c m y k c m y k

FacebookCEO MarkZuckerbergto feature ina cartoon. Technomics

Apps in worksfor RIM tablet,says OliverBussman, CIOof SAP.

iPhonebeats RIM,others insatisfactionsurvey.

11New Delhi ●● Monday ●● 22 November 2010

Indian product start-ups beginto attract serious attention

Notepads that keep you on the same pageANNE EISENBERG

NEW YORK

Nov. 21: Three-by-fiveindex cards, those hallmarksof research, may be fadingaway in these digital times,but the need to take notesendures.

Human memory is as weakas ever, and people are stillshoring it up by recordingtheir observations, researchand grocery lists, thoughmany now use computersinstead of pens and paper.

But the electronicnotepads on smartphones,tablets, laptops and desktopsdon’t synchronize with oneanother automatically. Sayyou’re sitting on a planewith your laptop, jottingdown some brilliant wordsfor that speech you’re givingnext week. Back at theoffice, those notes will never

find their way to the copy ofthe speech you’ve stored onyour desktop, unless, for

example, you e-mail them toyourself.

Now companies including

Simperium and Evernoteoffer applications you caninstall on your variousmobile and stationarydevices. The companies’servers gather and coordi-nate those notepads, keepingall the entries up to date

The source of the notesmay be typed text, Simperi-um’s specialty. Evernote’sexpanding services, mean-while, can handle notes sentby keyboard, digital pen,scanner or camera phone.

Simplenote, a free applica-tion from Simperium, runson desktops and laptops viathe Web. It can also beinstalled on iPhones, iPadsand the iPod Touch, saysMichael Johnston, a co-founder of Simperium, astart-up begun this year inSan Francisco. Other com-panies, he says, also useSimperium’s synchroniza-

tion platform as part of appsthat run, for instance, onAndroid phones.

The company is alreadyprofitable, he said, in partfrom premium subscriptions($12 a year) and in part fromadvertising displayed on thesite.

Jonathan Beilin, a gamedeveloper and writer in Sun-nyvale, Calif., uses Sim-plenote with his desktop PC,his Apple laptop, his iPadand his iPhone. He maywrite down ideas for hisblog in the morning on hisiPad; then, when he switch-es to his laptop later in theday, the rough draft is wait-ing for him.

“It’s the only sane way toshare between my comput-ers and my mobile devices,”he said. (He still carries pen-cils and a Moleskine note-book, mainly for drawing.)

The Simplenote app isintended for keeping textnotes. For those who want tocapture additional informa-tion — like Web page clip-pings, photos and voicememos — Evernote offersboth a free and a premiumservice ($45 a year) thatwork across most devicesand platforms, says PhilLibin, the CEO of the com-pany, which is in MountainView, Calif. If users areaway from home withoutlaptops, they can still use asmartphone or a hotel com-puter, for instance, to accessan account and retrievenotes.

Mr. Libin says Evernotehas been adding and refiningits offerings, buoyed in partby $20 million in recentfunding led by Sequoia Cap-ital. One of its new services,available to those who

install Google’s Chromebrowser, is a dual search —one of public sources foundby Google, and another ofthe private data on a user’sEvernote account. It alsoadded one-button service onscanners from Canon andother companies that auto-matically send scanned doc-uments to the Evernoteaccount.

David Pierce, 22, a junioranalyst at PC Magazine inManhattan, uses Evernoteon his BlackBerry, iPad,iPod Touch, Mac and PC. “Itake notes on whateverdevice I have in hand at themoment,” he says, “but thenall the information in mynotes is in one, single,accessible place.”

He also uses his phone totake photos of businesscards and white boards atmeetings. — NYT

Nokia’s N8phone haspower issues

Nokia, the world's topcellphone maker,said on Friday some

of its flagship N8 smart-phones were sold with apower fault that meant theyswitched themselves off.

The success of the N8 —Nokia's first real challengeto Apple's iPhone, morethan three years after itslaunch — is seen as crucialto Nokia's profit margins inthe current quarter, analystssay.

Nokia sales chief NiklasSavander said “a limitednumber of N8 users” werefacing the problem of theirphones switching off, andthey are not able to turnthem on again.

A spokesman said thefault was due to a problemin production, which hassince been fixed.

He said the issue was lim-ited to the N8 model, butdeclined to comment onhow many phones wereimpacted. “Probably not allconsumers have informedNokia about the problems,so the final number offaulty products is likely toincrease,” Nordea analystSami Sarkamies said.

“Hardware problems canbe tricky to find and solve,”he said.

The fault in the powermanagement stems fromthe way in which the enginecomponent — whichincludes most of the tech-nology in the phone,excluding covers and bat-teries — in the Nokia N8was being installed.

“If you look at the totalnumber it is a small num-ber,” Savander said in avideo on company website.

The N8, first to useNokia's new Symbian soft-ware, was originally sched-uled to reach consumers inJune. In April, Nokiawarned the software renew-al would take longer thanexpected due to qualityproblems, and said that themodel would reach con-sumers by the end of Sep-tember.

The model was finally inthe shops last month.

A weak offering of smart-phones and problems withsoftware were seen as themain reasons for Nokiareplacing Chief ExecutiveOlli-Pekka Kallasvuo withStephen Elop. — Reuters

SANGEETHA CHENGAPPA

BENGALURU

Nov. 21: Although India hasshed the “land of call cen-tres” stereotype over the lastdecade to emerge as anindomitable player in theIT/BPO industry, it is yet tomake a mark with IP cre-ation globally. The goodnews is that Indian productstory has arrived at aninflection point, with ahandful of potential billion-dollar companies that arealready creating waves inthe US and UK. The betternews is that there are manymore product start-ups withgreat value propositionsemerging. Here’s a look atthree promising start-ups inthe media, social network-ing and mobility space.

AMAGI MEDIA LABSTV is the most compelling

media option in India,reaching close to 500 mil-lion people across thenation, and benefits adver-tisers who require nationalreach to sell their productsacross the country. Howev-er, it is a very expensive andwasteful proposition forlocal advertisers to promotetheir products on nationalnetworks. To address thisproblem, Bengaluru-basedtechnology start-up AmagiMedia Labs has built a DSPtechnology infrastructure onanalog cable, digital cableand DTH platforms to helplocal advertisers such asjewellers, consumerdurables companies, realestate developers, etc., totarget their offerings only topeople in their cities on anational TV channel.National TV channels put aspecial marker on the con-tent which they stream to

MSOs or national cable TVoperators. This marker isidentified by the ‘InsertionBox’ provided by Amagi tothe MSOs, which allows thenational ad-spot to bereplaced by a local ad-spotin the exact place which ismarked. This modified con-tent is then streamed to thelocal cable TV operators.

“No onion, no garlicMaggi noodles is sold onlyin Gujarat, Bio-yoghurt isretailed in a few metros, andSUVs sell a lot in Bengaluruand Delhi – our solutionallows advertisers to targettheir advertising to a specif-ic consumer base throughcity-specific ad-spots whichthey can buy from Amagi, ata fraction of the nation-wideprice. At present we connect8 million cable TV sub-scribers across the countryin Bengaluru, Hyderabad,Pune, Ahmedabad, Kolkata,Patna, Nagpur and Indoreand have completed over

100 advertising campaigns,”said Amagi's co-founder,Bhaskar S.

EYESANDFEET.COMSome of the questions that

might cross your mind ifyou are a local businessowner of a bar, restaurant,café or spa could be: Whichrestaurant’s got the mostFacebook fans in your local-ity, what they do so well todeserve this fan club and soon. Chennai-based start-up,EyesAndFeet.com hasdeveloped a web applicationthat helps local businessowners in the US figure outwhat their immediate neigh-bours and competitors aredoing on Facebook, Twitterand other social networksand the kind of business thatthey rake in from activelyengaging with people onthese networks.

“We are creating what webelieve to be the most com-prehensive and usable data-

base of local business socialmedia activity – all deliv-ered at EyesAndFeet.comthrough our ‘See Module.’Our web application alsohas a ‘Do Module’ whichhelps local businessesembark on their own socialmedia efforts and we helpthem customise it for Face-book, Twitter etc,” said Lak-shmanan Narayan, founder-CEO, EyesAndFeet.com.Interestingly, the businessalso gets a ‘score’ based onhow well they’re usingsocial media for their busi-ness. They can comparetheir score with other smalland local businesses to seehow good or badly they aredoing. “We expect this gam-ing element to further cat-alyze a local business’sadoption of social media,"said Narayan, who hasrolled out a beta version ofthe solution across 10 citiesin the US with over 500 reg-istered users.

INFIMATRA TECH-NOLOGIES

PlanEasy2D, a mobileapplication developed by atechnology start-up InfiMa-tra Technologies, addressesthe numerous painpoints ofpeople who are in theprocess of buying or design-ing their homes. The 2-dimensional applicationallows users to start drawingrooms and walls of theirdream home in the dimen-sions of their choice insquare feet or metres, on abasic blank screen on theirmobile phone or desktop.

The furniture library foreach room – living room,bedroom, bathroom,kitchen, study, etc – allowsusers to drag and place asofa, chair, table or cot androtate it in any direction tofit snugly into the selectedrooms. Floor tiles in differ-ent colours can be placedalong with landscaping ele-ments, such as green grassin the balcony and terrace,potted plants in the drawingroom and kitchen window-sill, etc. The basic floor plancan be saved to be workedupon the next day.

“With more and moreyoungsters going in forhomes at the beginning oftheir careers, we decided todevelop a mobile floor-plan-ner solution that would helpthem plan their dream homedown to the last detail. Weare currently working ondeveloping a 3D version ofthe application for the desk-top where the wall colouringor tiling and the effect ofsunlight on a patch of floor-ing can be viewed and a vir-tual walk-through the homewill be possible,” saidSrikanth Krishnamohan,founder-CEO, InfiMatra.

(Left) Bhaskar S. of Amagi Media Labs. (Centre) Lakshmanan Narayan of EyesAnd-Feet.com. (Right) Srikanth Krishnamohan of Infimatra. Bhaskar, Lakshmanan andSrikanth head promising Indian start-ups. —ASIAN AGE

Lawsuit indicates Dell hid computer faults ASHLEE VANCE

SAN FRANCISCO

Nov. 21: Documentsunsealed Thursday in athree-year-old lawsuitagainst Dell have raisedmore questions about howthe company handled anunprecedented number offaulty computers sold togovernments, schools andcorporations from 2003 to2005.

A judge in the Federal Dis-trict Court in North Carolinaunsealed hundreds of docu-ments linked to a lawsuitfiled by Advanced InternetTechnologies that hadaccused Dell of trying tohide defects in its desktopcomputers from customers.

For instance, the courtdocuments show that theCity of New York filed inci-dent reports with Dell on20.2 percent of a batch of5,000 computers purchasedduring this period. A pur-chase of 2,800 computers by

Microsoft resulted in issueswith 11 percent of themachines; General Electric,William W. Backus Hospi-tal, Denison University andthe Montana Justice Depart-ment were among dozens ofother organizations thatexperienced similar results.

The documents also showhow Dell had resistedinforming many of its cus-tomers about the extent ofthe problem. Despite wide-spread reports from thefield, Dell salespeople andtechnicians were encour-aged to keep customers inthe dark about the knowndefects that left computersinoperable.

As it tried to deal with themounting issues, Dell beganranking customers byimportance, putting firstthose who might move theiraccounts to another PCmaker, followed by thosewho might curtail sales andgiving the lowest priority tothose who were bothered but

still willing to stick withDell.

The company declined torecall the systems and didwhat it called “proactivefield replacements” for cus-tomers that met certain salesand failure rate thresholds.

In September, Dell settledthe lawsuit with AdvancedInternet Technologies with-out disclosing the terms ofthe agreement. The NewYork Times sought access tothe documents that hadremained under seal.

The issues with the com-puters revolved around thecapacitors that dot computermotherboards. A typicalDell computer could have

up to 20 of these capacitors,which cost a fraction of apenny each and help regu-late electrical operations ofthe machines.

Earlier this decade, capaci-tors made in Asia with a badchemical recipe were sold tonumerous makers of televi-sions, PCs and other elec-tronic devices. The capaci-tors would bulge when theybecame too hot and causedevices to malfunction orstop working altogether.

Dell, Hewlett-Packard andApple and others wereaware of these issues andtried to pull faulty comput-ers from the market and tofix the computers. But evenwhile keeping an eye on theproblem, Dell continued toreceive faulty capacitorsfrom suppliers.

It waged a three-year battleto identify the troublesomecomponents. Studies con-ducted by Dell and a thirdparty showed that the com-pany shipped 11.8 million

computers from May of2003 to July 2005 that wereat risk of breaking.

What shocked customersand Dell was the rate atwhich the computers failed.

For example, the unsealedcourt documents included aDell study from 2004 inwhich the component issuescharged past the company’sinitial forecasts. In June ofthat year, Dell expected thata minimum of 12 percent ofits SX270 Optiplex comput-ers would result in incidentreports from customers overa period of three years. BySeptember, Dell raised theminimum incident reportforecast to 45 percent andnoted it could run as high as97 percent.

The same Dell study cov-ered issues with the GX270computer and noted that thecompany planned to helpcustomers who had boughtmore than 50 computers andwho had at least 5 percent ofthose systems fail. — NYT

Groupon Incconsideringselling itself out

E-commerce couponsite Groupon Inc isconsidering selling

itself to Google Inc,according to media reportson Friday.

The two are in discussionsabout an acquisition formore than $3 billion,reported the technologyblog AllThingsD, citinganonymous sources, on Fri-day. Groupon is a privatelyheld, Chicago-based com-pany which was launchedabout two years ago. Thecompany, which sends itsmembers daily emails withabout 200 deals, is presentin 250 markets in NorthAmerica. The deals areactivated only when a mini-mum number of peopleagree to make a purchase,giving Groupon clout tonegotiate steep group dis-counts.” There is nothingfor us to comment on.These are just rumors,” saidGroupon spokeswomanJulie Mossler. A Googlespokesman said the compa-ny does not comment onrumors or speculation.

— Reuters

“Dell salespeopleand technicianswere encouragedto keepcustomers in thedark.”

Keep looking foryour ‘Grameen’

KAPIL KHANDELWAL

Since the success ofSKS Microfinanceand its IPO, a new

breed of wannabehealthcare social entre-preneurs have emergedthat would like to incu-bate the “Grameen” likesocial business modelsin healthcare and ICT(Information, communi-cation and technology)in rural and urban slumof India. These initialattempts by wannabesocial entrepreneurs inmobile health are quitelaudable and encourag-ing. A couple of yearsago, I had urged to theHealth and ICT Minis-ters of African continentto bring the stakeholdersfrom government, civilsociety, academia, ICTand health industries tocreate an opportunity foraligning on key priori-ties in the developmentof the mHealth ecosys-tem.

The same applies toIndia as well. For 16%of world's population,we have around 20% ofthe world's disease bur-den, less than 8% ofworld's hospital bedsand doctors (around 0.8million each) and wehave around 625 millionmobile phones userswhich are the secondlargest base in the worldand the health and ICTneeds to catch up to theopportunity of leverag-ing the half billionmobile handsets. Thesocial entrepreneurs inthe healthcare still don'tknow the right businessmodels for empoweringthe ‘aam admi’ to con-trol have over theirhealth and, as such, helptransform the manner inwhich new solutions arecreated. Our wannabeNobel Laureates, theGrameen look alikesocial entrepreneurs inhealthcare think thoughthe business models thatthey should work out tobe another successfuldisruptive SKS-likesocial venture.

After having reviewedhundreds of businessplans for differenthealthcare ICT venturesas advisory board mem-ber, here are three keypoints that mostwannabes forget to vali-date and become toopassionate with theirpanacea to the world'shealthcare problems.There are three key

components to buildingyour successful venture

— value proposition,delivery proposition andlastly the financialproposition. Firstly,what is the value propo-sition that you areaddressing and what arethe key service lines thatyou propose to incubate.In the short to mediumterm, mHealth is a per-sonal, additional, discre-tionary spend. Valueproposition would needto address consumerspending on healthcareand what they are will-ing to pay for. Once youhave zeroed into thevalue proposition thenyou need to define thecompelling services thatwould be payed for bythe consumers.

A word of caution hereis to engage with thoseconsumers that do carefor their health and usetheir experience to buildcompelling feedback toother potential con-sumers. Most of thegood ventures have beenkilled due to over indul-gence with the medicalprofession and regula-tion rather than thinkinglike aam admi.

Having defined thevalue proposition andthe services, the secondcomponent is to definethe delivery propositionand competencies thatwould be required todeliver your “Grameen”mhealth venture. Manytechies often start bybuilding the technologycastles rather having anunderstanding of thevalue proposition theywould like to deliver tothe consumers. The ideahere is to stop thinkinglike doctors and techiesand start thinking likepatients and consumers.

Lastly, the businessplan or the financialproposition of running asocial healthcare ven-ture.

Obviously with goodintent, there is a healthindicator that the ven-ture would strive toim-prove upon.

The revenues and costsneed to be balanced toensure that there is prof-it for the venture.

The acid test is todefine all these proposi-tions to build anotherGrameen or SKS inhealthcare and ICT.

Keep on looking…there's a business modelsomewhere takingshape…

Kapil Khandelwal is a leading healthcare andICT expert. Kapil@KapilKhandelwal.com

A dose of IT

A dose of IT

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