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Put another way, on the mobile, VAS 1.0 was all about generating revenues from consumers. In India, this is a billion dollar business. VAS 2.0 will be using Free SMS Subscriptions as the anchor for monetising the right of way to consumers in multiple different ways. What will be valuable in this case is the Subscriptions Engine. What Search did on the Internet Subscriptions will do on the Mobile - generate an audience and create revenue streams. The World of Subscriptions: Creating Right of Way, and Combining Invertising and Advertising Now, the next question is how big can this be? Or put another way, what can users Subscribe to? And what’s the business model? Free Subscriptions can be...
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The next point is: Pull or Push? Or put another way, Search or Something else? Search has succeeded big time on the PC, and so there is every reason to believe it should do well on the mobile also. My belief is that Search needs the mobile web - on SMS, the limitations are too many to make it work. Two chief ones: the cost of sending a premium SMS each time a search needs to be done, and the inability to always get an Answer that one is looking for. In countries like India, Search on mobile is probably better done via Voice where one can interactively fine-tune the requirement to get what is needed. (This is space where...
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So, the questions that come to mind are: What will be the dominant model on the mobile? What will create the $30 billion global market opportunity in the next five years? For the purpose of this discussion, we will leave aside the existing VAS industry which is many billions of dollars in size - and covers ringtones, wallpapers, games, CRBT and music. This has been the biggest success outside of voice and P2P SMS. We want to look at those models where the user does not pay (much) - these models are likely to be equally big if not bigger than the VAS industry today. They will fall largely into three buckets - subscriptions, advertising and transactions (as do all...
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I have put together some thoughts on what I think will be the foundation for the next big opportunity in the digital (internet-mobile) space - the next big evolution since Google created paid search. Over the next few days, we will start with a bit of history and then I will put my thinking on mobiles into context. The Shift from Internet 1 (Portals) to Internet 2 (Search) The early days of the Internet were all eyeballs and monetisation via banner (graphical) advertising. The business was about creating portals and destination sites like Yahoo and AOL were doing. There was also some eCommerce going via the likes of eBay and Amazon. These were significant opportunities but they paled into...
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Here is the list of companies I have invested in over the past 3-4, and what they do. Netcore is the company I run full-time. Netcore: Enterprise Mail + Security; Mobile Data
Novatium: Sub-$100 Network Computers
Rajshri Media: Bollywood-centric Broadband Video Portal
mChek: Mobile Payments
Midas: Wireless Communications Equipment
New Horizon Media: Language Publishing (Books)
ValueFirst: Enterprise Mobility Solutions
Yos: Personal Healthcare Records
Greynium: Local Internet Portals and Classifieds
Intelizon: Solar for Rural Electrification
MobiFusion: Consumer Mobile Apps Two companies I have recently committed to investing are both in the education space:
Pathfinder: Knowledge Publishing
Global Talent...
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While I was in Singapore with Bhavana and Abhishek (who is now 3 years, 4 months), I bought a 63-piece jigsaw puzzle for Abhishek. It had all kinds of ‘transportation vehicles’ in there — aeroplanes, cars, buses, vans, boats, and so on. And the pieces were nice and large. Abhishek has been doing the jigsaw puzzle daily for the past few weeks! And that’s bored me no end, since he only focuses on the road vehicles, and has me do the air and water ones. So, in our hunt for more jigsaw puzzles, I discovered ten of them — from my childhood. My mom had kept all of them in storage. And in a day, Bhavana and I were having...
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Here is my typical weekday schedule: 5:10 am: Alarm 1 goes off on my iPhone 5:17 am: Alarm 2 goes off on my iPhone 5:25 am: Manage to wake-up. 5:50 am: Go for walk (in my building) or do Yoga, for 25-30 mins 6:30 am: Waiting for Abhishek to wake up (check email / news websites on iPhone; think) 6:45 am: Abhishek wakes up. We play, read, and generally keep busy. 7:50 am: Give Abhishek bath and have bath. ABhishek is then off to play-school.
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Today, I turn 41. Last year, I wrote about my first 40 years. So, to ensure that the story is kept updated and since I did very little blogging during the past year, I am writing about the year that just went by for me. On the business front, the focus was almost entirely on Netcore and building the MyToday service. It was one of the busiest years for me since 1999. I finally had found something that worked - from the many ideas that we tried in Netcore over the past 7-8 years. The free SMS subscriptions service grew rapidly, and with that came more challenges. Tackling those and laying the foundation for monetisation was what much...
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[This is the second part of the article I wrote for Outlook Business. Part 1 is here.] What does it take for us to make this future a reality? How can we make computing available to every family, every employee and every student in India? There are three triggers that are needed to create the foundation for a Digital India: Ubiquitous Wireless and Wired Broadband Infrastructure: For too long, India has been hamstrung by short-sighted telecom policies. We need to treat broadband as core and critical infrastructure, just like roads, ports, airports and power. Low-cost Access Devices with a Utility Computing Model: We need to reduce the entry barrier for consumers and small- and medium-sized enterprises to adopt...
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I wrote an article for Outlook Business as part of their Independence Day special issue (August 23 issue, page 96). The title given is “Waking Up to a Digital Dawn.” The first part is a small story set in the future. Pooja lives in with her parents in a modest two-bedroom apartment in a middle-class neighborhood in Mumbai. She is studying in class V. It is early in the evening. Entering the living room, she switches on a light and then pushes a button on a little blue box the size of a shoe-box sitting next to a monitor. The monitor lights up immediately displays what looks like a PC desktop. A little dialog box blinks, “Who is it?”...
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