The Xtra Pagal Blog in Top 100 Now :D

Wow, I can't believe this! I just casually added this blog to the Indian Bloggers directory last week and I was really shocked to see it on the 89th place in the category of Personal blogs from India today.

Do check it out by clicking here

Don't forget to rate the blog honestly :)





I am really grateful to all those who visited my blog and helped it get into that list :D Keep checking back :)

Make way for IPTV

Way back in October 2003, Microsoft Corp. and Reliance Infocomm Ltd. announced that the two companies would work together to jointly create, test and deliver next-generation Internet Protocol (IP)-based television services using an IPTV solution being developed by Microsoft TV. After the announcement, the project has been kept a closely guarded secret but I expect Reliance to start offering its IPTV service in select cities by the end of this year. Reliance Infocomm already boasts of 60,000 route kilometres of pan-India fibre optic backbone which is more than capable of providing IPTV to a huge chunk of the population.

IPTV stands for Internet Protocol Television and it uses a single line to deliver programming to the television. The same line will triple up as a telephone connection, an Internet Connection and a cable connection. Just like cable or DTH (Direct to Home), IPTV uses a set-top box that allows customers to cruise hundreds of TV channels and order movies and other shows anytime through video-on-demand. People who are interested in knowing more about what IPTV has to offer can have a look at the Microsoft TV IPTV Edition page.

If Reliance can price it right, IPTV is going to solve a lot of problems - Firstly, it will reduce the multiplicities of connections (and even devices) at home - we will just need to pay one company instead of three or even four separate entities. Next, we won't need to bunk school/college/office/family functions to catch our favourite programme, it will be available on demand which means I can watch it when I have time to spare. I read somewhere that Reliance has already bought out most of the old Hindi movie libraries, which means one can watch any movie of any genre/time period at any time by just paying a small amount.

More importantly, if Reliance can extend the technique of "Digital Distribution of movies to Cinema halls" to homes, it can seriously dent the Pirates. Imagine having access to the DVD quality print of the latest movie releases at home, at the same time when it gets released in theatres. You pay per view of the movie, much like the CD/DVD rentals and the charges get added to your monthly IPTV bill. Simultaneous movie release on IPTV and theatres that can get a bit controversial, but if the Industry has to survive piracy it must look at additional sources of revenue like this. This is something I firmly believe in, if Mr. Anil Ambani or any senior Reliance official is reading this, please give it a thought as it has the potential to revolutionize the Indian entertainment Industry.

Eagerly awaiting the launch of IPTV in India :-)

Signs that you are an MBA

10 Signs that you are an MBA - thesis work by Anurag Saxena :D

1. You give lessons in Customer Relationship Management to the shopkeepers, explain them the concept of the Lifetime value of a customer while bargaining.
2. You point out the inefficiencies in the Supply Chain of your local dhaaba waala.
3. You think of applying Business Process Re-Engineering to day to day activities.
4. You think of Process Improvements and automation while standing in the queues of Government offices.
5. You use a lot of jargon and fancy terminologies in your oral and written communication.
6. Microsoft Excel is the most commonly used software for you.
7. You try to predict the share prices by making use of Business Forecasting techniques.
8. You get a new Broadband connection at home by explaining the ROI and expected payback period to your family.
9. You compare promotional schemes by drawing line diagrams.
10. In the free time, you start blogging and write stuff that no one except you understands :p

If this matches your behaviour, both of us need to find a good doctor :)

Happy Birthday Sachin

Dear S10,

Wishing you a happy birthday :D You are the only sportsperson whose B'day I remember, wishing you a wonderful year ahead...May you win the World Cup for us this year :) I don't care what your critics have to say, I will continue to have your poster in my room and you will continue to by my all-time favourite batsman.

Cheers!

Image courtesy: http://www.ibnlive.com/

500!

Wow! 500 page views within a week of public launch, not bad :D Thanks for the overwhelming response to this useless blog, hopefully I'll learn how to write meaningful stuff soon, keep visiting till then :)


Life is all about celebrating small things.

Cheers!

PG Tees and E-Commerce in India

I happen to be a Certified Pagal on Pagalguy.com - India's largest MBA Forum with close to sixty thousand registered members. Pagalguy.com came out with it's T-Shirts recently, members could buy the PG Tees by making online payment (people who lived close enough to the PG HQ could get their tees in person). The Tees were a huge hit and close to a hundred vanished within hours. This idea of this post is not to celebrate the success of PG tees; it is to highlight the growing popularity of E-Commerce in India.

After the bubble burst in the early 2000s, many analysts had written off the fancy term called "E-Commerce" but now things are changing and E-Commerce is gaining in popularity. It will gain momentum as connectivity improves and the credit card culture spreads. On both counts, we seem to have reached the take-off stage. More and more Indians are finding online shopping a great convenience. They are buying airline and railway tickets, books, home appliances, electronic gadgets, movie tickets and more stuff by logging on to a Web site, than driving up to a store.

Consumers are becoming increasingly comfortable with transacting online, mainly due to better (perceived) security features being used by the Banks. I purchased my PG Tees through ICICI Bank online money transfer and I was satisfied by the authentication checks being employed by the Bank. Despite all this, one of the biggest roadblocks for portals trying to grow B2C e-commerce in India is still the payment system. Lot of people I know would like to buy things online but they are still scared of using their credit cards, the best option for such users is COD (Cash on Delivery), but it has a lot of problems. Very few courier companies in the country are willing to provide COD (those who do it charge a hefty premium). COD takes the cost of delivery up by 10-15% but, more importantly, it takes an average of three months for the cash to get back. That is why portals like Pagalguy.com encourage payment methods like credit cards and online banking.

The future of e-commerce in India will depend on how successful we are in upgrading infrastructure and connectivity - both of which seem to be improving very fast thanks to cheaper computers and introduction of Broadband in most cities. Also important will be the presence of a legal framework for resolving disputes (The IT Act 2000 needs to be revised). The credit card companies should do their bit by encouraging people to use their cards online - they must prove that their security is unbreakable by throwing open challenges to the hacker community. They can also look at the option of insurance against credit card information thefts like some of their western counterparts.

Hopefully E-Commerce will really take-off now.

Pay Packet after MBA

Another GOMBA (Grossly Overpaid MBA)

Hail the Class of 2006!

Nokia N92: TV on the Go

Nokia N90 was my dream phone till I saw the N92. Simply put, It Rawks! The N92 is a TV Phone (height of convergence!) with a mind blowing resolution and the output looks really great on its 2.8 inch display. It can open both ways - In Portrait mode and in landscape mode, has a 2 Megapixel camera (some would say it's not a big deal, Samsung D600 and even one of the LG handsets priced at around 17K in India can boast of that currently). It has Wifi connectivity, Bluetooth, Infra red and most of the features of an advanced PDA. The TV transmission is based on DVB-H which is a digital standard for receiving TV signals from terrestrial transmitters aimed specifically at mobile devices. It offers a watch time of up to four hours and has the ability to record live TV and do an on-demand 30-second replay. It also an XpressMusic device, harbouring a music player with support for MP3, WMA and AAC formats as well as a memory card slot allowing for up to 2 GB cards. Also on the slate is dual stereo speakers and the ability to connect a stereo headset, as well as an integrated stereo FM radio!!



The Nokia N92 is slated for commercial availability in the EMEA region in mid-2006 in countries where DVB-H transmissions are available. The estimated retail price will be in the 600 Euro range (Not less than 35K in India, IF and when it gets launched). People in India will have to wait a little longer, but the device is definitely worth a wait. BTW the device looks a bit bulky, but with features like those who's complaining :)

The Great Indian IT Industry

It's results time once again, IT majors like Infosys and TCS have announced their annual results and the numbers are impressive, as always. These large Indian IT companies have been growing consistently at over 30% an year which is much faster than the growth rate of their American counterparts. While some may argue that the American companies like IBM have much bigger base, they are already feeling the heat. The US Big Six of outsourcing - Accenture, ACS, CSC, EDS, HP and IBM-have never been under as much pressure as they're today, buffeted by high costs and an Indian global delivery model that's matured over the years. According to 2006 research by TPI, the world's largest sourcing advisory firm, close to $100 billion (Rs 4,50,000 crore) worth of big-ticket outsourcing contracts will come up for renewal in the next two years and it looks increasingly likely that the US Big Six will not retain all of these contracts in full. Indian champs like Infosys, HCL, Satyam, Wipro and TCS are likely to take away a major pound of the flesh.

All said and done, the kind of work "most" Indian IT companies are doing is "Clerical" at best and they are far away from doing high-end "R&D" work. Most Indian "Software Engineers" today are just copy-pasting code borrowed from Google and creating customised applications for client needs. This leads to a lot of frustration for the "Engineers" and that's why we find most of the IT guys leaving their jobs for MBA within two-three years of joining. How many Indian IT companies can boast of having a state of the art software product that can be purchased off-the-shelf? What percentage of these multi-million profits are being used for R&D purposes? All these outsourcing contracts may seem very lucrative currently but for how long can these Indian IT companies continue to compete on price alone? China may not be perceived as a threat in the IT Industry, but it can surely give Indian IT companies a run for their money in the time to come (atleast on the price front). It's time our companies started to set aside some share of their revenues for R&D purposes, if the Indian IT champs want to be of the size of Microsoft, they cannot afford to remain pure Project-based companies. We must start looking at developing new products - ERP Software, Document Management Software, Word and Image Processing software, Software that addresses the untapped market (the Blue Ocean Strategy).

Hopefully, the guys at the top are smarter than we think and they are already working on these lines.

P.S: No offence meant to anyone. Standard Disclaimers apply ;)

5..4..3..2..1........Go Live!

"In the begining there was nothing and God said 'Let there be light', and there was still nothing but everybody could see it."

-- Dave Thomas.


My friends have been bugging me for a long time to start blogging, I used to think it's a waste of time (and I still think the same :p). It's vacation time which gives me a lot of time to spare and Blogging seems to be the best way to kill time. Registered a blog, now the next challenge was to select a template for the blog, which was not easy for me. I browsed through all the templates available on blogger, searched for some free ones on Google but didn't like any. So, I decided to work on my own personalised template. Hundreds of versions later, I have finally decided to stick to this version and I hope I won't need to change it for some time :)

Technically, this is not my first attempt at blogging. I had started The Unofficial Blog of IMI Students last year, but it was more of a community blog and not a personal blog. On this blog, I will post my thoughts on things I like the most - ICE (Information, Communication and Entertainment) and some random topics. Some really Insane posts coming your way on this blog...stay tuned!

Go Live!

-AnuragXP

Coming Soon....

World's Insanest Blog..............Coming Soon......