Sukshma

Why would Google India sign a deal with AirTel to share advertising revenue for data applications?

Bharti Airtel Ltd, India’s largest mobile service provider with nearly 53 million customers, plans to tie up with leading Internet portals for sharing advertising revenue when Airtel’s subscribers visit those websites through mobile Internet.

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I will be attending the TiE ISB Connect 2007 for entrepreneurs on November 14th, 15th and 16th at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. BookEazy co-founder (and author here on Sukshma), Anjali Gupta, has been invited to participate in a panel discussion on Funding Software Product Ventures. Anjali will be talking about her approach and experience with closing funding, selecting the right investing partners and deciding on the right amount to raise for a product oriented startup.

Also keep your eye out for the Business Plan Showcase track where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas and businesses to VC’s.

You can watch a live stream of the event here.

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VOIP for mobile happens to be one of my top predictions for fastest growing markets in India. Fring is the application making it happen. It is already the most frequently used application on my Nokia E61i. I use Fring for Skype International calls, chat on GTalk, MSN and other networks. The only drawback is that it seems to suck out your mobile battery faster than you can imagine. I end up having to restrict its use to only when I am traveling.

The people behind Fring seem to acknowledge the huge interest and potential and have dedicated a blog to India. The blog is a great addition to help their customers, announce features and new phones compatible with Fring.

Now if only AirTel, Vodafone and the other big Mobile boys wake up and learn to walk their customers through enabling wireless data on their handsets.

Another product riding the mobile wave in India is Mowser who claim to receive more than twice as many mobile requests from India alone. Rajan attributes that interest primarily to dial-up users from India who use Mowser and other content adaptation engines for mobiles to surf the web.

Back in 2006, a few VC’s left their Sand Hill Road offices and visited us to talk about what investments they would like to see happen. They cheekily talked about how they were seriously looking at the Internet and Mobile industries. However, their adopted strategies are focused on retail and infrastructure. This is also evident from Sequoia’s current portfolio of late-stage investments in Cafe Coffee Day and Idea Cellular.

Why is this so? How does this impact me?

Primarily, the Internet already has its own Google (Google).

Secondly, what India has to offer in the early-stage Mobile and Internet application space right now is not potentially large enough to fall into their sweet spot.

This is not to suggest that a late-stage deal in an Internet application company will not happen.

Instead, I am asserting that Indian Entrepreneurs need to stop trying to sell old wine in a new bottle. If you truly want to understand the web - aim to build assets that exploit the webs global and interactive nature. An Indian Internet Eco-System is hardly an exciting proposition and will probably not exist by itself.

Ask yourself how large do you need to be to be able to make the transition from good to great. Amazon.com, the darling of the worldwide E-commerce space had already grown in to 5 or more countries before it could IPO. Other E-commerce plays from India treat the web as a secondary medium for Sales after phone and retail. They are already aware of what is required to make it in their own markets.

There is a saying that goes something like - People buy from Friends, Experts and Market Leaders.

Who do you want to be?

~ Santosh

UPDATE I - A few days after I wrote this post, Sequoia Capital invested $6Mn in Printo services in India.

Some of our early adopter customers have been pushing us hard for a mobile version of bookeazy.com. Last night, our technology team finished and released a Beta mobile prototype of bookeazy.com, what we proudly call beMobile.

If you have GPRS/EDGE enabled or CDMA - data, give the application a whirl. If your phone is GPRS/EDGE or CDMA data capable and you would like your wireless operator to enable it, we have help pages to guide you. Write back to us with your feedback and if you think the application can be improved further.

I have been eyeing a new phone to replace my existing Nokia 6230 for a while now. I finally caved in and bought a brand new Nokia E61i from the Nokia priority dealer in the Pune city area today.

My last smart phone was a BlackBerry 7100. The phone was tuned for e-mail like other BlackBerry’s. However, the 7100 fit well in my jeans since RIM managed to squeeze in two alphabets for every key. Setting up GMail on the BlackBerry was a breeze and did not require additional tweaks. Using the proprietary BlackBerry network, my desktop Outlook contact book always stayed in sync with my BlackBerry. I could even charge my BlackBerry over USB - a feature that was extremely handy when I traveled overseas.

The BlackBerry 7100 (and later models) are killer e-mail devices because they do the following extremely well.

• push e-mail
• new e-mail notification
• a huge local e-mail cache with search
• a complete contact book to store names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses
• keep your e-mail, desktop contact book and calendar in sync without cables
• the ability to modify your “sent from”
• auto configure access to GMail and other popular personal e-mail providers

However, without the BlackBerry network, it is next to impossible to provide the functionality listed above. Joining the BlackBerry network in India costs Rs. 2000 a month which is by no means priced for individuals. In comparison, AirTel GPRS costs Rs. 350 a month with no caps on how much data you can transfer. Additionally, we decided to avoid Microsoft Exchange and opt for Google apps for our office e-mail infrastructure. Until and unless you plan to be on the BlackBerry network, a BlackBerry might not be a good fit.

There are several phones that compete fairly in the general smart phone category. I had a serious look at Samsung i600 (~Rs. 18,500), Nokia E62 (~Rs. 12,500). The Nokia E61i was the final winner primarily because it is based on the very stable Symbian OS. Also, it is an improvement over the earlier (tried and tested) Nokia E61 and was launched in May 2007. In terms of features and connectivity options the E61i is comparable to other phones in the category.

The Nokia E61i costs a little north of Rs. 18,850 here in India. Additional charges including VAT apply. In my conversation with the dealer, he claimed that Nokia phones have only a 1% retail margin and therefore credit card charges would be over and above the price of the phone (an additional 2%). Unlike the US, additional discounts are not offered by carriers. You usually end up paying the full cost of the phone and having a zero commitment contract.

The phone comes in a box with a battery charger, a single battery, a memory card (microSD) of 256MB, a pop port headset and a CA-53 data cable. The Nokia CA-53 data cable happens to be the most popular data cable as far as duplication by after-market vendors. I have attached a screen shot of the cable to help identify the real thing. Fake Nokia CA-53 cables never work as intended.

I will be looking to get the best out of the phone in the coming weeks and promise to highlight some of the best applications available out there.

Related Links and Credits:

• A blog dedicated to the Nokia E series.
• The E61i pictures were taken by e61isuperfan on flickr.