First Open Coffee Club in Bangalore!

Its good to know open coffee club event has come to Bangalore.. Vaibhav and Ramjee are co-ordinating the same. The details of the same are

Event: Open Coffee Bangalore meet

When: Sunday, 19th August 2007

Timings: 11AM – 1 PM

Where: BrewHaHa, Koramangala

Looking forward for the first meet!

Back 2 Blogging!

I am back to my writing.. Have some interesting posts to make…

Will update this soon..

Life in 20s!

“Your twenties are always an apprenticeship, but you don’t always know what for.”
– Jan Houtema

I came across this quote in Paul Graham’s site. Having been through the major part of 20’s now, I can’t stop admiring the person who quoted this!

Kamal Nath Learning Economics!

Came across this interesting conversation between kamal nath, the commerce minister and CNBC-TV18 host. If not for anything, its worth a watch for the way host puts Mr.Nath into the trouble with his basic questions:-)

Say no to cash…

that seems to be the mantra in the new p2p mobile payment systems… I I think the simple concept of mobile as a wallet is really going to impact the way cash is transacted….

A few weeks back Economist had a cover story
comparing cash with extincted dinosaurs:-) An interesting observation from the story is

You can already pass the day in Austria without carrying cash, credit or debit cards by paying for everything, including consumer goods, with a mobile phone

I think this technology will play a major role in the remittances (both domestic and international)… M-PESA is a good model to look for in the coming days… Maxis E-Money is another good model to look at.. (thanks Farhad for pointing out)

In Indian context, p2p mobile technology is already picking up well… this post has a good summary of the model for India…and IAMAI fortnightly thinkingaloud recently had a few good articles on digital payments.

Atleast from my experience, this can play a major role in reducing cash handling costs in microfinance operations.. and also in domestic remittances…

There are a whole bunch of startups waiting to cash on this opportunity in India… Obopay , mchek, jigrahak, paymate, atom technologies are all fighting for the pie..

but I am not sure how much a mobile can replace a debit or credit card in merchant transactions because cost of acquring the later is almost zero (thanks to life time free cards..).. right now many of them are positioning as “creditcard with extra pin security”.. I tried using Jigrahak a few days back..and.. it was really tough to use…

Some of these applications require GPRS and java enabled phones..and others require  lot of SMS interaction..In a market where most of the customers still own a low end phone and not comfortable with SMSing , I am not sure how these companies can educate customers and acquire a critical mass to be profitable…

I’ll definitely follow this space with more interest…. and looking forward to participate/lead discussion on mobile payments during barcampbangalore

BCB3

Barcampbangalore is back again!

The theme is one of my fav ones – Technology meets society.. expecting interesting discussions on e-goverence, banking, music, privacy, impact of culture etc.. The logo is very cool this time…

If you are around Bangalore … do join the gang!

Snapshots from Wikicamp

(Myself, Jimmy Wales and Rajan )

 

 

(People leaving their footprint at the end)

India’s first Wikicamp is a good start and it once again showcased the deft organizing skills of the knowledge foundation, Chennai. Had a chance to meet and interact with the rock star of tech circles and the man behind Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales. He was so cool and had so much energy to answer every question floating around and smile for every snap (including mine!) till the evening. Funnily, by evening Jimmy started acting as a reporter for TOI and started asking questions

Though I sat through only a few sessions , the feedback was that some of the sessions were really good. However, I got a feeling that the overall energy levels were not upto the blogcamp or a typical barcamp.. I think this got to do with the “coolness” of overall theme…

Any how, awaiting for the upcoming BCB 3.0 at Bangalore!

Vinod Khosla @ TiE-Bangalore

Vinod Khosla is talking about Solar Thermal Power at TiE Bangalore on 1st Feb. Its been almost three years since I attended Khosla’s talk.

Waiting to hear his thoughts on the World around us:-)

@ Proto

I was at Proto last weekend and it was interesting.. There were 27 company presentations…and Gokul had live blogged it.. I was there for a couple of presentations…and..mostly loitering in the corridor and meeting people… Its infact fun to know the kind of cool stuff people are doing…

One observation I had for the presenations I have seen was that they were mostly around product and not around business…That made me to think about the purpose of proto..is it for demoing your product or pitching your venture….few entrepreneurs really talked about their markets or business models or infact addressing problems…

One entrepreneur went deep into a feature in his product  that has some multi threading ..encryption etc..I am sure he would have spent nights in building that “cool” feature.. Fantastic..but as an audience it didn’t make any sense to me…

Waiting for the next edition of Proto….

@ Proto.in

I’ll be at Proto which is happening on 20th and 21st Jan. Since this is first of its kind event in India, it will be interesting to see how the startups are geared up…. Chennai’s Knowledge Foundation always comeup with interesting events.. then blogcamp and now Proto!