God in Chief

The new Bangalore international airport surely looks swanky and new age however the Airport has got mixed reviews from passengers.. The biggest issue being the time it take to travel from the Airport to Bangalore City. Bangalore is currently being dogged with problems with air pollution, poor infrastructure and a big traffic jams and the airport has made it worse. When I traveled for the first time to the Airport It was a short flight from Mumbai about 1/12 hours however to my surprise it took me about 2 1/2 hours to reach reach my hotel The Leela.

However the 2 1/2 Hour trip was well spent, I had a very good quality meeting with one of the founders of GoVasool.com a startup based in Bangalore. I think it was probably one of those rare moments where I could give my undivided attention to a startup and spend quality time discussion their plan and strategy.

If you have a start-up and are looking for funding I am sure your first stop is almost always the big names of the Silicon Valley And why not! most of them have set-up 1 man ‘offices’ in India, most probably headed by a ABCD (American Born Confused Desi). ABCD has become a polarizing factor in the South Asian diaspora in the US, with first-generation immigrant parents and young South Asians of second or latter generations. South Asian Americans use it to criticize the Americanization and lack of belonging to either South Asian or American culture they perceive in their second-generation peers or children

During your funding rounds... at first these American Accented ABCDs will impress the hell out of you.. talking about the Boards they are on... the multiple Phd.. degrees they have done and the amount of capital they raised or burnt during their time in the states. However they forget that they are looking at start-ups in India and with their impressions of India locked some 30 years back in time they find it very difficult to apply all their leanings in the present and future Indian context.

While I was in Auckland, New Zealand to attend the X-Media Labs. New Zealand The capital of ‘Jumping off Any Hight’ and I surely could not resist myself from doing one of those jumping gigs. So I looked outside my hotel room and saw the tallest structure in Auckland. It was the Auckland Sky Tower 192 metres straight down!

Update 13th May 2009: Got a call from the terror agents treating us not complain and keep quiet in return they will close this case. My dad told them bring it on. No call today. Letter from RBI asking for some additional information. Have been contacted by couple of Business News Channels who are planning to do a story on this. Have also started a group on FACEBOOK called Citizens Against Banks who Employ Recovery Agents a support group to help Victims of such crimes committed by Banks.

Update 11th May 2009: Thanks friends for all your support and the hundreds of emails and messages. As per your request I am also posting a link to the letter which Standard Chartered had issued for Full and Final Settlement of this account see page 1 for receipt and page 2 for letter. Also I spoke to the RBI guys who have mentioned that Standard Chartered is one of the most biggest defaulters and they are going to take strict action. Also a friend told me about the recovery agency which is doing which is run by a local goon from Lal Baug and gets 50% take of whatever money he manages to extort from consumers.

Original Story
These headlines would normally remind you the terrorist who came to Mumbai on 26/11 and killed many innocent people. Apart from damage to life and property they were able to terrorise the entire world as they watched the events unfolding live of television.

However this time I am not referring to those terrorists or terrorist organisations like Al Quida, LeT, Taliban etc. The common man in India is currently being terrorised by a breed of local ‘Terror Agents’ popularly called as ‘Recovery Agents’ who are funded by giant corporations like Standard Chartered Bank among other banks

Oh! the world is in recession, people are cutting jobs, productions, marketing budgets and everything which is associated with a cost centre. While most people look at this situation in a negative way my take is a bit different....

This is the best time to spot opportunities in problems - and a recession can be a real problem. And there’s the opportunity as Everyone wants their problems solved.

Over the past few years when the economy went to its peak... salaries went up 2-3 times, rent almost doubled, attrition was at its all time high and companies had to what I call ‘over eat’, recruit extra people to take care of attrition, take extra office space to account for growth etc in shot most companies over a period of time grew a lot of Flab!

So one interesting thing is in this time most of the cost you would save would not really result in any major productivity loss...

With the election heat going on in India. The media is full of views of our political parties and politicians on various aspects which touch daily life in India.

Recently when I saw Samajwadi Party’s election manifesto which talking about banning computers as they are causing unemployment. I thought it would be best to find out their views on the gaming Industry.

Large percentage of India’s population is below the age of 30 who are prime consumers of gaming. With the popularity of mobile gaming, XBOX , Playstation and Online gaming growing. Government support is very important to grow the sector. With millions of youth enjoying this form of entertainment.

Governments in Korea, China, UK, USA etc. have dedicated Ministries which focus on the growth of gaming industry. And it is well know that President Obama booked ads inside the Xbox 360 racing game Burnout Paradise & 17 other games in an attempt to reach the young gaming community. The campaign, featured billboards with Obama’s image, includes a message that players should register their vote, and to vote early.

Just few weeks back at the Games Developers Conference in San Francisco. I made a presentation talking about the Indian Mobile Gaming Opportunity. While the rest of the world is all excited about the iPhone, I told the audiences that India has less than 600k iPhones for a 350 million mobile base that’s really small. And currently it dosen’t have any significant impact of application sales in India.

However with what I saw yesterday, I may have to take back my words. iPhone mania seems to have hit the streets of Mumbai and at places like Lamington Road & Hira Panna Market you can get CD’s full of iPhone apps and games along with all the software to install it on your iPhone for Rs.50 ($1). And the vendors seems to be doing great business. When I asked them from where are these CDs coming from all I got was a grin... and a mind your own business look... I was told such CDs are also available in Delhi and Bangalore ...

The CD’s is well packaged and even has its own cover which says “iPhone Mega Pack 2009″ and looks like many more packs are on the way. Like other pirated software once I checked the CD the source of most of the games looked Russian or Eastern European.

I don’t really know if this is good or bad news for the iPhone and the thousands of iPhone developers. But one thing is for sure if your product is the one being pirated its a sure hit!

What do you guys think about it??

As a kid growing up in the suburbs of India I have strong memories of the Arcade revolution which had once hit India. There were dingy streets full of PAC-Man, Space Invaders and other arcade classics with each game played for about Rs. 1. This is the 1980s and I remember spending hours in front of those machines trying to break the high-sore of someone called AXD.
Today most of those games and right so are found in a Museum… The American Classic Arcade Museum. But one thing which always used to strike me was why the hell can I not play cricket....

Last week at the NASSCOM Leadership Summit I met my old friend Rene Seifert a 6 feet 5 in tall German who has been living in Bangalore for 5 years. He is almost say half Indian and Half German by now.

As we all know all major airlines across the world are going through some really tough times there have been cuts announced across the board. But one thing which has an immediate impact on all the passengers is the food served on these giant birds of steel. The quality of the food served on Airlines is something which during good times or bad always has been questionable.