October 2005 Archives

Yesterday's terror attack in Delhi came as a cruel reminder of the times we live in. A terrorist group based out of Kashmir has taken responsibility for these attacks. It is unclear to me how their motives could be achieved by killing innoncent people. I was out in Gurgaon when the blasts occured last night. There was no panic as such in the malls there, but the crowd did start trickling out.

This morning, Delhi woke up in a defiant mood. Both the Sarojini Nagar and Paharganj markets - where blasts took place last night - opened for business at 2 PM. The markets remained closed in the morning as a mark of respect for those who lost their lives in the blasts. But after 2 PM, it was business as usual. TV footage showed decent crowds thronging both the markets. The electronics goods shop in Paharganj which suffered maximum damage yesterday was also open, even with broken windows and signboads. Some foreign tourists left flowers at the Paharganj market to show their solidarity.

In my opinion, there is no way to fight terrorism. Violence or retaliation certainly doesn't work as is obvious from America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Talks don't help either. A terrorist will not listen to reason. The best we can do is what Delhi did today - each time they try to pull you down, get up and get back to work.

We had our Diwali party last night. It was great fun! Our cultural team organized a cubicle decoration competition. With bollywood music blaring in the background, Teknokrats got into action. Within an hour, our office got completely transformed. Finally it started feeling like holiday season! We also created a beautiful rangoli. We played housie after dinner. As usual, my luck deserted me and I tied for second last place with two other people!

Tekriti Software and New Delhi Times wish you a very happy and prosperous Diwali!

More photos here.

If Amitabh Bacchan was a technology blogger and not the host of KBC 2 (desi version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire), he would have a proclaimed "aaiye hum aur aap dekhte hai internet bubble dwitiya" (come let us together witness the internet bubble 2.0). And he would have been right as always.

BeyondVC has an excellent post on this topic. He links to another VC who also feels that all this hype about web2.0 might well be a bubble.

The gist of their (and of many others') concerns is that:
1. With the advent of cheap computing power, open APIs, and RAD technologies like LAMP, it has become increasingly easy to start a new venture.
2. So this leads to many bright entrepreneurs creating products which should really only qualify as features of a larger product.
3. These entrepreneurs fail to realize that a) there are already dozens of other teams around the world building the same technology, b) if they can build something cheap and fast, so can others. So entry barriers are really low.and c) its really hard to make money when you are selling a feature that is also being sold by dozens of other companies.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 a few times and you have a bubble.

I think these are genuine cautionary signals that every startup will do well to pay heed to. Especially the part about low entry barriers. Entry barriers can be of many forms:

1. Product based on data/technology that has been exclusively licensed. For example, if I had exclusive rights to put satellite data for Indian cities on the internet, I could be fairly confident that a clone wont crop up as soon as my product is released. If I had exclusive rights to sell music from all Ram Gopal Varma movies on the internet, I can be sure that is a safe business to get into.

2. Technology that is complex to create or clone. Many will disagree, but Skype is an example of this. Its really hard to write reliable P2P network software that works all sorts of configurations (NATs, firewalls etc). And till date, I am yet to see something as reliable and easy to use as Skype.

3. Products that will ride on the shoulders of a giant from day one. If I were to write a neat "web 2.0" mobile app and had a deal with Airtel (largest cell phone service provider in India) to distribute my app on their network, my app is likely to race so far ahead of upcoming competitiors that it will be difficult to catch up.

My guess is this is what VCs thought process would be when they evaluate startups for investing into.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way

Happy Birthday New Delhi Times. It has been one helluva year and I couldn't have said it better than Dickens. May you see more posts, more readership, and more comments (and less spam) in the coming years.

p.s: Kris, I am flattered that you remembered! :)

According to rankings published by THES, IITs rank as the third best amongst all the tech. universities in the world.

Declaring the IITs' elevation, the THES said they were "a source of Indian national pride as well as of innovation and wealth".

It is fair to say that IITs are a source of national pride. But beyond that, these rankings are completely misleading. Universities like Stanford are ranked below IIT. I do not know the criteria that was used for coming up with these rankings, but if wealth creation or innovation were used as paremeters, IITs should rank much lower. Consider Stanford. It is the fountainhead of innovation. It has been directly responsible for generating billions of dollars worth of wealth as well (think of companies like Google, Sun and many other companies which started out of Stanford). IITs strength thus far has been as a training ground for producing sharp engineers who have then gone out and done stuff with varying degrees of success. But IITs by themselves have not really succeeded in becoming centers of innovation or entreprenurship. The reason might lie in over aggressive curriculum. I remember that my grades suffered during the semesters I was trying run my classifieds website by the side. So, while the IITs are working on reducing the complexity of the entrace exam, they should probably take a second look at the curriculum also and make it less rigorous.

The most popular search on Technorati today is "IIPM" which is the name of a local private business school in India. Why? Because a local youth magazine outed IIPM's false claims and over exaggeration in their advertisements. Another blogger Gaurav Sabnis linked to that article. Soon after, IIPM served him a "legal" notice via email. What a mistake! Worse, they went ahead and started complaining to his employer IBM. In response, Sabnis resigned from IBM! And now its war. Like never before. Indian blogosphere is in top gear right now. I had been following the story since a few days now. But I could not have imagined that it would take a such a twist. The story will make it to mainstream media within a day or so. IIPM ended up with major egg on their face which they deserved if it is really IIPM officials posting these comments . A story in a niche magazine would have gone almost unnoticed. But this is going to hurt them bad.

Desi Pundit announced a "blog war" on IIPM today. Personally, I think this kind of "ganging up on somebody" is really really wrong and an ominous sign of things to come in the desi blogosphere. Sure, in all probability, IIPM acted like a sleazeball but does every blogger condemning them on his or her blog know that for sure? Did each one of the "blog warriors" double check the facts, verified the claims, talked to former/current students of IIPM? If not, then they are hitting below the belt. Citizen journalism is going to become more and more relevant with time. But with great power comes great responsibility (thanks Spiderman!). Those blogging based on their personal experiences or cold facts are doing a service to their readers (probably that is what the original article in JAMMAG was). But if you are going to deride somebody just because your blogger buddies ended up having an issue with them, then thats just plain wrong. Let's not create a culture of "don't mess with us or else..". And for a moment, think about the career of present and past students of IIPM. They are surely going to have a hard time finding jobs for no fault of theirs.

I would like to write more about this but its late night and I am still at work. Maybe more later.

Originally uploaded by New Delhi Times.

We moved into our new office earlier this week. The office is much bigger (3500 sqft) than the previous one and has much better infrastructure. Since we are closing in on several milestones on many of our projects, most of us were working this Saturday. I took this oppurtunity to take some pics. You can find them on my flickr feed

Exactly one year back, I was preparing myself to talk to my manager about considering to leave Microsoft. I had been feeling the itch to change things in my life right from late 2003. My worry was that I was letting myself get cast into a stereotype. The "desi engineer in US of A" stereotype. This stereotype is so stereotypical that I could virtually see myself living the life depicted in all those stereotypical desi-NRI movies. My other worry was that I was in too much of a comfort zone too soon in my career. Inspite of whatever discontent you hear of from Microsofties, for a middle-class Indian 24 year old, life doesn't get much better than what it is in 98052 (zip code for Redmond where Microsoft is situated). To top it off, work was fun and I rarely got stressed out because of work issues. Frankly, I couldn't find an excuse to give to myself for moving on!

For Christmas and New Year's eve of 2004, Ashish, Manish and myself went on a week long trip to LA and Las Vegas. We spent a lot of time on the road driving the rental car and eating chocolate chip cookies. I decided during that trip that by next new year's eve I needed to change something in my life. I just wasn't sure what that something was going to be. Around middle of 2004 I decided that "something" was going to be getting an MBA. A little bit of business education can never hurt. I quickly got down to preparing for GMAT and spent a month or so digging deep into books. I told almost nobody about it because I was thinking I will screw up the exam pretty badly. I had not written a competitive exams since IIT entrace in 1997. However, thankfully, with a little bit of luck, I managed a pretty good score on GMAT. Gleefully I started researching business school admission process. At that point, I realized I was on the verge of stepping out of one stereotype into another one - from "desi engineer in US of A" to "desi engineer + MBA in US of A"!! It became evident to me pretty quickly that Indian engineers form the biggest pool of non-white applicants to business schools in the US. I was afraid that I would spend two years and $100,000 getting an MBA and end up feeling exactly the same way as I was at that time - part of the herd. So MBA plans were dropped (or at least postponed indefinitely). That left only one option - go back to India. It was an easy escape route because there was so much uncertainty associated with it. There was nothing stereotypical about it and it would surely throw me out of my comfort zone (spend one summer in Delhi heat and you will know what I am talking about :)). Fortunately, Ashish was also contemplating moving back and for both of us, it became much easier to take the plunge together.

October 22nd was my last day in Microsoft. October 20th was when I started this blog. October 28th was when I left for India. If there is such a thing as astrology and if stars really influence your life, then my stars were really aligned in some strange configuration in October of 2004!

After two days of hectic running around setting up the new office, I finally got a chance to catch up on my blog reading. The last few days have been incredibly predictable in the blogosphere. First it was the skype-ebay deal (I was guilty of blogging that myself). Then everybody was blogging about "what is web 2.0". 24 hours back Ning was hogging the limelight. Today its the sale of Weblogs Inc to AOL. Blog after blog talking about the same thing. Linking to the same url. Providing the same analysis in different words. Man, reading blogs is starting to get *gasp* boring! I think we tech. bloggers are getting too reactive in our blog posts. Worse, we all react to the same events. So suddenly all tech. blogs start looking same. I hope its a temporary phase and almost wish that nothing significant happen in the tech. world over the next few days. At least then we will get some meaningful and original blogs to read!

Microsoft is introducing XP starter edition in India for Rs. 1000 (roughly $22). It will be available only thru OEM (Original equipment manufacturer - folks like HCL, Compaq, Zenith etc) channels in Hindi and Tamil to begin with.

Microsoft claims that Starter edition is their effort to introduce computing to the masses who have never used a computer before. It is also supposed to be a way to combat piracy by making XP more affordable. I am afraid that none of these two motives get served by the XP starter edition.

Cost of Windows XP or its ease of use is not the reason for non-adoption of the PC in India. The fact is that the PC, as it exists today, is not very useful for the average middle class house hold. It holds some value for families with kids in school. But beyond that, its just a very fancy type writer. The internet makes it a little more attractive but frankly there is very little regional or local vernacular content on the web that is not available on the TV.

Lowering the cost of XP does not really help combat piracy. Pirated software is available for FREE. And nothing beats getting stuff for free. Besides, why would one pay Rs 1000 to get a crippled version of XP when the full blown version is available for free.

All these points are no brainers really. Then why would Microsoft take the pains to introduce a whole new version of XP just for developing markets? I think the reason might lie in how the OEMs work in India. Of late, OEMs have started to offer PCs with Linux installed on them. It brings down the cost of the PC since they don't have to pay for the XP license. Worse, the reseller simply uninstalls Linux and installs a pirated copy of XP on the OEM machine as soon as it is sold. That allows OEMs to remain competitive against local PC assemblers on cost. XP Starter edition provides an alternative to installing Linux on OEM machines. At Rs 1000, it does not inflate the cost of the PC too much (XP Home costs Rs 3700, I think). And it allows OEMs to remain on right side of the law and in Microsoft's good books as well. For Microsoft, Rs. 1000 is still better than not getting anything and definitely much better than risking losing a customer to Linux.

Piracy is yet another reason why we are seeing a move towards web centric approach to software (the so called "web 2.0").

Sania Mirza is going to be featured on the cover of Time magazine. While I admire her immensely I have only this much to say: too much, too soon. World ranking of 34 and one WTA title is no great shakes in world tennis. Sure its unprecedented in Indian sports history but when one competes in the world arena, they must be compared at the same level. I wish media would give Sania time to achieve much more before putting her on a pedestal.

Mom's blogging. I have web 2.0 parents! I always knew it was in my DNA ;-) Mom has much more intelligent and insightful stuff to say compared to the mundane geek stuff I post here. On a few occasions I pinched ideas from Mom to post on my blog. I guess I will have to stop doing that now :)