone has ideas, almost everyone wants to be independent, and almost everyone wants to build a company. Ask them WHY, the answer broadly is to lead their life their way & become successful (with a hidden hint of becoming famous). Fame definitely brings the serial-success easier to achieve, so why not?

Also, whenever got a chance I dug down the “definition of success” that these people actually perceive. Surprisingly even most of the thoughtful people couldn’t define it more than some materialistic gains, which I (including many others) cease to agree, therefore, it somehow just happens to be an ambiguous English word that lot of us strive for.

Within myself I’ve however felt the two approaches that motivates a youngster (youngster here means a first time entrepreneur) when it comes to do something of his/ her interest

1. To become famous.
2. To build credibility.

Since both the approaches lead to self-motivation, considering any of them as inappropriate could be wrong. However, what needs to be understood is the boundary and limitations that both these approaches bring to your vision. Where these self explanatory phrases do not need a mean description from my side, what still needs to be understood is this simple mathematics that other’s experiences teach us:

“Fame is the subset of credible track record“

After meeting several wannabe(s) and understanding their psyche with due diligence, I realize how less in number the people we have in industry with this ground understanding. Need to remember that credible track record is something that helps you in how soon your product sees the northern trend in terms of funding, building team etc. etc. Striving for fame rarely leads to a “good” product and never “great” unless exceptionally favored by your astrological stars.

Killer App Vs Successful product

What we as programming studs again fail to see are the other ‘dimensions needed for this killer application to become successful & self-sustaining product’. Definitely “the business model” is the next keyword that will hit our mind when we talk about things like “sustainable” & “successful”.

India undoubtedly is one such country where almost every individual inherits good business understanding by birth; thus, explaining that ‘No killer application/product worth a penny without a viable business model’ would just be kidding. The question however remains is?

Is it only the killer app & the business model that you need to make a product successful? Or to say to build a successful organization/ company?

… and then there are hell lot of things like the team, market, research, funding, entrepreneurial wisdom etc etc. Yes we need to get aligned to all these trivial aspects all at one time. Since there is no thumb rule to success in this journey, therefore the wisdom collected at every step from different gurus will inevitably be different. This in turn leaves any amateur entrepreneur confused about how to develop their product in the form that will sustain in most of the unwanted and unavoidable conditions? And eventually struggle is what creeps slowly into our sleeves.

How good would it be, if we could conceptualize all these aspects of starting up process in a pictorial form or something that we can relate easily to?

The other day I sat confused, trying to hammer myself, wondering what exactly most successful companies/ products have in common? Why is that that some plain ideas go to enjoy the heaven while good ones survive? Why is this startup process so tedious even when we have best of the resources & lots of entrepreneurial wisdom all around? And several questions like that …

Their came the visualization of one of the finest products we know ever made on this planet – yes it’s The Human body! Trying to map 2-3 examples of good software products with it, I derived how all those most successful products resembled this Human body.

In my opinion any damn thing in life to become successful (be it a product, company/ or once own career etc.), it should resemble very much like a human body, broadly with these four major parts intact. How?

i. The Backbone (middle structure)

ii. The Legs (Foundation for the middle structure to stand)

iii. The Hands (Muscle Power, provides reach to longer distance being at the same place)

iv. Face (Structure with senses, synchronizing entity)

1. The Backbone (Killer-ness)

Let us assume that our killer app is actually killer in nature based on fundamental research of competitive products or the market needs, by this definition, it should qualify to be the backbone of the successful entity (product/company/career) we intend to build. This also indicates a good start and that we have some framework to build the castle around.

What needs to be still defined is the “killer-ness”. A recent discussion with a great visionary & my all-time personal mentor helped in objectively defining the killer-ness, which in simple terms is nothing but the USP of our product, which could be in any of these forms:

1. Technology – Something that is non-replicable at all else it takes significant time to replicate e.g. Google Search Algorithms

2. Speed of Execution – In any race the winner is always the one with maximum speed e.g. Miscrosoft Operating Systems

3. Innovation – Something which demands expert manpower, which either is unavailable or with greatest of the difficulties e.g. Photo search by Riya

If your product has anyone of these elements present, yes you earn the discount for filing the killer-ness to your product.

2. The Legs (Revenue Model)

Then what we fundamentally need are the legs to make this product run and what else than a good business model will help it to run? In essence, the business model forms the legs part of our framework.

Another aspect to always keep in mind is that the revenue model is never a rigid framework (and don’t let it ever become one); it is a continually evolving concept, demanding regular innovation.

I remember meeting few guys at a technology conference, who had developed a very useful software product for the enterprise application collaboration (I could definitely call that as a killer application) however, what I discovered later is the lack of monetization model around it. It was so pity to see the disappointment in their eyes for nobody having an interest to talk about their product & their struggle to formalize the monetization around it.

3. The Hands (A great team)

What we need for this semi-skeleton is the addition of a new structure that can help having a firm grip around the product (grip in the sense, having strong self belief, being always optimistic, to keep striving continuously, continually executing the business etc etc.). What else than a team can help you in holding your belief, product development, taking decisions and brainstorming etc? Yes once you have that Black cat commando team in place, believe it or not, you have actually come quite far yet too far behind to see a successful & sustainable product/ company etc.

More the power in your muscles better are your chances to lift heavy weight to a longer distance. Great team in a budding startup takes it a long long way even with the bad times looming around over the head.

Now think for a moment, a killer app, very good business model & a great team, what else do we need? Isn’t like all the basic fundamental things are actually in place to build a successful product/ company? In fact there must be some examples of success that might come to your mind immediately. Lets say some people see success with these elements in place, lets now call the success achieved with these three ingredients is CurrentSuccess.

4. The Face (Synchronization)

Can we imagine a body without a face? It assimilates all the most important senses required for a normal living i.e. eyes, ears, nose, tongue and Big B(rain), hence needs to be taken very very seriously. This tells me that even after having that killer App, business model and good team in place, still there’s something that is very very crucial for the product to succeed. Lets check them out what could it potentially mean?

Even if we have all the other parts of body in place functioning perfectly, will they be of any use without some good synchronization?

Definitely not! However, our body synchronizes broadly in two ways

i. Internal Synchronization

It requires an un-drunk mind to synchronize them all, to talk to one part of the body on behalf of another to keep running the complete framework (Backbone, legs & hands to work in harmony). This is precisely the role played by the top management (directors) in the company. An advisory board however, suffice to the thought process & actions being taken by the management at various stages (pre-funding, pre-revenue), they help all the functions remain in control in accordance to their directions & talk to other businesses/ investors/ potential clients on your behalf to build partnerships, bring funding & enhancing the sales etc.

ii. External Synchronization

Ears, Eyes, Nose, Tongue are all the senses that take inputs from the outside world, therefore, helps in synchronizing the body with the external world. And do we have at all doubt understanding the importance of any of these organs in their own capacity.

Today the User Generated Content (UGC) also referred as web2.0 in consumer oriented Internet industry, customer support, after sales service, corporate blogging etc are nothing but about building these senses for the product. All this helps in synchronizing & adapting the product/ company with the external surroundings/ expectations.

I’ve now started to believe that the success a product/ company would see without having facial structure in place (i.e. CurrentSuccess defined above) would be a small subset of the actual success that this product could potentially see otherwise. Lets call the otherwise potential success as PotentialSuccess.

If we now observe the gap between these two successes, it usually is a substantial difference. This difference is actually the success not achieved by the company/ product, which in my view should go to the failure account; thus, whole new definition of failure comes as:

Failure = PotentialSuccess - CurrentSuccess

And probably this is the reason, when we develop a product it is not less than our child. After all it’s about giving birth to a completely non-existent entity. So your love towards it is quite inevitable!

Having mentioned all that realization in print about having a body in place doesn’t necessary guarantee of a successful product/company! A body is always driven by a “Soul”, which still is an unknown & most debated entity to everyone around (including me). Its just the interpretations that exists.

Finally it comes to something, something which is unknown!

Acknowledgement - SiliconTryst remains as is!

Yes I’ve been taking time to settle in Delhi, however, I’ve accumulated some intriguing thoughts waiting for attention but yet to be converted to the blog format.

However, since I’m not residing in Bangalore anymore, I’ve been considering to change the name of this blog. Wouldn’t it be incorrect to project the ideas & thoughts w.r.t. Indian Silicon Valley when I’m not there anynmore?

The biggest question I now come across is: “Do readers (new & old) connect/relate themselves to the blog writer or to the blog name?“

If it is the writer, then definitely there isn’t any problem with the same name, however, a name change is inevitable otherwise.

Given the fact that I do not have another good potential name coming to my mind for the replacement and also not a huge reader base, therefore, I take the liberty to take the journey of this blog with the existing name, however, looking forward to any suggestions/ feedbacks/ advices on the matter.