SaaS Growth to Drive and be Driven by SMBs

While researching on the advances SaaS (Software as a Service) has made in India two things struck me hard in the face SaaS is not as naive to the Indian Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) as we in the tech field usually think The major SaaS providers in India are still North American companies, examples being Microsoft, WebEx in the area of collaboration, etc. A recent survey by SpringBoard revealed statistics that predict jaw dropping numbers in terms of SaaS adoption in India. There is also news of Indian players slowly but surely waking up to the SaaS reality. While ASP ( Application Service Provider) concept failed, SaaS, a similar refined concept, was initially discarded as a old wine in a new bottle. However, it seems to have more than just teeth in its bite. Indian Majors like NIIT, TCS are announcing SaaS initiatives. TCS announced a complete new model that they christened 'IT as a Service'. Infosys announced a 'SaaSified' version of their popular Finnacle financial product for banks and other monetary institutions. With former revenue taps running dry, it is just a matter of time before Indian IT majors announce their own SaaS initiative to tap the predicted $168 million SaaS market of India by 2010. SaaS will affect Indian growth in a huge way. Its single most unique advantage of not forcing companies to produce upfront capital for their IT investment will mean that a slew of Indian SMBs will now embrace IT like never before. IT adoption in India will fuel SaaS growth and that in turn will fuel more IT adoption. Its a symbiotic cycle that's getting setup. Its only a matter of time before the wheel starts spinning in full vigor.

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Indian IT - Looking out for business

Two news items caught my attention. One, where NASSCOM has predicted that India's IT growth is very well on its way to meet its targets for the year 2010. The other where Infosys CEO Kris Gopalakrishnan cautioning the industry of slow growth. While the industry trade body seems to predict a rosy future, the industry bell weather seems to be pointing at a grim one. NASSCOM, predicts software and services exports to cross $40 billion and the domestic market ito touch $23 billion in FY08. "Positive Market Indicators" and "Strong Track Record" are being cited as the reason to safely predict that India will reach $60 billion in software and services exports and $73 to 75 billion in overall software and services revenues, by FY2010. A careful observation reveals that while exports are expected to reach from 40 to 60 bln USD in the next 2 years, the domestic revenues which is expected to reach 23 bln USD this year are marked to fall to 13-15 bln USD in 2010. I find this a little hard to accept. I am more gungho about the domestic market being able to sustain the US slowdown and make up for a substantial portion of the fall in exports. On the industry side, things are not looking up. IT stocks are getting battered, margins are being lowered, the Indian rupee is appreciating and the sub-prime crises that is plaguing the US financial markets does not seem to be going away. Add to that high attrition rates, spiraling salaries and shrinking talent pools and you defintely will empathise with the situation that the IT industry finds itself. The message is very clear and loud. To sustain growth and reach the levels predicted by NASSCOM, IT companies need to look and build forts elsewhere while they wait for the world's largest economy to re-emerge from the recession it seems to be sinking into. But where elsewhere? Europe is already being tapped. Australia too is being tapped. Did we forget the burgeoning businesses in the new darlings of the global economy? China and India....Lots of medium and small businesses are growing at frenetic paces and they need software services support their amazing growth rates. Are we missing the fortune right at our feet? Hope not....

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Direct to Home TV sweeping India

When I landed in Bangalore in November after a span of 10 months, the first thing that struck me was the advent of new plastic dishes atop roof tops across Bangalore. Direct To Home (DTH) technology had finally made its presence felt in Bengalooru. As I dumped my luggage on the door steps of my cousin's home, I saw one dainty dish adorning his home's roof too. The first question that escaped my lips was not "How are you?" when he opened the door. Rather it was, "How is the new DTH service?". "See for yourself", he said and switched on the TV. With close to 110 channels on offer in crispy clear digital mode, the Tata Sky DTH service really took my breath away. I was most impressed by the cool browsable categorised menu of channels. Another laudable feature was the language facility that enable a channel like National Geographic to be viewed in either English or Hindi. With three DTH business namely Dish TV (by Zee Group), Tata Sky (by Star TV and Tata group), and DD (by state owned Prasar Bharti) making waves and more players like Blue Magic (by Reliance), Sun Direct (by Sun TV) and Bharti joining the race, the customer can expect a slew of sleek offers along the way What does the customer have in DTH that he does not already have with the local cable man's offering? Freedom to choose the bouquet of channels one prefers Freeedom from being charged a flat fee for the 50 odd channels being offered by the local cablewallah Crispier Digital Signals On Demand programs available : The chief strength of DTH is the ability to cater to individual tastes. Pay per view and On demand broadcasting will be the next big wave sweeping India. Pay the same rates as the cablewallah charges for 3 times as many channels. Today's news also features educational houses like 24x7 Guru tying up with DTH players to provide on demand educational subjects to student and adults alike. This might be a further boost to India's literacy efforts and also an opportunity for people to further skills at home and promote a new class of small time home entrepreneurs across India. To speed up things further, ISRO's recent INSAT series satellite launches have made up for a lack of K Band transponders that are necessary for the DTH relays. Indians are in for a big treat in the days to come. The other day when Mom was complaining about having to pay Rs 150 every month to the local cablewallah and still suffer poor transmission quality, change in channel sequences as per the cable guy's whim and wish. My brother shouted out a solution to her from the bathroom, "Tata Sky amma"

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Mobile Search Revolution in India

While working recently on a project for the Singapore government on mobile speech and search technologies, I happened to do an intensive research on the what it takes for mobile search to be successful. The questions that I was seeking answers to were Can current internet search behemoths like Google, Yahoo and MSN just port their search engines onto the mobile platform and be assured that mobile phone users will embrace it just as well as they did over the computer? What is that key difference that one has to grapple with when they offer search facilities over the mobile phone? Well, answers I did find. Some after brainstorming with people around me and some after scouring the internet for articles. It happens that the first thing that disappears in a person who is performing a search over his mobile phone is patience. This happens because mobile searches are charge money. And nobody wants to spend money on getting results that are irrelevant when using a mobile phone. The same results might have been tolerated on the computer but not so on a mobile phone by the discerning user. This I call the Golden Rule for mobile searches Intrigued, by this single finding, I decided to test out for myself some of the offerings by small startups in India. Quite interesting. How did they adhere to the Golden rule. All of them limited the scope of their searches. Their reasoning went something like this The mobile user wants something of use to him when he is on the move. The rest can wait. What the mobile user typically wants on the move is what an yellow pages offers Provide the most relevant search for the user keyword by further localising the searches as per city/locality Chennai-based Onyomo’s www.owap.in offers localized searches for 10 Indian cities currently. I searched for Queens in Bangalore. It suggested 3 beauty saloons and also prompted me with 3 results for restaurants. When I clicked on Restaurants, it immediately showed me the restaurant that was on my mind as the firstAsk Laila is another search engine that produces equally good results Mumbai based JustDial too offers similar services that is accessible via mobile phone and SMS too. I was however disappointed with the results that came out of the servive when I searched for the Queens restaurant. The search just suggested 50 more categories for me to browse through. What do they expect me to do while on the move in the middle of a busy junction?...Browse through their categories ? TeliBrahma is yet another service called Genie that offers a small java based download onto your mobile phone that assists in searches. Mobile searches are surely the next big thing and it will be interesting to see who emerges the winner.

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India Infotech Titbits - 1

Due to repeated requests by the readers of this blog to restart the news updates that I stopped last year, I have decided to reintroduce the feature albeit a slightly different manner. Instead of just supplying the top news items in the IT sector, I will be analyzing them in current backdrop of happenings in the IT world and try to put them in perspective Vavasi Telegence, an Indian company claims to have developed a wireless technology on the lines of the recent Chinese technology. It is based on Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA) which will offer high speed mobile wireless connectivity. This technology will be in use as newer bands are opened by the government to support the burgeoning growth in mobile market in India. Termed NG-1 by the company to denote Next Generation-1, the innovation might lie in how the technology is handled and deployed in India to squeeze the last drop of juice it could offer with minimum infrastructure roll out. Zahid Ghadialy in his blog, 3G and 4G Wireless Blog, mentioned that he is yet to see anything out of the blue with regards to the technology aspect of it. Hyderabad-based MetroMela Internet Services has launched MetroMela.com. Covering the cities of Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Cochin and Mysore for now, the website claims to highlight everything that these metros offer. Be it the best place to buy electronics or the best place to savor the top cuisines of the city, this site offers it all. The better part of the site is that in addition to information avilable, users can themselves add information too for the benefit of other users. So here we are seeing another of the crowdsourcing efforts in vogue. I personally tried the Chennai microsite and found it quite good. It mentioned that Ritchie street is the place for electonics and Murugan Idly shop to be the best for idlis anytime of the day. Hope to savor it all when I will be there sometime next month :)

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Outsider perspective into Indian IT

A foreigner's perspective that chronicles the radical changes sweeping across the Indian IT landscape is invaluable. For a moment, it lets us put aside the thousands of inefficiencies we see in the working of the Indian IT tech startups and focus on what is being done right that is allowing the likes of Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Satyam, HCL, Patni, Mindtree, Aztec, etc to compete effectively with the turf protectors like IBM, Accenture, Cap Gemini, etc One such view is provided by Business Week journalist, Steve Hamm, who has kept tabs on the IT growth in India since 1989. One of his books, Bangalore Tiger, tells the story of Wipro Technologies. Though I am yet to read the book, I stumbled upon an excerpt of the book on Rediff. Titled 'How Wipro turned defeat to victory', it tells the story of what the top management at Wipro did in 2003 after losing a deal from a big European travel agency. It details the policy change, the radical new steps and the eventual win back of the deal from the same customer. The quote that captures the essence of the article is the one from Vivek Sharma, a senior business development manager, "If you bring in value, you may have a short-term [negative] impact [on your billings]. But in the long view, you'll get benefits from that." Read it here

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Cool Hotmail for Indians

Heard of CoolHotmail? MSN India has come out with a brand new strategy to push its Live.com services in India. That is through CoolHotmail. What's different in it you may ask. The difference is that you get a email that suits your intersts, passion, your geography, your group or something that screams out your favorite star. Thrown in with the unique email id are the 5GB free storage that comes with the Live service. Sample domains include yourname@clubaishwarya.com yourname@bangalorerocks.in yourname@heybaby.in yourname@iamsizzling.com yourname@individuality.in yourname@vadapaavrocks.in

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