Prakash Advani's Blog

The public cloud services market in the country is projected to grow 30.4 per cent to reach USD 1.26 billion this year as organisations are pursuing a digital business strategy, Gartner said today. According to the research firm, public cloud services market, which stood at USD 968.1 million in 2015, will reach USD 3.52 billion by 2020.

Read More: http://www.financialexpress.com/article/industry/tech/public-cloud-services-in-india-to-reach-1-26-billion-this-year-gartner/249120/

With 10 firms, India claims the second-highest number of companies for the fifth year in a row on Forbes Asia Fabulous 50 list again dominated by China with 25 companies.

The Fab 50’s brightest star over the decade, India’s HDFC Bank, did not debut until 2006. However, it has now made the list nine times, more than any other company, noted the US business magazine.

Read More: http://www.firstpost.com/business/hdfc-lenovo-ten-indian-firms-among-forbes-asia-fabulous-50-2358866.html

E-commerce was supposed to simplify things, but in reality it is getting more complicated.

While purchasing online is getting easy, however making payments is painful.

First these sites give you a dozen option to make payments, for example they will say if you pay using a third-party wallet you would get 2% off, but if you use another wallet you would get 5% off and a third wallet will give you 7%!!

Now you have to first go and register in these wallets, if the wallet was popular, why would they offer discounts? They are offering the discounts to capture customers, hence you have to register with them first. With leading banks such as ICICI and HDFC jumping onto the wallet business, I think this will get more complicated.

You end up spending time registering with different wallets. After registering, they will still ask you for your credit card credentials.

In case you are already registered, they ask for you for login password at-least.

If that’s not enough, the credit card company will again ask for you a password to compete the transaction!

I am tired now of e-commerce, so I just choose cash on delivery 🙂 but that’s not available every-time.

The Indian smartphone market grew 82% from a year ago and 27% over the preceding quarter, making it the second consecutive quarter of more than 80% year-on-year shipment growth for smartphones.

There were 23.3 million smartphone handsets shipped in the reporting quarter, comprising 32.1% of the overall mobile phone market that touched 72.5 million units in the September quarter of 2014, recording a 9% growth from a year ago and 15% rise from the preceding quarter.

Read more at: http://www.livemint.com/Consumer/jssXBoP3nMkZOOGbXOCdeL/India-fastest-growing-smartphone-mkt-in-Asia-Pacific-IDC.html

Top cities with Tech Skills are: Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai.

These 4 Indian cities are ahead of San Francisco Bay Area.

Read the complete report: http://blog.linkedin.com/2014/06/24/indias-got-tech-talent-cities-in-india-top-list-of-cities-attracting-technology-talent/

According to a new Gartner report, around $3.9 billion will be spent on cloud services in India from 2013 through 2017, of which $1.7 billion will be spent on software-as-a-service (SaaS). The overall public cloud services market in India is also set to grow 33.6% this year to touch $404 million, an increase of $101 million from the 2012 revenue of $303 million, said the research firm.

Read More: http://www.cxotoday.com/story/india-to-spend-39-billion-on-cloud-services-by-2017/

• US Number 1 Country, India Number 2!
• Ubuntu No 1 OS.
• KVM Number 1 Hypervisor.

Nearly 9 of every 10 (89 percent) respondents in India believe that Cloud Computing, or ‘as-a-service’ approach, is relevant to their organization. Nearly 8 of every 10 (79 percent) respondents in India say they currently have a cloud-related initiative in place within the organization, or are planning to implement cloud, or ‘as-a-service’ approach, in the next 12 months, according to 4th annual VMware Cloud Index, a study that was conducted by Forrester Research across 12 Asia Pacific countries. –

See more at: http://www.computerworld.in/news/indian-businesses-seem-to-be-in-love-with-cloud#sthash.1Ly7KKUy.dpuf

India ranked second in becoming the leading innovation centre for the world, third in the list of the most promising countries for disruptive breakthrough and fourth-most friendliest technology innovation country.

Read More: http://www.livemint.com/Industry/r6N1pw1LVz1D8fYDUcWBDL/India-among-top-3-in-KPMG-technology-innovation-survey.html

According to research firm Zinnov, currently 30 percent of the top 1,000 R&D spenders across verticals have a presence in India. As per the report titled “Global R&D Benchmarking Study: FY2011” released, there is a total installed talent pool of 2,20,000 in MNC subsidiaries in India and these MNCs have spent USD 7-7.5 billion on the headcount in India in FY11 alone. The study also found that the opportunity areas for India to attract R&D investment span over 13 sectors with software being the most invested in sector.

Read More.

Forbes has this interesting article on why USA is second after India for Innovation.

USA is a clear second to India and that the USA’s innovation interests tended to veer towards incremental change and efficiencies (Six Sigma) rather than the more open, greenfield area of creativity and ideation.

Read more.

AirJaldi is an organisation which has pioneered the art of creating mesh WiFi networks. They have managed to reach Internet to the hills in Dharamshala, where connectivity is a challenge.

Here is a full writeup about them. Some interesting quotes 🙂

The open-source community has also dabbled extensively in it, creating a suite of free software. Most of AirJaldi’s work, Ginguld says, was made possible by “standing on the shoulders of these open-source giants”.

“I hope we’ll be remembered for adding some beauty to this place, not as someone who bought the silicon valleys of Pamela Anderson to innocent Dharamshala,” Ginguld says. For him, the Internet is a basic freedom—as important as security, water or electricity.

In the recent past many of the Indian insurance companies have launched websites that offer term insurance at very lost costs.

They are able to offer low costs, as they have bypassed the insurance agents as you purchase them online. What they don’t realise that the agents do all the running around for the customer which now the customer has to do on his/her own.

Customers don’t mind doing it, if they are saving lots of money. But the biggest challenge that they will face is, that these web sites are very poorly designed. And to make things more difficult, they are only designed for Internet Explorer or Flash. Well the insurance companies should know by now: Internet Explorer is not the only browser around and definitely the most secure browser around.

People have moved on to either Firefox or now Google Crome/Cromium. Also people are increasing using devices which don’t even run Windows so they don’t have internet explorer around. If you are using Linux, Mac, sorry no insurance policy for you? What about people coming from phones such as Android, iPhones, they too can’t buy the insurance.

Here are the problems that I found with some of these popular online insurance websites. Some were serious compatibility issues with Firefox and Crome browsers, while others had poor usability. The biggest pain point was the option to purchase insurance online was hidden somewhere deep inside in some of these websites, so it took time to first find the option.

• ICICI Pru Life: They have one of the better websites, easy to use. Its flash driven, works on Internet explorer only. The first page loads perfectly and then it goes to the second page to ask to fill up all your personal details. If you are using Firefox or Crome, you only discover this, after you fill up the entire form, you hit on the submit button and nothing happens. And yes, if you want to cancel your application, you can’t do it online, you have to visit the branch, fill up a form and then you get your money back.
• Kotak Life Insurance: This is a tad better, if you use Firefox, you can’t buy any insurance. It tells you:This site can only be viewed in Internet Explorer 6.0 and above sorry! go away 🙂
• Metlife: You cannot get past the first page. The drop down for Duration of the term of the insurance doesn’t work on Firefox. I also installed Firefox4.0 Beta and it still didn’t work.
• Aegon-Religare: I was able to get past the first screen. The first screen asks you to put in your expenses and works out your insurance for you, didn’t find a way for you to change your insurance and it re-calculate your premium.
• HDFC Standard Life: Had no option to first calculate your premiums. You are first expected to input all your personal details include 3 phone numbers before you can get past the first screen. I finally added all the details. After inputing everything, it didn’t go further as the check box for “I accept terms and conditions” did not work. I tried even with Firefox 4.0, but no luck.

None of these websites were standards compliant, what these companies don’t know that the internet was built on open standards and by breaking standards, they are loosing customers. What I last heard was even, being much cheaper, the percentage of people buying online insurance was very small. No wonder.. God bless these insurance company, they need serious help!

Consumer companies have successfully launched micro products to reach out to Indian customers by having Shampoo sachets. The advantage of this that people who cannot or do not want to invest in the whole bottle , can buy a small sachet for 1% of the cost of a bottle.

The end result is more volume of Shampoo is being sold through the sachets rather than bottles and this is hugely successful in the rural India.

Now Insurance company Allianz has taken the same route to launch Micro Insurance.

This today has 3.8 Million customers: Most sold in India and balance 600,000 sold Outside of India.

Alliance earned 30 Million Euros in Premiums. Here is the maths.

If unclaimed, the entire deposit with interest after 5 years. Here is the full story.

Similarly Indian companies have launched $40 cellphones in India with 30 days battery life (stand by). They have taken away 14 percent market share. Nokia the incumbent player in India which had 64 percent market share has dropped to 52 percent market-share.

As per a recently published article, India in Number two globally right after US for using Internet via mobile phone.

Number 1 mobile device globally for accessing internet is the iPhone followed by the iTouch, Number 3 is the android based Motorola Droid, Number 4 is HTC Dream (also runs Android).

In India people are not spending $700 mobile device to access the internet, instead they are using humble Nokia phones to do so.

Indians take considerable pain to view the Internet on their phones, as evidenced by the devices they used. Unlike almost every other country where the highest number of usage came from a smartphone, in India, the top two devices were mid-range Nokia phones — the Express Music 5130 and the 3110c, both of which cost between Rs 3,500 and Rs 5,500. ($70-110)

The numbers also revealed that the iPhone was losing Internet share to the Android in a big way in its home market, the US. The share of iPhone’s internet traffic dropped from 55% in November to 44% in February. During the period, the share of Android phones rose from 27% to 42%.

Read the complete article.

LORD MACAULAY’S ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT, 2 FEBRUARY, 1835

I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.

This not only tells you what India was in 1835 but how British managed to rule over India.

Some time back, I read an article in the Hindustan time about a person spending Rs. 45,000 flowers on 14 foot bouquet for Valentines Day and the article title “In times of meltdown, a Rs 45,000 bouquet” sounded like it was criminal to spend so much money in Economic Downturn.

First I would like to remind you that Love is blind. Love knows no boundaries, love doesn’t care about cost and if a person is truly in love he can spend all his fortune not just Rs. 45,000. As the saying goes love can make the world go around. We have forgotten to love, all we care is the cost. If everyone was in love in the world, there was no conflicts, wars and terrorism.

The second thing is the media is over using the word Economic
Downturn. India’s GDP will grow at 7% this year  instead of 9% last year. Does the word grow mean something? It says grow !! Not Downturn. So India is not affected by the downturn for the following reasons:

1. India’s GDP dependency on exports is not as high as China. For example India’s exports are actually less than the imports.
2. Indians haven’t lost as many jobs, most indians are still very much employed. Chinese lost 20 million jobs!
3. You keep hearing the pilots have been asked to take a salary cut, I don’t think that’s a bad thing, its good for the airlines. The airlines have been facing heavy losses, if they can trim some costs (pilots earn 4.5 lakhs a month!), then they can be profitable and most importantly these people will continue to be employed. Its better to have a job with a salary cut then to have no job at all.
4. Hey guess what the last time I went to Delhi and most of the star hotels were sold out!
   So what economic downturn?
5. And most importantly we are a nation of savings, we save for the rainy day, unlike the west, which is a credit economy, so there is nothing to worry, trust me!

Economics depends on Consumption, and people will continue to use their phones, buy grocery, travel for work. Yes what has changed is that people planning on bigger expenses like buying a car are delaying the purchases. Not that they don’t have the money but because of the fear of the unknown. And thanks to the media hype that has been created and they saying “Economic Downturn”, people are not spending on big expenses.

If the media screams, “Economic Downturn doesn’t affect India”, you would be surprised that people will start feeling normal as if nothing has changed. Which is what is happening currently, as the stock market is going up, people are feeling happy. So the downturn is more of a perception than a reality.

The currently global economy seems to be getting better for Open Source. After enterprises adopting Open Source now software outsourcing Major says:

“We won’t have as much work for all our employees right now, so we’re encouraging them to contribute to projects on open source and do more innovative work,”

Nandan Nilekan, Co-Founder, Co-Chairman and CEO Infosys.

This is a great way to polish their employees programming skills at the same time keep them busy.

Read More.

While we are still struggling with a few Kbps speeds, which we call Broadband in India. Korea is already rolling out 1Gbps broadband by investing US$24 Billion.

Most of the internet plans available in India, have a download limits of 1GB and speeds are 256/512Mbps.This defeats the whole purpose of having high speed internet when the moment you start using it, you end up paying for every MB of download.

Airtel which is offering the highest speeds for home use of 8Mbps, has  a cap of 4GB, which you can easily use up in about an hour! And BTW Airtel service is available in only select cities and locations, so you are out of luck.

What India needs:

• Active peering between ISPs, most local ISPs don’t connect to each other, so traffic has to go around the world to reach them.
• Fireup the unused fiber.  Only 3% of fiber optic cables are actually being used, the rest are sitting idle. Create a law to force people to put this to use within a time frame, else this fiber becomes public property.
• Currently its more expensive to host sites in India, than in the US, because of which most Indian companies have web sites situated in the US. First reduce the cost of hosting in India and second give tax incentive for businesses to host web sites in India.
• Also ISP shouldn’t charge for downloads, if the downloads are from an Indian server. This will encourage people to download from a local server.
• Setup  local mirrors of popular software such as Linux flavours.

“There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.”

-  Indira Gandhi