Ecommerce In India

Experts see India’s e-commerce market at an inflection point. A recent Morgan Stanley report titled “The Next India” said Indian e-commerce would expand to $100 billion in revenue by 2020, from $2.9 billion in 2013, making it the world’s fastest-growing market...... Ant Financial, an Alibaba affiliate that invested $575 million in January for a 25 percent stake. .... Paytm has 20 million active wallet users (compared with 190 million for Ant Financial’s service Alipay, China’s largest) and aims to quintuple this by 2016. Some experts predict that mobile wallet users will overtake credit card users in India. ..... For investors in Indian e-commerce, China’s growth provides evidence that the scale is real and achievable ...... As in China, India’s smaller cities and towns lack retail infrastructure. In 5,000 cities and towns, tapping an app is the new equivalent of a visit to the mall, and it could unleash pent-up demand for the latest fashion or the newest device. ..... India resembles China of seven to 10 years ago in its broadband Internet growth, creation of digital-native marketplaces and rapid user adoption. Even ideas like online grocers, which have just started to gain a foothold in places like Silicon Valley could do well in India. ..... “So investors who won in China are playing in India. Those who missed in China, too, are playing in India. This is the land of opportunity”

The Next India

India’s new government has the strongest mandate in 30 years to deliver reforms ..... The government’s reform agenda must rein in corruption and streamline the regulatory and bureaucratic complexities of doing business so that foreign and domestic investors can feel more confident. If successful, growth in labor, capital and technology in tandem can power productivity and industrial output in ways that are simply not possible in Reform Club peers such as Japan, South Korea and China. For example, new capital can fund technologically advanced factories that can hire relatively inexpensive labor, assuring a market advantage in terms productivity, cost base and quality of product. ....... Over the next 10 years, India will contribute an additional 124 million people to the global labor pool, accounting for nearly 25% of the increase in the world’s working-age population. Economic growth that creates better-paying jobs can transform this youth demographic into a rising middle class, which will also be better educated, more aware of information technology and better able to take advantage of globalization trends.

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Data Security

Edward Snowden showed the government is dipping into data centers at will. That set off alarm bells. It's not just the government. There are many prying eyes.

The “Soft and Chewy Centers” That Put Your Data at Risk

More and more sensitive data is being entrusted to data centers connected to the Internet. ...... The interior of those complex networks is mostly unobserved or protected, meaning that attackers who manage to remotely access the computers can explore mostly as they please .... Servers inside modern data centers usually run multiple copies of Windows, or Linux-based operating systems at the same time. Illumio’s product works by attaching software “agents” to each of the operating systems inside every server. The data those agents send back to Illumio’s central control panel provide a global view of the data moving around inside a data center. Responses to suspicious activity can then be sent back to the software agents for enforcement—potentially shutting down hacking attacks as they happen. ..... “Overall, network security solutions haven’t evolved for the past 20-plus years”

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Glass Half Full Phase

Image via Wikipedia

Fred Wilson: The Word Bubble: There will come a time when the environment we are in will be in the rear view mirror. And entrepreneurs should be crystal clear about that. This is a time to raise money and sock it away for a rainy day. Because it will rain. ...... deals are actually companies and most venture investments are held for five to seven years. I've likened them to marriages over the years. Don't let the lust for the deal lead to a bad marriage that you have to be in for the next decade. ...... we are in the glass is half full part of the cycle. Investors are focusing on the upside and ignoring the downside. That part of the investment cycle lasts for a while and then things change and investors focus on the downside and ignore the upside. Markets are defined by greed and fear. We are in the greed mode right now

I will have to agree. A lot of people sat on a lot of money for about two years. But money does not want to sit still. Money wants to grow. And right now it feels like the basketball that was held at the bottom of the pool was let go. It is not going to end at the surface. It will eventually. But first it will go into the air a little. We are in the air a little phase.

But this is no bubble. I don't see an imminent industry wide collapse. Going out of business also happens in the restaurant business, all the time, but that does not mean the restaurant business is going through a bubble.

FinTech: I Am Loving The Term

This is not the first time I am feeling like Fred Wilson stole my idea.

Fred Wilson: Calling All Fintech Entrepreneurs

JyotiConnect: Executive Summary

A little over two hours ago I sent my executive summary and powerpoint presentation to Irene Hodes and Yao Huang for the Dot Com Hatchery event on January 13. This is what I sent. I hope to elaborate on the themes at this blog over the coming days leading up to the presentation. That is the social media way.

Hunger, Vision, Money 

JyotiConnect Inc.
Executive Summary by Paramendra Bhagat

JyotiConnect Inc.’s vision can be encapsulated in two letters: IC. IC, as in Internet Computer. The PC ended the mainframe era. The PC will not die. But the center of gravity in the computing industry is going to shift to the IC in a rich ecosystem of computing devices from smartphones, to netbooks, to PCs, to servers, to huge data farms. The IC will be the primary way the average human being will interact with the internet in a meaningful way.

The smartphones are all the rage today as they should be. And the mobile space will bring many more people their first web experience than the PC ever could have. That is exciting. But you can’t write a term paper on a smartphone. You need a device that speaks to the human dimensions for the screen and the keyboard. The hardware will look like a laptop of today but will be vastly different. Something much simpler, much cheaper, much lighter, much stronger.

There are three components to the IC vision: connectivity, hardware and software. My company would like to tackle it in that order. One and a half billion people are online today out of more than six billion. That is not good enough. Down the line we have to be able to offer wireless broadband supported by ads. But in the short term we have to be technology agnostic in how we bring people online.

You create few pilot projects, and once you have the basics down, you grow globally through the franchise concept. That way you tap into local capital, local ad markets, and locals’ awareness of the local political, social, cultural knowledge.

The hardware part could be a great second step. And you could argue everyone but everyone is already doing the IC software. Google is in the lead. Google today is the premier IC software company.

You want a barebones operating system that runs the browser, because all your computing needs are met online. If Web 2.0 has taught us anything, it is that the people, the masses are the very center of computing. Technology is secondary. And the web is poorer for every human being who is not yet online. The push for globally universal broadband, I am calling it Web 3.0. The semantic web is not it. That would be Web 2.1. (Competing For the Web 3.0 Definition)

I was done raising my round one goal of 100K and then in February 2009 most of my investors walked away reacting to the worst economy in 70 years. I took some time off, focused on social media, and now I am taking a second crack at my idea. This is the very first round, round 1, as I call it. I am looking for 100K.

Like Steve Jobs said years ago, the PC wars are over, Microsoft won, let’s move on to the next thing. And he gave us the iPod and the iPhone. I am saying the dot com wars have been won by Silicon Valley. If the center of gravity in tech is going to shift to NYC, it is not going to be because NYC finally outdid those on the West Coast in the dot com space. I don’t see that happening. But NYC is magically suited to take the lead on Web 3.0, as I define it. My company would like to take the lead. (Visionary Entrepreneurs Will Recreate The World)

Presentation

JyotiConnect Inc.
The IC as in Internet Computer Company
5 slides for 5 minutes
By Paramendra
Twitter.com/paramendra
Facebook.com/paramendra
LinkedIn.com/in/paramendra
paramendra@gmail.com
Google “paramendra”

Slide 1: The Vision

o Mainframes ---> PCs ---> ICs
o Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0
o And the visionary.
o Me, the butterfly effect, and Nepal’s magical April Revolution 2006.
o I am extremely good at vision and group dynamics.

Slide 2: The People

o Adam Carson, former Morgan Stanley banker, currently at the Tuck Business School, no longer a team member, though still a friend.
o Khushboo Vaish, IIT, IIM graduate, same school as Indra Nooyi, the Pepsi CEO.
o JP Rangaswami, CIO of British Telecom, mentor. (And If This Is Not JP Rangaswami, JP Rangaswami, Utterly Confused Of Calcutta (2))
o Anu Shukla, friend, California person, sold a company for $300 million in 2000. (Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising)

Slide 3: Step 1, Step 2, Step 3

o Step 1: Raise and burn 100K. One full timer in NYC, a pilot project in Nepal, the poorest country outside of Africa.
o Step 2: Raise and burn 1-5 million. 5-10 full timers in NYC. 20-50 full timers in Nepal and Mumbai, Calcutta.
o Step 3: Grow like crazy globally through the franchise concept.

o I was done raising round 1 money and then most of my investors walked away in February 09. I let them. This is me taking a second crack at it. Ride the upswing. The future is now.

Slide 4: Round 1

o Looking to raise 100K.
o 15-20 K for the pilot project in Nepal.
o 25-30 K for a mobile, global team of part timers.
o 50 K for one full timer in NYC.

Slide 5: Web 3.0 and NYC

o Like Steve Jobs said years back, the PC wars are over, Microsoft won. Let’s move on. And he gave us the iPod and the iPhone.
o If the center of gravity in tech is going to shift to NYC, it will not be because we will produce the next big dot com. Silicon Valley won that round. Let’s move on to Web 3.0 as I define it. We will win. No place quite like NYC. (Empire State Of Mind)

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