20 Qs with Puneet of Young India

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Introduction

Q. In your own words, who are you and what is your business?
I am just a young creative mind, who feels that everyone can sell anything; but the only reason why everyone doesn’t become a businessman, is that they don’t have a product to sell. Since they don’t have anything to sell they sell somebody else’s product. All one needs is to be creative, a little passionate and definitely risk taking.
My business is www.yindia.co.in. It is a new and a creative website which give a purpose to networking. It is a place where creative minds will compete and get recognition. It may not be a very big recognition like any reality show that makes you an overnight star but it will make you realise the star potential in you.
Q. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
Well a very less famous person once said that the best of business ideas come from ones own need. If you really want to start a business then just think is there anything that you want or ever wanted that you couldn’t get because of unavailability and that’s where you create a product.
My business idea comes from my own life. As a young guy I have many creative interests and dream, but I never could pursue them. May be because of lack of knowledge and may be ‘coz I never knew how good I am outside the boundary walls of my school and college. So I thought of giving the young generation something I did not get. It’s less of a business idea and more of an initiative.
By the way that less famous person is nobody else but me.
Q. Is this your first business?
Well definitely yes, it’s my first business. I would prefer to call it an initiative than business. It’s my way of changing the systems and things that are currently there in India.

Market

Q. Who are your customers?
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My take on iPad

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Ever since the iPad was announced, the internet is clogged with updates, analysis and impressions on iPad. But I saw very little talked about what this means, or how this could affect the way we do business. The guys with the biggest megaphones are either reporters or tech gurus, who are far removed from the trenches of enterprise application development.

Full disclosure

The only Apple product I own is the iPod touch. It rocks, itunes sucks.

Initial impressions

I was a bit underwhelmed and I doubt I will acquire an iPad. But that does not stop me from believing that it will be a big hit.

What could be better?

Personally, I would have loved the device if it came with multi tasking and maybe a camera. But this post is not about it.

Then what is it about?

This is about the big disruption the entire tablet computing movement could cause to the current state of art. How the relatively low price, the interactivity and the right size makes it suitable option in a lot of never before situations. And about how, Apple could leave a gaping hole for another Microsoft to capitalise on.

How so?

By not allowing custom built apps from being installed on the iPad. This will rule out iPads adoption in the enterprises and also cool new ideas and mashups. Large companies could use an iPad for several clever niches, but needing to install custom IP on to the iPad via the app store is out of question.

Are there any examples?

Sure, several.

  • Team of financial advisors carrying a tablet for explain various insurance or investment options to average Joe. Imagine how good the apps could be made to look and how interactive they could be. It would go a long way in closing the sale.
  • A restaurant replacing the boring menus with interactive ones on a tablet. Hell, they could even just ‘add to basket’ then and there. If there is a waiting time, people can pre-order their food and also surf while waiting.
  • Replacing the dull and expensive kiosk with a 350$ tablet. This might still happen, but by playing a keynote presentation.
  • How about the classic ‘travelling salesman’? Does he really need a laptop?
  • Medical staff carrying a tablet instead of the physical patient files.
  • I haven’t even begun to think about industrial applications

I think you get the picture. Not only can the tablet replace a laptop, but also paper in several cases. People more creative than me will find several more creative uses of a tablet. This brings me to mashups.

What about them?

The thing about mashups, they are obvious in hind sight. But it takes a creative mind and an open ecosystem to dream and create one. But I can imagine a few hacks / mashups surly.

  • How about a tablet controlled robot or speed boat?
  • A tablet replacing the entire instrument panel of a car
  • Tablets used in performing arts
  • Tablets used in science and education
  • Tablets used by NGOs in rural upliftment

The possibilities are limitless. But the artificial limitations imposed by Apple, will leave the door open for a highly hack-able, maybe android based, tablet provider. Whether that’s a known brand like Asus, who spearheaded the netbook revolution; or an unknown startup like NotionInk remains to be seen.

Sure, Apple will sell millions of these devices and make tons of money, but saying that there is no room for another player is a false assumption.

Kid Project: Making paper

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I was trying to explain paper-recycling to my daughter, then thought it is best we do it together. Thus came about a weekend project to make paper from waste papers. Although the end result was not that great, I think she understood the concepts.

She was super excited and did most of the steps herself, including taking the pictures.

Here is a pictorial guide to making your own ‘hand-made’ paper.

Biz plan: Build a better Craigslist

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I am surprised that I haven’t come across a voice based classifieds system. Well creating one from scratch and reaching critical mass is difficult, but leveraging social media and Craig’s list should not be difficult at all. So, here’s the idea.

  1. User calls a premium number and speaks the advert.
  2. The server processes the voice and tries to understand the message.
  3. If the message is correctly understood, it will post an appropriate ad on Craig’s list, with the user’s phone number and an auto generated email id.
  4. If the message is not fully understood, it is passed to a call centre for transcription.
  5. The message is then transcribed and posted to Craig’s list.
  6. Any email received on the auto generated email id is sent as text message to the caller.

The above set up allows the user to place a classified ad in under 2 minutes with no unnecessary steps required. The calls are placed to a premium number thus generating revenue.

I am surprised no one has thought about it or maybe I didn’t dig into it enough.

Teaching kids (& adults) about climate

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photo_verybig_110295[1]With Copenhagen behind us, it makes me wonder is there something we as individuals do to help the climate? On one such thought tangent I wondered if it possible to teach kids about climate using a simulation game like Civilisation? On cursory search I could not find anything that could entertain and educate kids.

What would it be?

An empire building game that needs to balance technology, way of life and climate to achieve sustainable conditions. The players will need to move from stone age to iron age to industrial age to knowledge age. All this is well covered by games in the Civilisation series. The difference is, to advance in the technology tree, they will need to consume resources and they need to understand that resources are limited and that consuming them is not without consequences.

Learning

A game that will show the interdependence of several factors like:

  • Exploitation of natural resources (wood, coal, oil, gold, diamonds, animals, fishes etc)  for technical progress and their costs in terms of environmental impact
  • The long term implication of the such impact
  • Investing in technology to achieve sustainable development
  • Also the flip side of not consuming natural resources and it impact on growth and empire building
  • The need to consume resources to ‘unlock’ next levels of technical innovation
  • Trading of resources amongst empires which have surplus of something
  • I would probably underplay the option of war and more of foreign trade as a means to acquire scarce resources.

What next?

I am not a game developer so wouldn’t know how to get about doing it. But may be some like minded people will come together and look at it. Maybe Freeciv can provide a starting point. Maybe it even becomes successful and makes some money for the creators.

3 Idiots – The nitpicking

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3 idiots I watched 3 Idiots yesterday, and could not resist reviewing it. This review is not about how great the movie is. There are several of those on the net.

Let me be quick in saying that my family and I loved the film and think it is one of the best movie. It is a good take on the state of education in the country, a subject I feel strongly about. This is also not about Chetan Bhagat, although the nit-picking could apply to Five Point Someone as well. But I haven’t read it, so can’t say.

I expected more from Aamir, the perfectionist.

I was born in 1978, the same year that Farhan Qureshi (Madhavan) was born. So I felt more connected to the movie than the current generation. This also means that the college period depicted in the movie was the same period I was in college, which is roughly 1995-1999.

So what?

Well you see, a few of the things shown in the movie are, let’s say, futuristic.

Mobile Phones

Mobile phones were launched in India after 1994. The call charges in a ‘scheme’ were 16 Rs. incoming/outgoing. They were not mainstream until 2000 when charges began to drop. Even then, in 2000, I was the only one in my MBA college to have a mobile phone, and that too was given to me by my employer.

So showing engineering college students carrying a phone, pre 1999, was a bit of a stretch.

Mobile Internet

Even if you think ‘chote’ (Rancho) was rich enough to carry a mobile, the movie shows mobile internet being used in the hospital for video conferencing.

  • Internet in 1999 was the good old modem based dialup internet at blazing speeds of 56 kbps. Broadband Internet was unheard of until 2005.
  • Mobile Data Cards / USB Modems were launched in 2008/2009.
  • Even then, I don’t think the speed that Airtel EDGE gives is insufficient for video conferencing. I don’t know for sure, since I am not using one.

Scooter

The scooter that Pia (Kareena) drives looks most certainly like Kinetic Flyte, which was only launched in 2009.

Bottomline

With a little research, which Aamir Khan is known for, the film could have been more realistic. Anyways, if you haven’t seen the movie, please do, it is really good.

P.S. Happy New Year.