Social Networking opportunity

MySpace, Facebook, Orkut are not the end of Social Networking websites. You can still win.

Try to create a Social Networking website exclusively for residential societies, Companies, Institutions in collaboration with those organizations. This definitely makes sense as people who meet each other regularly may like to share more information than with strangers.

Mumbai Police Station's record : a proof for changing India

Claim: India is changing
Proof: One of the Mumbai's coveted police station (Bandra-Kurla Complex Station) proudly announces that there were no Murder, Attempt to Murder, Robbery, Assault cases registered for the past 2 years.

I am very happy. How about you?

Developing countries are better prospect in this knowledge based revolution

Innovation, Enterpreneurship are the key things for development in a knowledge based society. Here I argue that people who live in developing countries are better prospects compared to the citizens of developed countries.

Innovation:
Necessity makes the people to be more creative and innovative (compared to the people who have just passion). And also problems familiarity makes them more accessible for innovations at basic level which may revolutionalise the world.

Enterpreneurship:
Risk taking is the key skill required for enterpreneurship. People who live in difficulties they are already seen difficulties in life and so for them risk taking ability would be easier (because by taking risk they may experience the state which already they tasted) and on the other hand risk taking would be very difficult for the people who never have experienced the downside of the risk. So enterpreneurship is better cultivated in third world countries than so called developed countries.

Traditionally suppressed people would have more zeal to come up in life. This causes much better activity than people who live in developed countries.

Build a house in 6 hours!

Toyota with its core technology of making cars, it has entered into House making industry!

Are Indian autoindustries taking the note of this?? So that they can enter into this evolving industry. See more details .

Click-everywhere : solving video piracy problem

These days many movie producers are loosing their business just because pirated video CD of a movie gets into black market within a week of its release.

Powerful business model to solve this problem: Producer himself releases the official video CD of the movie along with its regular release. That too, at the cost of a pirate CD.

But then, how can a producer make money out of it: when people watch the official video CD on computers, on the screen every item comes on the movie is a clickable item. For example, if the viewer clicks on a shirt that Amitabh wears or Sharukh's pant or Rajani's bidi or Chiranjeevi's lungi then it straightaway takes to a website of the item where it is auctionable (same item) or salable (similar item). This does not just remain with cloths or accessories. Every item which goes on movie screen can make a great appeal to the audience and in turn to the marketer.

This was an idea which informally came out among students of a top US university and I think it may soon get patented. But then, can you generate similar ideas for Indian businesses?

I will join Indian Politics : an Orkut community

Last year I started a community in Orkut by name "I will Join Indian Politics". Now it is one of the popular community among Indian members and counting 1000+ members. For the readers, who does not know Orkut: it is a friendship network service of Google (similar to Myspace) and it needs an invitation to start an account. Community is like a yahoo group but discussions are public.

I used to feel that there are many highly educated people who wish to get into politics but then there is no support from their friends/family on the same issue. So I started this community to make sure that there are a large number of such people in the country elsewhere.

Statistics on the community:
It took almost an year to cross first 500 members while it took just 43 days to complete second 500 members. Now the current number of members is : 1012. Everyday it is counting at least 10 new members. I am very very curious with this fact and observing the growth.

Reasons for this extraordinary growth in recent days:

1. Growth in number of Internet users
2. Increase in popularity of Orkut
3. Interested by seeing large number that is already formed in the community
4. Media coverage of Paritrana, Bharat Uday Mission, Samudai Bharati
5. Anti-reservation sentiments

When I think of total MP seats, MLA seats, ZP seats, Block leaders, etc., 1012 is still a very small number. By the way, can anyone just tell me : what is the total number of elected leaders of India??

If you would like to join this community, then you must have an Orkut account, for which you require an invitation. So you may write to me with all your details for an invitation (my gmail id: malapati).

Current recruitments at OSP Global : My Interview experiences

For the past 20 days, I am seriously engaged in our recruitment drive of Certified IT Security consultants and PHP developers.

Most guys I interviewed are armed with BTech in Computer Science/Information Technology. I am extremely surprised to see that very few could answer the following set of questions.

1. What is a Stack?
2. What is a Queue?
3. Explain Linked list concept. Example for same.
4. Can you explain any sorting algorithm of your favorite?
5. Can you explain Binary search tree Algorithm?
6. Explain the concept of recursion.

Can you answer these questions?? Definitely not from your memory, but understanding of those concepts. And are you having following skillset?

1)Atleast 2 years software development experience
2)Experience with atleast one of the following: Java, .NET, Oracle/SQL Server Databases, Web Services/XML, Encryption, Remedy
3)Atleast 3 months experience with php
4)Good analytical skills

Preferable (but not mandatory) Skills
1)Experience with software development life cycle
2)Any security/compliance knowledge a plus
3)Good communication skills

If so, contact: zlokhandwala@ospglobal.com with your latest CV and contact number.

Education & Reservations

Recently Atanu has a beautiful post on this issue that supply is the major problem. On a similar note, in regards of higher eduation, Satya compares this scenario with Indian telecom revolution and food sector experience.

I too believe on similar lines. Otherwise, why chattisgarh could come up with "40 private universities" in a span of very short time. I accept that, they were under quality institutes but then when the number increases, then quality would become the major issue. Which essentially mean: people want as many as institutes to come-up and they are ready to pay for quality education.

And then, in regards of primary education, Kerala did good things by increasing competetion by giving straightly scholarships to children, and subsidy in transport. Even in the case of primary education, poor ready to spend money.

Coming to Atanu's mantra that we should be concerned about causes not the symptoms: in the case of today's medical system as well, we are always very much bothered about symptoms but not the causes. On a surprising note, we prefer this and dont prefer ayurvedic system which chases the causes. Is this due to mass psyche?

Experiments on Myself : 1

I usually experiment on myself on several issues: I started to document them,

• Though often materialistic desires do take me a ride into their net but then when I take back for a while, as usual, eternal happiness has its last laugh along with me.
• Formula for winning over greed : "My principle of" unwilling to do things which one loves to & can.
• To be happy when you are in trouble is by getting yourself "willingly" into a bigger trouble for which you have a solution
• To enjoy any situation, willingly face (or rather practice) both the extremes
• Relations don't happen, they are built over time, sometimes knowingly and at times unknowingly.
• Ethics are the focal to a character of a person

Certified IT security professionals : dearth of talent

India is facing severe dearth of talent in IT security industry. Industry require people with CISSP/ CISA/CISM certification and good technical background. They seek people who would like to pick-up new technologies quickly (basically smart guys). India Inc is ready to pay very high pay package. By chance if you know anyone out there, let me know (malapati g mail).

Showing stock market quotes .. Good business for billboards!

When I used to be at chennai and pass through Mount road I definitely look for temperature billboard, near hindu office. Because, in most cases I used to be stuck in traffic jam & had to kill the time.

So, keeping a small display box inside a billboard & displaying "Stock Market quotes" on it could be a good idea. That makes people to keep attention over billboard & as well as stock quotes, while passing over traffic jam.

How to bypass the "subscription" services of Online Newspapers & Magazines

Usually many news articles are available just for subscriber alone. But then, in most cases you can get those articles if they are of high value.

How??

I assume, you have preview content of the article that you wish to read. Take a sentence out of that (keep this sentence in quotes) and search in blogsearch engines (for example, http://blogsearch.google.com/). Got it ??!!

(Note : This is a small piece of my book on Google Search (specific to Indian context). For more detailed explanation, on same topic or otherwise, you will have to wait for my book!)

Googling for someone : a routine activity in life??

Last year I wrote on life partner selection that depends on "googling". Here is an another article that employers google their prospects. Today when I am discussing with N. Nagaraj of Business Line, he mentioned that googling of a person whom you are going to meet is also a common. Now I want to have a more closer look.

Whom are you googling for:

1. for Celebrities
2. When new friend introduced (likely thro online)
3. person whom you are about to meet/talk
4. Employers for potential hires
5. Police searching for criminals
6. for old classmates/pals
7. Ego-surfing or Self-Googling
8. Matrimonial/dating Search
9. for professionals (like architects, doctors, etc)

But then you must be careful, if not, you may get mistaken with the same/similar names. In this large world, there may be many people with same names/nicknames who confuse while you are researching.

Where to look for?
websites, blogs, comments in blogs, comments in web-news, comments in websites, guest-books, orkut or Myspace or ryze type of communities, blogeverywhere comments etc

Are there clues to search?
Ofcourse there are .. but then, you need to wait for my book.

Online Exam organising : Wonderful business opportunity

As you all may be aware that, in future, most exams will be conducted online because of cost & time factors and (most importantly) effective reach. If one conducts exams online similar to Brainbench in India, that would be a great hit. Slowly they can take up the opportunity of conducting online exams for recruitments, admissions, online courses, distance education etc by renting "ready infrastructure" at Rs. 8000 a month (for a single computer). You can even reach to small villages through rural kiosks.

Wish to take-up?

E-commerce Infrastructure for small players : Wonderful business oppertunity

Online presence is a must in this 21st century. Small players cannot have web presence and moreover they can't regularly maintain the website. If we can provide basic e-commerce service (incl. online payments) with subscriber revenue model, it would be a big hit.

Interested??

Price comparision website : a good business idea

Indians are extremely particular about pricing. So if there is a website which provides details of product pricing comparision. That will be instant hit.

Are you ready to take-off with this idea?

Indian Movie database : No such website yet!

It is very true that Indians are extremely fanatic about movies. You see that most of Indian forums are about movies. However I am extremely surprised to to see that there is no website which gives good information of movies like http://imdb.com/.

What data such site should contain?
It should give all movie details, reviews. Telugu, Tamil, Hindi are the top ones to be looked at. Site should get RSS feeds from several news sources. Discussion forums. Songs streaming (not so desired). Lyrics of songs (in english and local language as well).

Note: It does not need much investments. Team of 5 people can succede in this venture.

Are you interested to make one such?

Choose the career that interests you!

These days I am used to hear about people choosing their career based on interests and not driven by money or similar materialistic desires. In particular, these days media loves to talk about management graduates who chose different career.

And here, I explain about one guy who made his dreams true.

Sekhar Kammula : He was a usual guy till he completed BS from Osmania Univ and MS (Comp Sc) from New Jersey Univ. He was always getting different thoughts of presentation from the movies he used to watch. So with this type of mindset, he talked to howard univ film school. In a way, he took an another Master degree in Fine Arts (MFA) from this school. Then he returned back to India with the MFA thesis consisting of a screenplay in hand.

When he was working as a software engineer in Citicorp, he saw the dreams of people around him who wish to make earning dollars as their objective of life. So his first directorial venture was "dollar dreams". Which was a runaway success but among high-tech junta and with a national award for his directorial debut. Then his second project was based on his MFA thesis, Anand movie is born, with a very different note. This was shot with his earnings and near to his residence (with a partial help from govt : total expenses were not more than 40 Lakhs). Anyone who watch this movie can understand how these days telugu/tamil/hindi movies fail to show tender feelings of an individual. No dramas or no fights and also no stylish dances either. It has made a mark on movie industry in the sense that one need not spend 20 crores to produce a good film. This film was a commercial success. Now that he became a established director, I hope he will not go after traditional likings of industry. His latest movie is Godavari. I am happy that Telugu industry got another Bapu style director in this fast century.

Do you respect your interests while taking decisions in regards of career?

Watch telugu/hindi/tamil movies online or even download them!

These days I came across innumerous links to downloading Telugu/Tamil/Hindi movies websites. Basically they are mentioned in certain blog-sites pointing to heavy-storage websites where the files are being uploaded. I could get almost every movie released (2006) in Telugu/Hindi/Tamil. I could get even some of the alltime-classics. Most of them can be downloaded (size could be anywhere between 150MB-300MB) and few of them could be watched online. Considering the penetration of broadband, I dont think this is a problem.

How to get?
Search for movie titles in http://blogsearch.google.com/ or http://video.qooqle.jp/ or http://video.google.com/. While searching for titles, be careful about spelling. For example, pyar could be written as pyaar and kiya can be written kiyaa. So while searching for titles, also try all possible combinations like pyaar kiya, pyar kiyaa, pyaar kiyaa, pyar kiya.

If number of results are very high, then use quotes as in "pyar kiya". You may also use (download OR watch OR part) along with the title to cut down the results (however this logic holds now but cannot be guaranteed forever because spammers may use these words so that their sites get visited if they come across this blog).

Being away from my native for 11 years, I wanted to watch few recent good movies in Telugu such as Arya (I strongly recommend it even for non-natives), Anand, Show etc. You would love to see the largest collection of links to Telugu movies (currently there are about 250 movies).

My views on industry: After watching few movies of telugu and tamil, I could clearly understand that nowadays some good movies are coming-up in telugu (at the same time tamil movies are becoming worse like of telugu movies in 1996-2003).

Franchise Model for Automobile repairs

Rohit Tripathy writes:

Specifically for India, franchise format development for automobile repairs is a money spinning idea. Standardize the offerings and rates: like puncture repairs, towing, body work, tyre replacement, engine/gearbox repairs etc, and come up with a standard prices for repairs. Offer a standard toolkit to the franchisees. The potential franchisees would be numerous car mechanics in the country. Charge them a fixed support fees of 7% of their entire sales. In return guarantee them customers, marketing support, and latest methodology.

The following infrastructure would have to be created:

1. National call center to arrange mechanics be sent to site of breakdown
2. Methodology and price list
3. An allocation software
4. Legal Contracts
5. National Advertisement and marketing program
6. Revenue sharing mechanism
7. Company website
8. Quality Management programme
9. A schedule for listing the host franchise company in NSE and BSE

The actual investments would be put up by franchisees. Collect a non-refundable joining fee of from them.So with a minimum capital investment, an extremely scalable business model can be created. This will have a very high visibility. Franchises are an under-developed concept in India, and stock markets would love it.

P.S. This can be done just not for automobile repairs but also numerous other small things that touches life of an average Indian.