Rarely do I hear about good work being done using public funds in India. I was pleased to hear about a municipal school in Hauz Khas, Delhi. The school charges $1 a year as fees . It operates upto 5th grade ( standard). A child I know joined as a first grade student. He received […]

We work fast. V1.1 has been uploaded as well. Make India – Social Entrepreneurship Here is the text of a mail I sent to some people to give the gist …. You may find interesting… It not very long … and it suggests that a $300MM + revenue company could be built… and more importantly […]

Jack Ma in China has built a large company, Alibaba & Tao Bao in China. Yahoo bought 40% for $1 billion. I have in the recent past posted on “Looking for Ma” and on “Make India movement”. Quite a few readers asked me for a copy of the whitepaper referred to in the “Make India” […]

Interesting video On “You Tube” 192 million children between 6-14 years of age across 1.1 million places in India are not going to school. This film for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Universilisation of Elementary Education) addresses the needs of these children. The film catches the moment when children all across India from Kashmir to Kerala wake […]

Lee Gomes provides some data into the long tail — or rather, the lack of it. In a critique to “The Long Tail”, Lee quotes examples such as: – With expansion of inventory, the no-play list on Ecast has gone up from 2 to 12%. The number on Rhapsody is 22%. – 2.7% of Amazon’s […]

Redherring has an interesting article on Google’s potental M&A plans in India. It is interesting to contrast Google’s acquisitions from Yahoo’s. Google has tended to acquire early and for technology, not for communities. Also, Google is totally focussed on stuff that can add to their advertiser business, unlike Yahoo which is also interested in ecommerce […]

As the “Quit India” movement demonstrated collective non violent action is a very powerful force that can introduce radical change. ” Rang de Basanti” articulated the need for radical change to “Make India” . The use of violence to achieve the goal is not something that I believe in. As the cliche goes the power […]

As some of you may know I was a Reuters Digital Vision Fellow at Stanford University and have an interest in “social entrepreneurship” . I also have an interest in ideas that start small but can become very big. I call these “elephants”. In the social area I am interested in “social elephants”. For “not […]

According to a recent HT-Cfore survey amongst youth, Entrepreneurship is the top career aspiration at 22% of respondents. Others such as Science, Engineering etc follow later. I guess this survey did not cover people already in jobs, and that number might only be higher. I remember fifteen years back, it used to be Engineering, Medicine, […]

Just stumbled on this interesting website which can be a useful resource for entrepreneurs who want to get a taste of how some real business plans were blueprinted, formulated and implemented. The Business Plan Archive is a joint archiving project headed by prestigious institutions like Library of Congress, the Center for History and New Media […]

I just returned from IIM-A after talking to students on ” Is a Startup right for them” and “Investors & Business Plans”. Beerud , CTO of Webaroo and earlier founder of e-Lance was also there and spoke on ” Start up: What it takes”. IIM – A is thinking of having a business plan competition […]

Nimesh from ValueFirst has started a mobile blog. Currently all the posts are his. I found it interesting reading. Mobile enthusiasts may want to check it out.