Silicon India June 10 Issue

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BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY IN THE U.S. & INDIA JUNE - 2010 SILICONINDIA.COM

PUBLISHED SINCE1997

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DeepakKhare

In My Opinion: Pradeep Elankumaran, Intridea VC TALK: Mohanjit Jolly, DFJ India


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Publisher

Harvi Sachar

Editor-in-Chief

Pradeep Shankar

Managing EditorChristoJacob

Deputy Editors

Jayakishore Bayadi JayaSmithaMenon

Editorial StaffBennyThomas EurekaBharaliRoshnaSankar SiktaSamantaray

Vimali Swamy

Sr.Visualizer RaghuKoppalSubscription Manager P Magendran

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siliconindiaJune2010, volume 13-06 (ISSN 1091-9503)

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JUNE - 2010

Editorial

[Business]

Telecom Companies ReviveValue of the Indian PaisaBy Sanjit Chatterjee,REVE Systems

[Business]

HR Meets Technology Asking

the Right QuestionsBy Sanjay Sathe, RiseSmart

[Technology]

Preventive HealthcareThrough Social NetworkingBySubhash K Parameswaran,UST Global

Information BreachtheThreat is InternalBy Rajesh Parthasarathy,MENTIS Software

[Management]

Fostering Productivity andOrganizational EffectivenessVia Employee EngagementBy Nanda Ramanujam,Axentis Software

[Business]

Entrepreneurship By R.Subramanya, E

[Technology]

The Emergence oEco-Friendly Com

Reduce Reuse ReBy Shiv Kumar, Zylo

How to Use Tech

Redefine TodaysBy Daniel Burrus

[CIO Profile]

Social Media ConKey Enabler of COriented ServiceBy Vimali Swamy

[SI Blog]

India to INDIA

The Pokhran Way

By Manan Bhatt,Geodesic Informatio

[SI 20 Profile]

[In My Opinion]

Technological Prescience &Building Great Indian ProductsBy Pradeep Elankumaran, Intridea

[Infocus]

[VC Chakra]

Infineta Systems Closes$15 million Series A FundingAxtria Closes $2.5 million Se-ries A Funding

[CEO Spotlight]

Enterprise Social Software ATrend that Needs to be Tapped onEnterprise Mobile Applications Will

Drive the Next Mobile Wave

[VC Talk]

Startup Ideas the DFJ WouldLike to Fund

By Mohanjit Jolly, DFJ India

[Technology]

Facing Upto the Green ChallengeBy Vikas Bansal, Carrier Sales

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Contents June2010

16 Cover Story Caresoft

PlayingtoWin

By Christo Jacob

In one of the popular temples in the U.S., a quote is engraved ona pillar, There are some things which Google cannot answeryou. So believe in God. This reflects how profoundly Googlehas revolutionized the very face of the Internet since the 1990s. Asimilar revolution is expected to happen with the recent 3G auction

in India that earned close to $15 billion to the Indian government.How? Unlike before, when the mobile was a commodity of the upperclass individual, the scenario has completely changed today. In the

past few years, the Indian and Chinese consumers have been leadingthe growth in this sector the number of mobile users in India is ex-

pected to increase from 600 million to over 1 billion by 2014. More-over, the increasing mobile broadband subscribers and data usagehas fuelled the spread of smartphone penetration from 11 percent to17 percent in 2009.

But there may be a hitch. Despite the market looking rosy for the3G spectrum auction winners, there are worries of the winnerscurse thatplagued the UKs 3G spectrum allocation in 2000, whichraised $34 billion. During that time, the bidders ended up paying somuch for the license that they did not have funds to create the infra-structure to support the rollout of the products and services. Hope-fully there is no repeat of the disaster in the current bid in India wheretelecom players have paid 10 times the amount they paid for 2G li-

censes just two years ago. Moreover, no single company has won abid in all circles.

Hence, striking a balance between making 3G affordable to pre-mium customers and upgrading their instruments, providing the data-rich 3G service through their own service providers in respectivecities will be a major challenge for these players, especially whenthe BSNL and MTNL have already set the rules of the game somemonths back. A bright spot for the telco service providers at a timelike this is the fact that the Indian mobile industry is ready with hand-sets and supporting infrastructure.

The only concern for these winners is to play the card right cou-pled with the right push to mobile app developers encouraging more3G apps to be developed and also to develop a clear understanding

between the operator and the mobile startups so that both can flour-ish. For 3G, there is much to gain from the buzz created by online appstores of Apple, Nokia, Samsung,and Sony Ericsson, and on Face-

book and Orkut as well, where developers can sell directly to con-

sumers. Of course, they must pay a yearly fee and 30 percent of theirrevenues to the service platform, perhaps much lesser initially, whichmay encourage more mobile app developers.

Please do share your thoughts with us.Christo JacobManaging [email protected]

3G: Will it Revamp the Face of India?


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There was a curious moment onmy trip to India this year whenI realized that the majority ofthe country utilizes a compo-nent of the GSM cellphone

protocol from 1985 - the ability to sendshort text messages - in a manner thatscompletely different from what I was usedto in the Western world. SMS is ridicu-lously ingrained in almost every aspect ofIndian society now, starting from friends

and family using it to communicate cheaplyto event and train ticketing and even mar-keting products to a distinct clientele. Whilethis in itself is not surprising in a countrylike India with its sharply segmented mar-ket and quickly-adapting but value-con-scious consumers, whats truly curious isthe fact that SMS has only recently seenrapid growth in the West, with the teenage

crowd enthusiastically sending messages tomatch up with the way the rest of the world

has been using the format for years now.The kind of SMS marketing campaigns thatIndia has been running successfully foryears have only recently started to take holdin the mobile culture of the West. Whatshappening here?

The great indian number trick alwaysapplies when youre talking about India, acountry that has a population of over a bil-lion; even a small fraction of the market isstill quite a lot of people when comparedto most other countries. At the same time,what works for the rest of the world moreoften than not fails miserably in India, asmany big multinationals have discoveredto their dismay (for instance Kelloggs andCoca-Colas marketing problems) over the

last decade. With this kind of market con-ditions, adoption of new technology istruly not a linear process, and while in ret-rospect a piece of technology may seem a

perfect fit, it doesnt appear so during itsinfancy in the Indian market. Again takingSMS as an example, missteps, suddengrowth spurts, and many failed ideas haveconverged to bring forth a standard, rec-

ognizable format that provides opportuni-ties for both personal and economic

growth for the majority of Indian con-sumers and businesses. The companiesthat were shrewd enough to see the imme-diate advantages of the then-new format afew years back were the ones that are nowreaping big, big dividends.

Lets take for example SMSGup-shup. They run an SMS-based socialnetworking service that (among otherfeatures) lets people subscribe to top-ics of their interest using their cell-

phones; whenever new content isposted about a topic all subscribersare notified immediately on their

phone. They understand that theirsegment of the Indian market consistsof people who require informationquickly, effortlessly, at dirt cheap

rates, and using technology that theyare comfortable with and understandstheir cellphones. At this point SMS-Gupshups network consists of 26million users, and is growing with$12 million in funding quite recently.This is pure innovation tailored to a

particular market, and hopefullyshowing other Indian startups the waythings should be done in India.

Building Products for India Using

New Technology

So, if youre an Indian software orhardware entrepreneur looking to

build products for the current and fu-ture Indian market, what should you

be concerned about? First, drop allthoughts of global expansion for themoment. Your product needs testingand growth on Indian soil before it willever be ready for a global launch. Re-member, theres always more moneyto be made at the bottom of the pyra-mid than at the top. Apart from finan-cial issues, after speaking with manyIndian Web entrepreneurs, you realizethat once your vision is in place andyour market has been defined moreoften than not your problems are re-lated to people rather than process. Atthe same time, solid technological and

procedural foundations need to be es-tablished to ensure quality and to truly

cement a product into place in a mar-ket like Indias. Lets talk about bothat this point.

Technology-wise, open source andopen standards trump all in the longrun. In a country like Ind ia, its almost

impossible to have useful closed sys-tems, and your software and overallarchitecture should reflect that. Opensource software lets you leverage theyears of work that quality developershave already put towards developing astable piece of software, along withthe freedom to modify whenever nec-essary to fit your products vision.Working with open standards ensuresseamless integration with other prod-ucts and services later on in your prod-

ucts pipeline - no developer likessoftware that doesnt play nice.

Feature-wise, your intuition andyears of experience living in Indiashould give you an innate and pro-nounced edge when it comes to build-ing out products that your countrys

citizens want. Being aware of yourown self and noticing behavior andusage patterns of various technologiesamong your friends, coworkers, andfamily will bring forth new ideas for

product improvement. Take heed ofthese ideas and run them ruthlesslythrough the wringer for flaws and im-

perfections, then shine it up, build, andrelease. Remember, the Indian marketeats up technologies that solve real

problems. For instance, just look at theIndian Railways reservations website;it may be slow at 8 AM, but that does-nt mean that people arent using it,and its miles ahead of the system thatexisted before.

Vital to your dream of launching asuccessful product in India is yourability to cheaply and rapidly iteratethe product. If you take more than aweek to release a new version of soft-ware, youre doing it wrong. You and

the rest of the Indian msumers expect quality and rightfully so. Theyyour product is no goodwise to listen, then rinsyour shop doesnt haveof quickly delivering tquality product at thyoure sunk. Use the neopment languages anthat are readily availablcomputing clouds to sc

lions of users, and inteisting websites to markcheaply - all is fair ingame, especially when for such high stakes.

From my conversadian startup CEOs and eral, the main pentrepreneurship in Inlack of vision, its the to execute it. This is a toup surprisingly often, anferent approach to this tDont hire by skill, hireSmart people learn quicand are usually passionaing on something they

sure that your productenough to hold their youll be off to a great s

The Road Ahead

Were now fast approwhere India is catchinglogical changes in the a lot quicker than befothat opportunities will leveraging new technthat make sense for thsumer; ways that moredont apply in other coclear-eyed entrepreneuare few and far in betwknow that youre one o

willing to put in the enew businesses to run andevelop. Build productthat exists now as well will exist a few years youll definitely reap t

Technological Prescience & Building

in myopinion

By Pradeep ElankumaranThe author Director of R&D/Architect, Intridea.He can be reached at pradee [email protected]

GreatIndian Products

Adoption of new technology is not a linear process; and while apiece of technology may be a perfect fit, it doesnt appear soduring its infancy due to the Indian market conditions

Your product needs testingand growth on Indian soilbefore it will ever be readyfor a global launch; drop allthoughts of globalexpansion for the momen

Pradeep Elankumaran


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silicon i n d i a |8|J u n e 2 0 1 0

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The domestic information tech-nology (IT) firms are grapplingwith several market pressureslike wage inflation, subdued demand,rupee appreciation, and others.Amidst these strains tech vendors inIndia are in a row with their customers

to dilute margin impacts from marketforces by pushing up the billing rate

by 10 to 15 percent, which is not easy.Companies like Sonata Software

and Infosys Technologies are havinga tough time to convince customers to

pay higher prices besides the prevail-ing optimism among the tech vendorsand the improved guidance. At In-fosys, we're trying (to hike prices) butit's not working. The world economy

is not like India's. Some Westerneconomies may have come out of thetrough, but still there is no growth. Weare not really in a high-demand mar-ket yet," says Subhash Dhar, Seniorvice-president and Head of the com-munications service providers (CSP)

business unit.Dhar pinpoints that uncertainty

continues to plague the global econ-omy. Most companies in the West setaside opex and capex spends for IT,

just like they do for R&D. Last year,they utilized the opex budget, butcapex was left untouched. When thiscapex is released, demand for ITservices will go up and that could

push up prices. As per Gartner data,

financial services compAmerica spend the moan allocation of close their total revenue, wspend the least at 1.95 munication firms set cent, construction

healthcare four percentpercent. Experts feel thupswing in pricing occhappen any time soon. C S, Director-advisorynov Management CoRate revision by IT cnot happen before 12According to him, till tsures would be taken cing the scale of operat

Despite Efforts Indian IT Firms Struggle to Hike Billin

With a wave of tablet PCshitting the consumer mar-ket, there has been a lot ofdiscussions on whether these devicescan emerge as an alternative to text-

books for the student community.

Though, many agree that these de-vices can one day replace the goodold textbooks in developed countries,can this be the same scenario in acountry like India also?

The tech majors seem to be very con-fident about the opportunities of thetablets, especially in the education sec-tor. After Apple unveiled its tablet PC, theiPad, several tech majors have startedshowing off their own 'iPad killers'. Join-ing this long list of contenders waiting torule the tablet world is an India basedfirm Notion Ink, which unveiled its'Adam' tablet in January this year at CES.And the person who co-founded this

firm, Rohit Rathi believes that in the next2-3 years tablets can replace textbooks inIndia at least in higher education. How-ever, Rathi feels that there is a major rolethat the government should also play inorder to increase the penetration of these

devices. "The two main challenges inIndia are connectivity and availability ofdevices," says Rathi.

Today, several institutes in the UShave already started using tablets insteadof textbooks by collaborating with techfirms. However, there are still some is-sues that the education community inIndia is concerned about. "The devicesshould come with certain features thateven engineering students can use, thattoo at an affordable cost, not many suchtablets are available as of now," pointsout B. N. Jain, Professor of ComputerScience at Indian Institute of Technology,Delhi. As far as pricing is concerned

Rathi explains that the average price ofthe tablet will be around Rs. 15,000,which would be affordable for studentsdoing their higher studies.

With both the academia and thetech community ready to upgrade tothe tablet generation, a thrust fromthe government can further increasethe use of these devices in a countrylike India that can revolutionize theeducation system.

When Nitin Nohria, an alum-nus of Indian Institute ofTechnology, joined Harvardas a faculty in 1988, none would havethought that a history is in the making.Today, after 22 years, he stands to bethe first Indian-American Dean of the

prestigious Harvard Business School.The 48-year-old leadership professorwill serve as the 10th dean of HarvardBusiness School from July 1, succeed-ing the current dean Jay Light.

Though, he was one of the high profile professors at Harvard, Prof.Nohria was not necessarily the mostobvious choice for the job. Many in-siders predicted that senior associatedean Srikant Datar or Carl Kester,Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs,would be appointed. However, his ex-

perience within India and his stints at

London Busi-ness Schoolmade Nohriathe rightchoice to

bring in aglobal per-spective tothe dean's po-sition.

Nohria received his degree inchemical engineering in 1984 from theIndian Institute of Technology, Mum-

bai, which also eventually awardedhim with its distinguished alumnusmedal in 2007. He then received hisdoctoral degree in management fromthe Massachusetts Institute of Tech-nology's Sloan School of Managementin 1988 where he earned an outstand-ing doctoral thesis award in behavioral

and policy sciences. Following that, hejoined the Harvard faculty as an assis-tant professor in 1988, became an as-sociate professor five years later, andthen served as the Richard P. ChapmanProfessor of Business Administrationsince 1999.

His current academic interests in-clude the theory and practice of leader-ship, the study of human motivation,the analysis of management practicescritical to corporate success, and thestrategic and organizational challengesof globalization. The latest of his six-teen books, - Handbook of LeadershipTheory and Practice - has been co-edited by his Harvard colleague RakeshKhurana and reflects a colloquium heorganized as part of Harvard's centen-nial in 2008 to stimulate serious schol-arly research on leadership. si

in

Are you Ready to Give Up

Textbooks for a Tablet PC?

Harvard Gets its First Indian-American Dean

Nitin Nohria

By Benny Thomas


6/25

s i l i c osilicon i n d i a |10|J u n e 2 0 1 0

Blurred pictures are often aworry, especially when the photos hold special memo-ries. But worry no more; Neel Joshi,a computer vision engineer at theUniversity of California, San Diegoand his colleagues have developed asoftware that can transform blurry

photographs into clear pictures thatare worth keeping.

Joshi realized that precious mo-ments are often lost due to blur in-

duced by camera shake and poor light-ing when he and his colleagues stud-ied home photo collections and sawthat the faces in many pictures were

blurry. Unlike Photoshop, the softwaredeveloped by Joshi does not remodelones physical features in a picture. Butit can fix problems with the photo -

blurriness or shade - by sharpening upfacial features according to the stockimage of a particular face.

The software developed by the

team uses an algorithm that uses facialrecognition methods like those insome photo editors to find a sharpimage with a similar pose. The patternof color and light in the blurry face isthen tweaked to match the model

photo. The software can also add colorand shine to black and white pictures.

The software is yet to be availablecommercially. But when it does, nomore losing out on special momentsof life.

Of late, the Indian IT industryhas been on a tremendoushiring spree but a majority ofthem are expatriates. With a growinggap in skills in local talent, it is nat-ural that the industry scouts for tal-ent abroad.

The Bombay Stock Exchange(BSE) had hired Madhu Kannan asthe CEO in May last year. The over-seas based Kannan was the Manag-

ing Director in the corporate strategygroup at Bank of America-MerillLynch. Infosys Technologies hasaround 100 expats in the middle andsenior management levels working inIndia. In July last year, Wipro hired

Martha Bejar to head its global salesand operations.

"Some are hired to fill skill gaps.There is also a lot many who want towork for a world class company thathas its base in India. They want tohave an India ex perience in their CV,"says T.V. Mohandas Pai, Director andHead of Human Resources and Train-ing at Infosys.

Sanat Kawatkar from Towers

Watson has estimated that 25 percentof actuaries in India are from over-seas who are paid competent salaries,when compared to the developedmarkets. "Insurance firms typicallyhire expats to fill management posi-

tions in finance and actuarial serv-ices, in which the local talent pool islimited," he says.

"Expats offer Indian companies the'know-how, the know-who, and theknow-what' that they would find diffi-cult, if not impossible, to replicate ef-fectively," says Dipak C. Jain, DeanEmeritus at the Kellogg School ofManagement.

Just as the US workforce is

'browning' with the addition of foreigntalent, so too we see the trend thatIndia is slowly 'creaming' as foreign-ers increasingly seek opportunities inthe world's largest democracy," hesays in the Amrop study. si

Ever imagined, why do we con-vict criminals and offenders?The sole reason is to rehabili-tate their mindset and make them re-alize their mistakes to help themtransform to become better human

beings. But do the prisons in Indiahave any such facility?

According to a national financialdaily, theres one in HyderabadsCherlapally Central Jail, which wouldhave a BPO unit in its premises. It isa public private partnership where theglobal IT firm Radiant Info Systemswill invest money and expertise in theunit and the establishment spacealong with the manpower would be

provided by the prison authorities.With a strength of around 70 odd

inmates in one shift, the BPO will runin three shifts. The prisoners willwork from within the 'closed space' ofthe BPO office and will be taken outof the locked enclosure at the begin-ning and end of each shift.

Jail officials say that the interestlevel and aptitude of the inmates will

be considered before involving themin this ambitious project. Accordingto C N Gopinatha Reddy, DirectorGeneral of Prisons, Andhra Pradesh,as many as 200-250 inmates could beengaged in the BPO unit and they will

be shortlisted from inmates that are

matriculates and graduexplain that those shofirst be trained by expabsorbed by the BPO c

"For starters, the cing at the BPO would nto phones as is the caseter. They would be inv

related work of datransfer," says Reddy. ensure that on being

prisoners find it easy toin the mainstream. Pfind getting suitable emrelease a tough task. Stempt to ensure that thknow them well in adv

T

he world of cricket graduallycame home with the radio fol-lowed by the television. It has

now reached an entirely new level toconnect with the fans through the mo-

bile. Gone are the days and timeswhen one had to sit in front of the tel-evision to catch the live action of the

sport. The new style of crickets for-mat laid down by the IPL has intensi-fied the interest of the audience. Anyinformation related to cricket excitesmost of the public.

According to a report, as comparedto last year the mobile platform saw a100 percent rise in the user interest forreceiving a word about cricket. Thishas also revived the interest in thesport, which was on the verge of de-cline due to excessive number ofmatches being played nowadays. Inthis fast moving world no one has thetime to sit for hours in front of the TVand watch a game. For the diehardcricket lovers all over the world, the

use of mobiles to get updates on thesport is like a boon.

"The IPL on the mobile platformhas received tremendous responsefrom mobile users across the country.The rate at which mobile phone own-

ers in India are consumformation on their phmony to the value, simp

premium content the Mobile has become onsources of informationment across the countrSohoni, President, InfoIntelligence.

The interest of the vsuch a level that the sphigher page views. Thsite for IPL reached alevel followed by Cricseason 3 of IPL witnesgaming section BrianCricket T20 world Chamand Freddie Flintoff games. Many of the cricwere played last year f

in this season too.The use of mobil

more viewers for crickgood idea as it helps thvision an interesting mwasting much time. s

in in

Indian Developed Software Makes Blurry Pictures Clear

Now, Prisoners to Run BPOs

IPL on Mobile, a Big Success, Report

Indian IT Sector Scouts for Expatriates to Bridge Skill Gap


7/25

Jaswinder Chadda and NavdeepChadda co-founded Axtria has closedSeries A round of venture capitalfunding of $2.5 million. The financing led

by Sequoia Capital India also included pri-vate investors Richard Braddock, Chair-man and CEO, Fresh Direct,AmarpreetSawhney, CEO, Octux; Fred Khosravi,MD, Incept, and Sandeep Tyagi, Chair-man and MD, Estee Advisors.

Founded in 2009, the Morristown

based Axtria provides business analyticstechnology and services to improve effec-tiveness in sales, distribution, marketing,and customer operations. We provide

predictive analytics and technology solu-tions to help customers manage their sales

and marketing operations. The demand forour solutions is driven by explosion ofdata. Every big company has invested intechnologies including business intelli-gence (BI), customer relationship man-agement (CRM), and marketingautomation systems. We provide businessanalytics solutions that help customers im-

prove performance of CRM and market-ing systems, says Jaswinder Chadda,CEO, Axtria.

Using a product-enabled servicemodel, Axtrias products are designedto be integrated with existing applica-tions, increasing the ROI of IT invest-ments. The company will use proceedsfrom the financing to develop sales, dis-tribution, and marketing analytics soft-ware products and to expand its currentUS-based operations into India.

Chadda sees a huge requirement for business analytics solutions for salesand marketing. Analysts estimate theindustry spending in this sector any-

where between $5 billion by 2015. The best

business analytics is cdata collection, data mwarehousing, busineCRM,and marketing a

A number of compbusiness analytics a cfor their business, nota

being IBM. There are ers who have added BI

portfolio. But ChaddaWe are unique becausdustry experience, predand technology to builketing solutions, he sa

At present, the combers strong, of whom femployees and the otsultants working withners. Axtria is lookingin 2010 and setting upIndia by the second haof its top most prioritie

siliconsilicon i n d i a |12|J u n e 2 0 1 0

As long as people have the need toshare their excitement with oth-ers the written form of commu-

nication is bound to exist. The sayingthink before you speak also supportsthe fact that formulation of words is agood way to share wisdom. The eluci-dation through written words is an eas-ier way to manifest all sorts ofinformation to others. The reversalcame both through a 50 percent jumpin text messaging and the rise of data-first smartphones like the Droid andiPhone. The design of large-screened

phones for the use of Internet alsoworks in support of texting ones ac-quaintances.

The companies with the most mar-ket share in smartphones are those thathave the most experience producingtouchscreen or QWERTY keyboarddevices such as Apple and RIM, wherecall-focused companies like Nokia

have struggled. The process of voicebeing overtaken by data on cellphonesshows the fact that writing is still the

best form of communication for many.There are a lot of people who find it

easier to express themselves through

written words. Internet access and textmessaging occupied more data on theUS carriers' networks than did theequivalent in calls. A lot of social fac-tors also serve as subsidy to this fact asmost of the teenagers are growing upwith messaging phones. Not only dothe teenagers text their friends, eventhe adults are getting used to use thetext form to communicate.

Writing is an ace form of articulat-ing information as it allows the person

proper time to think before he or sheexhibits the feelings. When we writedown the message to be conveyed, it

becomes simple for the receiver to un-derstand it.

Calls have also grown shorter andare now more likely to be used for cru-cial info rather than usual conversa-tions. A typical same-area call hasdropped to 1.8 minutes from nearly2.3 in 2008. si

in

Now, Mobile Phones are Used More for Text, Internet

Who said that, the CIOs are theones responsible for an orga-nizations processes and prac-

tices supporting the flow ofinformation? Their role is manifold,taking cognizance of the current com-

petitive business environment. In a bid

to make the best of the growth oppor-tunities, the CIOs role in organiza-tions has turned critical. As per theresearch firm Gartner, it is the trait tomanage the operations while grabbingthe opportunities with an entrepre-neurial mindset that makes the CIOsreel out better profits.

"For IT leaders, entrepreneurialgrowth and the shift from a 'prob-lem-focused' organization to onethat is 'opportunity-focused' require

more planning and execution thansimply changing the organizationchart," Gartner vice-president, JorgeLopez says.

Entrepreneurial IT organizationsmust maintain a dual focus of achiev-ing targeted growth while running the

current business. Building newsources of revenue and positioningthe business for dominance in thenew venture is an entrepreneurial taskand this requires an equally entrepre-neurial CIO to grab the opportunity.

According to Gartner, there aretwo key tools that the CIO must em-

ploy to satisfy the ambitions for en-trepreneurial growth; frameworksthat set the agenda and actions forchange. The entrepreneurial scope

assessment framework enables CIOsand other business executives toevaluate the magnitude of the oppor-tunity and understand the scope ofthe task facing IT, as well as other

business units.However, the analysts also point

out the intricacies involved in don-ning this entrepreneurial role. "Thegreatest conflict faced by entrepre-neurial CIOs will be the tension be-tween the team that is focused on theentrepreneurial opportunities and theteam that is focused on 'keeping thelights on. Both must function effec-tively in an environment of elevatedrisk. Failing on either responsibilityis unacceptable and highly dangerousfor the business," Lopez says.

CIOs are now Expected to be Master of All Trades

Infineta Systems, co-founded by RajKanaya and K.V.S.Ramarao, has closed series A round ofventure capital funding, with $15 millionfrom Alloy Ventures and North BridgeVenture Partners. Founded in 2008, theSan Jose headquartered company devel-ops and markets a line of high perform-ance network optimization products. Withthe bountiful support from Series A fund-ing, it plans to pioneer a new category of

products that will help Global 2000 enter-prises address the explosion in inter-datacenter traffic resulting from mission criti-cal storage replication, backup,and emerg-ing private cloud applications. These

products will be based on the companys patent-pending Velocity Dedupe En-gine, the industrys first ever hardware

based network deduplication technology.

We see a demand with Global 2000enterprises or large Web properties that arestruggling to move the ever increasing vol-ume of traffic between their data centers.We solve this problem by deliveringthe accelerated inter-data center networkfabric - providing optimization for criticaltraffic workflows that require high speedand low latency performance across thewide area network, says Kanaya, CEO,Infineta Systems. So, out of the gate, wewill bring immense benefits to large en-terprises that are conducting big SANreplication and storage backup jobs. Grad-ually, we will begin also to support theWAN bandwidth and performance needsof such emerging use cases as long dis-tance live migrations, active/active storageredundancies across multiple data centers,and more.

Despite a large market opportunity,

only a few infrastructurebeen funded in the passector requires a large ainvestment to get a scaland running. Based on ifrom meetings with cumary analyst research, Intial market opportunity i

billion. Anticipating co

sector, Kanaya highlighuniqueness with the factuntil now has directly addata center network fabrhave tackled the issue oftion but primarily in themizing traffic between

branch offices and data tomer problem we solvedifferent, he says. Withnificant technology innovagement team with prothe 20 people strong comward to revolutionizingWAN acceleration.

$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $

Axtria Closes$2.5 MillionSeries AFunding

Infineta Systems Closes $15 MillionSeries A Funding

Raj Kanaya

Jaswinder Chadda


8/25

Social software, as we all know,started in the middle of the lastdecade as a new way to en-hance individual self-expressionthrough media sharing, content cre-ation, and interaction. Since then, ithas quickly spread to other areassuch as marketing and now it entersthe core of the enterprise.

CIOs today are looking at not justkeeping the lights on, but at ways toimprove the way their organization op-

erates. This year, social software isamong the top trends of corporate IT,

along with virtualization and cloudcomputing. The expectation is that so-cial software will positively contributeto knowledge management, processefficiency, innovation, and organiza-tion ability to respond to change.

If one observes the flurry of recent product announcements, a commonthing noticeable is a simple set of Web2.0 like tools, integrated into a social ac-tivity stream private to an organization.Too many products appear similar intheir approach. However, I believe that

bringing great adoption within an orga-nizations internal user base (typically asmaller community, compared to the

public social networks on the Web) re-quires a mix of social activity with busi-ness content.

We designed Qontext as an enterprise social network that easily inte-grates with other business applicationsused by sales, marketing, HR, engineer-

ing, service, distribution, and more. It issimilar to the Salesforce Chatter and

Tibco Tibbr that bring applicationfeeds into social interaction streams forits users. Qontext goes a step further, tocreate a two-way flow between applica-tions and the enterprise social network,enabling contextual collaboration (hence

the name Qontext).I believe that one of the greatestchallenges for product vendors in the en-terprise social software space is to stepup the pace of their product innovationto match the quickly growing wish listof their user communities. One is nolonger satisfied with just tweets, filesharing, and discussion forums. The

products would soon grow and special-ize in different directions such as thoseoriented to internal and pre-existing con-tent, partner and customer interactions,highly mobile and distributed work-forces, departmental use-cases, andmore. Young product vendors are betterequipped in this nascent market to inno-

vate faster and bring products that es-tablished vendors may want to acquire.


CEO SPOTLIGHT

In the last few years, I have observeda paradigm shift in the mobile space both in the US and the marketsabroad. The next 2-3 years will bring ina lot of opportunities for entrepreneurs inthe area of building mobile applications.This development will be similar to thetransition of a computer to desktop PC to

laptop. Any applications running on PCswill be available on the mobile phone inthe near future. And the driving force be-hind this will be the growing demand forsmartphones android, apple, blackberry,windows, and the development platform

they offer. Blackberry leads the pack interms of the opportunities it provides en-trepreneurs for developing ingeniousmobile applications, and android too willsoon catch up in this market because ofits openness.

The mobile applications market itselfwill see a change in the next few years.

Thousands of applications have juststarted scratching the surface and there isstill a lot of potential that needs tappinginto. I believe that the focus will changefrom consumer driven applications to en-terprise driven applications on mobile.

Many first time entrepreneurs be-lieve that they can thrive by building ap-

plications and selling them on app storesand end up starting a dot com company.What they do not realize is that at the endof the day, each one of them is no differ-ent from the other. This needs to change.Entrepreneurs need to analyze the pain

points in the industry and start focusingon solving them. This requires a good in-dustry experience and capital and a freshlook at their business model. Entrepre-neurs simply need to look at the every-day problems in different sectors and

develop enterprise mobile applicationsthat can help solve industry specificproblems like those in healthcare, BFSI,utilities, and the other verticals. Whenthis happens, entrepreneurs will drive thenext big wave in the mobile space. si

Enterprise Mobile Applications Will Drive the

Next Mobile WaveBy Ashok Samuel, CEO, Bravura Technologies

Bravura Technologies is a leading provider of mobile apps for enterprise use.

Jay Pullur is CEO, Qontext Inc.

Qontext integrates social softwarewith enterprise applications toenhance enterprise business effi-ciency through better collaboration.

Enterprise Social Software A

Trend that Needs to be Tapped onJay Pullur,CEO, Qontext Inc.


9/25


Caresoft

PlayingtoWin

Back in 2003 and 2007, several FDA reports revealedthat about half of 13 factories in the island country ofPuerto Rico manufactured contaminated pills. Recentreports show that one of the pharmaceutical compa-nies continued exporting pills that it knew contained

small metal particles which were also present inside the bottles thepills were packed in. This was due to the metal content in the drugmanufacturing machineries. Hence, it is imperative that the phar-maceutical sector be properly regulated. This is highly essential and

justified as medicines can either save someones life or make mat-ters worse if proper standards are not maintained in drug manufac-turing and information about the medical ingredients and theireffects are not known.

Most pharmaceutical companies today are cautious about hav-ing their business processes in perfect health. Quality control ofraw materials, specifications, formulae, manufactruring processesas well as the finished product is paramount, with exact standardsoften applying to the receipt and storage of raw materials in addi-tion to the storage and dispatch of finished products. For major

players like Pfizer, Schering Plough, Novartis, Merck, and John-son & Johnson this means that their practices and systems need to

be updated to enable the industry to be more agile and responsiveand yet maintain a control over complex and costly developmentand production processes.

Quick Facts

Founded1994Founder&CEO

DeepakKhareHeadquartersMiddlesex, NJOtherOffices

Florida,Colorado,Pennsylvania,

California,Canada,Cyprus,Bhopal

Headcount250

VerticalITServices

Websitewww.caresoftinc.com

D

By Christo Jacob

COVER STORY


10/25

data that an Information Commissionrequires of the government organiza-tions are obtained. At the state level, theState RTI Commission is responsible to

ensure implementation of the RTI Actin each and every government, semi-government,and public organizations.

Currently, there are no cost effectivesolutions that allow a smooth transitionof an RTI related request. Self imple-mentable, Caresofts RTI Soft is a Web

based product that allows the public torequest for information from any gov-ernment organization starting from thekasba (small village) level to city cor-

poration, district, and state levels.CARE RTI handles the complex

task of implementing the progress of anRTI application in a very simple andlogical manner. Caresoft implementedthis for government organizations and

NGOs in Madhya Pradesh. RTI Soft isable to provide the mechanism that im-plements the whole RTI framework forany organization looking to be compli-ant with the reporting requirements ofthe State Information Commission as

well as the Central Information Com-mission, says Rajnish Murab, Directorof Sunita (M) Foundation, an NGO fo-cusing on helping people help them-

selves. Currently, the companys 15member sales team in Bhopal is in talkswith implementing the same in othergovernment organizations in MadhyaPradesh and other states like Uttaran-chal and Chhattisgarh.

From Services to Practices - Care-

softs 360 Degree View

Caresofts best practices in Hyperion,security services, and Quality frame-work could bring in lot more traction.Caresoft, being an oracle core partner,implements end-to-end Hyperion solu-tions for their clients. Hyperion is a fi-nancial management suite of solutionsfrom Oracle, which takes care of the

complete financial management re-quirements of a company - switchingroutes, planning, auditing, financialforecasting, and doing all kinds of fi-nancial analysis like actual expected

budget versus forecasted revenue and

more. It also helps in findation. For instance if aganization has a profit cefive profit centers in Ccenters in India,and a sarope, it will help to connancial reports of organization. It will alsocial statements as per theaccepted accounting prcountry.

AMResorts, a group20 resorts spread across

and the Caribbean with tcoordinating from the Ua global resort managemThe company found that of flaws in the financiaceived from over 20 resoworld due to which it ldollars. The propertiessorts were on a rapid grand, therefore, needed aflexible BI system. Wquirement for a common

porting, AMResortstowards automation of fiand increasing its reacmore granular levels of aselected Caresoft as its

plementer. Caresoft haResorts Hyperion projestage and is now more a sorts team rather than mentation partner. Thisfull life-cycle developm

Caresoft, a provider of CustomSoftware Development, Temporary ITStaff Augmentation, and OutsourcedQA is well aware that the complexitiesand challenges of documenting proce-dures, monitoring processes,authoriza-tions, and managing heterogeneoustracking records are not trivial exer-cises. Deepak Khare, CEO, Caresoftwas early to have a strong understand-ing of the major transition that is evolv-ing in the pharmaceutical sector and no

wonder most of the major players todayare knocking at his doors for the same.In fact the very first customer of ourswas from the pharmaceutical vertical.This has given an extra mileage to us inhaving a better understanding of thisvertical, says Khare.

Caresofts customer, M. P. Phar-maceuticals, had complicated sys-tems, long processes, numerous rawmaterials, and above all, a largeamount of human involvement in the

process of making medicines. Thereare frequent audits, and there is verystrict demand for quality control dataat all stages of the manufacturing

process. The company needed a state-

of-the-art Laboratory InformationManagement System (LIMS) to runtheir labs. However, LIMS does notcome cheap. The cost of a typical im-

plementation of LIMS exceedsa minimum of Rs 50 Lakhs.

But Caresofts Care QCMShas helped its customers in ad-dressing this issue, improving

product and services quality,work processes, efficiencies, andmorale, while reducing cost,standardizing business by givingit a consistent approach to oper-ations, meeting government pur-chasing policies, givingconfidence to customers that

their quality needs will be met,improving customer satisfaction,minimizing fraud, reducing re-work and wastage, and meetingquality standards set by differentcountries. Care QCMS is a Web

based system that works on the SaaSmodel and does not require any clientside installation of software or serverside installation. Built on XML, XSL,and AJAX architecture, the facility letsthe client start Care QCMS within 60minutes of the subscription approval.For M. P. Pharmaceuticals this was agreat relief. The team has been ex-tremely happy with the implementationof Care QCMS. We would recommendit to any company looking to implementa quality control system for batch man-ufacturing. The Caresoft Team workedvery closely with us to customize and

implement it in our unique situation.Not only is their support staff very re-sponsive and knowledgeable but theyhave also met and exceeded all of our

expectations, says Mukesh Nema, Di-rector, M. P. Pharmaceuticals. Khareconfirms that the product has workedwell among midsized companies thatare in the range of $5 to 50 million.

But rather than concentrating on onevertical, Khare felt the need to expandthe companys portfolio across variousverticals and gain mindshare of the cus-tomers in finance, energy, insurance,manufacturing, public sector, telecom,and many more. Winning the mindshare

of an Indian government organizationitself is one of the biggest testimonialsabout Caresofts confidence among itscustomers. It was Caresofts RTI Softthat was able to grab attention of the

public sector.The RTI (Right to Information) Act

is currently being implemented allacross India to improve the governance,open the administrative processes of thegovernment, and more importantly tomake the government accountable.Fol-lowed by the enforcement of the RTIAct, the citizens of the country havegained access to the records of the cen-tral and the state governments. The RTIAct empowers an Indian citizen to ask

for information from any of the govern-ment departments, but the pain point formost of them is the accessibility of in-formation. The RTI Act implementation

generates enormous amountof paperwork. Every RTI ap-

plication must be trackedand the information re-quested must be disbursedwithin the stipulated time.The State Information Com-missions are responsible forensuring proper implemen-tation of the RTI Actthroughout the respectivestates. The State InformationCommissions report matters

of governance to the CentralInformation Commission ona regular basis. The issuesare tracked till the informa-tion requested is providedand it is ensured that all the


Dhaval Desai

Caresofts Hyperion Practice

Boutique Hyperion Implementation Practice.Extreme HyperionExpertise.

20/20 Platform:Guaranteed20%reduction in operating costforexisting projects,20% reduction in budgetfor newprojects,and 20%improvement in Quality of Service

No-FluProjectDelivery Team.Everyone on the team isHands-On,Experienced,Hyperion Guru.

Industrysstrongestonsite-oshore Hyperion Implementation Team.

Secure infrastructure design andanalysis.

Penetration testing andvulnerability assessment. Securing webapplication. Network & DisasterRecovery availability assessment. Firewallandrouterreviews.

Perform an IDS/IPSrule setreview.

Caresofts IT Security Practice

SLAs are contracts

and so are very dry;

it is worthy to

believe in going

beyond the contract

and providing the

human touch to

ones services


11/25


which Caresoft assisted AMResorts toautomate its procedures on all the threescenarios actual, budget,and forecast.

Amit Sanghi, Caresofts EPM Solu-tions Architect says, Our Hyperionteam tirelessly worked for extendedhours breaking complexities of themaze of financial systems throughoutthe company to capture, centralize, andautomate them into a single financialdata management system. It is truly sat-isfying to see how our System releases

the otherwise blocked time of financialanalysts from mundane spreadsheet ac-tivities by automating most of the num-

ber crunching. Free from much of report

preparation and reporting tasks we arehappy to see that they can now partici-

pate more on the growth frontiers of thecompany with their CFO. Currently,the team of Financial Analysts at AM-Resortsmanages the reports in a jiffy on

the new financial consolidation systemthat Caresoft has implemented, insteadof spending all of their time in consoli-dating spreadsheets. The system takescare of all currency conversions and itcreates consolidated financial state-ments for entire company at the touchof a button. Emmanuel Samia, SeniorFinancial Analyst at AMResorts says,Caresoft has done a great job. We arevery happy with the quality of their sup-

port. They go the extra mile in their cus-tomer support. We are glad that wechose them as our implementation part-ner. We implemented the system inrecord 24 weeks from start to finish. Itwas like a whirlwind; when we hear

victory stories like this, it makes it allworth it, says Dhaval Desai - Hyper-ion Practice Head, Caresoft.

Caresoft also focuses on securityservices that are named Second Prac-tice. In order to have focused provision

of information security advice and as-surance services within the context ofindustry and country-specific regulatoryrequirements, Caresoft has partneredwith Symantec. It provides end point se-curity, network security, and applicationsecurity. Caresoft has built longterm re-lationships with major clients and infor-mation securitystakeholders in both the

public and private sectors, providing ex-ceptional customer focus throughout its

business units. With its modus operandi,

work philosophy, and commitment toalways providing the very best to itsclients, the company has helped themdevelop several longterm and success-

ful associations. It provides onsite serv-ices, audits, and assessment with thehelp of their team of CISSP certified ex-

perts who have years of experience indifferent areas and from varied compli-mentary backgrounds as MCAs, CEH,

CISSP,CISM, auditors, and also the ed-ucationvertical. Its pragmatic approachto IT security begins with the process ofin-depth assessment, and then based onthe analysis it can suggest and providehelp in creating and publishing appro-

priate security standards for the clientsenvironment. The standards may in-clude specific controls for the various

platforms, a set of best practices thatcross over the platforms, and linkagesof the standards to higher level policies,governmental regulations,and lot more.

Another practice that Caresoft fo-cuses on is quality assurance frame-work. In 2002, a study commissioned

by the US Department of Commerces National Institute of Standards andTechnology concluded that software

bugs, or errors, are so prevalent and sodetrimental that they cost the US econ-

omy an estimated $59 billion annually,that is about 0.6 percent of the gross do-mestic product. A good quality assur-ance framework for software takes intoaccount two factors - the ability to func-tionally test all the specifications forwhich the software was built and theability to test how efficiently and pre-dictably the software will run under allspecified conditions. Caresoft has com-

plete understanding of customer needs.Caresofts QA services ensure that thereare quick QA implementations done forthese frameworks, where you can de-velop the portal quickly and roll it outin two months from scratch to end. Forinstance,if there is an organization that

develops portals as quickly as one intwo months, it is difficult for the QAteam to keep pace with it. So, for thisCaresoft has developed a set of tools,

pre-designed templates, and a libraryfor frameworks that help the companysQA frameworks rapidly. The knowl-edge of tools like Documentum,WebLogic, WebSphere, and iPlanet en-abled them to deliver the full benefitsof JAVA technologies. Moreover,Khare was quick to prove their cus-tomers, how it can reduce their IT

budget using proven Microsoft tech-nologies such as COM, MTS, and Vi-sualBasic.

Commitment Beyond ContractDespite a myriad of products and serv-ices on offer, the foundation of Care-softs business success lies in thecustomer centric culture within thecompany. The company promotes a

culture of commitment and curiosity;hence not believing in signing unreal-istic deals. Since inception, every asso-ciate is instilled with the values andculture the company stands for, andthey are tuned to the fact that it is be-yond the contracts that relationships are

built. Khare made sure that most of theemployees had a relentless researchand development mindset and a com-mitment to stay ahead of the technol-ogy curve with continuous in-housetraining and career development. Thishas boosted each individual in their

team to take ownership of their actionsand realize how individual actionsbuild a champion team.

The commitment of Caresoft re-flects in its motto itself - We Care.The company has a legacy of bringinga million dollar smile to its customersthrough its best of the class customerservice. Khare always wanted to have adeep understanding of the customersatisfaction. So, in order to serve itscustomers better, the company has setup a very stringent methodology incustomer care service. It has monthlycustomer care service reviews that it

presents in detail to the customers on aquarterly basis. Infact, this has helped

Caresoft to prove themselves to theircustomers how they have met the re-quirements according to Service LevelAgreements (SLAs), and how theyhave gone beyond the SLAs. Accord-ing to me, SLAs are contracts but very

dry. We believe in going beyond thecontract and providing the humantouch, says Khare.

Life@Caresoft

The company is not only well knownfor its unique customer services, butalso as a great place to work in. Thecompany is keen on grooming the em-

ployees and creating a place wherethey can learn and grow. The key toCaresofts success is the belief thatsomething great is always out there,waiting to be discovered, and the effer-

vescent entrepreneurial spirit om-nipresent in the company. In keepingwith the Caresoft culture, we celebrateall achievements - big and small, to-gether as a team. We take fun seriouslyand believe in working hard and party-ing harder, says Varsha Sepaha, HRManager, Caresoft. Summer picnicsand Christmas-season parties for chil-dren and adults offer everyone the op-

portunity to meet in more relaxedcircumstances and look back on a jobwell done. Having grown rapidly overthe last decade, Caresoft still enjoys anenvironment more like a small startupwith a high degree of flexibility in rolesand a minimum of structure, guideline,

and policy. Common sense is the ruleand good judgement is everyones re-sponsibility. This is what makes us

proud to be one of Americas fastestgrowing companies and a genuine suc-cess story, she says. si

Behind th

William ShakespTime has a diffeveryone. This isof Deepak Khare tofall of 1994 to provsulting services topanies, Caresoft heven as the softwwent through thecycles. A graduate

gineering, Khare eral businesses inCurrently, many ofare flourishing. Ktated to try out nein his career, evefailed ventures town.com, and awas not pulled dtrary, learning frorose like a phoearound, whetherIndia or elsewhwants to move focellence, and do wThats where entrborn out of. The

stops people frompreneurs is the feure and fear of peoin life you win sosome. You may losyou win, but a singshadow all of youOne must be resiliures, and move fotrepreneurship kfun, and alive.

During his carconsultant, he wogious clients like JHoffman LaRocheagement ScienceWarner Systems

helped Khare takenext level of it grgrowth has not Today, Caresoft is company becausecal touch.

silicon

Varsha Sepaha

You may lose more often than you win, but

a single win might overshadow all of your

previous losses

Caresoft Team


12/25


Entrepreneurs often ask a fairly simplesounding question what do I need to getDFJ excited about my idea. The answeris really two-fold. There is a mix of sec-tor-agnostic and sector-specific re-

sponse. Let me focus on the sector-agnostic first.DFJ, as an investor, is focused on a blend of early tomid-stage investment (series A, B and C). Typically,an investment thesis revolves around team, technol-

ogy/differentiation, traction/ validation and marketsize/opportunity. At an early stage, however, thereoften isnt much that an entrepreneur can offer. Theteam is incomplete, the technology may not be de-veloped or fully baked and given that there isnt a

product or service, there isnt any traction or rev-enues. What does matter at that stage is undeniable

passion and an absolutely resolute attitude towardsmaking it happen, come what may.

A perfect example of that was DFJs investmentin Attero, emerging as a leader in the electronicwaste recycling business in India. When Nitin andRohan, brothers and co-founders approached DFJ,they had virtually nothing except a power point anda spreadsheet. But it was the passion that they ex-uded, and the fact that they were willing to back that

passion by investing their family savings, that con-

vinced NEA-IndoUS ventures and DFJ to put in$6million into the company. We were also convincedthat the market for ewaste was enormous and grow-ing, and that trying to replicate what Attero was

planning on doing was going to be non-trivial (inessence, its not a business that would create manyme-toos).

On the later stage front, the entrepreneur needsto be able to convince DFJ that, in a very capital ef-ficient manner, he/she has been able to make solid

progress, that the business model has either beenproven or on its way to being proven, and finally thatthe market is large and growing. Examples of latestage investments for DFJ are companies like Clear-trip and iYogi where the capital requirement was forscaling the business, not for proving the business.

Finally, what has to be clear in the entrepreneurs

mind is the overall potential (how big can it be overwhat period of time). Fund IX, from which DFJ isinvesting, is a $650 million fund. DFJ is looking toturn that into a $2billion+ return. For DFJ to get ex-cited, the startup has to have the potential of return-ing at least $50 million or more to the fund. To make

the math simple, assuming that DFJowns 20percent of a given companyupon exit, the exit value of the com-

pany has to be at least $250million..Before approaching DFJ, the entre-

preneur in his/her mind needs to beconvinced that the idea is big and fora larger fund, is going to move theneedle for a funds IRR. I have often

said, that before approaching VCs,entrepreneurs should do their home-work and make sure that the fundsthat they approach are in line with theoverall business that he/she is look-ing to build.

Coming to the topic of specificsectors, DFJs name has been syn-onymous for years with consumermedia (internet and mobile) andcleantech. Those continue to be keythemes in India as well. But in addi-tion, India holds tremendous promisein areas such as healthcare, educa-tion, logistics/distribution, and retail.I often joke that the sure shot way ofmaking money in India is to open an

institution that is a combination of aschool, hospital and a temple. Thekey challenge that companies face inIndia is truly around scale. The pos-sible online revolution holds promise(whether that happens on the PC orthe mobile phone, remains to beseen), so consumer media is some-thing that we are closely watching.Right now, a pure online play is stilldifficult in India. There is often a

physical infrastructure required interms of handholding, and servicing(examples are plenty in travel, matri-monial, jobs etc.). But its a matter ofwhen, not if, India will start hittingthe types of numbers that China, for

example, has shown around areassuch as online gaming, ecommerce,entertainment, mobile infrastructureand applications to name a few. ForPC based online penetration to get tocritical mass, reliable power issues

need to be addressed. In the mean-time, the mobile phone may becomethe so-called First Screen. As con-nectivity improves, as feature-richhandsets become more affordable,and as new business models around

new applications prolibile revolution will cfold. As an example, Ispeaking with an entrenables people to be avoice, photos and vithem as sms to their fr

Additionally, other as mobile jockeys br

formation or creating i bile sessions with spectators or participaastounding to me was80percent of this comtered user base was noin tier 2/3 towns, whmore people can affosets, but without reliabno use for a TV or a PCthey have both in theiresult, they resort to thedevice for communicatainment.

Additionally, the eresents an enormous m

provides opportunitie

neurs in the same areasabove (financial serviceducation, cleantech,tail). The challengscalability. Tapping a mented user base holdwill be tough. But thcrack it, will create larenterprises. The MFIone such success storyout. There will surely b

Bottom line: The Ttion and technology) anket)on the one hand arany business, but key tthe noise on the other hand conviction that a

DFJ is interested in slarge and growing, ileveraging technologya solid trustworthy braorganization in an othunorganized fragment

Startup Ideasthe DFJ

Would Liketo Fund

VC Talk: By Mohanjit JollyThe author is Executive Director, DFJ India

The entrepreneur

needs to be able to

convince a VC that, in a

very capital efficient

manner, he/she has

been able to make solid

progress, that thebusiness model has

either been proven or

on its way to being

proven, and finally that

the market is large and

growing.

In 2010, mobile gamingend-user revenue is to grow19 percent globally, exceed-ing $5.6 billion, says Gart-

ner. Gartner estimates70-80 percent of all mobile

consumer applicationsdownloaded are mobile

games. Additionally, 60-70percent of these down-

loaded games are "free."

The market will continue tosee steady growth through2014, when the market is

projected to reach$11.4 billion.

Mohanjit Jolly


13/25

s i l i c o nsilicon i n d i a |24|J u n e 2 0 1 0

The case for Greening the data

centre

Businesses today rely on telecoms anddata networking to run their organisa-tions but this increasing demand hasalso had an impact on carbon emis-sions. In fact, IT- equipment world-wide is responsible for roughly 3-4

percent of CO2 emissions which cor-responds to the total amount of CO2emitted by airplanes says SimonMingay from Gartner.

It is likely that global carbon diox-ide emissions from Internet Data Cen-tres (IDC) will continue to grow. For

example, data centre energy consump-tion as a percentage of total U.S. elec-tricity use has doubled since 2000, andIDCs and servers will double their en-ergy consumption again by 2012, ac-cording to the US Environmental

Protection Agency.In the UK, energy consumption

from non-domestic ICT (Info-CommTechnology) equipment increased bymore than 70 percent from 2000-2006and is expected to grow by a further 40

percent by 2020, according to a reportby the UK-based Environmental ITLeadership Team (EILT).

Making the U-Turn

Providing greener telecoms and datanetworking is fast becoming a priorityfor all CIO and IT Directors today.This is a sea change in perspective

that has come about in just the last fewyears with many IT and IDC managersfeeling caught between their existingIT best practices and environmentally-sustainable computing. They tell usthat their data centers was never de-

signed to be environmentally efficientand infact, were set up to cater for re-dundancy and failover; this by default,meant more servers than optimally re-quired, leading to greater power con-sumption. Now, IT managers arehaving to look at options to makethese data centers green.

These compulsions, actually, arenot just restricted to the IT or IDCManager level. Running of energy ef-ficient datacentres will become more

prevalentforming part of the definedresponsibilities and KPIs of the CIO.Metrics will involve more efficientuse of the IT budget, with enhanced

performance and efficiencies lead-

ing them to consider increasing use ofvirtulisation solutions and makingdata storage, retrieval and transfer farmore efficient.

Its not all over... theres hope yet

Contrary to popular belief, there is anatural convergence between green

practices and good business. Effi-ciency in business invariably meansgetting the best effect for the lowestcost. Additionally, the high cost of

power means the potential savingsfrom efficient IDC management arehuge. Research firm IDC estimatesthat for every dollar spent on computerhardware, another 50 cents is spent on

energy. It predicts that will increase tomore than 71 cents by 2011.Cable&Wireless sees the first part

of reducing consumption as organisa-tional. Interest needs to start at the topwith support from the CEO and the

senior management team. Naturally,any program to increase IT energyefficiency and reduce a carbon foot-

print also needs to be part of corpo-rate social responsibility andenvironmental efforts.

However, most ICT departmentsare only marginally involved in theirorganisations social responsibilitystrategies and a significant proportion

has never been asked to focus on en-ergy efficiency. It is essential to meshthe IT groups goals with the organi-sations facilities management teamand establish baseline measurementson energy use and costs.

The second part is the design andrunning of data centres themselves.Many data centres today were built atthe time of the tech boom. They tendto lack floor space, and have difficultyin accommodating todays high-den-sity servers. Energy management will

become more and more an issue forIDC managers when procuring newhardware and in daily operations.

The third is to help educate the

market about energy efficiency and toadopt standardized measurements.The role of ICT suppliers here is alsocritical. They need to be able to speaka common language with standardmetrics. Currently, each chip andserver vendor has its own definitionsand green practices and according toan industry survey, some 60 percentof ICT professionals consider vendorenvironmental information from theirsuppliers to be confusing.

Finally, companies should fullyutilise existing computing powerthrough consolidation into fewer andhigher performance systems. As theymake commitments on carbon emis-

sion targets, government leaders needto recognize that their compliancepolicies can in fact add to the data stor-age load. Instead, governments need to

provide incentives to ICT departmentsto implement Green IT practices and

technologies as part of national carbonemission programs.

Reducing the impact and optimizing

resources

With energy resources growingscarcer, and energy prices rising, thismeans data centre energy costs overthe lifetime of a server could easily ex-ceed hardware costs sometime in the

future. Taking care of the environmentis about a combination of solutions,services and improved processes thatreduce the environmental impactwhile reducing both resources andcosts.

Customers are looking for dy-namic data centre solutions and a ho-listic approach to greeninfrastructure to save energy, cooling,space and resources but they need tohave the right balance between busi-ness benefits and environmental bene-fits in data centre space.Businesses need to adopt a three-stepdata centre strategy:

1. Reduce Consumption - Implementbest-practices based technology andprocesses; offer products, solutionsand services that aim to balance

business and environmental bene-fits.a. Deploy servers, which as reduce

power consumption of CPUs andI/O by improved, chip technolo-gies and manufacturing

processes.b. Select server technology that

provides improved computingperformance per Watt of powerdissipation.

c. Increase efficiency of serverpower supplies.

2. Optimize Data Centre Infrastruc-ture - Offering more efficient

blade servers and cooling tech-nologies.a. Fully utilize existing computing

power throughonto fewer and hiance systems.

b. Improve utilizatitems with virtuanology.

3. Effective Use of Re ploying more eservers and cooling

and are implementinidation and virtualiza. Flexibly control

sumption by meaIT solutions

b. Actively seek th balance betweenand optimal serve

c. Reduce the enerminimum by transdata centres to a DCentre by creating

puter and storage are provided withon-demand.

d. Better utilizationtion of blade serv

alization metechnologies.e. Integration of IT

tools to react fastallocation of serve

f. Automated, intelltion life-cycle manegy (ILM) to put tit consumes the lkey for an energy age pool.

Time for clear directi

Businesses today neetheir current and futurdata networking requmake the changes no

reap the benefits in tconsolidating serviceswill not only improvefootprint, theyll also bcost and efficiency savimprove the bottom lin

Facing Upto theGreen Challenge

Heres how IT and Data Centre Managers can respond

Technology: By Vikas BansalThe author is Director Carrier Sales, India and South AsiaCable&Wireless Worldwide


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s i l i c osilicon i n d i a |26|J u n e 2 0 1 0

100 different services that add up to plumvalue added services. There is hardly asubscriber who has not subscribed to aservice or two at a minimum of Rs.15(33 cents) per month.

If you include data services likebrowsing the web to send email, down-loading music or streaming video towatch TV, the billing potential for themobile companies is huge and is likelyto grow manifold in the third generation(3G) regime. By subscribing to data

packages on a mobile phone the sub-scriber can navigate unknown routes oreven make international calls for a song.

While all 600 million Indian mobilesubscribers dont own a handset that sup-

ports data services, it is only a matter oftime when some of the cheaper copycatlook-alike handsets as market re-

searcher, IDC calls thewithin every mobile uselittle as one-tenth the avsmart phone.

Industry analysts expber of service providers ing mobile voice over in(VoIP) services to offertional calls. Right now mtional calls is not only eneeds activation, often fosecurity deposit. Once thservices are available, thedrop from the current Rs

per minute at the lower bRe.1-Rs.2 (2-4 cents) per

Already a few optioMobile Dialer Express market allow a phonemake VoIP call from

phone. With the mass Wi-Fi networks in manthe introduction of cheice, calling from mobiletechnology is getting p

The telecom tariffs ithe lowest in the world

been making a visible dsociological level y

bus, train or plane. Athere are mobile air spwho are busy convertinfrom a primarily day tim24/7 activity.

With a variety of chcalling packages on offecommon for friends to late into night and for mutions. With value offeringnon-peak hours, the serhave been able to make sleeping hours of younmunity successfully.

The time is not far wrevolution will embracehalf of the country at adding 20 million new mtions every month inyears. The economies of fully extract the India dvantage for many morecost of a single paisa.

Telecom Companies

Revive Value of the

Indian Paisa

Visiting us during her va-cations, Manjari, myteenage niece, asked meif I would help her witha summer project. I

agreed. It involved the study of coins.The curious kid wanted to know whata one-paisa coin looked like. Her nextquestion: What can one paisa buy?

We were amused as to why ateacher would give a one paisa proj-ect when the cheapest toffee costs 50

paisa, or around one cent. Manjarissearch into the shape, size, and metal-lic content of one paisa coin landed

her at the Reserve Bank of Indias(RBIs) monetary museum. She learntthat over a period of time, the cost-

benefit considerations led to a grad-ual discontinuance of 1, 2 and 3 paisacoins in 1970s.

Then came a discovery of sorts.There was something that was wortha paisa offered by the burgeoning,yet highly competitive, Indian tele-com industry. For just one paisa, onecan talk to someone in the farthestcorner of India for one second, orsend an SMS of 160 characters to anyone of the 600 million mobile phoneusers in India. Not only that, one canextract more from the service

provider if the bill plan is well cho-sen. Of course, it also depends on thedesperation of the service provider toacquire and retain a customer.

The Indian telecom industry, theworlds fastest growing, must be cred-ited with applying all the marketingtricks ranging from product or servicesampling, marginal costing, happyhours, family and friends packs among

others to hook the customer.This explains the offer for send-

ing 15,000 SMSs for Rs.99 (around$2) a month a cool 3 SMSs for 2

paise. Or for just Rs.299 (around$6.5) to call 65 hours, or full-hour oftalking with your mother for underRs.5 (11 cents). If your circle offriends extends nationally, at Rs.599($13.3) per month plan you can talkfor 65 hours, packing in 60 minutesof calling for a little over Rs.9 ($2).

For the service provider there is littlemoney to be made in the local or long-distance calls from and individual sub-

scriber. However, money is made fromvalue added services ranging fromring tones and astrology, music down-loads and jokes, stock alerts to cricketscores, International calls and data serv-ices. It is estimated that there are at least

According to a report byBusiness Software Alliance,global loss due to software

piracy has reached $51.4 bil-lion in 2009, with $16.5 bil-

lion in the Asia-Pacificregion. Despite some achieve-ments in the fight to protectintellectual property rights,43 percent of software used

in computers globally in

2009 was pirated. The over-flow of counterfeits waslargely due to the growth of

the personal computers in theemerging markets.

Business: By Sanjit ChatterjeeThe author is Director Global Marketing and Strategy,REVE Systems Cable&Wireless Worldwide


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This lack of visibility and account-ability has left many employers won-dering whether they actually receivethe benefits promised to them by theiroutplacement consultants. Employersare not doing enough to demand ac-countability and results from their out-

placement vendors, including the mostimportant result of all - helping laid-off employees find new jobs asquickly as possible.

Driving Accountability withTechnologyBut times are changing. Its increas-ingly clear that the old model of out-

placement is broken. Employeesarent happy with it, and neither areemployers.

Fortunately, there are indicationsthat more employers are demandingaccountability when it comes to out-

placement. Three trends have con-tributed to this development:1. As large employers expand out-

placement services to their entireemployee population, the cost ofservices has increased andmeasuring results has become ahigher priority.

2. As more small and medium sized businesses offer outplacementsupport, they tend to be more con-cerned with the hard benefits thanthe soft benefits of outside con-sulting services.

3. Technology is making it easier foroutplacement firms to delivermeasurable and cost-effective re-sults to employers of all sizes.

The creative leveraging of tech-nology, in fact, is critical to increasing

both employee and employer satisfac-tion with outplacement services.

Technology Can Positively Impact

Recruitment

When it comes to recruitment, yourhuman resources division will tell you,if you didnt already know, that the

process can be very difficult and long,and the ability to know for certain

whether a candidate who seems like anexcellent fit for the job will indeedhave longevity with your company isakin to having ones own crystal ball.

The complaints that many compa-nies have about using third-party re-cruiters, however, involves the quality ofthe talent they receive through theirdoors, the lack of communication, andthe expense. Certainly, this current eco-nomic climate has precipitated an em-

ployers market; skilled talent is out thereand looking for new positions. The diffi-culty with an economy on the upswing,

particularly for cost-conscious busi-nesses, though, is that employees might

jump ship once the market for their jobskills opens up and other positions be-come available.

As I mentioned, no one has that crys-tal ball. But the best way to mitigate thatrisk is to start with a wide and diversified

pool of talent in the selection process anda third-party vendor who focuses on ac-countability and considers you a priorityclient. Also, find ways to reduce yourcost of on-boarding, using technology toshorten the time-to-hire and by closelyinvestigating often large fees charged bysome recruiters. Will it cost you 25 per-cent of a $70,000 salary in recruiting feesto hire a new person to fill that position?Thats more than $17,000. What if youhad to do that twice or even th ree times- in one year?

The truth is that technology, whenproperly leveraged, has the ability tochange the recruiting landscape by find-ing a wider pool of talent, reducing time-to-hire, and significantly bringing downcosts. There are vendors out there who

can offer this to clients, ifbased on their ability toand they are given clearthe collective goal.

A Formula for Technology m

bility in outplacruitment saccessible. Hoincumbent upoexpect and deThis means thshould construwhich to measits outplaceme

ment services provider.While every employ

unique, companies that wperformance of their cument firm or determinchoose during a selecshould be asking the follo1. Is this firms thinki

my strategic busines2. What is the measurem

and does this vendorbility to show me an urement?

3. In what timeframe dneed to be complefirm have the capabwithin that window?

4. How, and how oftendor be communicteam?

5. How are my costs dedoes that compare wROI?

6. Is there a guarantee their work? Do thesupport impacted ethe employees find j

Do they guarantee to filled the open positioncontracted their help in

The truth is that thewho can become as in

business as your on-site eit requires asking the righdemanding accountabilcan show you that measglad that you asked. si

Effective managementknows that people are thelifeblood of any business;talented employees are

by far a companys mostvaluable asset. Due to todays dy-namic workplace and the fast pace ofever-changing business processes,employers are increasingly turning totechnology and vendors to assist inmeeting the demands of outplacementand recruitment. But as with any ven-dor relationship, third parties you

choose to do business with must haveclear objectives, defined direction,and accountability. Never is this moreimportant than when they are dealingwith the very heart of your organiza-tion - your employees.

As an example, I would like todiscuss here how technology can andshould be leveraged in both outplace-ment and recruitment to allow themanagement of a companys humanresources to be as measurable and ac-countable as any other business ini-tiative.

State of the Outplacement Industry

You may be aware of a recent Holly-

wood hit movie, Up in the Air, whichtackled a topic companies in generaldont like to discuss: outplacement.This is an industry that grew out of aneed to take care of employees evenafter business climate forced layoffs.

While many HR practitionerswere excited about the prospect ofGeorge Clooney portraying a memberof their profession, they largely have

been disappointed upon seeing thefilms take on corporate layoffs andoutplacement consultants. If you be-lieve the Hollywood version, transi-tion consultants offer little more thanglib pep talks and thin packets ofdubious value to laid-off workers.

This is certainly not the case inreal life. Today, four out of five em-

ployers offer substantive outplace-ment services, ranging from careercoaching and resume help to the iden-tification of job leads, for weeks ormonths after qualifying displaced em-

ployees for the program. But manydisplaced employees are unhappywith the assistance they receive, andfor good reason.

In recent surveys in the U.S. andthe UK, approximately 80 percent ofemployers said they offer outplace-ment support, up significantly from

just a few years ago. A 2009 surveyby the Institute for Corporate Produc-

tivity showed that the US employersspent an average of nearly $3,600 peremployee on outplacement services.Once reserved for managers and ex-ecutives, these services are now typi-cally offered to employees at alllevels of the organization.

To run these programs, the vastmajority of companies turn to outsideconsulting firms. This is a big reasonthat transition management has

emerged as a $3 billion in-dustry in the past decade.

And yet, for all the goodintentions of employers, theresults delivered by out-

placement programs have been mixed. In the WallStreet Journal story of Au-

gust 20, 2009, Outplacement FirmsStruggle to Do Job, journalists PhredDvorak and Joann S. Lublin make thecase that traditional outplacementservice packages such as griefcounseling, group seminars, and theuse of office space offer littlevalue to workers and leave manyfeeling dissatisfied. Since themethodology behind user surveys isflawed, some companies never know

that their former employees didntfind jobs. By some estimates, 40 per-cent of displaced workers who wereoffered outplacement services dontuse them at all let alone participatein satisfaction surveys.

HR Meets Technology

CIO Profile: By Sanjay Sathe

HR vendors you choose to do

business with must have clearobjectives, defineddirectionand accountability

Technology has the ability tochange the recruitinglandscape by finding a widerpool of talent,reducingtime-to-hire, and significantly

bringing down costs

Asking the

Right Questions

The author is Founder and CEO, RiseSmart


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Social networking is replac-ing several traditionalforms of contact manage-ment through its ability toquickly create significant

impact on targeted populations. Therecent decision by Pepsi to avoidSuper Bowl advertising to focus on so-cial networking advertising is an ex-ample. Even though some attemptshave been made by a few h ealth insur-ance companies, enough attention hasnot been paid to the use of social net-working sites in this direction. Withincreasing healthcare costs ruling theheadlines these days, it is importantthat healthcare companies evaluate theuse of social networking features to

promote preventive care.

Why Focus on Preventive

Healthcare?

Most healthcare debates focus on howto reduce the administrative costs in-curred by the insurance companies.

However, insurance companies claimthat about 85 percent of their premiumrevenues go back into paying for serv-ices and only 15 percent of the totalrevenue is spent on administrationoverhead and profits. Hence, even a

small percentage of reduction in theservice provider costs can significantlyreduce the overall price of healthcare.Lifestyle choices and proper preven-tive health measures can significantlyreduce the number of incidents for

members, thus contributing to the costsavings.

How Does Social Networking Help

in Improving Preventive

Healthcare?

It has been proven in the past, by thelikes of Weight Watchers Clubs, thatsocial pressure definitely helps to im-

prove lifestyle. A large percentage ofthe population may not wish to dis-close their weight or eating habits tothe public, or even to friends. But theanonymity offered in these forums willvery likely improve the participationand produce impressive results. A fewsuch applications of social networkingin improving overall health of mem-

bers are discussed below.Sharing of Health Tips

Create a social networking site wheremembers can share tips on health andwellness. The content can be moni-tored by qualified physicians for accu-racy and also to ensure that the

comments are appropriate. Thesephysicians can also append their ownsuggestions on the tips. Informationsuch as calories contained in commonfoods, recommended portions for spe-cific diets, and easy cures for commonillnesses can also be shared throughthis site. Magazines already providesimilar columns by physicians and thiswould be more attractive on a website.

Chronic Disease Specific Commu-

nities

Communities can be created withinsocial networking sites for peoplesuffering from chronic diseases suchas diabetes. These can be promotedthrough organizations such as theAmerican Diabetes Association andcan provide information specific to

better living conditions of patients.For example, people can share spe-cific diet plans, common exercise op-tions, a

Documents

Silicon India June 10 Issue