Way2Top

Well, it feels like a short while ago when I re-capped 2006, but another year has passed in a jiffy…

Highs: (In chronological order)
- Starting a new job (Senior Product Manager @ ibibo Web Pvt Ltd) at new location (Gurgaon). First taste of internet industry.
- Being part of the core team that launched (DWAAR), India-focussed search engine.
- Getting Married. Varalakshmi is an extremely understanding and very caring wife. Lucky to have her as a life-partner…
- Learning Driving and getting my licence!!
- Buying my first car. Hyundai Santro Xing (Space Silver).
- Visiting Maldives (Heavenly place in earth).
- Visiting Taj Mahal with my wife. Being an Indian, too late to visit the Indian wonder that is part of the seven wonders. What a structure! What a symbol!
- Visiting quite a few religious places (Shirdi, Mathura, Gokul, Sripuram, Sholingur, Tirupati, Akshardham).
- Taking the entrepreneurial plunge & forming my own company called Antya Web Private Limited. Sunny Saurabh is my partner in this journey.
- Getting the seed funding for Antya. The seed fund has given us more confidence to continue the journey than anything else.
- Launching our own product, Antya. A site to find or discover websites across various topics.
- Featuring in Statesman Delhi for Antya- A full page article comprising 2400 words!
- Featuring in Indian Express, Technology edition for Antya.
- Interviewed for “Tech 4 U” section in Hindustan Times.
- Rise of the Antya in Alexa. Currently it is ranked 1764 in India. When launched the rank was 16905. It took just 20 days to reach under 2000! Antya is improving well in US too. Promising start for a long journey ahead.
- Getting my hands on Apple iMac Desktop (20″) loaded with Mac OS X Leopard edition. Interacting with Apple Mac is a Larger-than-life experience!
- Getting to know Bruno, a Labrodar, an extremely loveable and intelligent pet of my friend sunny. It’s amazing to see how fast he has grown from a small pup in May to a big boy now. Wonder how big he will be in another year

Lows:
- Death of a close cousin. She died of cancer.

Overall, Year 2007 has been pretty eventful for me. Year 2008 is a critical year for me in many aspects. Entering 2008 with loads of hope, courage, confidence, dreams and determination.

A quote to remember for me this year:
“…It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change…” - Charles Darwin

By now, many of you would have noticed about the funding for Antya.com. Just capturing the news bits here…

Pahwa Knowledge Based Services has also seed-funded a search engine called Antya.com, which is a web discovery engine that helps people search for specific websites on a particular topic, says Pahwa. Antya.com will also offer regular search service like Google and will be launched in beta mode in a few weeks

- Source Agency Faqs

He’s also funding a soon-to-be-launched India-focused search engine, Antya.com

- Source Business Week

I did a brief research on the sites that are exposing the information to the world (other websites that is). Leading websites like Yahoo, Google, Technorati, Amazon, CNET, eBay to name a few are in the forefront when it comes to exposing the information through APIs.

What is the rationale to expose the information, that is supposed to be an asset or “Competitive Advantage”?. The rationale is pretty evident when you observe the way the information is exposed and the way the exposure drives traffic back to the originating site!

This article in read/write web summarizes the thought and concept beautifully. The internet is transforming to one giant structured database…

ProgrammableWeb neatly summarizes the APIs from various websites. As of today, there are 523 APIs available.

In Indian Context, the APIs haven’t caught up in a big scale. So the practice of “Web Scraping” looms large. Huge number of Yellow page companies boasting lakhs of business-details illustrates the effect of “Web scraping”. Same set of data problems can be seen with each Yellow page company for the simple reason that everyone copies the same set of data and repackages it. No one gives credit back to the other site.

When Bixee.com offered a one-stop search for all Jobs in India, by crawling and extracting information from all leading Job portals including Naukri, Naukri reacted negatively by filing a law-suit against Bixee. Later Naukri realized the complimentary nature of Bixee in generating traffic back to them and decided to expose the data in legal channels. If the information is scraped for the purpose of “Search and Redirection” to the original site, “Scraping” has a positive effect.

I cannot remember a single service that is successful through “Web Scraping” without redirecting back to the original site.

Killerstartups.com, a user-driven internet start-up community, profiles a whopping 249 search-related products! There are various flavours of Search engines originating from different parts of the globe.

Wikipedia, the Free encyclopedia, lists down around 100 odd search engines. It’s interesting to see the way they have classified these search engines in to 29 categories.

Off late, I am fascinated by the concept of human-powered search engines like www.Mahalo.com & www.chacha.com. They focus on serving high-quality relevant results using the human intelligence. This is accomplished through the people-centric approach, whereby experts hand-pick best sites and difficult-to-find sites under each category and add them to the search engine. This approach clearly overcomes the problem that the mega search engines like Google, Yahoo et al poses. For example, the PageRank algorithm of Google prevents new, niche, less SEO’ed sites and not-so-often-quoted sites to figure on top results. Many a times, such sites turn out to be the most relevant ones.

Until the “artificial intelligence”, “machine-learning”, “natural-language processing”, “neural-networks” and other esoteric concepts gather some traction and shape, the human-powered approach is a dependable way of solving the problem. But there will be questions raised like “How to do you scale it up?”, “How many years, people you need to accomplish this?”, “How will you eliminate the subjectivity and bias of the experts?”. This is where I think Mahalo and Chacha are doing a good job. They invite users/volunteers to hand-pick the results. They also have a good reputation system which enforces sanctity and validity on the user-contributions. The focus is on top search terms and to add the long-tail terms as and when a demand is seen. The approach eliminates spam-sites, copy-paste sites, SEO-oriented blogs et al., The game of “online advertising and marketing” has clearly spoilt the quality of search results on major search engine. It is refreshing to see search engines that are powered by humans and that are clean from advertising gamers.

Mahalo.com: Mahalo is the world’s first human-powered search engine powered by an enthusiastic and energetic group of Guides.

Chacha.com: The first search engine that uses the brainpower of really smart people to find anything you want on the Internet.

In many ways, Spencer Plaza in Chennai is the first Mall that I visited. It was way back in 1995! Ever since, I have visited many malls in India, Belgium and neighbouring countries. But Gurgaon’s Mall Culture is the best I have seen. There are 15+ Malls in this small town. In fact, there are 7 Malls next to each other within a space of 500 meters! And, there are many more coming up….

Among these all-purpose malls, there are “Specialty malls” that are slowly cropping up across the country. Of all the Specialty Malls, the prominent one is “Gold Souk” . Started by the Aerens Group, this shopping place houses a huge number of global jewellery brands both from India and Abroad. The same group has started “Wedding Souk”, a specialty mall focussed on marriage.

After few searches, I found that a Real estate mall, Interior Decoration mall, Automobile mall, Wellness Mall, “House to Home” Mall and a Furnishing mall are either available or under construction across India. The Real Estate mall will help an individual in buying/selling a house, getting home loans for the house, buying/selling land, getting office spaces and ofcourse assist in furnishing the house (or can redirect to furnishing malls!). The “House to home” Mall will sell construction materials, interiors, furniture, furnishings, landscape elements, art works, home appliances, white goods and insurance facilities. It will also provide the services of architects, Vaastu and Feng Shui experts, contractors, consultants, interior decorators, real estate agents, etc! Quite a vision this is

A research study shows that the conversion of footfalls in such specialty malls is around 80-90% compared to 5-10% in all-purpose malls. A mouth-watering stat!

Going by the trend both online and offline, I can foresee Travel Malls, Education Malls, Job Malls, Movie Malls (A bigger giant than Multi-plexes. Can house not just movie-theatres but even DVD rentals, DVD purchases etc.,), Financial products Mall and the list goes on…The fundamenal idea is to group similar products/services together, to provide a great shopping experience for consumers and great infrastructure for shop-owners. If the consumer does not find a product/service of his taste, he can look around for alternatives easily. (He does not have to go through the painful automobile-parking process again :)). Retail Industry is getting organized….big time!

This all-purpose malls and specialty malls can be compared to General Search engines and Vertical Search engines. Though the Vertical Search engines has a niche audience, it will have high conversion rates and high-worth sales!

Related Links:
Gurgaon Shopping Malls - Search for stores

Since one of my job roles entails evaluating Open Source technologies, I was wondering if there are any good career options in “Open Source Consulting”. There are some firms doing exactly this.

Organizations world-wide are slowly embracing Open-source solutions as the choice for the enterprise-level IT needs. The challenge, as I already mentioned in one of the posts, lies in evaluating the suitable solutions and Recommending an executable-strategy based on the fit analysis. There should be a deep understanding of each and every open-source offerings across all solution space. Every possible advantage and disadvantage should be captured. The inter-dependencies/synergies/incompatibilites between different open-source technologies should be documented. Best practices in deploying open-source technologies should be arrived at…

Different set of Solutions should be formulated by mixing and matching different technologies. The possibilities are endless, just like in the business of consulting.

As more and more Tech start-ups are cropping up in India, as more and more web 2.0 based companies are coming up everyday, I believe there is good business opportunity for Open-source consulting in India. My thoughts…

Google Search: Open Source Consulting

“Rob Peter and Pay Paul” is probably the right adage to describe the music piracy caused by some online music websites and file-sharing networks. But, a new set of people called “advertisers” have come forward and saying to these online music websites that “Listen, Here’s the deal. Get Paul to visit me. I will give you the currencies that you need. Keep some for you and share the rest with Peter. Don’t rob Peter…He will not produce music if you keep robbing him“.

So what happens now?
Paul gets free music and gives his time to visit Adveritser.
Advertisers get Paul’s attention and gives money.
Peter gets money & peace of mind and gives music.

Music websites coordinates the transaction, get to make profits and gives an online service!

That essentially sums up the intention behind the new venture called “SpiralFrog” and “QTrax”.

SpiralFrog is a new online music destination, offering ad-supported legal downloads of audio and video content licensed from the catalogs of the world’s major and independent record labels.

SpiralFrog will be a secure environment where music lovers can satisfy their unyielding passion and thirst for music, entertainment, and information. Our site will be as multifaceted, smart, and current as the audience we hope to attract. An audience that we believe is the driving force behind the way music is created, discovered, and consumed today.

Who are willing to supply legal music to SpiralFrog?
Universal Music Group
EMI Music Publishing

Where does the Revenue come from?
Business Model is based on sharing the “income streams from advertising” with the content partners. Customers pay with their time.

Is it sustainable?
It all depends on making the customers to visit advertisers. It is the job of advertisers to monetize the footfalls. But it is a challenge for Spiralfrog to attract highly targeted audience and luring them to advertisers website. Not easy!

How different is it from some Joe poky’s website supplying MP3 but filled with Google adsense?
Well nothing in terms of delivery of service. But the music is legal! Moreover, It is not plain Google adsense, where the advertisers are not official partners with you.

Is it really free? Any catch?
Yeah…in a way it is really free. But users are required to visit SpiralFrog each month to validate the music. Otherwise the music expires. They are doing this through some DRM Technology. Well, I think soon there will be some hackers who would break that validation mechanism. A definite Watch-out-Factor!

Any other similar company?
Yes there is. QTrax [You play the music, We pay the artists!] . QTrax has a slightly different delivery mechanism. It allows free download but in proprietary format called “MPQ”. These tracks can be played only in QTrax player. Moreover the music expires after being played for specified number of times. Unlimited music playback can be obtained for a premium fee.

SpiralFrog has plans to extend this ad-supported business to Video [MP4s?] in 2007. I think it is just a matter of time for this to extend to e-books and all content that could be delivered over the web.

Come December, we will know the answer from SpiralFrog! For now, it looks all bright and colourful on paper…

What say?

I was reading an article in Hindu about leaving an employer without damaging the relationships. I felt a need for the following when I was reading it:

“One-stop website to capture the following input from the employers/employees: Testimonials, Recommendations (both positive and negative), awards offered and Experience validation. All employers can check out the details of prospective employee through this website. The website will act like a certifying/validating/verification authority. “

The benefit for employers:

1. A single point to know about the track records of prospective employees. This will help the employer in easily weeding out cheats from real stars at a very early stage of recruitment process.
2. A mechanism through which they can mark the employees who hop jobs relentlessly, who leave job half-completed and who were fired (kind of register the information in the database). This kind of feedback from employers will be crucial for the success of the concept.

The benefit for employees:
1. A star employee can proudly show all his “approved” accomplishments to the next employer.

Users of the system:
1. Corporates
2. Professionals searching for job.
3. Universities ( May be for recommendation letters needed by some Management institutes).

I have to think over this business need. Job portals like Naukri.com, monster.com can easily incorporate this feature as they already have some relationships with corporates and professionals. But how easy is to collect the data that I mentioned before accurately and timely?

I landed up on the following website while I was doing a Market Analysis for Enterprise Search Solution.

Jahia

Jahia offers a product suite with solutions for Enterprise Content Management, Corporate Portal, Document Management, Search Engine, Powerful Indexer, Caching, Colloboration Tools and Business Process Management Tools.

They are offering almost all the features that we are trying to develop but in a slightly different approach. Anyway, I liked Jahia not just for what they offer…but more for their effort to promote a Sustainable Business Model blending the benefits of Open source software and proprietary software. They have instituted a Sustainable Software Initiative (SSI), a non-profit organisation dedicated to promote this business model.

The basic idea behind this initiative is to provide the source code for free and to allow anyone to freely modify the code. But the model charges a licence fee based on the intent and the extent-of-the-intent of use! (commercial or professional reasons). The developers who contribute to the development of the project will be fairly rewarded through stock-options or shares or discounting the licence fee! Jahia is essentially trying to curb out free-riders in the software community: The passive people who use the free software for commercial purpose without contributing anything back! Jahia calls them as “Technology free-riders”.

Bottomline:

“So, you want to enjoy the benefits of high-quality open-source? then give back something useful to the community. Don’t be just passive consumers…You can earn your right to be passive for a specified Fee..”

The movement seems to focus mainly on eliminating the Technology-Free riders. I was just reflecting this principle on what we currently do. I have been wanting my team to contribute back to the community…Time to take some concrete steps towards that…

http://Sramanamitra.com

This is another Business-Technology-Entrepreneurship blog that I found today. The blog is maintained by Sramana Mitra, an Entrepreneur and Strategy consultant since 1994. She blends her rich experience with happening tech trends and offers solid content for readers.

She has been writing for 20 years! The lady seems to have great photographic skills too….And yeah, she is a good friend of Om Malik, the person behind the blog Gigaom…

Yet another entry to my Technology Blogroll…