Monday, April 23, 2007

Does social networking phenomenon is over in India?

When I joined orkut in july last year I had no idea I am joining a new internet revolution better known as web 2.0.I was surprised to see everyone I know was there on orkut. They spent hours on orkut scraping everything to share and searching their lost school and college mates. All of them got own identity on web.

After one year it seems the whole magic of social networking is fadding. There is tangible fall i user activities on these sites. People scrap only on festivals and special occasions.No more search or lost friends.Gals ,earlier excited with attention these sites got them, are frustrated with unsolicited friendship requests.Boys are unhappy with no response from gals.Charm of meeting the special one is gone. Some of them feel that social netwoking thing is not for "grown -ups". In fact many of them find this whole thing a total time waste.The only utlity sites served is geting them "presence on web".But they are now questioning the value of this presence on web.

So, does the social networking phenomenon is over?Is it over locally or globally?

I wonder how mypace,friendster,facebook are growing with million of users and where this will end eventully.

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High-Performance Entrepreneurship

One person in IT industry I admire and respect vey much is Subroto Bagchi. He is the chief operating officer of Mindtree Consulting which he stared with his 10 colleagues in 1999. I was avid reader of his essays in Times of India.

In following interview he shared his views on various topics he covered in his book The High-Performance Entrepreneur: Golden Rules for Success in Today's World.

What I like most is how succantly he defined "High-Performance Entrepreneur".

"Anybody can set up a "mom and pop shop" and become an entrepreneur. You have the multitude of small- and medium-sized organizations which come and go. High-performance entrepreneurship, on the other hand, sets itself apart by a multiple of things. One is the size of the ambition. The second is the sustainability. So, high-performance companies, high-performance entrepreneurships, are ones that will build unusual value for a long time, for a large number of stakeholders. And fundamentally, they differ from any other entrepreneurship in terms of size of the ambition and how much of a long view of time they are taking."

For any aspiring indian entrepreneur interveiw is good read.


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Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Location location location :Part 2

On of the decision all entreprenuers have to take is find right location for start-up their venture.In USA most of the technology start-ups are clustered in California or Silicon Valley.In India we have most start-ups coming from Delhi or Banglore.

I just wondering what effect does location have on success or failure of start-ups?

In following essay by Paul Graham , he opinioned that one of the start-up mistake is bad location. He elborate why some location have more start-ups then other as

"that's where the experts are. Standards are higher; people are more sympathetic to what you're doing; the kind of people you want to hire want to live there; supporting industries are there; the people you run into in chance meetings are in the same business"

But I don't think any entreprenuer took all this into account while selecting location for his start-up.In most case choosing right location may not be high priority decision.

Most ventures from are located where their founders resides.What possibility we have that a guy eager to start software company will relocate to Bangalore just to start a bussiness.

At best what a entrepreneur tend do is to get started from a location enough for his or her venture.

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Right location for start-up

My MNC company is located in Noida and I am staying at North campus ,23 km from Noida.Yesterday I left my office at 10.00 pm and reached home at 11.15 pm. Everyday I spend 2 hour or so in commutation. Time used in travelling is not only unproductive but also make me unproductive for extended period of time.Luckily my company have Flexi-time policy and provide as prompt transport facility.

I could stay in Noida but cost of living is too high for the quality fo life it offers me.Frequent and long power cuts,unreliable and unadequate public transport ,and constant sense of insecurity make Noida a undesirable place for me.In summers weather in this part of India is unbearbly cruel.Life becomes really difficult if you have to live without power and water.

All major cities in India face similar problem of traffice jams,long hour power-cuts and poor public transport system.These problem coupled with high rate of real state makes metros not the best locations for a start-up venture.

So question is does delhi in particular and Metros are right places to jum start a venture? Do they have right support system for start-ups?

A start-up want lots of local talent,good living standard, low cost of living,working public transport system, continues and reliable power supply,and comfortable weather.Not many cities in india provide all but definetly they can and will be developed in coming years to give most of these facilities.With rise of tier 1 cities I think this is time to move from metros.

So which city in next bangalore in India?

Monday, April 16, 2007

New Blog for growing start-ups

Edited by Carleen Hawen Found+Read, GigaOm’s newest blog, will be a must-subscribe to resource for all budding entrepreneurs. It is intenteded to be platform where experts come on and share their experiences in building companies. Malik says he is starting this becasue he’s gone through growing pains building his own business over the last year, and realized that most of the hurdles he had to jump weren’t new, just new to him. He’s hoping Found+Read can become a resource for others to get advice as they grow their companies. This just launched last night, so content will be light for a while until it builds up

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