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 […]
VC1.0, Stagflation and VC2.0 Preambe
Peter Rip of Leapfrog Ventures has a humorous piece on On Everything 2.0 and takes a dig the 2.0 trend with Arithmetic 2.0. Then he gets serious with Venture Capital 2.0 a series on paridgm shift in the (IT) VC space. First in the series, Venture 2.0 – Preamble traces the The sequential evolution of […]
Make India – V1.1
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 […]
Looking For Social Ma
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” […]
School Chale Hum
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 […]
Does long tail work?
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 on Google M&A in India
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 […]
The Laws
When Rajesh pointed out the site couchsurfing it made me think. Here is something that I cannot imagine being done without the internet. It took just a few people to build this community and bring so many people together, in such little time. In addition if you read about when it was almost destroyed by […]
Hacking The Himalayas
Continuing on the thought-provoking post by Sanjay, I wanted to share a very interesting story of human endeavor and social entrepreneurship. The amalgamation of right ideas, right minds and right knowledge can definitely change human perspective and enlighten society. A Silicon Valley escapist, members of the old-school computer security group called the Cult of Dead […]
Make India Movement
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 […]
Social Entrepreneurship
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 […]
Leisure Travel
Innovations in Leisure Travel