` 25 only Guru Talk: Satbir Khanuja, DataSphere VC Talk: Parag Dhol, Inventus Capital Partners E-Commerce Special

EMPOWERING TECHNOLOGY LEADERS OF TOMORROW

June 2011

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25 E-Commerce
Promising companies

SHOSHAA.com:
Nipun Arora

Show Off Now!

Manoj Gupta

EMPOWERING TECHNOLOGY LEADERS OF TOMORROW

Vol 7 Issue 6 l June 2011

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Contents - June 2011

22 COVER STORY

SHOSHAA.com:
Show Off Now!
By Vimali Swamy [Guru Talk] 8
Building a Winning Culture in a High Growth Environment By Satbir Khanuja, DataSphere
Nipun Arora Manoj Gupta

[Business] 40
Say Hello to the New Consumerized IT Workplace By Ambarish Deshpande, McAfee

52
Evolving Landscape of Software Testing By Anuradha Biswas, Prakat Solutions

[In Focus] 10 [Tech Buzz] 14 [VC Talk] 16

New Entrepreneurs should bet on a single horse By Parag Dhol, Inventus Capital Partners

42
Internet Advertising: Real Timr Bidding 101 By Gourav Chindlur, Vizury

54
JAVA is Back! By Vimali Swamy

44
The Power of Trademarks By Abhishek Sharma, Raj Abhyankar P.C.

[Buyers Perspective ] 56
HR Today is about Organizational Transformation

[People Manager] 58
The Lasordas Law! By C. Mahalingam, Symphony Services

[Feature] 17
Is America at a Stake of Brain Drain By Anamika Sahu

[Buyers Perspective] 46
One Stop Shop for Managing Personal Finance

[Tech Products] 60 [Event] 62

Embedded Chip of Knowledge By Nushin Naz

[Venture Beat] 18 [Startup City] 20 [Management] 35

An Organization is all about its People By Niranjan Neelamangalam, Aditi Technologies

[Event] 47
On to the Clouds! By Akanksha Ravindran

48
Gamers and Gaming Experts Galore! By Nushin Naz

[Business] 36

49
Brewing New Marketing Ideas By Nushin Naz

25 E-Commerce
Promising companies
Alma Mater Fetise.com Goodvalue.in Kidloo.com Surat Diamond Jewelry Xtees.com PricesBolo.com

26

Indian E-Commerce Industry: What does the Future Hold? By Ritesh Dwivedy, JustEat.in

[Technology] 38
Surveillance: Moving from Ananlog to Digital By Shrikant Shitole, Cisco

[Technology] 50
Semiconductors Fuelling Next Generation Mobile Devices & User Experience By Gokul V Subramaniam, Texas Instruments

The Smart Techie

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June 2011

The author is President & CEO, DataSphere

gURU tALK

By Satbir Khanuja

Satbir Khanuja

High Growth Environment

effrey Katzenberg, co-founder of DreamWorks, sums up the value of good company culture in a nice quote: Our philosophy is that if you love your work, and you love coming to work, then the work will be exceptional. According to a Bain & Company survey of senior executives at global companies, 91 percent of 1,200 executives agreed that culture is as important as strategy for business success. Building an entrepreneurial and productive culture is essential to building a successful and a great company. I have been part of two high growth companies first at Amazon and now at DataSphere Technologies, where our culture has been instrumental in driving 250 percent year over year revenue growth and an increase in staff over the same period from 35 to more than 400 people. In both instances, I have seen culture play a big role in driving the success of the companies throughout the growth cycle. It is also critically important in weathering the inevitable
The Smart Techie

Building a Winning Culture in a

dark days and maximizing opportunities presented when things are going well. Many other highly successful companies such as Netflix and Zappos have similarly stressed the importance of their company culture in driving business growth. In this article, I will share the principles you can utilize to build an amazing productive culture for your company. Set up company philosophy so that everyone is aligned We have built a culture where every employee is asked to act as a CEO of their role and leverage others as resources to best service their customers. We have also established key company philosophies that guide everyones actionsa) Pursue game changing opportunities b) Obsess about delivering value to customers c) Create compelling value for all team members d) Provide a culture where the best ideas win

e) Work hard, have fun, make a huge impact It is very important to choose values that everyone in the company can believe in, embrace, apply, and evangelize. Communicate core philosophies of your company to potential candidates during the recruitment process so that they can self assess if they want to be part of your companys journey. Do a company orientation for all new employees in their first week of employment led by executives. Go over the companys values, with lots of examples, so that everyone is crystal clear about the companys guiding principles. It is also helpful to pick successful role model companies that you would like to emulate and share the rationale with your team. Our current role models are Amazon.com, Netflix, and Google. Drawing specific parallels between well known great companies and our company helps employees share the vision of where the company can go with their help. We explain that these role model companies arent just household names because they are lucky, they are great because they created an amazing culture of continuous innovation to deliver value to customers and employees.

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June 2011

 Everyone needs to play a role in building the company culture Culture is not built by giving employees a handbook with nice phrases no on can repeat. Everyone in the company, from the CEO on down , needs to constantly apply the values in their day to day activities and explicitly highlight when these values are being used as a guiding light in decision making. To ensure the company-wide adoption of your core values, think of all the tactics you use to drive product adoption and apply similar approaches for this exercise. Tactics should include: leaders constantly reinforcing core values in contextual meetings; highlighting good and bad application of core values across the team; explicitly recognizing and rewarding good behavior; and, most importantly, ensuring that their own decision making actually and obviously lives up to these principles. For example at Amazon and now at DataSphere everything we do is guided by the impact it will create for our customers- it is part of our core principles and our company DNA. We constantly reference this principle as part of how we make we make tradeoffs and prioritization decisions. In a rapid growth environment with many new employees, you must repeat, repeat and repeat until the concept becomes ingrained. To maximize the impact, everyone in the company needs to believe in and contribute toward building the culture as opposed to relegating it to human resources. Enable everyone to create impact Encourage and challenge everyone in the company to think about the ideas that can significantly benefit your customers, partners and employees. Make sure that they can talk directly to the potential implementers or have the ability to easily connect with the right decision makers and get a quick follow-up. Any friction in the process will kill the idea generation and submission process. In our company, employees can submit ideas directly to

the CEO or other execs and we make sure to follow-up on the same day. Entrepreneurs like to build and you have to make sure you give them an environment that not only taps into all their creative ideas but also helps them drive impact faster. Implementation speed matters- it accelerates the overall innovation engine. Reinforce the core values with action Regularly showcase examples of good ideas that came from the employees, were implemented, and created impact for customers and employees. Ideas could range from simple process improvement to major new product ideas. The key is to celebrate and share all the successes and especially those where the employees generated ideas in areas not core to their day to day responsibilities. You can use email, intranet and company-wide meetings to share these successes. Make sure that that you are proactively working on all core values and demonstrating progress. One of our core values is to work hard, have fun and create a huge impact. We schedule regular strategy sessions to figure out tactics we can deploy to create a fun environment and we constantly refine those tactics. For example, we have created budgets so that teams can develop their own regular fun activities. In addition, the HR team, with help from cross-functional teams, develops company-wide quarterly events. We take employee feedback and iterate team building activities with similar rigor that we deploy to drive new product development. Another core value at our company is that the best ideas win and anyone can create ideas about any part of the business which will create a positive impact for our customers and employees. To enable that part of the culture we encourage people to use data, hypothesis, and logic to drive idea discussions. We also encourage employees to come up with innovative

ideas and apply learning from experiments to continuously improve. Cross-functional teams can also be helpful in creating more holistic changes and are often the best way to deliver more rapid results. Finally, invest heavily in training and mentorship and create opportunities for all employees to learn, to grow in responsibilities, to contribute and to be recognized. As a result of our collective efforts, we have created a culture that our employees love and over 40 percent of new hires come from employee referrals. Culture building is not one time activity but needs constant attention and iteration. Think of building a culture as building a product that will require continuous innovation. You will have to keep refining your tactics as your business scales and you add employees in new locations. Open and regular communications regarding company principles, vision, and goals of the company and progress updates is important to keep everyone aligned and to maximize impact. Set key metrics to measure progress and improve continuously It is very important to set key metrics to track progress on company culture. We use new employee referral and existing employee retention as two key metrics to measure employee satisfaction. We also conduct regular employee surveys to measure employees assessment of our culture, how closely we adhere to our stated principles, things that are most effective in promoting our culture, and areas for improvement. We then iterate and follow up with action to earn the right to solicit feedback in the future. Building a winning culture requires regular and sincere effort by the entire leadership team, but it is essential to create a great company.
The Smart Techie

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June 2011

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18 Indian Founded Companies in TiE50 2011 Winners
he Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Silicon Valley chapter announced the winners of the TiE50 2011 Awards, of which 18 companies are Indian founded. The awards were presented at TiEcon 2011 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California.

The awards were for the most innovative startups of 2011 in five hot sectors: Internet/Social Networking, Software/Cloud Computing, Life Sciences, Wireless/Mobile and Energy/Cleantech, each sector had 10 winners. These 50 companies emerged victorious competing against 291 finalists which were shortlisted from about 1600 nominations. The TiE50 represent the best in entrepreneurship - risk-taking yet pragmatic, visionary but marketaware, and a passion to be the best, according to Vish Mishra, President of TiE Silicon Valley. We hold up these companies as role models for any enterprise, big or small, established or

being incubated, which aspires to success in a dynamic and demanding marketplace, he added. Six Indian founded companies won the award in the Wireless/Mobile sector thus making this the sector the strong hold of Indian startups and Life Sciences is the only sector where Indian founded companies failed to register a win. The Indian founded companies which won the prize include: Deeya Energy, Oorja Protonics, Seeo, Soladigm, Virident, Claritics, Apptio, Glassbeam, Gluster, OrangeScape Technologies, Mobifusion, Sokikom, Avnera Corporation, Cinemacraft, Luna Ergonomics, Roamware, Stoke, and Zenprise.

Rise in Overseas patents in India

he number of patents approved for Indian nationals is less in number than it is to foreigners, prompting the government to say "much needs to be done to encourage more domestic innovations. The number of patents granted to Indian applicants has steadily decreased from a high of 41 percent in 2002-03 to a low of 17 percent in 2009-10 with rest belonging to the overseas applicants, according to an Industry Ministry document. The proportion of patents granted to Indians when compared to the other nationals showed a radical drop from 28 percent in 2009-10 to 17 percent in 2010-11. While in 2010-11, from a total of 7,486 patents granted, Indians could claim only 1,272 granting the foreigners a total of 6,214 patents. On the contrary Japan gave a maximum number of 1,93,449 patents in 2009 followed by the U.S. (1,35,193), China (1,28,489) whereas India granted only 6,168 patents.

The main purpose of the Indian patent system is to, stimulate inventions among Indians and to encourage the development and exploitation of new inventions for industrial purposes in the country so as to secure the benefits there of to the largest section of the public.

In the document, the ministry said: "there are a number of fundamental challenges which need to be addressed to catalyze Indian innovation." National Intellectual Property Organization (NIPO) Director T C James said that the government should play a vital role by carrying out a comprehensive study to find out the main reason for declining numbers of patent in the country.

Indias Industry Ministry has proposed to analyze the viability of introducing utility models into the intellectual property rights regime. Utility models are a framework for providing limited protection to those innovations, which may not meet the standards of the Patents Act and yet are commercially exploitable and socially relevant. The patent shield for the home-grown products will be officially called the Utility Models. This practice is common in 55 countries like China, Japan and Germany. Reflecting on the prime reasons for the fall in the patenting activity, one of the reasons could be the lack of responsiveness about IPR( Intellectual Property Right) and also the absence of institutional systems. There may be other constraints originating from agreements on technology transfer which do not allow patenting, but patents do help in differentiating between a more innovative firm and a less innovative firm.

The Smart Techie

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June 2011

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Indian owned U.S. businesses rake in $150 billion
wning nearly a fifth of 1.5 million non-farm U.S. businesses owned by Asians operating the U.S. in 2007, Indians raked in over $150 billion in revenue, according to a new survey. With their number going up by over 40.4 percent since 2002, these Asian-owned firms accounted for 5.7 percent of all non-farm businesses in the U.S., employed 2.8 million persons and generated $507.6 billion in receipts. Of them Asian Indians owned 308,514 firms , with receipts of $152.5 billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureaus 2007 Survey of Business Owners (SBO), released last week. Asian-Indian owned businesses recorded a growth of 38.2 percent. Among Asian Indian-owned U.S. firms, 48.9 percent were in the professional, scientific, and technical services; the retail trade sector; and the health care and social assistance sector. Asian Indian-owned U.S. firms accounted for 1.7 percent of all U.S. businesses in these sectors. Retail trade, wholesale trade, and professional, scientific, and technical services accounted for 59.1 percent of Asian Indian-owned business revenue. California had the largest number of Asian Indian-owned firms at 58,995 , with receipts of $29.1 billion. New York and Texas were next with 47,760 and 27,748 Asian Indian-owned firms respectively, with receipts of $17.2 billion and $14.0 billion respectively. Among U.S. countries, Los Angeles County, California, and Queens County, New York, had the largest numbers of Asian Indian-owned firms in 2007 at 16,730 and 16,324 respectively. The metropolitan statistical areas with the largest number of Asian Indian-owned firms were New YorkNorthern New Jersey-Long Island, New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania (64,457); Los Angeles- Long BeachSanta Ana, California (23,151); and Chicago-Naperville-Joliet,Illinois-Indiana-Wisconsin (17,362). Asian-owned businesses continued to be one of the strongest segments of our nations economy, bringing in more than half a trillion dollars in sales in 2007 and employing more than 2.8 million people, said Census Bureau Deputy Director Thomas Mesenbourg. Among all Asian-owned businesses, Asian Chinese-owned businesses accounted for 27.3 percent; Filipino, 10.5 percent; Japanese, 7.0 percent; Korean, 12.4 percent; Vietnamese, 14.8 percent; and other Asian, 9.9 percent.

June 25 & 26, 2011 Bangalore

Agenda
The Property Buyer Summit is filled with resources and education, giving perspective home buyers the know-how on purchasing their home. During the Property Buyer Summit, youre invited to talk to as many people as you like, ask as many questions as you have, and walk away with an invaluable education in exactly what it takes to buy a home. Best of all, these experts will tailor their responses to your individual situation whether youre curious about builder credibility or finding the right loan for you. Whether youre a first time buyer, an experienced homeowner, or in the market for an investment or vacation property, youre sure to pick up useful advice, right from the experts. Theres no selling, no commitment, simply the best opportunity to learn from leading professionals everything you need to know to buy a home. State of the Bangalore Real Estate Market The APARTMENT you always wanted to buy Choosing the BUILDER You Trust How to Negotiate with the builder? LEGAL Aspects of Buying Property Choosing the Right LOAN

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in
Can Rural Entrepreneurship give a Face-Lift to

Developing India?
By Anamika Sahu t the beginning of 20th century Mahatma Gandhi said, "The soul of India lives in its villages," we are in the next century now still the statement stands very true. Until a decade ago the national and multinational companies just focused on cities, but in the last few years this has started changing. More and more entrepreneurs are realizing the potential of the rural market and have started focusing on this. More than 70 percent of the households in India live in the rural areas, and this is estimated to grow in the near future, which makes it the biggest potential market in the entire world. With increasing income levels, the market potential is going to expand in near future. The penetration of the existing MNCs and entry of the new one's into the rural area pictures the depth of this market in the coming future. Various factors are responsible for this. Rural India is becoming educated, becoming more value conscious than price. There exists a huge vacuum of demand and supply, which needs to be bridged by the government and the big and small size entrepreneurs by understanding the need of these people and area and customizing the products according to their requirement. We cannot serve them with the available products as it has not been manufactured accordingly, says V. Vijay Babu, CEO, Vertox, a low cost ATM manufacturer. The core of the problems in India is surplus agricultural labor and closure of traditional village industries, resulting in unemployment in rural areas and migration of rural youth to the urban areas in search of jobs, thus putting more pressure on the urban inThe Smart Techie

frastructure and amenities. Recent change in the shift of big entrepreneurs from the urban to rural areas can help in preventing this. Availability of key raw materials, cheaper labor costs and presence across the entire value chain gives India a competitive advantage. But, will this influencing entrepre-

clusive support structure for both long term social and economic growth, says Ramakrishna N.K., CEO and CoFounder, Rang De, NGO for Micro Finance. The government can more profitably focus on skill development of its existing population to reap the ben-

neurship help curtail migration from rural to urban area? Understanding the characteristics that make the people and the market in rural India unique can help corporations to enter this market successfully. A swing in policy orientation is needed and a re-assessment of resource management is required to attain sustainable growth pattern. We cannot bank upon an inherently brittle international economic system for a very long period of time and definitely not with a great level of surety. It appears to be in the interest of the national economy to pay inward attention and strengthen its traditional base which can provide it with an ex-

efits of its demographic dividend and diverse natural and traditional resources that were medieval India's uniqueness in the world market. The Indian rural market with its vast size and demand base offers a huge opportunity for investment. Rural India has a large consuming class with 41 percent of India's middle-class and 58 percent of the total disposable income. Technological advances such as the internet and e-commerce will aid in better logistics and distribution in these areas. So, entrepreneurs by setting up new small and micro enterprises can leverage the rear large number of products and services in rural areas.

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orbes has released its Global 2000 lists in which as many as 57 Indian companies have been included. The rankings have been complied on the basis of composite score of sales, profits, assets and market capitalization. All the three top Indian firms have improved their ranks considerably with Reliance having a sales of $45.3 billion ranked 121st in the list with public entities, State Bank of India Group (136, $29.1 billion), Oil & Natural Gas Corp. (172, 22.6 billion) and Indian Oil (243, $52.1 billion) taking the next three places among the Indian firms. Other companies in India's top ten were ICICI Bank (288, $13.2 billion), NTPC (348, $10.8 billion), Coal

57 Indian firms in Forbes list of top global companies

India (418, $10.4 billion), Bharti Airtel (453, $9.3 billion), Larsen & Toubro (499, $9.8 billion) and Tata Motors (512, $20.2 billion). According to Forbes the Global 2000 companies have combined revenue of 32 trillion dollars, 2.4 trillion dollars in profits, 138 trillion dollars in assets and 38 trillion dollars in market capitalization. The Asia-Pacific region led The Global 2000 again this year with 701 companies, including the most additions (11) to the list of the regions Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East & Africa-EMEA, the Americas and the U.S. - with doubled profits, by far the biggest increase. The biggest profit centre was China, as 121 companies, including Petro China, ICBC and Sinopec, returned an aggregate profit of $168 billion. Japan and South Korea also showed impressive gains in profits and assets. With the U.S. economy back on its feet, growing at a steady 3 percent clip over the past 12 months, American firms on The Forbes Global 2000 are growing far faster. Total sales were up 12 percent in 2010 over 2009, and profits continue to rise-up 69 percent, versus 56 percent for the S&P 500. Still, the U.S. grip on The Global 2000 has been slipping since 2004, when the number of US constituents was 751. It's now 536. The U.S. still accounts for the most firms among the top 100 with 28.

Compiled By Hari Anil

HP: Aiming to meet real time business demands

By unveiling new Z210 CMT and SFF Workstations, 8460w, 8560w and 8760w EliteBook Mobile Workstations, HP recently kicked of their Forefront Workstations Launch event. The workstation will be launched across Sydney, Mumbai, Beijing and Korea. With this launch HP is aiming to meet real time business demands and provide maximum reliability and performance for the most demanding

professional tasks. India is a very important market for us. The country is witnessing a paradigm shift in recent times, spurred by a buoyant economy and constantly evolving market dynamics. HPs workstations are perfectly poised to address this burgeoning demand, says Vinay Awasthi, Category Director, HP PSG. These new workstations are available in convertible mini-tower (CMT) or highly compact small form factor (SFF) options for space-constrained environments and the choice of highperformance, enterprise-class Intel Xeon E3 and second-generation Intel Core i3/i5/i7 processors, and a range of professional graphics options, including 2-D choices from AMD and NVIDIA that incorporate dual graph-

ics card capabilities that support up to four 2-D displays. 3-D choices include next-generation processor-integrated Intel high-definition graphics that lower the entry cost for professional 3D graphics, and entry and midrange graphics from NVIDIA and AMD. HP continues to demonstrate innovation, performance and reliability through the Z210 Workstation and the EliteBook Mobile Workstations. Engineered with customers in mind, HP workstations pass through rigorous testing and certification with key professional and software vendors to help ensure reliable performance, says Anneliese Olson, Vice President, Client Solutions, Accessories and Services business for the Personal Systems Group, HP Asia Pacific and Japan.

Cloud-Ready Platform for the Insurance Sector from Polaris

Polaris Software Lab, a global Financial Technology Company, launched its first Cloud-Ready platform offering for the Insurance sector globally. IntellectTM SEEC is a comprehensive solution for the Insurance sector offering 3X Efficiency Multiplier that runs on the Polaris Continuous Migration (PCM) Architecture. Due to its highly complex nature, the Insurance sector needed a solution which is both easy to implement and highly efficient. Polaris achieved this through its SOA compliant Cloud-

ready offering and superior PCM Architecture which enables organizations to extend the useful lifespan of existing IT investments and futureproof new investments. The 3X solution combines, customized product launches, new distribution channels, and automated service delivery, which helps lower the total cost of ownership of enterprise applications. The launch of a Cloud platform for the Insurance sector would add one more chapter in our Insurance journey. So far, seven of the top 10 global insurance companies trust Polaris solutions for claims processing, improvement in sales productivity, new business improvement, business intelligence and analytics. This trust, combined with

our superior solution architecture has helped us build unique Frameworks, Methodologies and Tools which provide unparalleled efficiency to our key customers, says Arun Jain, Chairman & CEO, Polaris Software. Intellect SEEC is a pure-play SOA based cloud offering comprising 10 platforms and over 70 products. The Polaris proprietary Insurance knowledge shelving and wiring framework (L0) has over 100 business processes, and over 1,000 business cases documented in the areas of Product Management, Asset / Broker Management, and Customer Management, spanning New Business, Policy Administration, Claims, Billing & Accounting, Risk Management, Investment and Reinsurance.

Renesas Mobile Corporation opens a R&D center in Bangalore

Renesas Mobile Corporation, a supplier of advanced cellular platforms and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Renesas Electronics Corporation, anits sales in India to $100 million by FY2012. Today Renesas Mobile India is a key R&D centre in wireless modem technology, performing leading edge technology development, as exemplified by the demonstrations in todays opening ceremony, where VAMOS calls (2G), HSDPA data transfer (3G) and LTE data transfer, were demonstrated with Renesas Mobile Corporation chipsets, says Heikki Tenhunen, Senior Vice President Renesas Mobile Corporation. In addition to 2G, 3G, and LTE, Renesas Mobile India is performing core technology development within TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE technologies, he adds. According to the companys management the opening of the R&D centre is an important step for Renesas Mobile, and underlines the opportunities Renesas Electronics and Renesas Mobile Corporation see in India.

IBMs new Virtual Desktop for Workforce Mobility

IBM launched Virtual Desktop, a workforce mobility offering that provides anytime, anywhere access to personal desktops from mobile devices including tablets, net books, laptops and thin clients. This virtual desktop allows Windows or Linux desktops to be hosted and managed centrally, thus lowering the cost and complexity of managing PC environments through rapid deployment of new applications, automatic software updates and reducing the need for help desk requests. "As IBM's latest smarter work offering, the Virtual Desktop is a First in Series of Integrated Solutions for Midmarket Businesses. VDI, expands the time and place where people can access information, contribute ideas and support customers, said Anoop Nambiar, Country Manager Business Partner Organization, IBM India/SA. New features in the Virtual Desktop include high-definition multimedia support and enhanced work-anywhere capability with additional features that simplify management and drive down IT management costs. The offering supports both Windows and Linux Virtual desktops and can be used on a wide variety of devices including iPads, a variety of tablets, thin clients, and netbooks, broadening the spectrum of user-options, including work-from-home employees, branch offices or field sales teams.

nounced the inauguration of its research and development (R&D) centre in Bangalore, India. This research and development centre focuses on developing 2G, 3G and 4G modem technologies. Earlier this year, Renesas Electronics opened a branch office in Bangalore in an attempt to deliver the cutting-edge technology that it offers globally, and with the aim of doubling

Maitree Scholarship Program: CSR of Huawei

Huawei, a global telecom solutions provider, has announced the Maitree Scholarship Program as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives in India. The program is open to Indian undergraduate and postgraduate students who have already secured admission to institutions of higher education in China. Through this program the company aims to build a platform for the exchange of ideas between the two nations, and foster a closer understanding of each others culture and society. The scholarship program will help promote scientific and academic aptitude and will expand the career opportunities available to Indian students. Every year 10 scholarships of up to 10,000 USD each will be awarded to selected students for pursuing academic courses in China. Each scholarship will cover the students full tuition and living expenses for the duration of his or her study in China. This scholarship is the latest among many CSR initiatives of the company in India. Promotion of education in rural areas through the program E-Hope, educational programs for specially-abled children, and higher education and research in the field of information technology are among their other initiatives. Registration for the program is currently open and applications can be submitted online before June 30th 2011.

vc tALK

By Parag Dhol

The author is Director, Inventus Capital Partners

Entrepreneurs should bet on a single horse

Where we invest
In India, the depth in each of the different segments in the industry is too narrow while the breadth is too broad and so it is better to look at things on a deal by deal basis. We are what we define as technology investors, technology that goes into the real world, it can be a semiconductor company, an embedded software company, a consumer internet vendor, software products and services company, a KPO, a mobile value added services or any other companies like that. While we are a technology only investor, we tend not to look at the industry in a sector wise basis, and we have no sector bias or no technology bias. We look at specific company and if we find it interesting then we invest in it. is not only helping companies that offer those services but also companies like Redbuzz which have moved to the cloud as it is more scalable. Another thing is mobile; apps from the mobile are going to be clearly the future. Some people are using the mobile platform for education, this intersection or vertical interaction is very interesting. This is a sector where we see a lot of potential for the future and we are very excited about the developments in this space. the final decision maker or the CEO. That is a mistake, there has to be a leader. A third thing is, and we use this as a criterion for judging the quality of the entrepreneur, h o w m a n y horses is he trying Parag Dhol to ride. Is he focused on one market, or is he trying to cover himself by finding two or three attractive horses. We believe that at an earlier stage it has to be a bet on a single horse.

New

Trends
When we look at trends, they are across the board. You see trends in the mobile front intersecting with education, there are very visible trends in the cleantech industry, the social media space, consumer internet, software products and services, mobile value added services, and so on, it is spread all over and we are quite excited by the kind of companies we are seeing on a regular basis.

What we look for

In the first meeting with company team, we will try to figure out if this is a bunch of folks will gel together, do they have the right sets of skills, and an apt market place. Then we look at what kind of traction are they getting in that market place, how differentiate they are - the team, the dynamics of the market place they are playing in, the competitive advantage they have over other players, and substitutes or alternatives in that market.

My advice to the young entrepreneurs

The key is to focus should be to set up a good business. Funding, in my opinion, is only a fairly insubstantial part of it. Many entrepreneurs prioritize VCs over their prospective customers, this is a big mistake. Try to do as much as possible with your own resources; it is not easy to rise funding in India. Focus more on your business and evolve your value proposition, what you start up with might not be what your customer wants. Iterate as much as you can, get feedbacks from the market place, and then when you feel it is necessary, go for funding.

Common mistakes by young entrepreneurs

There are three main mistakes that I see the young entrepreneurs make. Primarily many of them fail to see competition. They dont think about substitutes or alternatives that can service the same marketplace. It is practically impossible that you are dealing with something which is not being done by anybody else in the world. Secondarily there is a lack of decision maker in many of the new companies. For example; four peers come together and start a company and do not decide on who will be

What excites us
A cloud company for the reason of being a cloud company might not excite us, how differentiated it is as an offering is what we are looking at. Cloud
The Smart Techie

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June 2011

feAtURe

By Anamika Sahu

Is America at a stake of

brain drain?

s America at a stake of brain drain just like India and China were during the 1990's? Or is there any option for America to withhold this flow? Back then, Indians and Chinese found better opportunities in America to build a healthy financial life, but today the changing political and economic scenario of these countries have become the important factors for this brain drain. Today America is not the only land of opportunity. The progress towards the free market economy have further opened the door for globalization and created better business opportunities in these countries. Vivek Wadhwa's survey on the topic justifies the above statement. His research point that if Americaneducated Indian and Chinese engineers and entrepreneurs return to their own countries, there will be a vast brain hemorrhage faced by United States. Further the research states that if U.S. wants to control this migration, then it has to bring reform in its immigration system. One of the biggest pictures of this change is the visit of Warren Buffet to India with an intention of investing in the Indian market. His entry has changed the entire view of the world

towards Indian market. The reason behind his idea of investment is the growing pace of the economy of India. Indians and Chinese feel that the economic opportunity is truly growing in their country and it is the best time for them to return back home to their family and friends. These returnees are enjoying greater advantage in terms of scope, better quality of life, better career prospects and the comfort of being close to family and friends. But America surely needs to needle point the various reasons behind it and find solutions to them as 52 percent of Silicon Valley's technology companies are started by immigrants and they contributed to more than 25 percent of their global patents which will be affected by their migration. These highly educated immigrants are leaving their work to be back to their people and contribute their bit towards the development of their country. The low cost in operation, cheap labor and raw materials are few other notches adding to this migration. The Indian and Chinese governments have brought several reforms in their present policies and acts to attract more and more immigrants to es-

tablish companies. In this new economy, the most important resources are likely the ideas, intellectual capital, and knowledge of the workforce which these migrants bring with them. The key to growth now lies not in reducing costs of doing business, but in endowments of highly educated and productive people. The improvement in the level of education in both countries, better social etiquette, better government, more freedom and human rights and higher esteem are some of the other factors that are pulling them back. It can be said that with their return they will be bringing more depth and diversity to the education system leading to less migration to America which can be a bad news for them. But it surely has raised the prospect of the economical set-up in the two countries and will contribute to political reformation. Buffet believes that India has a lot of potential to grow in the future and to improve competitiveness in every field of the world, which will contribute a part towards fulfilling the need of the seven billion people. India is flourishing and has become a dream market for every business due to, the rising purchase power.
The Smart Techie

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June 2011

Compiled by ST Team

99labels.com raised around Rs.16 Crore in Funding

9lables.com, an e-commerce private sales portal, raised around Rs. 16 crore in funding from Info Edge. 99labels.com is a members-only, flash sale site, 99lables.com, offers up to 90 percent discount on branded merchandise for luxury brands in fashion apparel, lifestyle products, accessories, footwear, watches, jewelry, fragrances and home decor. This investment will be used in increasing the company's international brand offerings, invest in ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) systems, and creating awareness amongst the target audience more aggressively.

Ishita Swarup

"We're really excited about forming this strategic alliance with Info Edge, and are sure that it will be a great step in taking the 99labels dream to new dimensions. We have quickly risen to be one of the top ecommerce portals in India, and we look forward to a productive, innovative and supportive partnership with a company that shares our ideals and our ethos, says Ishita Swarup, CEO, 99labels.com. Our mission in pioneering this online private sales concept in India has always been to constantly innovate and make possible the most satisfying experience for both our members as well as merchant partners, She adds.

Sourcebits raises Rs. 45 crore in Series A Funding

ourcebits, a third party developer of mobile applications, raised a venture capital investment of Rs. 25 crore each from Sequoia Capital and IDG marking their first round of investment. Founded in 2006 and based in Decatur, Georgia, the company plans to use this fund to expand their engineering and design expertise in US and Europe and to build more products. The company is already well established around the globe and with this round they are planning to further this hold.

It has developed over 300 apps, of which 20 are in the top 100 apps list of Apple App store, Android Market and other stores. Their clients range from Fortune 500 companies to small startups. Design-Led Engineering is our major asset and that I believe got us the VC funding. The concept is totally engrained in our DNA and designers are involved at every stage of product development, to make sure that the user experience of the products that we develop is up to the par, says Rohit

Singal, Founder & CEO, Sourcebits. The company operates in the $22 billion mobile apps market, which means there is a lot of leg room for them. Primary demand for the companys solutions comes from the U.S. and Europe, the demand is also picking up in Asia, especially in India. With this first round of funding and their 300 employees the company is trying to grab this opportunity and gain more momentum in their growth. The company also

The Smart Techie

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June 2011

Quikr closes Series D with Rs. 36 Crore

nline classifieds company, Quikr, has raised Rs. 36 crore in funding in a round led by Nokia Growth Partners with participation of Norwest Venture Partners and eBay. The fund will be utilized for product development for the companys online and mobile platforms, exceeding bounds of its market capabilities and other such operations. Headed by Pranay Chulet, CEO, the company is presently focusing on domestic market since it is showing great potential. Built around with a concept of creating an online transparent marketplace, Quikr provides people the ability to trade and find goods and services in a variety of categories to be

Pranay Chulet explored by individual consumers as well as small and mid-sized businesses. Offering web and mobile-

based classifieds platform addressing a variety of local needs in 40 cities across India, they have more than 10 million consumers visit every month to buy, sell, rent or find things ranging from laptops to mobile phones, cars, real estate, jobs and everything in between. After being a success in online classifieds, they plan to play around with 3G and smartphones to create new opportunities to deliver classifieds and other local commerce opportunities to mobile devices. They have three defined revenue streamsadvertising, premium listing and providing lead generation for small-scale businesses.

SOFTEC 2011 siliconindia

TOPICS

TEST PROFESSIONAL TRACK

July 2, 2011 Bangalore

The testing community today, and test managers in particular, are facing a number of new problems such as increasing complexity, ever-increasing demands to reduce time-to-market & the need for testers to take on more varied roles in the organization. The focus of this event will be how best to address the problems

TEST LEADERSHIP TRACK Leadership Lessons for the Test & QA Profession An optimum approach to n-tier architectured application testing Emerging business drivers and orthogonal validations Building an Automation Framework around Open Source Technologies Accelerate defect detection via Hypothesis Based Testing(HBT) Commercial Test Automation Tools and its real benet The Business Case for Test Automation Creating a high performance Testing & QA Team Software Security Testing Test Strategy and Test Planning Mobile/Infotainment Apps testing Using Real-World Agile Practices on Your Testing Project Cloud Testing: The future of software testing Workforce Strategies for Creating Successful Test Organization The Case for a Standard Uniform Test Modeling Language Process maturity in QA/Testing (Six Sigma, CMM..)

PLATINUM SPONSORS

SILVER SPONSORS

om/events m Register Now at http://www.siliconindia.com/events

80-43402006 0 For speaking and sponsorship opportunities write to events@siliconindia.com or call 080-43402006

Mee the Senior Testing Leaders eet T and get practical solutions.

Limited Seats

Startup City >>

their products in proper standard. Their Retail Solutions meet the demanding needs of a small, independent retailer to a large, multi-location retail chain. Their RayMedi Retail Solutions offer the choice of deployment on many different hardware and IT infrastructure. You can choose the right technology and benefits in terms of the capital or operational expense, operational, security and maintenance and support needs. GoFrugal has grown at close to 100 percent on an annual basis. With plans to expand its presence to 250 towns of India over the next 12 months their future plan seems to be very aggressive and daring. Most of the additional coverage will be done through channel partners. Besides, it also plans to launch their solutions in SaaS model in next quarter. Along with the SaaS launch, they are also looking forward for launching their products in the international market. GoFrugal has created magic in the Indian retail industry, lets wait and see if they can do the same in international markets as well. hence, as he reveals, the company is on the steps of providing Sales, Solutioning, Presales assessments processes through cloud-based solution. They have a comprehensive tieup with the academia and industry for their offerings, backed by global research of deals, buying and selling patterns. BathuDun's consulting division offers Solutioning Excellence Program and Solutioning Development Program, wherein it ensures the organization's Solutioning Force Automation is rightly equipped for responding to global large deals. Today, as the company gears up to turn on its revenues massively with a significant bite into the $2 billion consulting market of India, it is mulling on franchise models too within the next two years.

GoFrugal Technologies
Kumar Vembu

oFrugal Technologies specializes in retail, retail distribution and supply chain management solutions. Their solutions integrate computing, Web 2.0, mobile and SMS technologies to provide comprehensive automation and collaboration among the entire trade and supply chain ecosystem that includes suppliers, customers, partners, service providers, franchiser, franchisee, among others. With more than 12,000 customers including more than 10,000 independent retailers and

300+ Retail Chains across India the company operates with sales offices in 30 locations. The companys business management solutions are built with deep understanding of Customer needs and pain points. They again utilizes the latest software architecture models and best in class engineering processes to deliver proven and cost effective technologies to their customers. The company members have significant functional and domain expertise and solid technology background which helps them to deliver areas. "Our Solution Effectiveness Assessment tools help IT & ITES organizations in winning more business and in sustaining existing business. We identify, address and extend the organizations current Solutioning effectiveness and capabilities via predicting and capturing business to achieve high ROI," says Ravindra Chandrashekara, Founder of Bathudun. Within a span of almost two years, the company has four of the top industry-leading firms in its kitty. Ravindra has a deep Solutioning/presales background in the IT corporations like CTS, IBM, Wipro, HP GlobalSoft, LogicaCMG and other IT MNCs. He understands that to steer others' business it's important to keep oneself upgraded with the market and

BathuDun
angalore based Bathudun is a Presales and Solution Assessments, Consulting and Learning Company that offers end to end services in winning large deals as well as sustaining existing customers. IThe company has built a well-knit bouquet of strategic Sales, Presales and Solutioning assessment solutions on scenario building for any given process. It offers Solutioning/Presales Consulting, Training/Intervention, Assessments and Products to support the Solutioning/presales teams of companies engaged in Application Outsourcing (AO), Infrastructure Outsourcing (IO), Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) and related

The Smart Techie

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June 2011

Startup City >>

Stylus

Christina Ghose

eadquartered in Bangalore, Stylus provides Office Space, Virtual Office, and Meeting & Conferencing Facilities. Office Space

fully furnished and serviced office space is available in different seating configurations to accommodate teams of all sizes. Access to the facility is available round-the-clock with security, housekeeping and business support services are also available on demand. Virtual Office - is a combination of off-site live communication and address services that allow users to reduce traditional office costs while maintaining business professionalism. Clients can choose to utilize Stylus' office space or meeting facilities on an hourly or daily basis to supplement their Virtual office package for the occasional virtual meetings. Meeting & Conferencing Facilities - a wide selection of configurations from meeting rooms, training room, discussion room and conference rooms. The company also provides audio and video conferencing facilitating meetings being held across the globe. Its IT & Telecom services include high speed secured mit Grover, an IIT-IIM graduate, started Nurture Talent Academy in January 2010, a firm that trains and prepares budding entrepreneurs and students for all the different aspects of their entrepreneurial journey. With different programs that look into the legal issues, finance, opportunity, evaluation, business planning, and more, the academy provides platform for them to cover the basics of starting a company. It also helps them in getting a perspective of what it is like to start a company and take it forward into success from the industry experts and VCs. The academy started with an aim to train 5000 entrepreneurs and enable at least 1000 of them to start their venture in 3 5 years and contribute about 20,000 jobs to the economy. Ever since their first workshop in March 2010 the academy has conducted as many as 67 workshops, in different cities of the country, that helped train more that 1000 entrepreneurs. In these 1000, 25 30 entrepre-

Internet connectivity, firewall and bandwidth controllable network access, VPN connectivity if required, telephone connectivity with DID & voicemail, secured dialing, common multi-function printers, and more. The company is driven by a small team of young and dynamic professionals. "With commitment to excellence, our team remains personally accountable to clients to ensure there is no compromise on quality. As a forward thinking organization, we adopt the latest and most efficient standards across the organization from our IT systems, HR practices to a very active CSR initiative," says Christina Ghose, CEO, Stylus. The company is currently expanding its footprint to other cities in India and hopes to foray into the international market soon. It is also exploring ancillary business models that will utilize their experience while allowing them to cater to a different market segment. neurs have already started their ventures and a few more are in the process. The academy provide half day programs, full day programs and online programs for professionals and students and also works closely with universities to help students improve their entrepreneurial qualities. "I am a judge and panelist in many of the businessman competitions, and entrepreneurial events conducted by different universities. I have been to 30 colleges in the last year for these," says Grover. Grover has plans to expand his academy geographically and increase the portfolio of the programs offered. Now the academy started being more vertical focused. Their first vertical based offering is a program, in association with Microsoft, for software startups. The program's focus will be on business plan, finance and marketing for young developers, professionals and students. The academy is planning to continue this focus on different verticals, explains Grover.
The Smart Techie

Nurture Talent Academy

Amit Grover

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June 2011

Cover Story

SHOSHAA.com:
Show Off Now!
By Vimali Swamy

Founded Founders Customers Brands Partners Website

:2010 :Manoj Gupta and Nipun Arora :12000 Plus in less than 70 Days :50 plus. :Blazeflash Courier Limited and Drive My Brand Inc :www.shoshaa.com

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June 2011

Nipun Arora

Manoj Gupta

he Indian eCommerce market has reached the tipping point. With the broadband penetration increasing across Tier 2 and Tier 3 Cities, there has been a steady increase in usage of Internet and in turn towards consumers transacting online. The advent of 3G has only added a mileage to the existing consumerization and ecommerce players are leaving no stones unturned to lure this new segment of consumers. As per latest reports by IAMAI, Indian e-commerce market is expected to grow at 47 percent to over Rs. 46,520 crore by end of 2011. While a majority of e-commerce players today are trying to lure with daily deals, 2011 founded SHOSHAA.com has a different approach. An online Social & Collaborative Commerce Platform for branded consumer durable products, Shoshaa.com, with its motto of encouraging consumers to show off their purchases and establishing a paid member club where customer can buy possibly everything at COST PRICE, the company has thoughtfully classified its consumers into different categories and provides unique deals

and purchasing options most apt for them. With in two months of its launch, the company already has 12,000 plus registered users and 19,000 fans and is already associated with international brands across various segments like electronics, clothes, accessories and other merchandise.

Taking a different beat

A venture of Nine North Retail Private Limited ( a Blazeflash Couriers Limited & Drive My Brand Inc co-promoted initiative) , the essence of SHOSHAA can be captured in "Innovation at its best - Flaunt for less". The company presents upscale brands, innovative products & services at their cost price to its members in a comfortable e-shopping environment, which is truly unmatched! Shoshaa literally means SHOW OFF and our concept is Shoshebaazi because someway we all like to show off, says Manoj Gupta, Co-Founder and CEO, Shoshaa.com. Unlike other e-commerce sites where Shoshaa.com is the only e-commerce in India that follows the concept of paid membership. Its Pride Membership gives a consumer the
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June 2011

High-end luxury brands and products like Chopper, Free held Island, Waterfalls, Pre-owned Luxury Cars, Luxury real estate, and much more, all are available exclusively for the VIP members at Shoshaa.com
By using the Not For Sale section, a shopper can truly convey his/her side of Show Off. A unique service, Not For Sale is an interesting space which gives all the shoppers an opportunity to showcase their possessions and making them available for display and sales to other members only. From ones vintage cars to antiques to collectible coins, handicrafts, watches, handbags or a piece of art, one can sell it all in this section of the portal. The company gets genuine

privilege to make unlimited purchases at the companys cost price for just Rs. 899 a year. And one must not take this lightly as the cost of the products on sale varies by a considerably large margin for a registered and non-registered buyer. Having a paid membership ensures that we have a dedicated serious shoppers, which is a great value proposition for any brand to sell on our website, says Nipun Arora, Co-Founder and Director Marketing, Shoshaa.com But an aspect where the company distinguishes itself is its play in the premium space. While most e-commerce sites aim at bringing any product/service at a discounted price for the common consumer, there is an elite group of consumers in the upper middle class strata to whom quality matters more than the cost. This is a segment the Shoshaa targets with its VIP Lounge. An annual membership for the lounge is priced at Rs. 31,000 upon which VIP members get benefits of Exclusive Shopping and Networking. High-end luxury brands and products like Chopper, Free held Island, Waterfalls, Pre-owned Luxury Cars, Luxury real estate, and much more, all are available exclusively for the VIP members. Some of the current members of the VIP Lounge include High Net worth Business Owners , CLevel Management Executives, bureaucrats and popular celebrities and more. Additionally, the company also plans to soon start servicing each of the VIP members with a dedicated Shopping Companion/Fashion Consultant to make the VIP experience full of luxury and sheen. The company gives additional mileage to its VIP shoppers with its Not For Sale and What Shoppers Want services.
The Smart Techie

Parul Chandra

admirers who would be interested in buying these products. With its What Shoppers Want feature, the company keeps in mind the psyche of a woman shopper. If a shopper shows interest in any particular product, the company tries its best to source it. Today the company has not only successfully built a strong shopper base, thanks to its various featured services but has also successfully managed to build a pipeline of sources to ensure that every shopper is catered to as soon as possible with timely delivery of purchases. The real proof of a good service lies in how soon the purchases are de-

livered to the shopper. To enure a timely delivery, we are building several point of sales across the nation which will act as our Customer touch points to bring in online shopping confidence for a common man and bring in convenience and quick turn around for all our customers, explains Gupta. Instead of sourcing all the products from one location and then mailing it across the nation, the company is building its point of sales (POS) a partnership using their inhouse Logistic Pipeline established by Blazeflash Couriers and individual retailers across the country that would store the most commonly bought products on the portal and once a shopper makes the purchase, the prodcuts would be shipped from the nearest POS. The company currently has 5 established point of sales and plans to develop over 3500 POS customer touch points in the next three years using the in-house courier network. Talking about her shopping experience on Shoshaa.com, Shivangi Singh of Gaziabad says, My dream came true on 26th April, 2011 when RCB won the match. I was supporting RCB and got my fan jersey from Shoshaa.com which was delivered at the Ferozshah Kotla Stadium in 8 hours time. Theirs is truly an unbelievably amazing service!" In the near future the company also sees these POS becoming a distribution pipeline for brands and shopper can actually get the localised assistance within his vicinity even at the remotest locatiions to buy products sold online. For most shoppers, the essence of purchasing lies in having the satisfaction of having the touch and feel of a product and this is an experience we want to provide our shoppers in the long term, explains Arora.

Collaborative Commerce The future of Online Retail

With its unique approach to online retail, the company not only looks to revolutionizing a shoppers online retail experi-

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June 2011

ence but also the reach of different brands to its target consumers. With this aim the company has embarked on a partnership with Drive My Brand to facilitate Collaborative Commerce. A strategic marketing company founded in 2009, Drive My Brand provides marketing, technological and management consulting services. The companys proficiency lies in Consulting & Strategizing, Profiled database Marketing, E-commerce, Internet Marketing, Outdoor and Event Management and is an expert in designing Marketing Campaigns and executing them competently by injecting some innovation in most routine events. Last year, the company set up a leading Social Commerce Platform in association with Shoshaa.com and Blazeflash Courier. With this platform, Shoshaa is blending marketing with

SD Aggrawal

database of 15 million, the platform provides a unique value proposition to any brand that looks to tap the growing consumer segment in India and establish its a strong presence.

With in a short span, the company has tasted quite a success and has successfully launched sales for brands like Toshiba, Apple, Blackberry, Belkin, Hitachi, Reebok, Casio, Benetton, RedTape, CK, Armani, Gucci, Coach and many more across varied product categories. The company also hosted Online Sales for IPL Merchandise as official online partners for IPL Reebok thereby selling jerseys and accessories by franchisees like KKR, CSK, RCB and KXIP says Parul Chandra. With many more brands on the way the company positions it to be a distribution pipeline for these brands to reach out to exclusive customer base both through its online and offline channels and not just function only as an online retailer.

Road Map Ahead

With its collaborative commerce platform, Shoshaa is blending marketing with technology to provide organized and targeted campaign for brands backed by research
Talking about the partnership, SD Aggarwal, CMD, Blazeflash Courier says, The strong and unmatched presence of our Courier Network of more than 4000 plus unique touch points PAN India definitely will make Shoshaa the first of its kind e-com venture in India having its in-house dedicated distribution arm to offer watertight and unmatched service network across any of the remotest location in India and abroad. Within a span of three odd months, this partnership has revolutionized the face of e-commerce in India and has helped over 50 plus brands to attain targeted consumer reach. Shoshaa further looks leverage this platform to help international brands to enter the Indian consumer segment.

technology to provide a very organized and targeted campaign for brands. Every campaign is backed by research to understand firms standing, industry movement, competitor analysis, requirement of the companys service/product in the market and identifying the target group. Based on this, Drive My Brand and Shoshaa develop a unique value based campaign with definite strategy and road map to help the brand penetrate the market and reach out to as many shoppers as possible. The companies leverage on multiple channels like Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Optimization, Social media Marketing, affiliate marketing, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, mobile and email marketing and much more. With a combined user base of 12,000 plus exclusive members of Shoshaa and Drive My Brands in-house

Apart from further enhancing its presence across the nation with POS, the company is also focusing on incubating local commerce & social commerce with another project SocialRecharge.com in pipeline as up gradation in the coming months. Additionally, it looks to strongly develop the offline network for consumer durable distribution channel sales & direct Luxury Retail sales. The aim is to become the premiere distribution channel for all brands, national and international and provide to our consumers that they can proudly show off, says Arora. With its current hockey stick growth, and creative ideas up it sleeve, its goals do not look unattainable. The company is already being approached by several Venture Capitalists and soon looks to raising some substantial funding to fuel its growth strategy. With the growing e-commerce consumers in India and Shoshaas attempt to disrupt the current trends, one can surely look forward to see more and more consumers taking pride in their purchases and Showing it off!
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June 2011

25 E-Commerce
Promising
by ST Team

companies
Name
20North.com Bangalore www.20north.com 99labels New Delhi www.99labels.com

Founder(s)
Jawad Ayaz

Founded
2009

Description
An online portal that enables Indian consumers to buy products from anywhere in the world. From electronics and gadgets, sporting goods, home accessories, movies, books, shoes, apparel and more the company features more than 25 million products. A members-only, online shopping community platform which hosts private online sales of luxury and premium brands.

Ishita Swarup

2009

Alma Mater Bengaluru www.almamaterstore.in

Varun Agarwal Rohn Malhotra

2009

An online store providing apparel and memorabilia to alumni and students from schools and colleges across India.

BindaasBargain.com New Delhi www.bindaasbargain.com

Dhruv Batra

2009

An online vendor of electronic products, USB devices, gadgets, cameras & mobiles, hardware & toolkits, games & toys, and more. The company offers one day deals for their customers.

Cleartrip.com Mumbai www.cleartrip.com

Hrush Bhatt

2006

An online travel site that provides travel solutions, let it be flight tickets, train tickets or booking hotels.

Fetise Mumbai www.fetise.com

Abhishek Shah

2011

An online outlet specializing in designer mens product which is making international brands available to Indian men in an affordable price. On daily basis, this by invitation only club, brings different offers for its members, providing up to 80 percent discount. An online book seller that offer books at competitive prices. The company's emphesis is on simplicity, customer service excellence and unique shopping experience.

Good Value Bengaluru www.goodvalue.in

Mahesh Kumar Tallam, Robin Ramakrishna

2010

Kidloo Hyderabad kidloo.com

Prashanth Gowriraju

2011

An online vendor of toys and other baby products. The site helps parents to buy the apt product for their kids by sorting it according to different age group.

Letsbuy.com New Delhi www.letsbuy.com

Hitesh Dhingra, Amanpreet Bajaj

2009

An internet retailer of branded computer technology and digital lifestyle products. It has more than 5000 products from top international and domestic brands.

Letsshop.in New Delhi www.letsshop.in

Ritesh Arora

2004

An online shopping portal that offers a vide range of products like mobiles, gadgets, home appliances, consumer electronics, designer apparels or accessories, and more at best prices.

The Smart Techie

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June 2011

Name
MyDala Delhi www.mydala.com Myntra Bengaluru www.myntra.com Odyssey360.com Chennai www.odyssey360.com Picsquare Bengaluru www.picsquare.com

Founder(s)
Anisha Singh, Ashish Bhatnagar

Founded
2009

Description
A site that leverages the power of group buying to bring benefits to the shoppers.

Mukesh Bansal

2007

An online portal for personalised products in the country, like lifestyle/fashion.

T.S.Ashwin

2011

The online book store of Odyssey India. The site provides attractive offers and free shipment to customers who wants to buy books online

Manish Agrawal, Kartik Jain

2005

An online photo service in India where you can upload, view, share and order online high quality prints of digital photographs.

PricesBolo Bengaluru www.pricesbolo.com

Parthiban TS

2009

A location based price comparison portal that enables customers to get the best priced deal in their locality.

redBus.in Bengaluru www.redbus.in

Phanindra Sama

2006

An online travel agency offering bus tickets in India.

Shoshaa.com New Delhi www.shoshaa.com

Manoj Gupta, Nipun Arora

2010

An online paid shopping club that offers products across fashion, lifestyle, gadgets, electronics, personal care, travel & leisure for its members at discounted prices. around 20 employees.

Snapdeal New Delhi www.snapdeal.com

Kunal Bahl

2008

An online coupon site which provides vouchers and discounts in all the major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore, in India.

sparklecart.com Bengaluru www.sparklecart.com

Joseph Keerthan

2011

The online sales platform of The Sparkle Jewellery and Fjord, an Italian jewellery firm. These two Jewellerys together created a modern brand TSJ-FJORD which will bring international jewellery designs from the Italian ramps to India.

Surat Diamonds Mumbai www.suratdiamond.com

Rajiv Mehta

1998

A manufacturer, exporter and online retailer of diamond, pearl, silver and semi precious jewellery.

Taggle Bengaluru www.taggle.com

John Kuruvilla

2010

An internet company that ennables its customers to leverage the power of group buying. Products available ranges from food and beverage to wellness, beauty, sports products to travel and entertainment services.

theprivatesales.com Bangalore www.theprivatesales.com Via.com Bengaluru www.via.com

Sunder Gianchandani, Sajan Gianchandani

2010

An online fashion flash sales site that brings fashion from ramps across the globe to the customers' doorstep.

Vinay Gupta

2006

An online travel site that brought in value added changes that benefit the customer and the business channels..

Xtees Thiruppur www.tshirts.in

Manoj Kumar

2002

An online retailer of t-shirts.

Yebhi.com New Delhi www.yebhi.com

Danish Ahmed

2009

A portal that started as bigshoebazaar.com, selling shoes online and later got rebranded as an online vendor of accessories including shoes, clothes, jewellry, bags and more.

The Smart Techie

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June 2011

25 E-Commerce
Promising companies

AlmaMemorabilia for Alumni and Students Mater Apparel and

wo 22 year old friends were brought together by an idea, make sweatshirt with their schools name on them, and they decided to take it forward. They made sweatshirts with their school name, but decided not to stop there, went forward and did the same for many other schools and colleges. This is the story of Alma Mater, an online store providing apparel and memorabilia to alumni and students from schools and colleges across India. Founded by Varun Agarwal and Rohn Malhotra and based in Bangalore, Alma Mater presently has about 15 schools, three colleges and a sports brand as their members. India as a country is not known for its young entrepreneurs, a country where educational institutions teach youngsters to be employees and not employers, here, with Alma Mater, Agarwal and Malhotra stands apart. Apart from the regular customers from the member institutions, people who are not from any member institutions can buy customized products from the companys webpage. About 30000 to 40000 students have bought customized products from the company so far, 3000 to 4000 sales a month is the present average. By providing well designed quality products the company has created a niche space and became a well know brand name in the markets it is operational in. By providing high quality, well designed products and with our highly effective marketing stratThe Smart Techie

Varun Agarwal & Rohn Malhotra

egy we managed to stay ahead of the competition that we have in this space, says Agarwal. This young company knows the power social media holds in its target customers and leverages this to its advantage. It uses Facebook for reaching out to the target customers. We have an extensive Facebook page; we have more than 18000 fans in it. We also give ads in school alumni pages in Facebook, says Agarwal. Apart from this social media marketing the company also uses Facebook Ads and radio marketing. Still, according to the founders, its Facebook that gives them the necessary boost they need to go ahead. Apart from the campaign and the products that attract

the students, the company has a business model that is structured to attract the institutions. Every time a student from a member institution buys a product from Alma Mater, the institution gets royalty. The founders seem to have big plans for the company. They are in the process of closing deals with many of the top institutions in the country along with the IITs. We are trying to get as many schools and colleges as we can as our members, and our priority are to have all the tops schools and colleges in the country as our members, adds Agarwal. The company is on the verge of closing its initial round of funding and are planning to use this to expand their team and reach.

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25 E-Commerce
Promising companies

Fetise.com: retail for Men Exclusive online fashion

he days of labeling women as rampant shopaholics could be numbered it is men who have been spending their way through the recession according to reports internationally. This begs to ask the question -why are most of the online designer outlets in India today women centric and feature predominantly womens products? Retailing in the mens online space is no longer an opportunityits a necessity. Keeping this in mind Fetise.com was formally launched in March 2011 in India to serve this huge gap. The company is a private online destination for men where they can buy apparels, shoes and fashion accessories from top tier international labels. Fetise Retail is backed by Abhishek Shah, who previously co-founded group buying platform WanaMo.com. In November 2009, Wanamo.com was acquired by Germany-based Group Buying Global AG and Smile Interactive group in June 2010 and re-launched as Dealsandyou.com. Some of the international brands that are have already been featured include Ed Hardy, Christian Audiger, Calvin Klein, Gregg Homme, ONE90ONE and several such labels

in the pipeline for future discounted sales. The company has different discounted offers for its members on a daily basis, which go up to as much as 80 percent. These offers normally last between 24-72 hours. Even though the market is a highly competitive one, since the company has concentrated on a very niche segment of that market the competition it faces is comparatively low. There are several players in this space but most of them are concentrating on womens products or general products, but we are a through and through mens fashion postal and so we do not have any major competition, says Shah. Fetise.com records some 100 transactions daily, with the average transaction amounting to Rs 1500. The site currently boasts of some 50,000 members in less than two months since launch, an overwhelming response by any Indian e-commerce company standards. Fetsie has achieved this enormous growth through word of mouth publicity. It is like a social commerce site, where a member refers us to his friends, they join and they refer to their friends. This has worked very well for us so far and I believe this model

Abhishek Shah

has the potential to take us a long way forward, he adds. The company presently has 20 employees and is looking forward to achieve the Rs. 1 crore transactions per month mark in the next three months. Shah also has plans to start womens and kids online fashion outlets under different brands in the future, still Fetise will remain as the umbrella branch and will be men centric.
The Smart Techie

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25 E-Commerce
Promising companies

reading appetite of various age groups. From books to e-books, , magazines, journals and audio books to all kinds of electronic readers, we want to make them all available for purchase on our site shortly, he adds. Having a clear picture of the competition they see around in this segment, the founder duo understand that unless they have stark differentiating features, thriving in this market would be definitely tough. Thus, they have identified about 16 unique differentiators which they plan to launch over a period of time. These differentiators are focused on creating Mahesh Kumar Tallam & Robin Ramakrishna consumer experience and at addressing pain points of commerce players are leaving no stones eCommerce service providers. For exunturned to lure this new segment of ample, currently the biggest challenges consumers. As per latest reports by faced by eCommerce companies today IAMAI, Indian e-commerce market is are on the logistics side and one of the expected to grow at 47 percent to over key areas we are working is Supply Rs. 46,520 crore by end of 2011. And Chain Management with a specific making the most of this booming mar- focus of experience on last mile delivket are Mahesh Kumar Tallam and eries, explains Robin Ramakrishna, Robin Ramakrishna who cofounded Co-founder, Goodvalue.in. But the hunger for this ever growgoodvalue.in 2010. Headquartered in Bangalore, good- ing pie of e-commerce does not end just value.in is an e-commerce company fo- here. The company plans to launch a secusing on their first project in the series, ries of very niche portals that would adonline sales of books. Though at pres- dress the pain points of consumers in ent in its beta stage of launch, the com- several sectors. Using its core strength pany in near future looks to move in eCommerce, from launching its first beyond books and start offerings with retail portal for selling books, the comrelated products and accessories. The pany now looks at addressing other connext wave of online consumers are sumer segments like toys, garments and going to be from The Tier 2 and Tier 3 merchandize, electronics and more cities apart from the Tier 1s, which is through individual portals that will dewhere we see a humungous growth for velop a brand of its own. With this the us in the coming years, says Mahesh company also sees itself in a healthy turf Kumar Tallam, Founder and CEO, since most e-commerce companies Goodvalue.in. The intent is to have today focus on just one niche consumer consumers make a choice from the segment. Our approach is based on the largest collection of books spread across motto of creating value for both the several categories that would match the seller and the online buyer and we are he Indian eCommerce market has reached the tipping point. With the broadband penetration increasing across Tier 2 and Tier 3 Cities, there has been a steady increase in usage of Internet and in turn towards consumers transacting online. The advent of 3G has only added a mileage to the existing consumerization and eThe Smart Techie

Goodvalue.in Great Value for buyers & seller alike

working on new models that would create unique experience and pattern of buying products online. Our model aims to monetize the large untapped segments in the Indian SME segment, explains Tallam. For instance, it is currently in talks with a gourmet chocolate maker to help sell his products online; working with a supply chain management company that wants us to develop eCommerce platform for B2B transactions and much more. Though the company is moving quickly on the path of growth, it also has been facing several challenges and the biggest problem is regarding investments. Initially we did find it challenging to find the right HNI / fund that could understand our model, but now this has become easier as we have chosen to approach specific individuals and fund companies that understand the sector. Another challenge was to convince on how different we are as every eCommerce company in the line of click-andmortar are considered Me Too types, says Ramakrishna. The company is hopeful to see positive outcomes with key investors in the next 3 to 6 months time. If the investments dont turn in the duo are committed to their passion of raising funds through bootstrapping to reach the next stage of growth. In the next few years, the founding duo intend to be one of the top 5 online retail companies in India and have chalked out a very detailed plan that would help the company grow to the next stage. It is currently working with Compassites ventures to create a value based organization as it moves towards the growth stage. It also seeks to provide its clients, consumers, investors, employees and partners a healthy sustainable growth with integrity and honesty. With their clear focus and passion to excel, this dream does not seem too distant!

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25 E-Commerce
Promising companies

Kidloo.com
India's leading online retailer for kids toys, baby and mother care products
Prashanth Gowriraju

nline sales in India have witnessed a rapid boom in the past few years. From clothes to grocery, air tickets, movie tickets to techno gadgets, Indians are no longer averse to spend money online and utilize the power of Internet for their purchasing needs. With Internet having matured the trust factor amongst consumers too has strengthened. The bottom-line ecommerce is growing in India and it is growing fast. It is this growing demand of e-commerce services that prompted Prashanth Gowriraju to found kidloo.com, an online portal that caters to all the requirements of a parent when it comes to buying products for kids. From a varied range of baby care products like diapers, feeding bottles, soaps, shampoos, sterilizers, warmers and accessories like baby seats, walkers to toys for age group between 0-14 years, Kidloo.com caters to all the needs of babies, toddlers and young children. The website especially focuses on providing a wide range of toys from local and international brands. Buying a toy for ones kid is quite time consuming since one has to look into all aspects of its suit-

ability to the child. Factors like age of the kid, the make of the toy, safety, the usability quotient, all play a vital role. A toy that suits a kid in the 5-7 age group may not be attractive or safe for a kid in 2-4 age group, and so getting oneself educated in this is very important. Being a parent himself Prashanth understood this necessity very well and today the portal helps parents make their purchase smartly with apt description and relevant suggestion of a product. At first, after doing enormous research on the market, Gowriraju introduced a few kids products in his one-day-one-deal website, Lootmore.com. The response that the site got for these products were enormous and this prompted the creation of Kidloo.com. The site presently sells about 200 products per day and features many of the main brands of kids products, which includes Funskool, Playskool, Barbie, Hot wheels, Disney, Transformers, Huggies, Pampers & much more. Customers can go to the webpage, search for products by age group or by brand and place the order. Once the order is placed its ensured that the product is shipped to the customer in two working days.

Kidloo has associated with a secured payment gateway partner, offering multiple pay options to the customers, one transact online via debit/credit cards, internet banking, paypal, online bank transfer and cash on delivery is likely to be introduced shortly nationwide. Parents can shop from wide variety of kids products from Rs.50 to Rs.50,000/- with upto 50 percent discounts. Presently, Gowriraju sees competition from three other main players in online baby products segment. While these companies concentrate more on baby care products, Kidloo.com leverages its strength by concentrating on the toys segment. And Gowriraju tends to keep this model and strength this by adding more selection. The company currently operates with 15 employees and is planning to double its headcount in the next three months. With a very clear plan for his companys future, he says, We are going to raise funding in the near future and are aiming to reach the 1000 transactions per day mark. With the wide variety of products they offer, the ever increasing demand for toys, baby products and the increase in online consumers in the country; the companys future seems to be bright.
The Smart Techie

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25 E-Commerce
Promising companies

Surat
eing born in the third generation of a diamantine family, Rajiv Mehta knew that quality and attention-to-detail ensures customer satisfaction. He was also observing the global market closely and seeing the booming online retail, understood very well the necessity of changing with time and the importance of embracing new technology trends. These played a big role in shaping the business model of his company, Surat Diamond Jewelry. From being a diamond jewelry manufacturing company formerly, as time moved it got into cataloguing and finally transitioned to online sales of jewelry. The growth was gradual and evolutionary. Surat Diamonds Ventured into online sales in 1998, way before the dotcom bubble burst, and a time when the concept of e-commerce was still un-evolved in India, there were not many Indian players in the ecommerce sector. The first customer the company had was from Texas, U.S. For a long time majority of their companys customers were from abroad since most Indians were timid to spend online. The company has witnessed a change in this scenario in the last few years with more and more Indian customers coming in and the recession slowing the foreign customers. Now about 80 percent of our customers are Indians and the rest 20 percent are foreigners, this used to be the other way around. The number of Indians buying online has increased drastically in the past few years, says Mehta, CEO, Surat Diamond Jewelry.

Diamond Jewelry: Gearing up with online retail

The company is focused at offering customers a pleasant jewelry experience. Since inception, it has endeavored to make diamonds more accessible, transactions more convenient and the experience, as fulfilling as possible. Every item of jewelry sold by the company carries a guarantee certificate and they prides on their policy of fairness. Once a purchase is made the jewelry will be delivered to the customer in 7 10 days. Even then, it is not very easy to attract and retain customers, People still would like to have touch and feel of things before they buy them, so we provide them with quality products with special offers online and make the value proposition outweigh the negatives, says Mehta. People who are buying jewelry for 10,000 or 25,000 stay happy with this, still those who go for 25 lakh or 30 lakh worth of jewelry prefer in shop shopping, he adds. They also offer their customers, who purchase for above Rs. 50000, the unique opportunity to design their own rings. In India, as a measure of the trust and confidence reposed in the company by their customers, they sell diamond jewelry by mail order. They undertake mail order campaigns with most of the credit card companies like Citibank, Diners, HSBC, HDFC Bank, ICICI, SBI GE and UTI Bank credit cards and established mobile phone companies Orange and Tata Indicom. The company does not seem to care much about the competition in the market. Mehta says he has not felt any pressure from competition so far and he believes that if

Rajiv Mehta

more people entre the market then the market will expand more and each player will have enough of it to work with. The company also partnered with firms like, Standard Chartered, Barclays, Axis, and Indusdind in BFSI, Kingfisher Airlines, Cleartrip , Yatra, Ezeego 1, Cox and King, and Easemytrip in travel, and hotels like Indian Hotels - Ginger hotels, Chiplun Hotels, and The Resort. The company has tens of thousands of customers around the globe and this number is growing rapidly. Since the end of the great recession the number of foreign customers has once again started increasing and even the recession failed to slowdown the growth in the number of Indian customers. With their customer centric approach the company seems to be poised to attain great heights.

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25 E-Commerce
Promising companies Taking on the T-Shirt market with the help of E-Commerce
-commerce is growing rapidly in India so are e-com companies. Now with the increase in internet broadband connections and 3G penetration, Indians are no longer restraining themselves from buying online. It is obvious that the pace of

Xtees.com

Manoj Kumar

online buying will go up. In this rapidly expanding Indian e-commerce scenario Xtees.com is certainly to be benefitted as an online seller of tshirts. Established in 2002 by Manoj Kumar and based out of Tirupur the city which supplies t-shirts to the entire world, Xtees.com is taking on the Indian retail industry in a dynamic fashion through e-commerce. Started

as a slogan t-shirt company targeting the youth selling crazy, naughty, funny & offensive slogan t-shirts, now Xtees has grown into a strong brand offering a wide variety of t-shirts for all ages viz., slogan t-shirts, logo collar t-shirts, led t-shirts, ladies tops, kids tees, plain round neck & collar t-shirts, tshirt packs, etc. Xtees latest attraction is imported hi-fashion t-shirts with rhine-stone, foil prints, tie & dye, multi-color graphic prints, etc. Xtees.com has a unique custom t-shirt division where the customer can have his own slogan, image, logo, photo printed on a t-shirt chosen from a wide range of styles, colors and sizes. Unlike other sites, Xtees.com calls the user to understand the design and provide customisation as per the customer's wish. Quality is in detail. T-Shirts are made of 100 percent cotton rugged fabric. Cheap transfers are not used. Printing is done thro professional screen printing methods & DTG (Direct to Garment printing). Xtees constantly adds lot of innovative products to the custom product line viz., photo mugs, mouse pads, and more. Payment options provided to the customers include COD, credit cards, debit cards, net-banking, net transfer, cheque, demand drafts, etc. Shipping can be done anywhere in

India. International shipping is also available. It is this wide product variety, quality, logistic coverage and affordable price factor that attracts the customers on to the site and helped the company to go strong for the last nine years. Apart from the customers who buy from the company webpage daily Xtees also offer custom t-shirts with own logo / design for corporate companies, colleges, small businesses, event organisers, clubs & groups. Custom t-shirts are suitable for employee wear, employee gifting, customer gifting, college departments, cultural functions, alumni, re-unions, group wear, sports teams, group tours, get-togethers, social activities, product launches, promos, fairs, road shows, brand promotion, memorabilia, marriage functions, birthday parties, elections, etc. Their corporate customers include Google, Cognizant, Infosys, Ixigo, TCS, Nokia etc. Several event organisers, bike clubs, tour organisers source custom t-shirts from Xtees for their clients. With a team of just eight people the company presently sells more than 200 t-shirts on a daily basis online. Xtees never fails to impress its customers with their innovative productline. They introduce 25 new slogans every week. With the growing product line the company is providing and the rapid increase of on-line buying in India, it is imperative that the company is sure to scale greater heights. Xtees.com is currently looking for venture capital to acquire new customers, expand its product line, and to strengthen its back-end.
The Smart Techie

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25 E-Commerce
Promising companies

PricesBolo.com shop online Defining the new way to

E
-commerce in India is spreading across industries like wildfire; anything and everything are available for online purchase now. Every second company selling online are attracting buyers giving ranges from home appliances to mobiles, computers, digital cameras, home theaters, inverters, storage devices, books, baby clothing and other products, gym equipment to travel gear. Founded in 2009 and based out of Bangalore, the company already has a strong base in Bangalore and Chennai. Indian consumers are very price conscious and we wanted to help them in terms of price and product selection, says Parthiban TS, Cofounder and Director, PriceBolo.com. The company gets about 3000 unique IP address visits on a daily basis and around 250 to 300 enquires in a day, still it depends majorly on word of mouth publicity, SEO and Social Media than any other advertising methodologies. The company gives high priority to the quality of the products that feature, We do not display anything that doesnt come with a manufacturer warranty and that is why we do not feature Chinese products, says Bernaad R Chetty, MD, PriceBolo.com. This is one of the main factors that highlight them from similar companies. Presently, the company is looking for funding. But, for PricesBolo.com, the main factor is not just the money. For us the most important thing is to have someone partnering with us who share our vision of taking the company to the next level, says Chetty. The companys main plan is to widen its service offerings to more metros in the country. Pricebolo.com is in the process of expanding its services in two more metros in this year alone. Mumbai and Delhi are the target markets for the next round of expansion. The company is also in the process of revamping the site which

Bernaad R Chetty

ParthibanTS

the lowest price or the best price, and this strategy is working very well for the companies. But how would a customer know if this is the lowest or the best price they can get? That he is not deceived by the company by saying they are offering the lowest price. PricesBolo.com, a location based price comparison portal, empowers customers to identify this. Customers can log in to the website and search for products they want and can get the prices offered by different vendors in their locality. The company has a very wide range of products available on their webpage for price / product comparison. This
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will be help customers to get the right product they need. Today if you walk into any store you will have a sales person that helps you, tell you the different varieties of the product that you need, their specifications, features and all, and based on this you will make a judgment which may be right or wrong. We are trying to provide a solution which will help the consumers to pick the right product they need, says Parthiban. With a much needed product and a clearcut plan for the future PricesBolo.com is all ready to grab a large portion of the fast growing ecommerce pie in India.

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mAnAgement

By Niranjan Neelamangalam

The author is Vice President People Department, Aditi Technologies

An Organization is all about its people

n todays dynamic corporate scenario, the concepts of human capital and creating a talent pool have created their own backyard and have grown to become the backbone of organizations. Businesses are operating in an ever-changing economy and are in a constant need of skilled workforce. Economic trends such as globalization and recent challenges in the recruitment and retention of talent have prompted many organizations to seek and adopt creative hiring and talent management strategies. With increasing local and global competition for high caliber professionals, organizations need to look beyond the standard cookie cutter method of human resources development. Hiring, training and retention of human capital are the key challenges faced by organizations today. Organizations today are focused on leveraging new technologies, new markets and high end workforce and therefore arise opportunities for HR to play a completely different role than what they have been doing traditionally. Social media in combination with some of the traditional hiring practices has proven to be an efficient tool in identifying potential resources. However, what might work for one company will not fit well with another, so organizations need to find what works best for them by lever-

aging on the right platform. For Aditi Technologies, social media has played a fantastic role in multiple arenas of attracting prospective employees. The company started

leads to highly satisfied customers and hence, translates into greater growth for the business of the organization. Few companies are yet to harness the power of investing in people and

With increasing local and global competition for high caliber professionals, organizations need to look beyond the standard cookie cutter method of human resources development.
with crude methods and is now moving to more defined usage of the social networks to suit its requirements. Some of the key challenges the industry has to address today include quality and employability of talent, retaining them, leveraging foundation skills and benchmarking the entry level resources. There is no doubt that hiring quality people is a challenge. But the challenge is also to keep hiring costs to a minimum by utilizing the most effective and expedient staffing options possible. Organizations need to keep their HR management practices a bit flexible, keeping in mind their employees well-being in order to reap great return on investments. When the people are empowered to make decisions without the fear of failure and punishment; it is only then that they feel more motivated to put in their best for the company and provide better service, which in turn learn how it could be creatively applied to create that sustainable competitive advantage in developing top notch human resources for the organization. In this extremely tight labour market, it is important to know that people are no longer motivated with that additional spike in salary and other perks. Many organizations have realized that employee engagement within an organization is one of the best ways to keep employees spirits high at a workplace. A true people organization seeks to reward its employees in ways that are meaningful to them, and empower them to be their best by offering a work environment and benefits that recognize the needs, interests and values of their people. Such human-focus initiatives just might be what a company needs to gain an edge over another in the global war for the best talent in the market.
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June 2011

The author is Founder & CEO, JustEat.in

BUsiness

By Ritesh Dwivedy

E-commerce Industry:
What does the future hold?

Indian

ets start with a question. Is ecommerce very big in India yet? My answer is not really, but we are getting there. Ecommerce by definition means buying and selling of services/products over the electronic medium, like Internet. In reality not many businesses in India are purely ecommerce. Even hugely successful companies like makemytrip or shaadi.com have physical stores to reach out to consumers who do not have access to Internet
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or those who have access to internet but do not trust the online medium yet to make their purchases. This is now a necessity for most businesses that in the west have been traditionally internet based. The question one would tend to ask is why is there this disparity? Though India is a huge market, internet is still available to a very small percentage of the population and is mostly restricted to the top few cities. Most of the active users

of internet in the smaller cities access it at cyber cafes, which are frequented by students who are not really the target audience for most ecommerce businesses. The other disheartening fact is that the usage of internet by this profile of people is heavily restricted to emails, social media and job portals. But if the numbers are not so good why is there so much noise about ecommerce? Well there are various reasons, the primary one being that we

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are growing faster than most other countries in the world. The metros alone are bigger markets than many of the developed European countries! More people in India have mobile phones than the entire population of UK. Facts like these make India a really interesting story, but of course with a lot of new challenges. A mere copy paste of a successful model from the west would not work in India. Innovative solutions are required to solve problems faced by the target audience. For example, since a lot of users who do not have access to internet but are still target audiences for many ecommerce businesses, last mile connectivity in terms of physical stores or reaching them out through telephone becomes important. Many OTAs have provided software solutions to the local travel agents to book flight tickets and make hotel reservations using their platform. This kind of approach though difficult to implement exposes the business to a market beyond the traditional internet users. While it helps in increasing the user base it also helps in bringing to all the real time availability of seats a win-win situation for all! Each ecommerce business in India is faced with a unique challenge, for the OTAs it was reaching out to the users, for bus ticketing it was integrating the bus operators on a single platform, for online retail it was integrating the distributors on a single platform and devising ways of managing the supply chain. In case of online food ordering we face a challenge quite unique to this industry. Every individual is hungry at almost the same time, typically during a 2 hour window during lunch and dinner. So unlike any other industry where the orders/customer queries are usually equally spaced out during the day we receive all our orders during only

these four hours. Another big challenge is that the orders have to be fulfilled within the next few minutes, again unlike any other ecommerce business where the fulfillment is usually expected to be done within a day or even multiple days. To top it up more than 85 percent of the restaurant industry is fragmented and in most restaurants the level of education of the employees is very low, thus making a single solution which works for all impossible. When we started the business five years ago we imagined a hypothetical world where all the restaurants could be connected by internet and orders received by our platform could be passed on to them seamlessly. Soon we realized our folly and have ever since been working on different solutions to cater to different types of restaurants. Most of the restaurants are what we call as "mom and pop" stores, the constraint at such restaurants are: 1. Real estate is expensive so most restaurants would have an extra table rather than having a computer. 2. Internet is misused and hence many restaurant owners are wary of having a connection at their outlets. 3. Education level of employees at unorganized restaurants is often low so the solution has to be very easy to use. 4. The environment at a restaurant requires a rugged system; sophisticated devices will get damaged very easily. 5. The industry is plagued by extremely high attrition and zero accountability. Theft and pilferage is very common. Since these restaurants got the bulk of the orders it was necessary to automate the process of order passing to these if we had to make a scalable business. We came up with

a small GPRS based device (which can run on batteries) which is installed at a restaurant to automatically print the orders placed online. While this works extremely well at the small restaurants it could not be put to use at the bigger chains that already had a legacy system of their own. We came up with separate solutions for them which would integrate with their systems for seamless routing of orders placed on our platform. The key learning from our experience is that an ecommerce business is not just about building a website. While the importance of a good website cannot be understated it is often the backend processes which would give the users a good experience and hence a reason to return for repeat business. Having said this, another challenge which is quite similar to many other ecommerce businesses in India is to build trust among users to make them place orders for their food online. Compared to the west, ecommerce is still relatively new here. Moreover it is a big habitual change for the users to shift from using their phones or visiting the nearby stores to place orders for food/books/groceries to a website. To tackle such challenges increasingly ecommerce companies rely on mass media like Radio, TV and print to make their brands popular. This is a difficult nut to crack but with time the general perception towards ecommerce is changing. While I am certain that if we would have been operating in the west we would have reached bigger scale in half the time, I am also certain that we might have had to deal with huge competition and probably would have been biting the dust. The benefit of being in a market like India is that we have plenty of time for trial and error. Things have been changing for better and the future looks very bright.
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June 2011

technoLogy

By Shrikant Shitole

The author is Vice President, Transformation Business, Cisco India & SAARC

Moving from analog to digital

rise in the instances of terrorism has prompted organizations, authorities and individuals to devise effective response mechanisms. Physical security has become essential for enterprises looking at solutions to address everything from pilferage to theft and terrorism. This has led to an increased

Surveillance:

While surveillance requirements of corporate environments are generally driven by the need to protect employee and company assets, they help achieve other business objectives also. Retail outlets for example use network surveillance for footfall measurement. In airports, an intelligent video system measures the

The government continues to be the biggest spender on physical security/ surveillance solutions and is expected to spend $10 billion on the nations homeland security requirements, over the next two to three years
demand for solutions like video surveillance in sectors like public transport, hospitality, airports, BFSI and education, prompting organizations to increasingly incorporate network video into their enterprise IT security plans.
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queue time between entering and exiting a check-in point helping direct staff and minimizing waiting time for travelers. In banks, remote surveillance and monitoring can help prevent theft, fraud and facilitate investigation.

Market opportunity Gartner estimates a CAGR of 16.4 percent for the Indian security market between 2008 and 2013. According to ASSOCHAM, corporates are likely to increase their security budgets by 3540 percent. The demand for security equipment has increased by 10-15 percent and the private security industry in India is expected to touch Rs. 50,000 crore by 2012 (125 percent growth as opposed to the 25 percent that's been the norm for the past five years). The Indian surveillance market, which is about 30 percent of the security industry, is seeing a shift from analog to IP-based surveillance. Currently IP-based surveillance market in India is valued at about $50-60 million and is expected to grow at 45 percent YoY for the next four to five years. While the global market for analog video surveillance equipment was flat in 2009, the growth rate of global IP video surveillance equipment exceeded 15 percent. According to the

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2009 IMS Research report, the global growth of network video products will be approximately 30 percent over the next five years. According a report by International Fire and Security Exhibition and Conference (IFSEC), physical security in India is likely to grow into a $3.5 billion market; this is expected to grow by up to 30 percent YoY. Growth is expected from various sectors including urban security, public transport, hospitality, airport security, BFSI and education. The government remains the biggest spender on physical security/ surveillance solutions and is expected to spend $10 billion on the nations homeland security requirements, over the next two to three years. Following the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, there has been an increase in investment for installing, as well as upgrading, existing security infrastructure within the country. This has provided a boost to the Indian security and surveillance systems industry, which grows at 20-30 percent annually. IP-based video surveillance touted as the future of surveillance systems, has replaced closed circuit analog systems, which traditionally dominated the security market. IP surveillance technology allows video to be transferred over the IP infrastructure making it accessible from anywhere in the world. An effective and integrated security system provides operator control, more usable data, and faster response time, at a reduced cost. By moving on to an IP-based network, building systems operators get better response control. Since IPbased surveillance provides the ability to access footage from any remote location over the internet, security or other authorized personnel need not be in the building or campus to access the data. They can remotely access the network and the cameras online. This technology also helps individuals who need to monitor their homes from

anywhere in the world while they are away. Todays IP-based surveillance cameras can handle motion detection and tampering detection. They have in-built intelligence that enables them to alert security personnel or to activate recording if an event takes place

frastructure is scalable and there is no limit to the number of devices that can be added to the network. The ability to interconnect security cameras with the other security systems with open standards is another advantage of IP-based surveillance. IP- based surveillance

The demand for security equipment has increased by 10-15 percent and the private security industry in India is expected to touch Rs. 50,000 crore by 2012
in a camera's surveillance area. Network video facilitates proactive monitoring. Digital or IP-based cameras can also add to business intelligence. In retail outlets, camera footage can help to analyze the customer footfall and patterns, reduce shrinkage, enhance marketing and optimize staffing. Network video helps retailers manage the inventory lifecycle more efficiently. Other benefits of bringing physical security infrastructure onto the IP network include reduced total cost of ownership, better image quality, increased storage capacity, enhanced features, greater interoperability, and faster access to relevant information during emergency. Compared to traditional CCTV cameras, the digital insolutions provide an open platform to build more collaborative and integrated physical security systems, while preserving their existing investments in analog-based technology. Simply put, the users can enable their analog devices to talk to other devices on the network, or to the central control system. What the future holds As the awareness of the benefits of IP-Based systems spreads, features and complexities of surveillance products will increase, and costs will go down. According to industry experts, IP surveillance in India has enhanced its reach into verticals such as government, SMBs and SOHOs. This market will continue to grow as organizations and authorities understand the advantages that IP-based surveillance brings with it. Additionally, with IT equipment prices likely to fall faster than analog CCTV equipment, the scales will increasingly tilt in favor of IP-based systems. At the end of the day, the security of the country continues to be a key concern for the government and its various stakeholders, who are working to bring together the best security solutions and create a wide-area security net, so that both the nations assets as well as its people remain safe and secure.
The Smart Techie

QuickFacts
A report by Forrester, titled Sizing The Cloud, estimates that by 2020 the cloud computing market will grow to $241 billion. The public cloud, vritual private cloud and private cloud will be $159.3 billion, $66.4 billion and $15.9 billion respectively.

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BUsiness

By Ambarish Deshpande

The author is Director Sales- McAfee India

Say Hello to the new workplace

Consumerized IT
he rapid proliferation of smart devices such as smart phones, PDAs and laptops is more than just a marketing and technological success story. These compact multi-functional devices have been responsible for changing the economic and social fabric globally by being an integral part of our daily environment. At the core of this phenomenon is the fact that these powerful devices can serve as a single point gateway to accessing information, making transactions, seeking products, downloading entertainment anywhere and anytime. However the ubiquity of smart devices is also posing as a major challenge confronting organisations today. Having grown up in the age of iphones and iPads, todays Generation Y comprising of technologically savvy, mobile, job hopping professionals is increasingly insisting on using their own devices at their workplaces to ensure uninterrupted access to company information and faster turnaround and productivity to meet the imperatives of todays competitive workplaces. But imagine a scenario when an employee uses three to four smart devices to juggle between various applications such as social networking sites, consumer applications for banking or travelling and business applications such as CRM, databases and others; using all these devices interchangeably for business and personal activities. This certainly implies opening a Pandoras box of issues associated with unauthorised access and subsequent data thefts! This phenomenon that is redefining the functioning of workplaces is

referred as Consumerization of IT and is touted to be one of the most radical and irreversible transformations in Enterprise IT.

Consumerization: To adopt or not to adopt

The phenomenon that is redefining the functioning of workplaces is referred as Consumerization of IT and is touted to be one of the most radical and irreversible transformations in Enterprise IT.

According to a McAfee survey conducted in 2010 with global IT decision-makers, administrators, consultants, and security analysts, the key drivers of Consumerization of IT are increased employee productivity (58 percent) and greater flexibility and turnaround time (52 percent). However the security risks pertaining to this trend have made many organizations firmly oppose it by restricting the introduction of personal devices into the workplace and attempting to lock down data. This however could be deemed as an escapist approach. Very few companies realise that productivity benefits aside, the willingness to embrace Consumerization of IT presents an opportunity for companies to save their capital expenses by leveraging their employees preexisting investments in such powerful devices. The way to make this trend work in your favour is by understanding the needs of an organisation and building a suitable strategy that incorporates this new future of work. So how can organisations leverage the productivity and cost benefits of this trend without being affected by its security challenges? McAfee recommends the following strategies for organisations to lift their veil of uncertainty around this trend and leverage it as a productivity catalyst: Deploy host and network antimalware to reduce infections and protect company systems. Use a firewall

The Smart Techie

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and network intrusion prevention system (IPS) to control traffic to and from key assets. Ensure VPNs for secure connections to corporate networks. Enforce remote encryption and wiping of information and applications for company owned smart phones and other mobile devices to protect data in case the device is lost or stolen. It is however important to note that this approach is difficult to use with users personal mobile phones and computers. Organisations need to use network access control (NAC) to ensure that employee-owned devices have installed proper security tools and are compliant with IT standards prior to accessing the network. NAC can control guest devices and other unmanaged endpoints and ensure enable to access resources or infect your network. By deploying virtual desktops, employees can access company appli-

cations and data on personal devices, but the application infrastructure and data remain on corporate servers behind the firewall. Implement encryption for information at rest and in motion. If a remote device falls into the wrong hands or a transmission is intercepted, encrypted information is unusable. Keep in mind that while this strategy is practical for company-owned laptops and employee-owned smart phones, its difficult to enforce data encryption on employee-owned PCs and Macs. Consider a relatively new development called PC on a stick, in which thumb drives (USB drives) or memory cards store a customized interface or launch pad, user-selected applications, and data. Users can carry this computer-on-a-stick to any public or shared machine, plug it in, and begin working with familiar tools and personalized settings. When the drive

or card is removed, there is no trace of the users work left on the PC. Deploy integrated endpoint security with a centralized management console to ease the effort required by security administrators and enable them to easily manage all endpoints in the system. An integrated, centralized strategy is always more efficient and effective from a cost and performance standpoint than deploying a series of point solutions. Like most technologies, Consumerization of IT is a mixed blessing with some incredible advantages bundled with unforeseen risks. But with Information Technology having undergone a paradigm shift in the last decade, CIOs will need to objectively consider such path-breaking approaches to technologies to trigger greater productivity and innovation in organisations.

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BUsiness

By Gourav Chindlur

The author is Co-founder & COO, Vizury

nternet Advertising is globally more than a $50 billion industry now. There have been several innovations cantered around technology and data in this space, that have brought about path breaking changes in the way advertising is perceived in general. One such cutting edge trend on the horizon is called Real Time Bidding (RTB). RTB is a new technology standard in the display (banners) advertising space. It allows buyers and sellers of display media to converse in real time and arrive at the best price for every ad impression. This happens in the background when a user opens a web page but before an ad is shown and it takes just a few tens of milliseconds to complete. More often than not, the best price is arrived upon using a bidding/auction model thereby valuing each impression optimally. This is a fundamental shift in the way media buying generally works. For a long time, display advertising has been a people business. Publishers and advertisers strike deals over meetings, emails, faxes and phone calls simple but highly inefficient. Buying

Internet Advertising Real Time Bidding 101

is through pre-negotiated rates based on assumptions about the quality of media & audience and often, the media bought is not optimally valued. Multiple technologies have emerged in between publishers and advertisers, all have helped bring in incremental efficiency, but none have disrupted the landscape as much as RTB promises to. RTB can dramatically improve performance of display campaigns resulting in a win-win situation for all major stakeholders; advertisers benefit from improved ROI, the publishers benefit from increased yields for their media/impressions and the consumers are happy due to more relevant advertising. For the first time, display advertising has the potential to match and beat search advertising in efficiency and value created within the internet advertising ecosystem. RTB is offered by sellers or aggregators of media through a platform that enables the bidding/auction model in real time. Buyers develop bidding engines which look at contextual and behavioural/cookie information to arrive at price quotes. The major steps involved in the process are as follows

Gourav Chindlur

a) A user opens a webpage on a browser, the sellers platform collects contextual information about the impression and sends this to all the buyers b) Every buyers bidding engine then considers the contextual information about the impression, overlays any behavioural or cookie data and responds with a price quote/bid that the buyer is willing to pay for the impression c) The sellers platform then compares all the bids from the different buyers and awards the impression to the highest bidder

The Smart Techie

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d) The winning buyer then displays an ad to the user RTB sellers differentiate themselves by providing a transparent, simple & efficient platform for buyers to integrate as well as by providing richer & granular contextual information about every impression. Buyers are investing in developing sophisticated bidding engines which take into consideration contextual information like banner size, website URL, ad placement, location of the user, keywords on the page, etc as well as behavioural or cookie information like user intent, impression frequency, user segments, recency, and more to come up with an intelligent price quote for every im-

to advertisers and publishers. Advertisers get more visibility and transparency in what they are buying; they can get complete information about the context of each impression. Advertisers also get much more control on their buys; they get better access to highly targeted audiences at a much larger scale than ever before; they do not need to sacrifice on the volume of campaigns now. Publishers get more visibility and control over which advertisements are getting shown; they can get complete information about the ad and brand getting shown and enforce block lists if they wish. Publishers can also control the rates at which the impressions are getting

pression. Today, the major RTB sellers include AdExchanges like Google Adx, Appnexus, AdBrite, and Sell Side Platforms (SSPs or Yield Optimisers) like Rubicon Project, AdMeld, and others. The buyers fall under four major categories AdNetworks, Demand Side Platforms (DSPs), Agency Trading Desks and Audience Targeting/Retargeting/Creative Optimization companies. RTB adoption has been extremely fast because it presents many benefits

monetised. To some extent, RTB has also enabled publishers to earn on the data that gets generated from the ad impression on their website and not just for the media being sold. RTB technology itself has of course materialised due to a bunch of technical innovations around the processing and exchange of data in real time at scale. Although it has been a dream run for RTB adopters over the past year or so, it does have quite a few challenges in store going forwards. A major con-

cern from many of the large publishers is data leakage. Advertisers can extend audiences from large publishers and target them on other less popular and cheaper websites thereby reducing the payout for the large publishers in the long run. AdExchanges and Sell Side Platforms should come out with proper tools for protecting the interests of publishers in this ecosystem. Because modern day targeting relies so heavily on the use of cookies and data, concerns about consumer privacy have been brought to the forefront. Government proposals so far have been unclear at best and the uncertainty could hamper investments in the adoption of RTB among buyers/advertisers and sellers/publishers. Also, RTB is still relatively new and requires significant amount of technical expertise and investments in resources for buyers & sellers to adopt and integrate with their existing systems. Adding to this, lack of standards between the seller platforms makes integration efforts trickier. Hopefully, as the technology evolves and standards are put in place, we will see continued growth in RTB adoption. Real Time Bidding emerged only in 2009 and it has taken the internet advertising market by storm. According to a market sizing study presented by Forrester in February this year, in 2010 advertisers spent $353 million in the U.S. alone on RTB buys. This is expected to be close to a billion dollars this year. This is almost 10 percent of the total display advertising market size. There is no doubt that RTB is here to stay and is expected to revolutionize display advertising in the next decade. The digital advertising ecosystem is evolving at lightning pace and is only going to get more complex. As new and better technologies emerge, it is imperative for various players in the ecosystem to adopt and adapt fast if they want to remain relevant.

The Smart Techie

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BUsiness

By Abhishek Sharma

The author is Partner, Raj Abhyanker P.C.

ThE POwER OF
hat if, after spending hours coming up with the perfect business name, someone copies your name? Can you stop others from using your logo or product name? Can you claim compensation for the loss to your business because of a misuse of your brand name? Yes, you can! The law of trademarks in India has been enacted to protect business owners, who register their names under the Trademarks Act against possible misuse of their trademarks by third parties. No matter, which business you are into, you must protect your company
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tRAdemARKs
W
name, product name, logos and other unique identifying features that differentiate your business from that of your competitors. Trademark law in India has a twin fold goal. One is to identify the source of the product or services and second is to distinguish the products and services of one from another. What is a trademark, you may ask? A trademark is simply a name, or a logo used to distinguish your goods or services from those offered by another. A trademark is thus the name or a symbol associated with a particular product through which the consumer identifies the source of the product. It is particularly important to protect your logo or brand name when consumers start identifying your company through it. If your logo is not protected, then there is nothing to stop some other person from copying your logo and duping consumers into thinking they are buying your products. This person is, in essence, riding on your success to sell his own product; something that no company would want. The easy solution to this is to get your logo or brand name registered as a trademark under Indian trademark law.

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It is easy enough to come up with a trademark. It could consist of words, designs, letters, slogans, symbols, or even a sound. Remember the Britannia jingle ting, ting, ti-ting? You might be in the dining room eating dinner when this ad comes on the bedroom TV, and you will still know that the ad was for Britannia, without having to actually see the ad. What about the Microsoft Windows sound? The next time you boot your computer listen carefully to the tune played when Microsoft Windows opens. These sounds could very well be used as trademarks. The only thing you have to make sure while coming up with your own trademark is that it is distinctive and does not resemble the trademark of any other company in such a way as to confuse consumers between the two. A common fault made by most people is using descriptive names as trademarks. People tend to think that by using a descriptive name as their trademark it will be easier to remember or to connect it with their products. The law, on the other hand, feels very differently about this. One of the requirements of a trademark is that it must be distinctive. When a trademark is descriptive, it is not distinctive. The trademark should have no direct reference to the quality or character of goods. A trademark is said to be descriptive if it describes the nature of identity of the goods or services for which it is used. Take for example Fair & Lovely. Using Fair & Lovely as a product name to launch a cream that is supposed to make you fair and lovely is hardly distinctive. It is in fact too descriptive to be a good trademark. On the other hand, brand names like Cinthol for soap, Lakme beauty products, Colgate toothpaste - all these are good trademarks, because though the products are recognized by the name, these names do not describe the actual product. The best way to guarantee a distinctive trademark is to make up a

word. Just make sure the word is easy to pronounce, not too difficult to spell and is not descriptive in nature. The best way to protect a trademark is by filing an application for registration of a trademark under the Trademarks Act, 1999. This applica-

It is particularly important to protect your logo or brand name when consumers start identifying your company through it
tion has to be filed with the Trademarks Registry in India. A registration not only acts as a proof that you are the owner of the trademark but also provides stronger protection to registered trademarks under the Trademarks Act. Trademark can be registered is for a

QuickFacts
The worldwide enterprise software market showed growth and recovery in 2010 with total software revenue increasing 8.5 percent annually to a worldwide market size of $245 billion, according to research firm Gartner. In 2009, worldwide revenue declined 2.5 percent to $226 billion.

lifetime as long as you keep using it and renewing it. If you have already registered your trademark, the legal battle ahead of you is fairly straightforward, but even an owner of an unregistered trademark does have some recourse in law. He may file a suit to get compensation for the infringement of his registered trademark. However the fact remains that an unregistered trademark is far more vulnerable, especially for those marketing new products, and the remedies open to unregistered trademark owners can be claimed only after infringement has taken place. Once a trademark has been registered, the owner of the trademark has legal rights to prohibit others from using it. If he can prove that the infringing mark is deceptively similar to his and because of this is causing confusion in the market, then there is a high probability of success in his action for infringement. It is not even necessary for him to show that he has suffered actual confusion, just showing that there is a likelihood of confusion is sufficient. In any case, a trademark becomes effective and valuable only if the owner actually uses the trademark and takes prompt action against any infringer. The ultimate aim of any company is to be recognized, and with a new company starting every day, its becoming harder and harder to remain unique amidst a sea of similar businesses. The only way of standing out in the crowd is by having a distinctive trademark, through which a consumer can identify your product. Its a simple marketing strategy followed the world over. Recognition equals Sales equals Profit. In the end a well chosen and well protected trademark is the greatest identification of a company. Be creative, come up with the wackiest thing imaginable and make sure you register it with the Trademarks Registry so that you are protected under law.
The Smart Techie

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BuyeRS PeRSPeCtIVe

One stop shop for managing Personal Finance

ounded in 2008, Bangalore based Perfios offers an innovative Personal Finance Software Application that provides a 360 degree view of ones personal finance, and helps manage personal finance in a safe and trusted environment with out much human intervention. In a candid chat with Vimali Swamy, VR Govindarajan Co-founder and CEO, Perfios talks about the companys offerings, and future growth plans. What does Perfios offer? Managing ones wealth is a daunting task faced by many, especially when in todays cut throat environment, banks and other financial institutes are offering multiple schemes, funds and other savings plans, leaving a person fazed and confused. With Perfios there were two specific points that we were trying to address one is to provide a 360 degree view of personal finance and other is to help a person is to get all the related data automatically. There are several sites like Moneycontrol or Valueresearch where they provide information about equity or mutual fund if one provides all the information, but personal finance is lot more than just equity or mutual fund. Our aim is to provide a complete 360 degree view be it ones bank account, credit card, insurance options, loans, deposit, whatever that touches ones personal finance should be addressed in our platform. For example; by using Perfios one must be able to get integrated data across ones different bank accounts,
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VR Govindarajan

balance, interest reaped, and also advice on investments that could help one reap higher percentage of revenue. Who all can use Perfios? From individual users to wealth managers, all can utilize our services. In case of a wealth manager he will have to subscribe as many accounts as the number of customers he serves. How strong is the security? Yes, the main concern of people when they start using this system is definitely security. We have addressed this issue from the initial development stage itself. We do not take in any bank account, credit/debit card or any other financial details from any customer who creates an account with us. The only thing the person needs to give our system is a valid email id. Other than this, at the back end, we have no data about the user. Also there are a couple of ways by which we gather data and automate it. One is the statement approval, where a user either forwards the statements to us or uploads it to our applications, following which the system automatically processes and populates your accounts. The second way is through automation. Here a first time user can provide ones bank login id and password upon which all processes are automated. None of the private information is stored on our web server every transaction of information is highly encrypted. Apart from this, the complete data is kept in a very secure data center. We

engage external agencies such as Trust Guard who independently run as many as 37,000 tests on our website every day. Even if we fail in one test an alert is put up on the website to inform that the site is broken into. Additionally, a code review is done by Paladion Networks every six months upon which they certify the application. They also do an ongoing security audit for us. What are some of the challenges? The key challenge is how to monetize this service. People are still not comfortable paying for anything on the internet. The biggest challenge, according to me, is to come up with an appropriate revenue model for the Indian context. What is the total number of customers and employees? We are presently 20 people strong. At present we about 100,000 plus customers which include individual customers and wealth management professionals. Our focus presently is only on the Indian market. Our goal is to provide a world class product from here and focus on Indian market. Are you planning to partner with banks? We are already in talks with some banks. We also work in the corporate segment with various IT companies where we are provided as a value added service or employee friendly service to thier employee. The aim is to make Perfios a one stop personal finance system.

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event

By Akanksha Ravindran

On to the

Clouds!
Janakiram MSV, Amazon Web Services

SiliconIndia Cloud Developer Conference May 14, 2011, Bangalore

angalore: The Cloud Developers Conference 2011, organized by SiliconIndia exceeded expectations as the symposium gathered top flight developers and industry professionals across the cloud spectrum for a one day networking and open discussions. The conference showcased cloud advancement in networks, storage, applications, interoperations and security to the Information Technology Enterprise. The conference focused on two key areas Cloud Apps and the Cloud Infrastructure. Cloud Apps track opening session on Collaboration in the Cloud presented by Dr. Vivek Mansingh, President- Collaboration & Communications Group from Cisco India, emphasized on next era of IT ecosystem, where he said, Like networking technologies have flattened the world and removed geographical distances, cloud computing is flattening the IT world by making IT resources available to anyone, anywhere. Stepping in next was Janakiram MSV, Technology Evangelist from Amazon Web Services who spoke on Building Powerful Web Applications in the AWS Cloud where he introduced Amazon Web Services from a business and technical perspective. He also briefed about how AWS can be used to build robust, cost-effective, secure, and high-scalable applications. Sudharshini HS, Senior Systems Engineer from VMware India elaborated on how VM ware works with the customer to transition to their cloud in a responsible, evolutionary approach,

Cloud Apps

without disrupting the business at-hand. She also said that VM ware is making hybrid cloud computing a reality which enables the customers to make smart, confident business decisions, without technical constraints. VMwares Cloud Application Platform is VMware vFabric which will enable Java developers to leverage the Spring framework the most commonly used framework for Java development in the world for cloud application development. Deliberating on Integrated financial applications using Intuits PaaS Solution, George Chiramattel Software Architect, Intuit was of the view that IPP is the easiest way to build SaaS and sell them to millions of small business customers. Binu Raj, Senior Director - Engineering, Cloud Computing from Yahoo! delved on The Yahoo Cloud: Challenges in deploying multi-tier applications on the cloud. According to him Agility with Stability in cloud can be achieved with true declarative deployment specifications. Ramesh Loganathan, VP Products & Center Head from Progress Software basically covered one aspect of the emerging cloud-leveraged enterprise IT solution space. He said the opportunity for real time business insights are made possible by having solutions that are mostly accessible over web/intranet and also by virtue of being on a web based cloud which can be accessible through service calls as web services or other web based protocols. A good sign off was given to the track by Bharati Lele, Head - Innovation Labs from L&T Infotech , who spoke on Cloud Computing for Business, she was of the view that, In this federated world, one cloud cannot suffice all needs

and thus it is important to have a mediation platform which will give seamless view to end user.

Cloud Infrastructure

Speaking in the opening session Dr. Srinivas Padmanabhuni, Head- Software Engineering Research lab from SETLabs- Infosys, gave a detailed note on the need for a thorough understanding of service and REST oriented API security. The audience got a clear understanding of the need for key security desiderata in cloud like user centric identity management, multi-factor authentication (like HMAC ) for APIs and deployment of higher level firewalls like JSON/XML firewalls. Cloud Systems Automation was elaborated by Sundara Nagarajan, Director R&D- Storage Works Division from HP, who was of the opinion that enterprises assimilate cloud technology for providing IT services to users, they will also require seamless brokering among the traditional, private, virtual private industry clouds and public cloud services. The Cloud Developers conference gave access to the best content from the experts who are actually living this disruptive transformation every day. The conference gave away details on how to optimize cost, performance, capacity and risk, and real world end user examples that demonstrated the benefits and drawbacks of cloud computing. The conference was sponsored by Amazon Web Services, VMware and DreamOrbit. The sponsors put in their best to make this event a success. McGraw Hill was the exhibitor for the day.
The Smart Techie

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event

By Nushin Naz

Gaming experts galore!

SiliconIndia Gaming Conference India May 07, 2011, Bangalore

Gamers and

angalore: Gaming Conference India-2011 organized by SiliconIndia in Bangalore was a convergence of creative minds. It highlighted the vast opportunities that abound in the field of gaming. The speakers who showed up were some of the prime movers in the gaming arena. Held on the 7th of May 2011, the Gaming conference represented a platform for exchange of insights and expertise on gaming and its trends among the local experts in the field, coupled with raw talent waiting to be tapped. Gaming is the hottest growing industry in the Media & Entertainment sector said Biren Ghose, Country head, Technicolor India who was present to officially launch the Gaming Conference. This conference focused on two key areas, Game Development and Designing and the Smart phone and Tablet games. Speaking on Rapid Prototyping with Unreal Development Kit (UDK), Chaitanya Munjuluri, Game Architect, Sierra Atlantic said, UDK is the leading professional game development frameworks. UDK offers everyone the same power and flexibility of Unreal Engine 3 that made games Like Gears of War and Magnacarta 2 possible. Ashish Kumar, Product Manager from Alienware-Dell gave the curious audience a sneak peek into the exciting range of merchandise Alienware-Dell had to offer. Alienware-Dell manufactures the world's best high-performance gaming peripherals, the latest being Alienware M17x R3 Laptop with Graphics pop off the screen. Taking the session ahead was Preetham Venkky, Business Head, KRDS India who said Games are slowly becoming platform-agnostic.
The Smart Techie

gies, an overlay of the test processes, challenges that testers overcome while testing games and the future of game testing and the opportunities for game testers globally and in India. SriSatish Mavuri, Lead Game Developer from Emantras, addressed the audience on Games: Touching the World on the Other Side of the Glass and said that mobile Learning truly arrives with iPad, iPad games are here to stay and is the most preferred way of Learning for kids. Impressive session by Arjun Gupte, Art Ashish Kumar, Alienware-Dell Director on Art Direction for XBox Title had the tive, said Laxmi Desai Khanolkar, Di- audience enthralled. Bruce Brodie, Director-Game Development from Apar rector Games from SourceBits who spoke on Player retention, Gameplay Games. Speaking on Flash game develop- and Expansion in video games said the ment, Saagar Dhoke, Founder and conference was an excellent platform CEO, Fun Element expressed that the and an opportunity to meet industry flash developers should look forward professionals, discuss new technolofor the commercial release of Molehill gies and the games industry here in which will equip them with the much India. Games should support maximum needed 3D game development in Flash and create more realistic physics handsets including various platforms games. Robin Alter, CEO, Kreeda like J2ME, Android, Blackberry, Wingames discussed the opportunities for dows, IOS, said Vijayprakash Ransocial games in India and the details of gappa, Founder & CEO, Mobi2Fun who how to make them. He describe many gave a talk on Mobile game distribution of the pieces that go into the social and publishing trends. I believe with game mechanics, what uniquely would 3G and dependence on service carrier work in India, how to design for dif- provider reducing via app stores. It is the ferent platforms and how to take an best time till date to be a mobile game idea through to a final, fun online so- developer, said Himanshu Pant, Cofounder from Mactabilis Arts. cial game. This exciting event was sponsored Kasturi Rangan, Site Head & Senior Manager - Operations, e4e Interac- by Alienware Dell and Razer. The extive Entertainment Services while hibitors for this event were DSK SupInspeaking on Fun & the Art of Game focom and E4E Interactive Testing gave thoughtful and brilliant Entertainment Services. Gaming Xpress insights into Game Test Methodolo- served as the media partner. When developers work on a game, it shouldn't be just about graphics, or realness. Building fortune along with having fun, Fun is combination of amazement and bewilderment which every player should experience. Introducing something new at appropriate intervals will let the player be inquisi-

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By Nushin Naz

Brewing new

Marketing !deas
to this saying, The digital space is growing by leaps and bounds and cannot be isolated by any marketer and the World Cup micro site by Sify was marketed on Face book and Google. Also they had created few applications which could be plugged into the social network. The final result was a huge success all around. Social Media Marketing Strategy: An Insight Vishal Chinchankar, Vice President, Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group Company said, " Today in social media space If content is King, then the consumer is God,as consumer not just consumes the content but also re-creates and redistributes the same content". And also, "As marketers we need to keep in mind the ideal mix of having presence on Talk to me media versus Talk with me media. Stressing more on strategic marketing, Manish Kasliwal, Head Advisory Relations & Strategic Marketing, L&T Infotech said, Strategic Marketing is not same as the tactical marketing, which primarily is being considered as a cost center by every organization. Face book and Linkedin seems to be the leaders today in their respective categories but this may change soon if they dont innovate and offer more applications to the end customer. Mobile Marketing: True Mobile Strategy George Paul, Director- Marketing & Strategy, Ericsson India said, "In today's marketing frontiers, the digital channel is gaining inroads into the traditional media space and as we enter

SiliconIndia Strategic Marketing Summit April 30, 2011, Mumbai

umbai: Using a mixture of technology and ingenuity, marketers today are finding new ways to reach consumers. Growing fields in marketing include Internet and mobile advertising, behavioral advertising, interactive campaigns, product placement, & Social Media. SiliconIndia organized the Strategic Marketing Conference on April 30th in Mumbai, where marketing professionals learned, developed, connected with each other, and learnt from experts on how to harness the power of advertising, mobile apps, digital marketing and the social media to build effective brand strategies. The conference kick started with the talk by Mahesh Murthy, Founder and CEO, Pinstorm and moved on to exciting panel discussions. Digital Marketing: The Serious Channel The future of digital marketing will be built by strategists who grasp the full array of emerging business, social, and technical models. Specialties in user experience, branding, application design, and data are laying the foundation for richer user experiences and business models breakthrough products and revenue based marketing. Anil Modi, President (CCC) & Global Head, Marketing and StrategyAegis elaborated on this at the event and said, Digital marketing is not just another campaign but a serious channel that requires strategy and thinking. Speed of digital marketing allows little space for procrastination. More engagement through digital media means higher empowerment at the front end to be intelligent and meaningful in such engagements with end users. Shivam Srivastava, National Manager - Strategy & Marketing, Sify added

the broadband age, it is important for marketers to understand and leverage this medium." "Latest data shows that India is already generating the second highest Mobile Internet traffic in the world and this is destined to keep growing at a really fast clip," said Anand Jhingan, New Business Development - Business Solutions, Nokia Siemens Networks. Speaking on Role of marketing mix in digital era, Harsh Kohli, Associate Vice President & Head - Manufacturing Vertical Practice, Zensar Technologies said Marketing in digital era especially in the B2B segment has transformed to be relationship & technology driven and product innovation with lower pricing as the key to acquire customers and drive new business/services. Cost effective Marketing strategies for Startups Additional media like print are still very alive and useful in the era of social media. A startup needs to go for media which have more shelf life, rather than put all the money into big media which exhaust budgets fast, said Prashant Pradhan, Assistant General Manager, Network 18. Koncept Marketing Consultants were the sponsors for the event along with 160by2 who were the exhibitors. Grasp the full array of emerging business, social and technical models and make all marketing decisions was the takeaway!
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The author is Senior Director - worldwide wireless Software Development, Texas Instruments India

technoLogy

By Gokul V Subramaniam

Semiconductors fueling
he transformation of the mobile phone from a voice communications device to a multimedia device integrating voice, video and data has revolutionized businesses and lifestyles. The smartphone market in India continues to show steady growth, with consumers opting for a rich array of features such as Web browsing and video streaming offered by these devices. Mobile application platforms play an important role in enabling the use of Web 2.0 applications on mobile phones without compromising on the experience that users have on PCs. According to analyst firm Gartner, the number of smart phones across the world will grow from 297 million

next-generation mobile devices and user experiences

continue to help make smartphones the best choice as next-generation communication devices, for both the consumers and business enterprises. Among other technical components, semiconductor companies support mobile technologies with processors that help add many versatile applications into mobile devices. For instance, the OMAP processors from Texas Instruments (TI) enable OEMs to include future generation applications and processing power to cater to a wide range of devices that span beyond communications from computing and multi-display capabilities to always-on Web browsing and more. With higher degrees of performance at lower power levels, TIs

While the possibilities are many, the education sector presents one of the largest opportunities for semiconductor technologies to impact lives in India.
units in 2010 to 792 million units by 2013. Gartner also forecasts that smart phones will comprise 38 percent of total mobile devises available in the market by 2013 (Source: Mobile Devices, Worldwide, 2008-2015, 1Q11 Update, Gartner Research, March 2011). The growing popularity of smartphones and multimedia devices can be attributed to the versatility promised by these devices. Several enterprise smartphones and consumer multimedia feature phones have recently been launched, and mobile service companies are offering services built around them to their clients. Adding to it, the ease in usage and security features, OMAP 4 processors, for example, enable mobile device manufacturers to address applications needed for feature-rich handsets, while also providing head room and programmability to support applications that are yet to be imagined. Imagine focusing a smartphones camera on the city skyline to view an information window pop up that points to locations where a discount sale is going on. Or, imagine replacing current phone contact lists with a dynamic video feed, which can display real-time GPS information about contacts location, availability or even their latest message to social networks? Sounds futuristic, doesnt it?

In reality, these capabilities are coming to fruition today, thanks to advanced processors. Being intelligent and fast, processors today deliver content in a variety of formats, including MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC and 3D graphics delivered via the Web or locally on a device. Processors can create, store and access higher-quality, multimedia-rich data, yet still provide much longer battery life, resulting in an optimal balance of

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high mobile computing performance and low power consumption. Future ramifications of such processors are many and exciting. For instance, they can enable the use of videos for analysis and training, instead of just surveillance in the security field. On the playing field, coaches can help players analyze performance by the millisecond, leveraging highquality, smartphone video recordings at high frame rates, or by capturing high-speed images. Mobile devices are truly undergoing a revolution. Viewers can download videos on portable devices and watch them on a home theater or HDquality TV via HDMI or Dolby Surround sound. Further, they can connect a mobile devices FM radio to a home theater sound system and enjoy highquality music. Electronic gadgets can pack multiple functions, yet provide the quality and performance of a dedicated device. For example, smartphone cameras could equal still cameras in terms of image quality with many value-added features such as red eye reduction, face detect and others. In addition, processors can be used for telepathic vision simply focusing the camera on the view can elicit realtime response about the happenings at that place, acquaintances present there, and other interesting trivia related to that area. Furthermore, apart from digital photo frames where you can upload content anytime and anywhere, OMAP processors can enable digital advertising boards, which have the ability to change content as per the time of the day, focusing on schoolgoing families in the morning, families on weekends and office-goers during the rush hours. Over the last couple of years, there has been an increased buzz in India with the release of a number of smartphones and enterprise-driven communication devices. Corporate users and teenagers have enthusiastically

Analyst firm Gartner forecasts that the number of smart phones across the world will grow from 297 million units in 2010 to 792 million units by 2013.
adopted devices with more multimedia content. While the possibilities are many, the education sector presents one of the largest opportunities for semiconductor technologies to impact lives in India. The mere mention of school conjures images of heavy school bags in India and other developing countries. How wonderful it would be to do away with books and instead use low cost eReader devices. Such a device would not only contain the entire curriculum, but also convert teachers instructions into text and enable students to deliver tests and network within the classroom. Moreover, in the near future, it will not be surprising for parents to receive a video recording of their childs recitation at school to help them analyze his/her performance. As the video is being recorded, the live content could be streamed to the grandparents who could view the performance from the comfort of their home, while a high-quality shot could be extracted from the video and uploaded into the digital photo frame at home or on online photo albums. Semiconductor devices can also be leveraged in colleges and universities to conduct innovative projects. Be it building an energy meter, a low-cost custom laptop, medical applications that compose 3D images from a series of 2D images, real-time location and tracking devices or real-time weather maps for farmers with price tickers, students could build all such innovative projects inexpensively using solutions like OMAP processors. Providing students with such platforms will also address the common needs of our countries for innovation and pave the way for products built to suit our exact requirements. Another area where India can hugely benefit from semiconductor technology is travel and traffic management. With roads becoming better, a new breed of travelers is exploring the countryside on fast-moving vehicles. However, detailed maps and directions are still in short supply. Using appropriate processors and connectivity technologies, travelers can access real-time 3D maps and travel-related information regardless of location. Incar video for rear seat viewing also contains a strong potential for markets where the investment of the device is not blocked by content availability. Semiconductors can also improvise traffic management by enabling remote traffic control. A central traffic control room could supervise large areas by utilizing sophisticated cameras providing gridlock information. Traffic control personnel could utilize audio broadcasts or ad-board notifications to direct the traffic. The advanced multimedia capabilities of semiconductor devices will also be useful to the media and entertainment industry. Indias film industry could leverage the technology to achieve superior picture quality and special effects. That, combined with the benefits the technology brings to sports or rather cricket, in our context makes it a perfect fit for the India markets. Semiconductors can truly bring people closer by integrating worlds in new and interactive ways. By catalyzing changes in both the micro as well as macro levels of existence they promise to improve the quality of life. The world is watching the progress Indias technology market is making. We need to continue experimenting our technologies are bound to enable even more innovative solutions.
The Smart Techie

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technoLogy

By Anuradha Biswas

The author is CEO, Prakat Solutions

Evolving Landscape of

Software Testing

oftware testing has evolved over the last several decades. The ever increasing sophistication of applications and the underlying technologies have forced the testing community to continue to optimize. While earlier the developers took care of the testing, as the applications required more reliability, a separate test team was setup to ensure that the reliability was a key criterion across all stages of the project. With time, people realized that an independent test team can provide a different perspective and help identify more defects. Today, business scenarios demand greater flexibility and require us to be cognisant of the financial cuts while still ensuring the application quality. The customer space has also evolved with different customers

being at different stages of maturity in the Evolution cycle. Large enterprises have stabilized their development and testing processes are now focusing on optimizing their already evolved and mature practices. They are looking for holistic sustainable testing solutions which cover areas like domains, technology, processes and tools. The midsized customers have realised the need to be on par with the best of breed industry benchmarks in testing services and have taken initiatives to put in place mature testing processes by setting up Test Centres of Excellence. The smaller customers, specially the new generation that provides niche software solutions in the Mobile and Internet space, are looking for quicker and cost effective testing solutions which are in sync with their market release timelines. It

is important for a testing company today to understand the varied needs of these different customer segments and recommend the right solution after analysis of maturity levels. Several companies are moving towards server consolidation based on virtualization to optimize costs. Cloud computing is also exceedingly finding adoption in enterprises. However, this situation presents two major challenges. First, how to test applications hosted on the cloud and second, how to leverage the cloud to test effectively. For applications hosted on the cloud, the features do not change much, but the way they are deployed becomes more distributed. While the cloud helps optimize infrastructure, the flip side is that it has pitfalls like performance and security issues due

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If youre looking for out-of-thebox ideas, it helps not to box your thinking into sectors

to too many layers and options in the environment. Testers require a more holistic approach for testing such issues since the usual approach of looking at them only from a testing or domain point of view may not always work. Their learning efforts should be directed towards gaining in-depth understanding of how cloud technologies are implemented and bottlenecks possible. To be an effective tester in the cloud world, a tester needs to have a combination of excellent testing skills, the ability to use the basic tools when testing and good understanding of the underlying technology and other software products which go into enabling the application on the cloud. The emphasis should be more on understanding the infrastructure and test environment solutions, areas which was not very critical in the non-cloud world.

Let us now discuss how cloud can be leveraged to test effectively. The whole reason for cloud or virtualization becoming a hot topic is that it gives end customers a flexible pay as you go model to reduce their overall spend and also does not hoard too much infrastructure. The same benefits can be extended to testing as a service. The testing services market, both in-house and outsourced is in the range of $80-100 billion now and customers are expecting optimization in their huge testing infrastructure. At Prakat, we are focusing on leveraging the cloud effectively by building frameworks and solutions on top of existing products and tools which will make it easy for customers to use them as required and not invest in them up front. Also, the customers will not have too many skills to learn, thereby reducing re-skilling expenditure. Another business opportunity that has emerged for testers today is in the mobile applications market. The phenomenal growth of mobile devices has opened up avenues for organizations to integrate them into the mainstream-computing environment. Todays mobile applications deliver complex functionality on platforms that have limited resources for computing. Yet, unlike the PC-based environment, the mobile environment comprises a plethora of devices with diverse hardware and software configurations and communication intricacies. This diversity in mobile computing environments presents unique challenges in application development, quality assurance, and deployment, calling for unique testing strategies. Many enterprise applications which were deployed as desktop applications earlier are now being ported to mobile devices. These applications are empowering workforces across various functions, especially in sales, supply chain, field support, and on the shop floor.

Mobile applications, although they have limited computing resources, are often built to be as agile and reliable as PC-based applications. In order to meet the challenge, mobile application testing has evolved as a separate stream of testing. We at Prakat are helping organizations mitigate the risk of running production grade mobile applications on different devices, with different OS versions and on different networks. As the demand for mobile applications continues to increase exponentially, developers, content providers and value added service providers face new challenges: Does your mobile application work on the real mobile phones? Are your services accessible from all targeted markets? Is the performance of the application acceptable on all the networks its deployed on? Does the application work while the user is roaming? Testing of Mobile Applications can be very complex because of the number of environmental changes which can affect the behaviour of the application. Look at a situation where you are doing some stock market transactions on your mobile phone while having coffee at the caf across the street from your office over a 3G connection. You walk back to your office and the phone switches over to your corporate WiFi connection. You are still transacting on the application. This is just one of the many conditions where you hope and pray that your application has been well tested and that you will not incur any financial losses based on its malfunction. As mobile applications become a part of our lives we must realize that there is a need to ensure that they perform as expected. Challenges such as these which continually come up will keep the excitement in the testers job alive.
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technoLogy

By Vimali Swamy

Amit Zaveri Param Singh

Nandini Ramani

JAVA is back!
n 2009, when software giant Oracle announced its plans of acquisition of Sun Microsystems, the biggest question in everyones mind especially the developer community was Will Oracle kill Java? Oracle has forever been the quintessential software company while Sun with its huge portfolio of hardware solutions and Java has supported open source. Definitely this acquisition raised eyebrows about the clash in interests. The last few years several questions have haunted the Java developer community Will Oracle let Java be open? Will it use its control over Java to favor its own products? And, finally, which Java technologies will be killed off after the merger?
The Smart Techie

But lets face the truth. In the last five years, Java did suffer under Suns hold. The company has long struggled to keep its diverse community of developers happy, creating a burdensome bureaucracy to manage the development of Java standards and gradually releasing key components of the platform under an open-source license. While Sun has made some money from Java licenses, it has missed out on big opportunities to sell lucrative Java development tools and middleware servers. More upsetting is the fact that the last major update for Java was released in 2006. Sun remains, at its heart, a hardware company; Oracle, an enterprise software giant!

But eighteen months after it took control of Sun, Oracle has come forth and spilled the beans over Javas fate! At the Oracle Develop and Java One conference held in Hyderabad between 11 and 12 May, 2011, the enterprise giant put the various rumors to rest and assured the developer community that Java is out there for the long haul and that it has a well etched role in the companys roadmap. The companys first ever JavaOne conference in India saw a participation of more than 2000 developers. The fact that the event was held along with OracleDevelop reinstated the developer communitys faith in the new management and future of Java.

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The good news is that Java is back! After a long hiatus of over five years, the heads of the Java development group announced the major developments, release of new features and updates to the entire spectrum of Java. Being a Java veteran myself, I see a lot of positives for Java in the coming years. The first major update we will release is for JavaFx which is a competition to Adobes Flash and Microsofts Silverlight. Until now a Java developer had to learn the JavaFx separately since it was not based on core Java language. This would not be the case anymore. App development will be much easier now with Java being the primary language, availability of over 50 UI controls and charts, a pipeline of high performance graphics, high-fidelity media, ability to render HTML content within Java applications through a programming model that combines the power of Java with the ease of JavaFX and operability across different platforms like servers, desktops, mobiles and more. The public beta for this would be available by early next month, said Nandini Ramani, Vice President - Java Client Development, Oracle. With stronger integration with the JRE, one can look forward to better performance, usability and a hardware-accelerated graphics engine that will enable JavaFX applications to render stunning interactive 2D and 3D experiences in real-time. There was also an announcement of the roadmap for the OpenJDK (Java Development Kit) which accelerates the availability of Java SE with two releases in 2011 and 2012 respectively, was meant to assure Java developers of Oracles commitment to bring Java releases to a more metronomic rhythm after a few years of irregular releases in the last few years under Sun. These OpenJDK releases will continue to

serve as the basis for the Oracle Java Development Kit (JDK) 7 and JDK 8. There was also the announcement for JDK 9, details of which would be released towards the end of this year. Every major change made to JavaSE has been done with a long term perspective of minimum 20 plus years and the strategies include driving a combined investment in Java platform across a range of servers and devices, fueling further innovation on various Java platforms, and continuing to support the developer community. Another major update has gone into JavaME, its platform for mobile phones. Over 3 billion phones around the world today run on Java. The number of Java based phones shipped every year is 31 times more than the combined number of Apple and Android phones shipped. Today, there are over 45000 Java based mobile applications available for people to use. With such a strong dominance in the mobile market, we are looking bringing some updates to JavaME such as modernization of the platform, integration with Web technologies, bringing in high performance, powering VAS in Java mobile stack, easy on device access to popular app stores and more, said Param Singh, Senior Director - Java Product Development, Oracle. Several companies such as TCS demonstrated their applications such as mKRISHI and GappaGoshti built on JavaME to empower rural areas. The Java mobile roadmap for next quarter includes utilizing Javas dominance in the device space. Over 1.1 billion desktops run Java, over 8 billion Java cards are used across the globe today and 1.4 billion Java Cards manufactured each year. With its presence in SIM cards, identity cards and other devices like Java embedded TVs, Blue-Ray players, the future looks promising.

Giving a third party perspective to the new developments underlined for Java, Harshad Oak, founder of IndicThreads & Rightrix Solutions and Indias first Java Champion and an Oracle Ace director, said, Having involved with Oracle and Java before and after the acquisition, I see a promising outlook for Java in the coming years and encourage the developer community to openly embrace the changes. The advent of Android has been a booster shot for Java, so apart from feature phones; it can actively be used for building apps on smartphones as well. The revamped JavaFx too shows lots of promise especially with its promising capability to seamlessly produce HTML5 output. I would personally advice developers to focus on Java for mobile and cloud computing. But the best of the news for the developer community was brought by Amit Zaveri, Vice President, Product Management (Oracle Fusion Middleware) availability Oracle App Development Framework (ADF) for developers for free. With Rich Internet Application (RIA) being the demand for the day at user end, ADF with over 150 AJAX enabled components, declarative look and feel, built in accessibility, internalization and advanced functionality and the easy integration of RIA without having to code it and a special SADF avatar will now fuel every developers programming quotient! Apart for all this, the two day conference also saw several other speakers such as Hal Stern, CTO of Juniper Networks who delivered the opening keynote and talked about Javas ubiquitous nature when it came to smart networks and how developers can further leverage on it to solve the next level of challenges in networking. So coming back to the fate of Java, Oh yes! Java is back and that too with a bang!
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BuyeRS PeRSPeCtIVe

organizational transformation

HR today is about
T
he corporate world is undergoing a rapid transformation, thanks to technology that is today touching every aspect of a business process. At the same time the HR space is seeing a rapid transition too, and it has more to do with the changing outlook of managers than just technology making it more automated. In a candid conversation with Vimali Swamy, Duke Daehling, EVP Startegic Accounts, Kenexa and Dr. Bob Bergman, Consulting Director EMEA, Kenexa talk about the changing outlook towards HR and the new trends. Founded in 1987, Kenexa is a global provider of business solutions for human resources. channels of interviewing people, understand how they scored on certain tests or in personality measures, and all of this was paper based. But now the same task can be done easily with planning tools that are available online. With these tools you can search for the profiles of suitable candidates, simply dial up, and talk to them and decide who are best suited to take over the post.

What are the common concerns or challenges for an organization?

The common concern amongst organizations is how to attract and retain top talent. The traditional, conventional wisdom says if you put in the right structures, policies and procedures, and technology, it will yield you top talent. But our research shows that if you put in something conventional it will yield conventional results and not transformational results. If you have the same age old structure then the new generation of people entering the organization will not resonate towards it. Todays generation likes things to be volatile, they expect technology to be fast and they want to work in an organization setup which provides an environment like that. They want to learn whatever they can from an or-

How has the transformation of HR industry been in the last 10 years?

Organizations have traditionally been simpler, more stable, and comfortable, with traditional hierarchies, and traditional management structures, a structure that was formed in the 1880s and was till 10 years ago. But nowadays this structure has become less stable, somewhat volatile, and very complex and dynamic due to the easy access to information. 15 years ago if you were trying to put a succession plan for your next CEO you would have to go through all sorts of
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ganization within a year and move on to another organization. So as an organization one must have a structure that is cognizant with this demand and plays to that as an advantage.

In this era of globalization, how do you help companies manage the same level of participation and drive from all the different countries they are in?
When we transform a multinational organization, we cannot do it in pieces. There has to be a mandate through a strong sense of leadership at the top. For instance one of our partners, HSBC, just had their first global initiative. They did not have global HRAs, a global marketing plan nor did they have a global financial plan, despite 3000 employees distributed across the globe. This was a daunting task that could never have been accomplished if there was not a strong sense of commitment from the leadership team who made people accountable to make it happen. And they transformed the organization across the world. Today they have a common set of surveys, partners and reports that go out to everyone. One needs to have a strong drive make sure that everyone is part of the undergoing change and is aligned with the strategy. But this does not mean that we ignore cultural differences or local needs. That is what we do through the analysis of data and by the way we consult with those parts of the organizations. While we have the same data; when we come to India to talk we take cultural differences, we take norms that compare you to India into consideration so that we can help you understand what you need to do with the data or how you are going to hire people in the most appropriate way based upon your culture using our standardized tool. HSBCs mantra was if we can get a lot of people to change just a little, it will transform our organization. But they did not want to prohibit any specific geographies dialing down their momentum and so they kept their local global momentum in balance.
The Smart Techie

If someone wants to change the existing structure, what is the turnaround time?
Transformation cannot happen overnight, there should be realistic expectations. Currently we are working with a global professional services firm that has about a 120,000 employees and their transformation timeline is of five years. What they are trying to do is to create a high performance culture and definition of high performance culture varies from company to company, leader to leader, and we are trying to give them the same language, the same definition, and then create systems with in the existing organizational structures to achieve those goals in five years. For this we have one year markers, three year markers, and five year markers, because one has to measure all parameters at individual, team, organizational and country level.

What are the common trends that you see when it comes to India vs. Global market?
There is some data regarding gender differences which was very compelling. When we look at gender differences across the globe the data is the same now but about six years ago this was not the case. Women were about six points below men when it came to engagement. But in India there is a dramatic difference especially that has developed in the last couple of areas. The perspective of female leaders and their effectiveness are higher than men in India. It is not a mere nominal difference. There are two areas that have very statistical significance, one is in just general overall performance of fe-

Duke Daehling

male managers and the other is in keeping commitments. These two parameters are very high with female managers. It is startlingly positive.

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PeoPLe mAnAgeR

By C. Mahalingam

The author is Executive Vice President & Chief People Officer, Symphony Services. he can be reached at mahalingam.c@symphonysv.com

The Lasordas Law!

he Lasordas Law! Well that is what worlds one of the most leading thinkers, Dr Robert Sutton calls as key to being a successful manager. This is attributed to Tommy Lasorda who served as the Los Angeles baseball team as a player, and then as a coach from 1949 onwards including a two-decade long stint as its manager. According to Lasorda, good managing is like holding a dove in your hand. If you hold it too tightly, you kill the dove; but if you hold it too loosely, you lose it altogether! In effect, what Dr. Sutton conveys is that the essence of managing lies in the delicate balance that every manger seeks between managing too much and too little. Let us accept that it is not easy to get this balance even if we readily recognize this as critical. In fact, most of us managers do appreciate this balancing act, but when it comes to practicing it, there is so much of a challenge. Effective managers understand that it is best to leave the people

alone except where a decisive intervention is necessary because the junior is a rank outsider to the organization needing handholding or is handling a difficult job that requires a bit of frequent guidance. Keeping a close eye or snooping over the shoulder often has no effect on performance, but worse still such micromanaging may actually undermine performance.

much. Management literature is full of advices on delegating and coaching the teams to take responsibility. Situational leadership shot into prominence and has remained very relevant till date. Here, managers are advised to understand and assess the task-relevant maturity of the team members and determine what style of leadership would be best: directing, coaching, supporting or delegating. When a team members ability to do and motivation to do are both high, a delegating style becomes a more appropriate one. When both dimensions are low, a more directive or telling style works. And therefore, it is not one style that helps a manager be successful, but the ability to adapt a style that fits in with the maturity of the team member that does the trick in balancing. Prof Robert Simons of Harvard Business School has researched extensively on this subject and has even written a few articles and books sharing his perspectives. In his pathbreaking article titled: Control in an Age of Empowerment published by HBR (March-April, 1995), Prof Simons has the following to say: Competitive businesses with demanding and informed customers

Good managing is like holding a dove in your hand hold it too tightly, you kill the dove; but if you hold it too loosely, you lose it
It is far from being warm and fuzzy! Balancing does not imply that managers shower their people with unconditional warm fuzziness. Savvy managers travel through every day at work in search of the sweet spot between interjecting too little and too must rely on employee initiative to seek out opportunities and respond to customers needs There are enough cases of failures of management controls leading to disastrous consequences for their organizations

The Smart Techie

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 It is not even realistic to think that managers can achieve control by simply hiring good people, aligning incentives and hoping for the best Now, the above situation is nothing to new to all of us as managers. We all would like to balance freedom with control as appropriate so that we can accomplish the Lasordas effect. Prof Simons has thoughtfully provided four clear and reasonably easy to navigate control levers for achieving the balance: 1. Belief Systems: Clearly, this is a grossly underleveraged lever by many organizations and most managers. Belief systems are concise, value-laden and inspirational. Those managers who use the missions as living documents and as a system to guide acceptable employee behaviours have discovered a powerful lever to balance freedom and control. Belief systems are only a part of the answer for this balancing conundrum. Prof Simon considers this as the yang of

the Chinese philosophy the sun, the warmth, and the light. 2. Boundary Systems: This revolves around a key question: if we want our employees to be creative and entrepreneurial, are we better off telling them what to do or what not to do? The answer is latter as smart managers know. Boundaries in modern organizations are embedded in standards of ethical behavior or code of business conduct. They are an organizations brakes and every business needs them in right measure. 3. Interactive Control Systems: As organizations grow in size, managers tend to have less and less personal contact with people and yet the need to achieve the balance between managing too much and too little persists. Interactive control systems are the formal information systems that mangers use to involve themselves regularly and personally in the decisions of their team members. Prof Ram Charan has written extensively

about the need for Social Operating Mechanisms that are critical for execution. These are pretty much the interactive control systems we are talking about here. 4. Diagnostic Control Systems: This deals with the critical performance variables that managers monitor on an on-going basis. This includes the traditional business plans, budgets, performance goal-setting & reviews and cost control systems and the like. It pays managers to recognize that in the knowledge era in which we run our organizations today and manage people, there is a clear need to continue to sharpen our skills is knowing where to draw the line in control. When in doubt, control was the old school. When in doubt, free up is the new norm. Manager will do well to unleash, monitor and tighten as they go along in managing people. Clearly this is more than an art and science. Managing people is clearly a craft that comes with practice!

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TECH PRODUCTS Compiled by hari Anil

MVL MOBILES LAUNCHES ULTRA SLIM TOUCHES SCREEN PHONE
Price: ` 4,349

MVL Mobiles ultra slim touches screen phone, Sizero, now in India. This duel sim phone has a 2.8 inch full touch screen and a 2.0 megapixel camera with video recording capability. It has inbuilt memory of 384KB and this can further be expanded up to 8GB using microSD card. Its 1000 mAh Lithium-ion battery gives up to 370 minutes of talk time and up to 126 hours of standby time. Along with the phone come a leather carry pouch and a 2GB microSD card. The phone is presently available only in black color.

PEARL: A BLUETOOTH MOUSE FROM AMKETTE

Price: ` 1,050

Amkette brought its Pearl, a Bluetooth mouse, to India. The mouse uses Bluetooth technology instead of USB dongle. Once the device is synchronized to the device it is instantly paired forever. The mouse has a 1600 dpi optical engine for quick and precise movement across the screen. It has a range of 10 meters and is compatible with systems running Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems. The mouse comes with a three year manufacturer warranty, two AAA batteries, and a carry pouch.

INTEX INTRODUCES MINI HOME CINEMA IN INDIA

Price: IT-MhP-1080 ` 4,349, IT-MhP-720 ` 2875

Intex launched Mini Home Cinema. Mini Home Cinema is a high definition media player which makes it possible to connect digital storage devices such as USBs, hard drives, flash drives and memory cards (SD/ MMC) to the television sets. The device has an energy efficient low-power processor and a remote to control the user interface. Presently two variants of the device are available, IT-MHP-1080 and IT-MHP-720. IT-MHP1080 can be connected both to the TV and to the computer.

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June 2011

ZEN M300: A NEW ADDITION TO CREATIVE ZEN MP3 PLAYER SERIES

Creative introduces a new addition to their Zen series of MP3 players, Zen m300. This player has a 1.45 inch TFT display and has Bluetooth 2.1 for connectivity. The player comes in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB models, and can be expanded up to 32GB using microSD card. The device supports audio formats including MP3, WMA, and WAV, and transcoded SMV video format. The device has an integrated microphone for voice recording and is capable of about 20 hours of MP3 playing on full battery charge.

GLO MX388: NEW GAMING PHONE FROM MAXX MOBILES

Price: ` 2,361

Maxx Mobiles launched their new gaming phone, GLO MX388. The phone feature 250 preloaded games and dedicated gaming buttons. Some of the games preloaded include Super Mario, Pacman, Race, Trojan, and Battle City. This duel sim phone also has a 1.3 megapixel camera. The phones internal memory can be expanded up to 8GB using memory card, and it comes with a free 2GB memory card. It also comes with three different color body shells. GLO MX388s other features includes MP3/MP4 player, FM Radio, and Bluetooth.

HTC WILDFIRE S SMARTPHONE NOW IN INDIA

Price: ` 14,700

HTC Wildfire S has arrived in India. This Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread powered phone has a 600 MHz processor and a 512 MB RAM. This 3G phone has a 3.2-inch touch screen with 320 x 480 resolution and a 5 megapixel camera with auto focus and flash. For connectivity the phone has Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi, and EDGE. The phone also features G-Sensor, digital compass, proximity sensor, and ambient light sensor. The phone supports audio formats including aac, .amr, .ogg, .m4a, .mid, .mp3, .wav and .wma, and video formats including 3gp, .3g2, .mp4, and .wmv. The phone has a 1230 mAh rechargeable lithium-ion battery.

The Smart Techie

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By Nushin Naz

Embedded chip of Knowledge

SiliconIndia Global Embedded Conference India May 21, 2011, Bangalore

angalore: SiliconIndia held the Global Embedded Conference India 2011 on 21st of May in Bangalore, a valuable and one of its kind conference which focused on the embedded systems that are deployed in commercial industry, military, automotive, avionics and defense space, industrial control, consumer electronics and telecom sectors. The opening keynote on ModelBased Agility for Embedded Systems Development, was given by Bruce Powel Douglass, Chief Evangelist for IBM Rational. Author of books like Real time Agility ,Real time UML. He describes Agile as a collaborative, incremental, and iterative approach to software development that can produce high-quality software in a cost effective and timely manner. Bruce demonstrated how UML Rational Harmony for Embedded Real Time Development eases the transition and improves communication between systems engineering teams and software development teams. After a fitting keynote, Ravi Boonapalli, Pre-Sales & Technical Marketing from Mentor Graphics gave a detailed description on Creating killer User Interfaces for Android with Inflexion. He said GUI has become a key differentiator in todays embedded markets. With users becoming ever more demanding in their expectations, the GUI needs to be compelling and offer outstanding performance and responsiveness. In this session the audience learnt about Inflexion UI engine and Inflexion UI Express tool that enables rapid creation and customization of visually rich, highly usable GUIs. The conference was later divided into five tracks. Consumer, Industrial, Automotive, Telecom, Avionics and defense track.
The Smart Techie

In the consumer track, Raman Venkatachar, General Manager Heading operations, SlingMedia spoke on Developing cutting-edge embedded applications where he said, The market space for cutting edge embedded applications has significantly increased in the past few years with consumers aspiring cool products, which gives excellent opportunity to all sizes of companies to develop these cool apps Moving on to the Industrial perspective, Balachandran Ganesan from CMC expressed his views on Challenges in developing Smart Meters where he said that the meters are simply not metrology measurement devices, they are becoming data points with advanced features support. Smart meter development face the challenge of mixed development approach like value engineering, re-engineering and NPI with significant convergence of technologies. At the automotive track the audience were gripped by the talk delivered on Emerging Trends in Automotive ActiveSafety Applications by Dr.Purnendu Sinha, Lab Group Manager of Electrical and Software Architecture Group, General Motors Technical Centre India. According to Dr.Sinha "Trend is a shift from warning-only systems (e.g., lane departure warning systems) to systems that actively control throttle and braking (longitudinal motion) and steering (lateral motion), leading to semi-autonomous and eventually fully autonomous vehicle operation. Vishal Suresh, Assistant Director Business development & Strategic partnerships from NXP Technologies clearly described about Driving Growth & In-

Bruce Powel Douglass

novation in Automotive Electronics. He said that Energy efficiency, connected devices, Safety and Security will be the key macro growth drivers in the automotive electronics industry. NXP is leveraging these macro growth drivers to develop innovative Concepts and products. In the Telecom track, Ramesh Kankanala, Principal Applications Engineer, Microchip Technology prodded on the biggest challenges faced by telecom engineers, while delivering a talk on Optimization of Power Converters Efficiency Using Digital Technology and said Telecom engineers are addressing these issues by choosing Digital Signal Controllers (DSCs) in the power converters design. DSCs will support non linear control techniques to improve the power converters efficiency said he. At the Avionics and Defense track, S.Umamaheswaran, Senior Research Staff from the Central Research Laboratory at Bharath Electronics Limited(BEL), spoke on Software and Hardware co-design for Defense embedded systems where he clearly mentioned that the Complexity of Defense embedded systems are gradually increasing.The conference saw packed halls and excited audience sit through the sessions interacting, discussing, solving and resolving many issues concerning embedded systems. MentorGraphics were the sponsors for the Global Embedded Conference India.The exhibitors for the day were NXP, ftd Infocom, Manipal University, Duragon, Uchi Embedded Solutions, ESDS and Mapusoft.

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Regn. No. KRNA/BGE-1046/08-10

RNI REG.NO. KARENG/2006/16955