As I wrote the Navteq piece, it struck me that the entire address data and mapping services category is a great one for India, and ripe for a Concept Arbitrage. A personal anecdote. Every time I visit India, and I go to visit relatives in North Calcutta, I wonder how on earth would I navigate
by Dharma Kuthanur, Guest Author If you look at different elements of the quadruple play (wireline, wireless, broadband and cable TV), the Indian urban consumer has abundant choices for wireline, wireless and broadband services. In fact, in most areas, there is vibrant competition with 3-4 different service providers vying for the consumer – more choice
We’ve had a lot of discussion on this forum about why there are no Technology Product Companies in India, and why such companies are needed. Let’s take a look at a company that is selling lots of technology products in India, and intends to sell even more: SAP. Recently, the Economic Times reported about SAP’s
On a few occasions, recently, the topic of Cisco’s inevitable lay-offs in Silicon Valley came up. It is true, that Cisco is a FAT company, with a very large (and expensive) workforce in the valley. However, the big new market opportunities in front of Cisco are all in the emerging, developing markets, and there, the
We dicussed the “Problem” in the last part. In this one, let’s discuss the “Entrepreneur”. Again, I’ll tell you a story from my own experience. My advisor at MIT, Prof. Anant Agarwal, was (is) also an entrepreneur. So, when I walked into his office one day in 1994, and declared that I wanted to finish
I promised entrepreneur Sujai Karampuri that I would write a piece on what an Indian Incubator Fund should look like, in response to the discussion in my previous piece, India Needs More Incubator Funds. To begin, I will tell you a story. When I first arrived at the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT, my
By Sujai Karampuri, Guest Author I have already written an article called, ‘Need Product Companies In India’s Growth.’ Before I start writing on what we need to do, I would like to talk about some of the most important reasons that curtail us from spawning product companies. Some of them are obvious-history, post-independent economic policies,
In Atanu Dey’s RISC model, he suggests a move to a micro-city model, as follows: :: India’s economic growth depends critically on the development of its 700-million strong rural population living in 600,000 villages. The challenge is to manage their transition from a village-centric agricultural-based economy to a city-centric non-agricultural economy urgently. The total rural