Impressions From The Future

It’s tech buzz time once again. BarCampPune – 2 is on the cards and scheduled for Dec 16 & 17 for Dec 16 at Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research (SICSR). This time we have got much more add-ons. Together with the geeks’ speech there are also proposals aloft to rope in VCs and Start-up CEOs. We hope this will all help the entrepreneurial ecosystem to grow with the spirit of the BarCamps’. BarCampPune-2 has decided to go well into the night with a Networking dinner too.

TCS is sponsoring the full event. Off late TCS has taken quite a good step forward in nurturing these kind of events viz BarCamps, MobileMondays etc. It’s a great initiative and hats off for a Corporate like TCS to support for unconferences. It will go a long way in stirring the spirit of technology, business and innovation.

The BarCampPune wiki is up and running. So be there to see lots of action and do spread the word around.

You Tube has been bought by Google for a colossal 1.65 b dollars. Apart from the numbers which is astonishing, what really matters is the power of innovation. You Tube has seen an unseen(?) opportunity in the Web 2.0 space. Just two guys and a college grad have created a company worth $1.65b. The story dates back to the days when the trio started discussing some topics on web 2.0 and it was Jawed Karim who has given the idea of video sharing. Jawed’s contribution was minimum and he reconciled into his studies at Stanford. Surprisingly he was in payPal team too, when eBay acquired it for 1.5b$.

Then Chad Hurley and Steven Chen took the mantle and build what is You Tube today. The rest of the story can be read here in NY Times.

Regarding the innovation view – It took You Tube to reach the dream numbers just 18 months and 3 guys. Compare it with any services concern say Infosys, it took almost 23 years and 25,634 employees to reach revenues of just over 1b$ in 2004. (This comparison is just for the numbers and the social change & empowerment infy has brought in is not taken into account here. Also Google has acquired You Tube at a rate 1000 times of it’s current revenues) So an innovative idea with a great market potential is what will make a big difference.

All’s well, that ends well. Not at all. Just shift the scene to India. If the same idea has come been implemented here in India – Can it encompass the whole world in such a short time? Or is there a chance that it will be acquired for such a price? The answer is No and a proven No. This is where the power of funding comes into play.

Some time ago, in some conference the same question was asked by a speaker and he gave the answer as ‘no’. I was apprehensive of his conclusion. Why can’t an Indian start up strike it rich? For a while it engulfed my thought. And I didn’t even think that a real parallel can happen this soon. This is the story of ourmedia.org – a 4x better community centered sharing site with audio, video & text uploads. It was up and running before 9 months You Tube hit the net streets. And well You Tube came into the scene, indeed into every scene from its own site, to other web sites, blogs and every where. So why didn’t ourmedia take off. Gaurav, has made a good deal of Analysis on his blog.

A $1.6 billion lost oppurtunity?

Youtube got bought over by Google for a whopping $1.6 Billion (no links here - its all over the place!). Going by how popular the site has become, it was only a matter of time before one of the big guys bought it out. Congrats to them! Our company, Tekriti, started off building one of the earliest video sharing sites back in Feb-March 2005 for our first client. Ourmedia.org was launched in March 2005. YouTube came along almost 9 months later. Ourmedia had a host of video and media experts on its panel of advisors and it had (and has) a team of volunteer editors to wean out copyright content. YouTube on the other hand has the policy of letting copyright content remain online until the copyright owner objects. Ourmedia allows users to download the original high quality video while YouTube only allows online viewing of very low res. flash versions. So for a site that started with a 9 month lead, it feels like Ourmedia was a missed oppurtunity. Of course, to be clear, Ourmedia is a non-profit and making billions of dollars wasnt even the aim and it still gets significant traffic and has over 100,000 videos hosted. But the kind of popularity that Ourmedia should have seen never came along. At a personal level, it helped us get our company started and gave us the initial credibility any startup needs. So Ourmedia remains very special to me.

Get all of his analysis here. It’s a great piece of write up for every entrepreneur in the Web 2.0 space or other.

Why so? The same and even, much more brilliant idea like You Tube which we have always wondered. Truly indigenous and truly innovative. I suppose, what our concerns’ lack is funding at the right time and at the right stage. Ourmedia was not funded to move as a juggernaut in the Web 2.0 area which is truly required in this sphere. Clones always appear in no time, if they spot a potential. And replication by a well funded company or even a behemoth will take the idea and splash it all all over the world in a fraction of time. MSs’ Zune to iPod is an example.

So for the 1.6 b $ opportunity lost?- the answer is funding. Yes there are some issues with ourmedia as Gaurav has outlined but it all must have vaporized with funds and little honing. India does generate much more powerful Web 2.0 ideas but the implementation is the key. And for implementation early stage funds and a little mentoring is all what is needed. It’s true that VCs can’t fund guys with just ideas on paper but- when it’s on the ground and happening ? And why when in Valley seed and early stage funds propel potential ideas it doesn’t happen in India?. Lot of questions and few answers. Hope VC community will realize this soon and then All’s well and will end well.

       Google’s codesearch is really a killer app on the net. http://www.google.com/codesearch. Just type the required code and can even be directly copy pasted from IDE’s, gives several example codes in search format similar to web search. It’s great in another sense too, that the search has pulled up results even inside zip/rar files. The multi color highlight is a gud feature to zero in on the required item more quickly. And the other side of the story is interesting - Computer World reports that Hacker’s has found it very useful.

This is my first time to momo Bangalore edition. I was well before the said time. This is because in every event I go, I clearly felt that I am not able to meet atleast a quarter of the people who drops in. So thought of dividing the networking into two sessions - before and after the event.

There was a last minute speaker change- and guess who - Sanjay Swamy from mchek. Swamy had a talk on Mobile VAS 2.0 . Oh Yeah- The 2.0 phenomenon has grabbed VAS too. What’s changing this VAS sphere to 2.0 I am not able to get. Swami had an interesting point that programming for low end mobiles including ULHCs can be done if we have higher footprint in the SIM card.

But that all depends on the operator coz he it’s his forte & he is the one going to supply the SIM. Again cementing the walls of ‘walled garden’ ? Also existing SIM cards has to be upgraded for this, plus you cant download or install any apps - only what the operator can give. Developers ???
Btw, hope that the 1 GB SIM card which will be commercially available from Msystems by this year end will do a disruptive change in this sphere.

The last day had two keynotes by Peter Mukherjea of Star TV and Sanjeev Kumar of Portal Player. His views were on contents that are omnipresent and the concept of “media fatigue” because of numerous media. Sanjeev narrated his entrepreneurial journey and how well will Murphy’s law play in this arena. The one law on “It always takes longer” is sure a point of concern.

The other tracks were on Sports and retail. I was at retail only for a few minutes. Some one in the panel shocked the audience on the fact 40% of medicine available in India is fake. I want to delve deep into this fake/ spurious areas. If we can come with some innovative solutions thru technology and contribute a little mite it will be of great help to the people.

All over the evening and into the night it was great networking. Lot of people with great enthusiasm and energy. All the way TiE-ISB was fun and fruitful.