Recently Mrs. Cannings, Director of Global Research for Dow Jones VentureSource in its Quarterly India Venture Capital Report mentioned that, "While the size of venture deals in the U.S., Europe and even China continues to climb, venture capitalists have shown some restraint in terms of investments in India, due largely to the risk still associated with this emerging region…"
However we have seen quite a number of Venture Capitals (VCs) raising funds to invest in India. In fact Sequoia Capital announced few days back that it raised its second growth fund $725 million (Rs. 3,186 crore). The firm has now two growth and three venture funds in India, will manage a total capital of $1,8 billion. Sumir Chadha, Managing Director at Sequoia Capital India said, "There is a lot of investor interest and we are not too worried about (market) cycles."
Echoing Mr. Chadha’s words, Rahul Khanna, director Clearstone Venture Advisors in an interview with Economic Times said, “This is the right time to invest in the Indian companies as a VC investor…” Clearstone will invest around Rs. 225 Crore in four companies in the on - line educational, entertainment and financial services vertical this fiscal year. WATBlog caught up with Rahul Khanna for a quick byte. Here is what he had to say,” We will invest up to $10 million in a company, either completely own our own or might be a syndicated investment”
Cybermedia has announced its plan to go mobile and provide news updates in the IT and Telecommunications sphere to its mobile subscribers. The system powered by Netcore’s MyToday platform already has over 10,000 subscribers signed up. Cybermedia as most would know is the force behind Dataquest, PCQuest, Living Digital and 12 other publications. It had also launched the online space for its entrepreneurship magazine DARE recently.
If posts on WATBlog itself are anything to go by, the mobile Internet space has seen frantic activity in the recent days. We have had major players go mobile and go local in their strategies to garner a wider base. I think people have finally come around the fact that PCs will take time to scale and mobiles with twice as much reach are a better way to leverage on the Internet as a medium. Guess all the more reasons for mobile marketers to pull up their socks.
Next in line for Cybermedia is a channel with content from Living Digital its consumer digital lifestyle monthly. The channel will provide mobile and gadget tips & news and to launch it next month. I personally don’t see them going beyond these two channels for the time being, considering the nature of their publications. Though E Abraham Mathew, President, CyberMedia India Online, assured that their subscribers will enjoy various other mobile services soon.
So now we have social networking going mobile, and digital publications becoming wireless with this initiative, games going mobi and exclusive music releases to the comfort of our palms. Recently Shayon also posted an excellent write up on mobile services on Wimax. While this is no attempt at co-relating any of the above pieces together, one can’t quite deny the strong winds blowing in the mobile industry these days. And what to my mind seems a significant shift in mobile Internet becoming a mainstream medium information spread. And 250 million Internet enabled mobile phone users doesn’t seem a distant picture with this.
I think a word also needs to be spoken about Netcore’s MyToday Dailies. Since being launched a year ago, I have been hearing quite a lot of it and have been using its services as a subscriber of a couple of content publishers including WATBlog. And the way it has garnered deals with some of the top media publishers has been impressive.
To activate Cybermedia’s new service, you need to SMS START TECH to 09845298452 e.g. START TECH MUMBAI, and to unsubscribe SMS STOP TECH to 09845298452. The service is essentially free.
Speaking of subscriptions, you can subscribe to WATblog’s updates on your mobile as well by START WATBLOG to 5757585. You can view further details on the same here.
BuzzCity, which is a Singapore based mobile content and services company, and owns myGamma, a mobile social network, received $10 million from MIH. MIH is an investment arm of the South African media conglomerate Naspers and had earlier invested in popular social networking site - Ibibo and ACL wireless in India. Dr. Lai Kok Fung, CEO, Buzz City, in company’s official Blog writes, (Referring to MIH) “They are buying a 25% stake in the company.”
The investment will help BuzzCity to expand at a speedy rate. They plan to build more localized version of myGamma. myGamma mobile ad network has more than six lakhs page views from India. It’s in the second position, while Indonesia leads the game. BuzzCity will utilize the fund for building brands, marketing and Public Relations to attract potential media partners. Dr. Fung further adds, ” I expect BuzzCity will expand in Africa, Middle East and Latin America, and strengthen our operations across Asia, Europe and US.” BuzzCity was initially funded by 3i, BancBostov and SPH Multimedia and now are exiting from the company. (SPH Multimedia is keeping a small stake)
In the official blog, Dr. Lai clearly mentioned that he was misquoted by a blogger, on BuzzCity planning to look for a strategic partnership with an Indian entity. Well, BuzzCity can not completely rule out India in his expansion plans, even though MIH has invested in Ibibo and ACL Wireles, which interestingly, also, has its own mobile community - Frenzo. Will have to wait and watch out how MIH plays on this!
Do you remember the little wooden boy from “ToyLand” who used to deliver parcels in his little red and yellow taxi and whose head keeps nodding because it is suspended with a spring? Yes, I am talking about the legendary and oh-so-cute character from Enid Blyton, Noddy. It’s been quite a while that kids’ cartoon channel, Nickelodeon, has been broadcasting episodes of Toyland for its Indian audiences. Now, it’s time for 'Just Because It’s Children’ to bring a Noddy Musical to India, that’s based on one of Blyton’s stories, “Noddy and the Treasure Map”.
If that is not enough, MSN India has decided to offer children across India an oportunity to experience Noddy through its exclusive videos of the live musical performance that would tour different Indian cities in August and September, including Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata and Bangalore.
Kavita Bedi, Director, Managing Director of Just Because It’s Children, says,
“Our strategic tie up with MSN India will help us take the show across the internet audience in India and connect with young people.”
Apart from Noddy, MSN India’s Video has gathered a lot of traction lately with their “first Day First Show” that features reviews from movie goers themselves. MSN India has also planned a photo caption contest for the ongoing show Splitsvilla, on MTV, and showcasing to be released movies like “Wall-E” and “What Happens in Las Vegas”.
September seems like a month of events. Hell, it seems like there are more events than there are speakers. Let’s see what all is coming our way in September.
The VAS conference of IAMAI will be held in Delhi. Prominent speakers include Anurag Dod, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Guruji.com; Prasad Narasimha, Chief Marketing Officer, Virgin Mobile India; Rajiv Hiranandani, Co-Founder & Global Head of Revenues, Mobile2Win; Salil Bhargava, Chief Executive Officer, Jump Games and many more.
The delegate fee is Rs.5000. Rs.500 off for online registration. 10% off for 2-4 delegates.
The event will focus on revenue generation through VAS. New streams and avenues for revenues and how the overall experience of the consumer can be improved.
Speakers: Sharad Sharma, CEO, Yahoo! India R&D; Jan Blom, Head, Nokia Research Center; Dr. Darlie O Koshy, Director, National Institute of Design; Pranav Mistry, Researcher, MIT Media Lab
The discussion will be around user experience and design considerations while desiging of products.
Speakers : Kushal Sanghvi, Managing Director, Media Contact; K Vaitheeswaran, Co founder & Chief Operating Officer, Indiaplaza.in; Naren Nachiappan, Managing Director, Jivox; Pearl Uppal, Director Advertising Sales, Yahoo! India, Rahul Nanda, Chief Operating Officer, Webchutney
The delegate fee is Rs.5000.
The discussions will hover around Analog VS. Digital. A discussion on new media tools, and also a conversation on how to fight the web-weariness. There will also be a discussion on what is blended search. Search which throws results from vertical search engines like videos, photos, blogs, etc.
Based on the concept of Barcamp, PHP camp will be a gathering of PHP-enthusiasts. The topics of discussions will hover wround PHP and web applications.
“We have projected to have a revenue of US $ 4-5 mn within next 12 months and majority of it will be coming from advertisements,” says BigAdda.com COO Shivanandan Pare.
Big people primarily are looking at advertising to drive most of this revenue target, both on the PC web as well as mobile Internet
With over 2.5 million users in its community currently and it’s aggressive plans to push more users over the next couple of years, the networking site has certainly set its plans big. Though with only 100 million Internet users predicted by the end of the year in India, BigAdda might shift focus on extending its newly launched MobileAdda on the mobile Internet platform.
They have already set a target of 50 million mobile users which is 10 more than those being pulled on the web, and have plans to reach out to nearly 300 million users. We had recently covered their mobile plans on WAT and also reported on their plans to spend around Rs 4 Crores in advertising and promotion.
According to Mr. Pare, BigAdda adds close to 15,000 new users everyday. While this adds up to a good 5 million users by the end of the year if true and consistent. However, even more interesting is this set of exclusive stats that WAT has on Big Adda’s user base.
Within India while top 20 cities account for 50% users, 40% of the users come from tier-II towns like Tuticorin, Bhilai, Amritsar, Guwahati, Surat, Nasik etc. The site gets almost 10% of users from countries like Sri Lanka, Pakistan and from Indians from Dubai, US and UK.
78% of the users are between 16-27 yrs
72% males and 28% females
11% consider themselves to be PHAT (pretty hot and tempting) and 28% athletic
Average height 5'.6"-5'.7" (Male) and 5'.2"(female) 25% with brown eyes
65% clearly not conforming to smoking and alcohol , 62% hating politics and 17% preferring to be Liberal
As compared to the global social networking sites in India, Bigadda is younger as for the global sites have around 60% under 25 years of age - 35% single and 62% come there for friends and 20% for dating, while on BigAdda apart from building their network through profiles (individuals users physically know or want to know) users are also connecting on interests (people with similar likes and thought processes)
40% of users consume videos and share them – create their own mash-ups thereby initiating comments /discussions and their by networking
57% of the users have created their photo galleries
Created 15000 ADDAs (equivalent of communities) which others are joining thus expressing themselves.
The interesting pieces here are the 40% Tier II city users and the connection driver which in this case is interests and communities. I think this can be attributed to the fact that BigAdda’s brand itself is on the lines of community building more than relationship building. And with MobileAdda, they are certainly expecting the user activity to increase manifold by converting occasional users into proactive mavens, according Nikhil Soman, CTO of BigAdda (not quite the same words actually).
Personally, I am big on mobile marketing purely because of the reach that it can provide. However, at the same time I doubt if the mobile internet activity for leisure would surpass its business use. And the mobile Internet usage beyond the limits of Tier I cities is something I haven’t experienced and doubt if the infrastructural framework is there to enable higher quality usage. So it would be interesting to see what numbers BigAdda or any other mobile social networking site reaches in a few years time.
Sulekha.com the yellow pages and classifieds portal (funded By NVP) which also boasts of a sizeable NRI community has announced its plans to roll out local search services to 20 Tier II & III cities. With this oll out Sulekha.com will establish its city-specific search services in 28 cities in India. The cities that Sulekha will cover with regards to classifieds and yellow pages are Agra, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Cochin, Coimbatore, Goa, Indore, Jaipur, Jalandhar, Kanpur, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Madurai, Nagpur, Surat, Trichy, Trivandrum, Vadodara, Vijayawada &Vizag. Sulekha also seems to have revamped its homepage and one has to slelect a city to browse the site further.
This puts sulekha in the local search space and in direct competition with the likes of justdial, asklaila and onyomo. Sulekha also plans to extend beyond the online medium and offer Mobile classifieds and yellow pages service to these 20 cities.
Inorder to monetize this local search service facility sulekha seems to be offering advertising solutions for the small businesses whereby they only pay per response. Sulekha aims to attract at least 50,000 advertisers to go live on the site by the year end.
Also Inorder to make sure that its new service is well publicised in Tier II & III cities sulekha is launching a new TVC in a week's time, which has been done by their agency JWT.
Its nice to see Sulekha focussing on local commerce and getting its mojo right if I may say so. Though in the recent past sulekha has been described as Craiglist + Facebook I dont think I quite agree with it. I think sulekha is more classifieds than social networking and this move to go local will only be beneficial to them.
Microsoft and Nikon on Thursday announced that they have signed a cross-licensing patent agreement on Nikon’s digital camera patents as well as consumer electronics patents from each company. The two parties did not disclose specifics of the deal, but Microsoft said that it will be receiving payment from Nikon and that the deal will be related to its digital imaging software. Whether this was a cash payment, a royalty, or some other form was not known. The agreement was signed by representatives from both companies at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
Nikon has carved out a place as a pioneer of optical technology in Japan and the world since its inception in 1917.
Looking to innovate on each other’s technologies, the companies have previously collaborated on bringing wireless cameras and RAW processing and said that that the new patent cross-licensing agreement will “substantially benefit customers of consumer products including digital cameras.”
Josh Weisberg, director of Microsoft’s rich media group, said,
“This agreement will extend and enhance our already successful, long-standing collaboration with Nikon, and will allow us to provide even better products to our customers.”
The companies believe that this patent cross license agreement will have substantial benefits for consumers and customers of consumer products including digital cameras. Both parties will be able to innovate openly with each others’ technologies, enabling new features and products to come to market.
Microsoft believes this licensing agreement is another example of the important role IP plays in ensuring a healthy and vibrant IT ecosystem. Since Microsoft launched its IP licensing program in December 2003, the company has entered into more than 500 licensing agreements and continues to develop programs that make it possible for customers, partners and competitors to access its IP portfolio. Over the past two years, Microsoft has entered into similar agreements with Alpine Electronics Inc, Fuji Xerox Co Ltd, Kenwood Corp etc.
One hint at a possible direction for collaboration might be Microsoft’s MediaFrame Vision project, part of its “Next Media” research arm. “The vision for MediaFrame is to enable you to store all of your personal media on your home PC and to quickly, easily and securely share your media to all kinds of connected local and remote display devices.”
Nikon director, Naoki Tomino added -
“At Nikon, we want to continue to lead the industry in pioneering photography solutions and give our customers access to innovative technology.”
After the online banner ads report IAMAI & IMRB have come out with another report this time on the Search Engine Marketing Industry in India. The report covers Search in the Indian Context, search activities, purpose of searching and user opinion on online search. It also covers introduction to search engine marketing and its advantages. SEM Industry global scenario, India as an SEM outsourcing hub, Growth of SEM in India and its Future.
The report came out with the following interesting insights:
The total market revenue for SEM industry in India was estimated at around USD 112.5 Million in FY2007-08 but only 1/3rd of this is from domestic clients and 2/3rd is from the international clients having local as well as global presence.
International clients from South East Asia, USA, UK, Spain and Middle East form a large part of the client base for India.
The revenues are expected to increase by 100% by FY 2009-2010 to reach a mark of USD 225 million.
India is poised to be a global outsourcing hub for SEM (Search engine marketing) and the acute problem of lack of skilled manpower is the only roadblock.
The top companies exclusively working in the SEM space are Pinstorm and Communicate2. While Pinstorm expanded its reach by having an alliance with Lintas, Communicate2 sold equity to Aegis media to create global network and reach for its services. We also interviewed Mr.Vivek Bhargava on this strategic sale of equity some time back. This report does predict a promising future for SEM in India and the only thing holding people back seems to be the lack of skilled manpower which I think is the roadblock for growth for the entire new media industry and not only SEM.
VNL, a Swedish-Indian start-up claims to have developed a solar powered mobile network designed, from the ground up, to serve rural populations in developing economies — and do it profitably. Called WorldGSM, their product has been getting attention from the media because of its low cost (about $3,500) and near-zero energy consumption (100 watts) requirements. Another attractive feature is the relatively simple installation, without the need of engineers.
Such inventions have the potential of making a big positive impact for telecom users at the base of the pyramid - the under served huge population in developing countries who may not spend much. VNL calls it ‘Micro-telecom’.
To power mobile networks in remote areas today, telecommunications operators pair base stations — the tower-top radio transmitters that form the backbone of mobile networks — with diesel-powered generators and batteries. These are impractical and expensive: Fuel accounts for 65% of the cost of operating a typical base station.
VNL has managed to develop a simplified base station that is powered by solar panels and requires just a fraction of the electricity of typical base stations.
However, convincing telecom operators to buy a stripped-down base station made by a little-known start-up won't be easy. VNL is among many companies trying to develop mobile-phone technologies for poor rural areas.
In India, Ericsson has installed some 40 base stations that run on bio-diesel, essentially recycled cooking oil. Alcatel-Lucent's solar base station requires about 750 watts to run, while Ericsson's solar base station requires about 600 watts. The companies wouldn't disclose the costs but both sets of gear require technical staff to install them over a matter of weeks.
VNL's base station will cost $3,500 and require 100 watts to run, about the same as a light bulb. By contrast, the GSM stations most widely used today can cost anywhere from $40,000 to $100,000. The most energy-efficient models require around 600 watts; others may need several thousand watts.
The tower is designed to make it easy for people with little professional training to install. Though tested in labs, VNL's technology is just starting to be tried out on the ground. The start-up recently signed an agreement with Quippo Infrastructure Equipment Ltd., an independent Indian mobile-infrastructure company, to test the VNL solar base station in northern India. VNL says it hopes to sign contracts with Indian telecom operators over the next year.
If VNL's base station takes root, it could make it possible for Indian telecom operators such as Vodafone Essar Ltd., in which Vodafone Group PLC has a majority stake, and Bharti Airtel Ltd. to wire more remote villages at a much lower cost and more quickly. That is one of their main objectives, because most people in Indian's cities already have mobile phones and price competition there is intense.
Do you remember the little wooden boy from “ToyLand” who used to deliver parcels in his little red and yellow taxi and whose head keeps nodding because it is suspended with a spring? Yes, I am talking about the legendary and oh-so-cute character from Enid Blyton, Noddy. It’s been quite a while that kids’ cartoon channel, Nickelodeon, has been broadcasting episodes of Toyland for its Indian audiences. Now, it’s time for 'Just Because It’s Children’ to bring a Noddy Musical to India, that’s based on one of Blyton’s stories, “Noddy and the Treasure Map”.
Apart from Noddy, MSN India’s Video has gathered a lot of traction lately with their “first Day First Show” that features reviews from movie goers themselves. MSN India has also planned a photo caption contest for the ongoing show Splitsvilla, on MTV, and showcasing to be released movies like “Wall-E” and “What Happens in Las Vegas”.
ADAG’s BigAdda has reportedly 
Microsoft and Nikon on Thursday announced that they have 
Josh Weisberg, director of Microsoft’s rich media group, said,
One hint at a possible direction for collaboration might be Microsoft’s MediaFrame Vision project, part of its “Next Media” research arm. “The vision for MediaFrame is to enable you to store all of your personal media on your home PC and to quickly, easily and securely share your media to all kinds of connected local and remote display devices.”
