DesiPundit

India can lead the way because it now knows how to develop global solutions that work on a very large scale, especially those that are technology intensive (witness India’s response to Y2K). Interestingly, India still is a chaotic, third world country, so it understands the need to adapt First World solutions to the chaotic environment of the Third World.

Mark Fidelman at Seeking Alpha lays out the framework for boosting India’s innovation system [warning: long post]. He appeals to the Indian government to lay the groundwork for improving infrastructural capability for ensuring long term economic growth. This is vital especially as other developing nations catch up to India just as we did few years ago [hat tip: Faisal].

Ravikiran goes into details on the spreadsheet he uses to manage his investments.

The first step is to update the sheet titled Transactions. If you are like most people, you probably have some investments already. To get them all into the system is a one time activity (if you are lucky and exceptionally well-organized). Once you have most of them in, this becomes a monthly exercise.

Spreadsheet included!

Vijay has a great idea for an Indian startup - a website offering stock photography in the Indian context.  He believes there lies a very successful business opportunity in this market.  Whoever takes him up on this idea, don’t forget to send me the finder’s fee!

That said, we do have a small problem. I have friends who work with online portals and in running content who basically have this complaint: “We scrap content at times, simply because we don’t have a good supporting image to go with it”. Images are plenty and dime a dozen across the web. What they are talking about is an image that fits the context - the context here being, the audience, and the characters of the story being Indian.

Vinayak has collected and scanned twelve vintage Indian print ads from an old edition of The Reader’s Digest. He lists them all here. Just by thinking to myself that I’ve seen some of them before makes me feel really old.

Priya (Girl With Big Eyes) cites the example of IT folks imposing restrictions at work place to subtly portray how different it is to work abroad. Through this lucidly written piece, she continues her series on “Only in India”. And there is a small message for our HR folks too

Scene 1: Just another IT company in India

IT support team member: “Our network is really busy today. So many of our staff are accessing sites like Orkut and Flickr and BharatMatrimony.”

Vivek describes his experience with 3 major companies in India which are sending him confidential information of other customers through email.

As stated in the beginning, this post is primarily for me to remember never to use the services of these companies. I am not an existing customer of these companies, so except for the spam (which I’ve now dealt with) I am not really bothered. However, if any of you are utilizing their services, I think you should double-check the integrity of your private data held by these companies (especially if your name is Vivek, or your initials happen to be VK). Since there is no lack of banks or mobile service providers these days, you might also explore the possibility of taking your business elsewhere.

The first Africa-India forum was held in New Delhi. The trend among analysts is to see this as a reaction from India to balance the Chinese influence in the continent, but Pragmatic says the Indian initiatives on Africa go beyond the traditional factors.

The recent improvement in India’s economic relations with Africa, however, cannot be attributed solely to the new focused approach of the Indian government. Another factor is the ‘outward-looking’ attitude of India’s private sector. Tempted by the easy availability of capital and driven by the search for new markets, Indian companies have been eagerly targeting those regions in Africa, in which they had shown little interest until recently. The economic boom in India and the success of both home-grown and NRI/PIO (Non-Resident Indian/Person of Indian Origin) companies in Europe and parts of South America have given Indian businesses the confidence to venture into Africa.

Lakshmipathy Bhat tells us how the launch of TOI has heated up media wars in Chennai.
He traces the changing Chennai ,the shifting of Citibank headquarters to the sprouting of multi-cuisine restaurants, the Naarth Indians coming in to the emergence as a manufacturing hub.

Media and blog circles are abuzz with the launch of Times of India’s Chennai edition. The Hindu now has serious competition. While Deccan Chronicle and the New Indian Express do have Chennai editions, I don’t think they are as formidable as TOI when it comes to a fight. Deccan Chronicle played the price game and claims No.2 position and the Indian Express was light years behind in terms layout and presentation.

thou? If you’re going to leave me angry, at least don’t send me mail that looks like an SMS.And how exactly was this unintentional?

Telemarketing and catalog spamming is finally entrenched in India. Nandita Saikia is angry at ITBC’s unsolicited commercial offers and fisks their response letter [hat tip: Pallavi].

There are 7 such stores within the 2 km radius of my house. But since I am planning to move to a different area, I decided to look up their websites and use the store locater to find a store in the new area. But what I soon discovered was that some of these supermarkets don’t even have any official site and the only way to find a store in an area is though local classifieds (Sulekha) , local search engines (Just Dial) , Google maps and Wikimapia.

Raj at Rhythmic Dissonance is disappointed to note that none of India’s supermarket chains have a reliable website. Probably one would blame it on Internet penetration but we have seen that even the allegedly business-savvy IPL sorely lacks an Internet strategy.