My blog address has changed!

Hi ,

I have moved out to a new blog address ( http://headstart.conevrgei.com) . I would like to thank every one who had been encouraging my blog posts. So i welcome you all to headstart.convergei.com with your criticisms and suggestions.

Click here to go to my blog!

Sanjay Bhargava launches mobile payment startup – EKO

Sanjay Bhargava, who was the former VP(payments) of paypal ( employ #10) has launched a mobile payment startup – EKO which is currently in stealth mode. After going through the EKO website, i feel like  Eko is a mobile payment solution.

But would differentiate it from the market would be it’s B2B model. So i guess rather than trying to compete with say a paymate or an NGPAY or an Obopay it will help service providers launch their own mobile payment solution under their brand name ( Read SBI Pay – powered by Eko) . Anyway i had always believed that there is enough market in India for a b2b service because it can bet on existing customer base and brand value of the service provider ( say an Idea or an SBI). Further the payment company can fully concentrate on the product development and improving the product while the marketing & promotion will be done by the service provider.

Also from a customer’s perspective , using a mobile payment service for a service provider (say an SBI or an IDEA Cellular) adds crediblity when compared with a mobile payment company like NGPAY or PAYMATE ( For example if a customer recieves an SMS from the customer care of his mobile service provider like ” Dear customer, now you can pay your utility bills and pay at resturants using your Airtel phone. to regsiter log on to Airtel.com” , the customers are more likely to use the service.

One critical factor for mobile payment solution providers is the platform they choose to operate their service ..USSD, SMS , GPRS or Voice. While USSD can be the most preferred option from a customers point of view as it works on any mobile phone with out the difficulty of typing keywords for an SMS service which is one reason why many of the SMS based application was a failure in market. ( Well at the time when my startup was running the SMS service for a leading TV network, our biggest problem was the keyword typing errors most of the users were doing..). When it comes to GPRS, it would works well if you are targeting the premium end of your subscriber base, becuase i think it would take atleast 2-3 years for GPRS to catch up in India due to bandwidth constraints of many networks.

Also i believe service providers rather than concentrating on services like restaurant bills and online shopping should cater to the basic needs of the average cell phone user like providing a facility to pay electricity bills, water bills and other utility bills ( remember bill desk and bill junction are really doing well on the utility bill sector and now they have started talking about mobile..though bill junction all ready has a mobile payment option), then railway ticket booking etc ( remember ITZ cash which is really doing well on this space).
Once again i wish Sanjay good luck on his way to creating an elephant that will cater to over more than a million customers with an ARPU of Rs 400/year as he always wanted to be!

Top 10 reasons why you should be an Entrepreneur

Well am just pasting an interesting blog article about entrepreneurship.

Top 10 reasons according to me why you should be an entrepreneur:

1. The number one reason is also the reason why most of us are afraid to be an entrepreneur. To experience the uncertain journey on Entrepreneurship. You have one short life, and if you do not give a shot at it, you are missing out on a great experience. The journey of becoming an entrepreneur will itself teach you so much it is worth it only for that one reason. The zing, the high, the thrill – experience it and you will know what I am talking about.
2. To bring out the inner strength within yourself, that is rooted deep inside somewhere. That reserve of strength will bring out a new and confident you.
3. To make yourself proud by walking on a path that is less traveled. To stand out of majority of people and creating an unforgettable identity for yourself based on what you have done.
4. To show people around you that you are a man of strength and confidence. People will look upon you as a source of strength. They will seek your advice during their hardships.
5. To value your own skills and strengths, instead of giving off cheaply by working for someone else.
6. To be an inspiration and example for others.
7. To be creative. Yes, when you walk on the entrepreneurship path, the creative side of yours will surface in most unexpected ways.
8. To make a difference in lives of others. When you are an entrepreneur you will have the power of making a difference in the life of your employees, friends and customers.
9. To be happy. To love life and to love self.
10. And finally, to create wealth. Yes, this is important, but it is the last reason. All the above 9 reasons will give you much more satisfaction than this 10th reason.

New Entrants in the mobile payment space!

The Indian mobile payment industry is getting heated up with the entry of new players like Reliance ( With it’s proposed wireless money transfer service), Vodafone (mobile money transfer service), VISA and Sify(which is reportedly working on a mobile payment solution).Anyway circa 2008, you will see more and more Indians transacting over their mobile phones!

15% of Redherring 200 list are Indian Startups!

While India is getting ready to celebrate it’s 60th Independence Day, there is few more reasons for each and every Indians to cheer. Out of the 200 finalits of the redherring 200 list 28 of them are Indian startups.

The Top 100 award winners will be announced at the ceremony which will be held on the 29th and 30th of this month HongKong. Some of the leading startups in the list include iXiGO, Paymate & Onyomo.

The following is the list of shortlisted companies in the RedHerring 200 list.

• Adiance Technologies Pvt Ltd www.adiance.com
• Automotive Exchange Private Limited www.CarWale.com
• CashTech Solutions India Ltd www.cash-tech.com
• Cat Computer Services Pvt Ltd www.quickheal.com
• Cross-Tab Marketing Services Pvt Ltd www.cross-tab.com
• FXLabs Studios Pvt Ltd www.fxlabs.com
• Gameshastra Solutions P Ltd www.gameshastra.com
• GlobalLogic India Pvt Ltd www.globallogic.com
• Intrasoft Technologies Ltd www.infrasofttech.com
• iXiGO.com www.ixigo.com
• iYogi Technical Services Pvt Ltd www.iyogi.net
• MeritTrac Services Private Limited www.merittrac.com
• Mindlogicx Infotech Ltd www.mindlogicx.com
• Mistral Software Pvt Ltd www.mistralsoftware.com
• nautanki.tv online india Pvt Ltd www.nautanki.tv
• NetAlter Software Limited www.netalter.com
• OnMobile Asia Pacific Pvt Ltd www.onmobile.com
• PayMate India Pvt. Ltd. www.paymate.co.in
• Proteans Software www.proteans.com
• RealAcres.com www.RealAcres.com
• Rudra Technologies Pte Ltd www.rudratec.com
• Regalix www.regalix.com
• Saora www.saora.com
• SM Onyomo Infotech Pvt Ltd www.onyomo.com
• Telibrahma Convergent Communications Pvt Ltd www.telibrahma.com
• Vembu www.vembu.com
• WeP Peripherals Ltd www.wepindia.com
• Worldviewer Dot Com India Private Ltd www.kerala.com

Band of Angels is now “Indian Angel Network”

In a move to expand nation wide Delhi-based Band of Angels is renaming itself as Indian Angel Network. It has got a new website too – IndianAngelNetwork.com. Their next target is Mumbai, and will spread to other cities too, truly making it a national angel network.
he network currently has some 60 members like Jerry Rao, Saurabh Srivastava, Pramod Bhasin, Raman Roy, Rajiv Luthra, Pradeep Gupta, Alok Mittal, Ranjit Shastri and so on. It also has institutional members like IBM, SIDBI, Naukri, Greylock Partners, and Google.
The network so far has invested in over seven companies.

Sequioa has 1 billion each for India& China! Anyone?

According to Mike Moritz Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India ,the leading VC firm has a commitment of 1 billion dollars each for India and China. While some of the industry watchers are calling the latest wave of web2.0 around the world as bubble 2.0, this is a good news for startups who have some real content within them.

Interview Transcript | Video

Is ur Online friend real ?

Well i have this interesting article on Cyber stalking from the Hindu Metro plus ! 

I had a stalker — if that conjures up a vision of a creepy man in a ski cap peering through windows, here’s some news for you. He wasn’t even in the same city. Or even continent. And he had never seen me in his life. Yet, for about six months, I got phone calls that began at midnight and continued till 3 a.m. on both my landline and cell phone. My inbox was flooded. And my MSN messenger beeped constantly. Yet, there’s nothing particularly shocking about the episode, simply because it’s not an exceptionally unique story. Over the past few years, as people across the world begin to live their lives on the World Wide Web, online stalking has become part of life. Fortunately, most of the people you meet are geeky boys who “want to make friendships.” But among them, there are some seriously dangerous people. Vulnerable users And unfortunately, Internet users seem to forget how vulnerable they are. When the net first became popular, the numerous horror stories about the creeps and criminals online were sufficient to ensure people were wary about the information they posted. However, today, when you use the computer for almost everything, whether it’s booking buttered popcorn at the theatre or asking for advice on how to clip your Labrador’s nails, it’s only natural you get lulled into feeling secure. Getting information on others has never been so easy. There are about 200 popular social networking sites such as Orkut, Friendster, Hi5 and Facebook on which members post photographs, personal details and messages. With an increasing number of people signing up on these sites, you can never be sure of who has gone through your details, album or messages. And there is a lot of browsing done. A reasonably active profile gets about 50 hits a day. That, in real life terms, is 50 people (many complete strangers) checking you out everyday. Of course, sites like Orkut have their good points, which is why they have so many members. You can use them to find old college buddies and classmates and make new friends. Unfortunately, you’re also likely to stumble across very strange people: If you’re a woman, you’ll constantly get friend requests from men, sometimes accompanied by obscene pictures or emails. It can be annoying, and occasionally frightening. Mahua (name changed), for instance, became friendly with a stranger on Orkut because they seemed to have a lot in common. “But he gradually became obsessive, calling incessantly. There were times when I was scared but I gradually became more exasperated by the behaviour,” she says. Stating that a typical Orkut stalker is someone with “obscene amounts of time on his hands and who, because of low self esteem, takes advantage of anonymity on the net,” Mahua says that most online stalkers “are voyeurs who spend a lot of time going through profiles to try and get an idea of someone’s life.” A lot of them have multiple identities or remain anonymous. For stalkers who need some handholding, there are even online communities offering guidance and succour. Orkut, for instance, has an `Orkut Stalkers’ club with 664 members, and even a `Creepy Stalkers Unite’ community which announces “Like stalking people? Helplessly give in to your `random’ obsessions?” Discussion includes tips on “how to stalk your victim using her cellphone.” Lack of control Site moderators have little control since any user can start a community, and users multiply faster than gremlins at a swimming meet. Orkut, which began in 2004 had 30,089,043 members by October 18, 2006, according to Wikipedia. And about 20,000 people add themselves to Facebook everyday. As a result, these sites end up uniting as many criminals as they do friends. In the recent past, there has been concern about the social problems they cause: enabling child pornography, hate mongering, racism and online crimes. With dozens of new groups springing up everyday — ranging from `I love potato chips’ to `Hack the Universe’ — moderators find it difficult to weed out the bad guys. So anytime you log on, it’s possible to get anything from a `credit card hacking tutorial’ to tips on how to hack into someone’s e-mail account. However, Sonu Shankar, a U.S.-based fearless user of social networking, says as long as you’re careful, the good outweighs the bad. “People spend a large amount of time on networking sites here in the U.S.,” he says, adding that “a lot of positive networking takes place… to, say, find new members for your rock band, people who write code if you’re having problems in software development, people who’re into Italian food or people who’d help you out if your cell phone goes on the fritz.” And he doesn’t worry how much information he makes available. “Some talk about not uploading pictures owing to the threat of people modifying them and publishing them elsewhere as pornographic images. In my perspective, people ought not to care so much about it in today’s Internet age. If we were to live with such ridiculous fear, we might as well do nothing on the Internet and get back to standing in queues to pay utilities bills and buy stamps to write `Hey. I’m good. Do write back. Me.’” Staying safe Don’t ever give strangers your phone number or address. Otherwise, one night you’re likely to open your door to find an axe-murderer armed with your helpful directions on a printout. He says he looks like Brad Pitt, has a yacht and vacations in the Alps? For heaven’s sake, get a grip on reality! He’s probably some 12-year-old with braces and a wild imagination. So you’ve found the love of your life on the Internet? If you must meet him/her face to face, arrange to do so in a public place where you can yell for help if things don’t go as planned.

Slideshare – The Youtube of powerpoint!

The other day I called up an old friend of mine Vishnu to inform him about my the change in mobile number. Vishnu was the technology lead of TNGicube for a long term and was instrumental in developing Tina- India’s first Virtual girlfriend service using Artificial Intelligence which was conceptualised by me. Later Vishnu left TNgicube to launch his own startup, Torque – whch is today one of the leading startups in Thiruvanathapuram. Currently Vishnu is working in a startup Uzanto based in delhi whose Indian operations is headed by webyantra fame Amit Rajan. 

While exchanging the latest developments hapning around our companies, Vishnu was really excited about the launch of Slideshare.net which is a online  presentation sharing   service and had sent me an invite for the same.

Well before going into the details of the service, the first the thing which attracted me was the neat and cool web2.0 design layout of slideshare.net and here’s no exaggeration, its the best design I had seen in any web2.0 sites.

Now what is slideshare? It’s a cool slidesharing service on the we that allows you to upload your presenation slides and share it friends or put it on your blog like a youtube or a flickr doing it for videos or photos Without having to send huge presentations as email attachments. So what are you waiting for, log on to http://www.slideshare.net (well you have to register for an Invite), upload your slides and start sharing it with your collegues, friends, customers or partners.

 Well there is also some interestng facts regarding the slideshare server cluster, which has been revealed by Amit Rajan on his blog.  The servers are all named after bollywood actresses.  At the bottom of the screen on each SlideShare page, you can see the name of the web server that is responding to your request.

Ash is a Pentium 4 machine with 2 Gigs of RAM, and is used as a web server. She won Miss World in 1994, and is often referred to as the “Queen of Bollywood”.

Celina is a Celeron machine with 2 Gigs of RAM that also is our second web server. She was born in Kabul but raised in Calcutta, and was crowned Miss India in 2001.

Bipasha is another Celeron with 2 Gigs of RAM, responsible for all file conversions and processing. She is considered one of Bollywood’s most controvertial actresses.

Dia is a Xeon with 4 Gigs of RAM and RAID 1. She runs the database, and most recently starred in the Indian adaptation of the film “Fight Club”.

The only disadvantage I find in the site is that there is no private  sharing facility available, which means you can’t make your slides private but as per the FAQ it seems the uzanto team is working on it, Anyway guys do check out the site and please let Amit ( http://www.amitranjan.com) know your feedback.

Ifuturz Finserv launches NXTpay mobile payment gateway

                           

IFUTURZ Finserv , the financial services subsidiary of TNGicube has launched NXTpay mobile payment service. With Nxtpay – India’s first integrated 360 degree mobile payment solution, your mobile turns out cash whenever you want and all of it happens. . So forget all those endless waits at the ATM queue and your worries for no ATMs near your favorite shop, or your particular bank ATM. All you need is your favorite mobile, we don’t care about the provider or the make, and you can make payments at restaurants, retail stores, pay your mobile bills, buy recharge cards, pay utility bills, transfer cash to your friends or bank accounts. So now your mobile not only gets calls, messages, takes snaps but with Nxtpay, brings in cash. And perfectly and completely safe with no scope for fraud. 

Ifuturz will provide the service using the cross operator shortcode 66777, which has connectivity with all GSM and CDMA mobile operators in India for SMS payments. The service is secure, simple and convenient to use and will use a 4 digit PIN for security. Each transaction will generate a unique 16 digit transaction key that is required for completing the transaction. For GPRS users, all you have to do is download a special software for accessing the service. 

Nxtpay service can be used either by linking it with a bank account or via prepaid cash cards, easily available across retail outlets throughout Kerala. To make this service easily available, Nxtpay has already partnered with leading retail outlets in Thiruvananthapuram like Ambrosia and De-options for the pilot launch of the service. 

 TNGiCube, already manages the wireless data service of Asianet satellite communications through it’s subsidiary Ifuturz Wireless. According to Anish Achuthan, Cofounder and CEO of Ifuturz Finserv,” our biggest advantage is our partnership with Asianet satellite communications”, which means direct access to more than half a million cable and broadband subscribers of Asianet building up customers.

The service has been conceptualized and developed keeping the customers in mind and this has resulted in a lot of innovations aimed at simplifying the end user experience with out compromising on security Says Rajni Nair, Product manager for Nxtpay.According to Raveen VR, the Technology head of Nxtpay, the 16 digit transaction is most secure feature of the service, which can only be authorised by a merchant and a user which means for anybody else, this is just a set of numbers.  Global revenues from mobile transactions or m-commerce stood at $22 million in 2005, to which Asia contributed more than 40 per cent. Mobile payments is a very young market and there is a huge opportunity here. The situation is ripe for the m-phenomenon. India currently has 100 million mobile subscribers, 45 million credit or debit card holders and over 38 million internet users. 

Incubated by Asianet Satellite Communications, Ifuturz wireless manages the wireless services of Asianet using the shortcode 66777. The company also launched Hi, India’s first 24/7 interactive SMS video voting channel. Ifuturz also provides VAS services to leading mobile operators like Idea Cellular. Ifuturz Finserv,which is self-funded and privately held, is currently in talks with two leading VC firms for raising 5 million dollar funding, to fuel it’s pan India expansion plans. 

For more details about NXTpay contact Anish Achuthan at +91-9947366777 or mail to achuthan.anish[at]gmail.com.