The Ultimate Renaissance

Hi

2006-12-15T02:37:00.000+05:30

Get Me Through Video - Ozzy Osbourne lyrics

The Web 2.0 Summit

2006-11-16T03:55:00.001+05:30

Web 2.0 was one of the most interesting events I've ever been to, and I've been to a lot of them over the past 20 years. John Battelle and Tim O'Reilly know how to put on a show, and what a show it was! Part of my wide-eyed amazement was clearly due to the fact that I am new to the technology/entrepreneurial world, having only really been a part of it for the past 18 months. But beyond that, I got a flavor for what has made certain companies and managers very successful, as well as gaining a window into some of the trends that will unfold across the technology landscape over the next 12 months and beyond. Certain themes continued to pop up that have broad relevance for management approaches, strategic planning and adapting to a rapidly shifting marketplace, and as I run through some of the really interesting stuff I saw I'll share some of my observations with you.

Wall Streeters are from Mars, Entrepreneurs are from Venus

But before that, I feel compelled to share one particularly interesting observation: the difference between competing on Wall Street and competing on Start-up Street is night and day. It took me a while to figure this out, as the cultural shift was abrupt and dissonant at first. While I generally had a cordial relationship with my competitors during my time on the Street, there certainly wasn't any collaboration, any material idea sharing, or any "Hey, you might want to interview this person. They'd be really great for you." Pretty much, Wall Street is a zero-sum game. I win; therefore you lose. Cooperation is (generally) not rewarded (unless you are discussing "club deals" in private equity and the like, which may or may not be anti-competitive, but anyway...), because in most cases in transactional/trading businesses the outcomes are digital - there is no gray. As a result, I was acculturated to be a royal hard-ass. Protective of my teams, my territory and my IP. This, as I've come to learn, is not exactly the case with start-ups in general and entrepreneurs in particular.

So What are the Key Take-aways?

So here is my bottom-line after distilling the input of all these successful people over a frenetic 48 hours:

1. Platforms rule – Web 2.0 dominance is about creating platforms where people can live. Really good ideas – features, products, applications – will be integrated within or accessible by these core platforms. But at the end of the day, it is the platform owners that will house the communities. But with data transportability, barriers to shifting platforms will eventually drop to zero. This will require platform providers to stay very close to their communities, or risk being jettisoned for a more robust, more responsive platform. Are the current true platform owners Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Amazon and EBay? What about the Cyworlds and the MySpaces of the world? What do you call them? Can others achieve platform status? Beats me. I’m not smart enough to know.

2. Winners listen – Every single big winner that presented talked about listening, being close to the user and really getting inside their heads to create the best user experience possible. There was a startling lack of arrogance by even the most successful companies when discussing their platforms and strategies. There is immense humility out there, probably because the best companies are deeply paranoid about losing their edge, which in the wired world can cause a company’s prospects to reverse practically overnight.

3. It’s all about the people – Recruiting is getting harder every day as the competition for top talent intensifies. It doesn’t matter – just work that much harder to find the best people to drive your business. The best managers of the best companies are obsessed about recruitment. You should be, too.

Conclusion

I realize just how green I am when in the presence of 1,200 people who are working to change the world. I am looking forward to the day when I can walk into the Web 2.0 Summit or another top industry gathering and feel like I can truly hang with the crowd. For now, I am still a citizen of Mars, but have applied for citizenship on Venus. I guess I’m kind of in the green card process. I’ve got some time to wait, some seasoning to acquire. Then I need to study for the test. It takes time. Web 2.0 was a truly eye-opening experience for me. Thanks John and Tim. You've helped me see that I’ve got a lot of work to do!

Motorola vs. Nokia

2006-11-08T04:00:00.000+05:30

After manufacturing facilities, telecom companies are now expanding their research and development base in India. Last week, both Motorola and Nokia opened new facilities. Motorola’s chairman and CEO Edward J. Zander inaugurated an R&D facility at Hyderabad, its seventh in India. “We want to cultivate top talent. We like what we see here,” he said. The centre will be working on WiMax, and network management.

Keeping pace is Nokia, which added a 210,000 sq. ft centre at its existing facility in Bangalore, set up in 2001. It will focus on software platforms, chipsets and high-end Nokia mobile devices. As an analyst says, “These companies can tap high quality talent at cheaper prices in India.”

Both Nokia and Motorola officials claim the work done at these centres will shape the mobile telecommunication industry over the next few years. Considering that 40 per cent of the software for Motorola’s Moto Razr was done in India, it is no mean claim.

Pathbreaking development in Cancer Drugs

2006-09-27T13:08:00.000+05:30

BIOMAB-EGFR is the first new drug in the world which was at least partly developed by an Indian company. Last week, Biocon, the company that developed it, launched the drug in Bangalore and Mumbai with the minimum of fuss. Cancer, in seemed, was too grave a disease. Biocon describes the drug as the first humanised anti-EGFR monoclonal antibody in the world. In commercial terms, this description may not mean much: pharmaceutical history is replete with examples of drugs which swept away their predecessors in no time. But in scientific terms, it could be termed a significant landmark, particularly for an Indian company, although Biocon was not part of the original discovery. BIOMAb-EGFR was discovered by the Cuban Institute CIMAB and then developed in India by Biocon, which, at the moment, holds rights of the product in the Saarc countries.
Let us decode the nomenclature first. EGFR is an acronym for Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor. A receptor is, as the name implies, a part of the cell that receives another molecule, usually something that gives a signal to start a series of events in the cell. When a molecule binds to EGFR, it starts a chain of events that finally result in cell division. Since cancer is uncontrolled cell division, we could argue that EGFR can be part of a strategy to stop cell division.
A monoclonal antibody is, as the name suggests, derived from a single clone of cells. Our bodies produce antibodies all the time, but in nature even antibodies against the same antigen — an invading molecule — look different, except for the part that can recognise the intruder. When produced artificially, antibodies are exactly alike because they are made from a single source. Monoab-EGFR is a monoclonal antibody that can bind to EGFR and shut it off. The cell cannot divide again.
This description makes it all seem simple, but it is not. The drug has to go and bind to the receptors only on the cancer cells. Shutting off cell division in normal cells can be disastrous. Fortunately, this problem is reduced somewhat because cancer cells have a preponderance of EGFRs. Monoab-EGFR seems to go and bind to cancer cells preferentially because they have an excessive number of EGFRs. The drug appears to be good at treating cancers that have a large number of EGFRs, like in head and neck cancer and glioma, a type of brain cancer.
At the moment, Monoab-EGFR is given to patients who have undergone surgery or radiation therapy. Clinical trials show that this improves the life of patients. The drug also does not show too much toxicity. CIMAB has licensed the molecule all over the world, except in small countries and Latin America. Yet Biocon treats this product as a beginning. The next product, anti-CD6, is just finishing Phase I clinical trials. This drug works on a novel target that has been patented by CIMAB, but Biocon jointly owns the marketing rights to the entire world. The target CD6 is involved in inflammation, a disorder that is intimately connected to cancer.
Observers will be watching this product closely. Biocon, meanwhile, has mastered the technology to develop and manufacture monoclonal antibodies. Since this $15-billion market segment is expected to double in value in a few years, everyone will be watching Biocon also closely.Seems to me as a the renaissance of medicos. Wat say !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Top 5 Marketing Services

2006-09-08T22:45:00.000+05:30

The Top 5 Marketing Services companies are listed above with details as are required. Omnicom heads the list with R K Swamy as one of the topmost brands, controlling from Mumbai, India.

IMRB, the marketing services major, comes a close second after R K Swamy, having a global revenue of $10.03 billion, opposing $10.48 billion of R K Swamy and group. Till last year, the impact of R K Swamy BBDO was not felt as much in the international market; but with the current fiscal giving greater opportunities to upcoming brands, R K Swamy has grown from the 12^th rank last year to an unpredictable 1^st this year. It has already taken in biggies like Raymonds, Gillette India, Jet Airways, Cadburys, etc. from its competitors.

The Inter Public Group which includes brands like Lodestar-Universal, FCB-Ulka, and Lowe came a distant third.

For more news on these marketing giants, continue tracking this space regularly

Blogging Sanyaas......................................

2006-05-28T21:06:00.000+05:30

Hello Friends
This is to inform all of you who visit my blog, that, I am undergoing my Summer Training in Bangalore and, hence, cannot write the blog for the next two months. I will be back WITH A BANG after my training. SO please, don't mind.....

An Indian making fortune in Pakistan

2006-05-21T03:05:00.005+05:30

Does this title seem unbelieveable? No. It is actually TRUE.

Roughly 800,000 vehicles run on Compressed Natural Gas(CNG) on the streets of Pakistan. Each need a specialised cylinder where the CNG is stored under high pressure. And, an Indian company, Everest Kanto Cylinders, is controlling 65% of this market.

The company makes CNG cylinders in India and Dubai and sells them in Thailand, Malaysia, several Gulf countries and CIS nations, besides Pakistan. It has built a business worth Rs. 215 crores in revenues and Rs. 26.1 crores in net profits (2005-2006), high profitability by any standards.

"It takes 6 hours for a vehicle to get converted into CNG. But it takes over 6 months to set up a CNG re-fuelling station", says P.K. Khurana, MD, Everest Kanto Cylinders. Vehicles would not convert to CNG until fuel stations come up. The stations would not come up until the CNG vehicle population rose up substantially. It is thus the same chicken-and-egg story. But while India was dithering, Pakistan switched over to CNG. It had 3 times more CNG vehicles and 4 times more the no. of fuel stations in India, but hardly any cylinder makers, and this is where Everest Kanto came into the picture.

Hopefully, Mr. Khurana will be an example to other enterpreneurs of India, to kickstart their businesses in Pakistan too, leave alone other Dubai and other countries.

The Indian Tech Renaissance

2006-05-13T03:49:00.000+05:30

In about three months, a little-known company called Novatium plans to offer a stripped-down home computer for about $70 or $75. That is about half the price of the standard "thin clients" of this kind now sold in India, made possible in part by some novel engineering choices. Adding a monitor doubles the price to $150, but the company will offer used displays to keep the cost down.
“If you want to reach the $100 to $120 price point, you need to use old monitors," said Novatium founder and board member Rajesh Jain, a local entrepreneur who sold the IndiaWorld portal for $115 million in cash in 2000 and has started a host of companies since.

It is this kind of entrepreneurial thinking that has made Jain the latest visionary to seek out today's Holy Grail of home computing: a desktop that will start to bring the Internet to the more than 5 billion people around the world who aren't on it yet.

The first $100 computer is a fitting icon for a country undergoing major changes in the development of its technology, economy and society. As Indian companies increasingly break away from the limitations of handling outsourced services for Western corporations, innovations are likely to multiply and inspire the rising number of independently minded engineers and executives who are leading the country's technology industry to new frontiers.

Because of thriving exports and low PC penetration, India has become the epicenter for projects on the cutting edge of computing hardware. Advanced Micro Devices has started to sell its Personal Internet Communicator for $235, including monitor, through a broadband partner here. It says a fully equipped $100 personal computer in three years isn't out of the question. The innovative spirit that pervades the industry is producing a variety of new approaches toward affordable computing. Tata Consultancy Services is tinkering with "domain computers" that reduce costs by just handling fixed functions such as bill payment or word processing, said Nagaraj Ijari, a senior executive in the company's operations in Bangalore.

About 200 miles away in high-tech center Chennai, formerly known as Madras, Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala of the Indian Institute of Technology has developed a $1,000 automatic teller machine that can also serve as an Internet kiosk for villages. He has also built a wireless data system that has been exported to Brazil, Iran, Fiji and Nigeria.

Creating a product that cuts costs without reducing functions isn't easy, as exemplified by the Simputer, a handheld computer designed for the masses. And many products face formidable logistical and infrastructural obstacles.
Professor Jitendra Shah, from the Centre for the Development of Advanced Computing, is examining ways to reduce electricity usage by setting up solar-powered computing terminals that tap into battery-powered PCs acting as servers.

Feels like India is just getting into the "Technological Renaissance" groove. What say !

Welcome to the Fourth Dimension

2006-05-08T13:48:00.000+05:30

Remember the Time Machine or the Space Theatre of Science City, Kolkata? What if you combine the two? Have you ever imagined how it would look like, having a large screen that is 180 degrees cylindrical wrap-around screen so that images seem lively; and the special appearance inside the theatre makes you believe that you are a part of whatever going on in the screen.
Till now you have just wondered how gr8 is a 3D movie. Now, as times are changing and some gr8 men of the world are getting on with the latest technology, 4D has come to the forefront. It was first started in a theatre in HongKong. And now, we are soon to get one in India. B.K. Modi is about to set up a 4D theatre in his Spice World mall in Noida.
Now you must be wondering what is the difference between a 3D movie and a 4D one? Well, in a 3D movie, you just see the rain on screen and feel the cold, but in a 4D movie, you get wet.
When there is a fireball coming towards you on the screen, you feel the heat of it, and almost get a burn. That's how the effects are in a 4D movie. For Mr. Modi, it's going to cost him around Rs. 2.5 crores. And that's for the gr8 wraparound screen, dynamic seats to give you the bumps in the movie, auxiliary special effects, stereo cameras, etc.

So, forget 3D for the time being, and, let's all welcome the FOURTH DIMENSION

The Introduction

2006-05-02T22:50:00.000+05:30

Dear Bloggers,
I want you all to know that this blog is not specialised for any particular topic. It is about all the current SPECIAL news, some hard-to-find facts, and Lifestyle. Post your messages for free, and let other people find what is happening in the world around you, your lifestyle, and SPECIAL topics you want to share with everybody on the blog.

The bottomline is : IT IS ALL ABOUT EVERYTHING SPECIAL

Bye,
Happy Blogging,

HellBoy