Parisista

I was looking for a city map of Goa. Nobody had one, not even the government’s official site. Then I chanced upon MapMyIndia.com.
The results for Goa were impressive. Considering that the whole postal addressing scheme in 99% of urban and rural India is very non-uniform, it would be a challenge to map addresses like “Opp. Roxy Cinema”, “Upper Ground Floor”, and “Next to Shopper’s Stop” 🙂
However, they have a long way to go — I tried mapping the route from Mumbai Central Station to the McDonald’s in Colaba, which failed. I think the success factor is simple — navigable level 1 maps of the 27 major cities in India.

The Late Night show with Conan O’Brien aired a hilarious comedy piece on outsourcing. The comedy was aired on 23rd Sept. 2004. Andy Blitz — one of the writers at NBC, after facing a computer problem decides to fly to India and visits their IT support centre in Hyderabad. Along the way he plays cricket, meet goats, gets honked, rides bullock-carts and gets a fling on the support lady Sharon.

Here are my two favorite shots from the clip:

I had to empty my bladder mid-way in order to continue watching the ~8 minute clip.

Anybody having sufficient band-width? (read, non-cheapo hosting) Ask me for the media file, if you want to host it.

Presenting the story in pictures…

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I just finished reading yesterday’s copy of the Financial Times. They have an interesting feature article on legal & IP research moving to India.
First came the call centers, then the IT. Next stop legal research and Patent filings. The trend towards offshore outsourcing is now beginning to make its presence felt in the legal industry. The work being moved abroad includes not just basic administrative tasks but also more sophisticated and complex jobs traditionally carried out by trained lawyers in the country where the work originated. According to a study by Forrester, the research firm, almost 40,350 legal jobs in the US will be outsourced by 2015, amounting to nearly 8 per cent of the total employed in the field.
Interesting quote, “If you were doing patent research in the US, you would have a team of PhDs making $100,000 a year. In India we save the client two-thirds.”
Hildebrandt International, a US-based legal consultancy that recently formed a partnership with OfficeTiger, estimates spending for support services by the top 200 US law firms is about $20bn. “Assuming, very conservatively, an outsourcing potential of 10 per cent of services,” says Mr Altschuler, “the market opportunity is about $2bn.”
Well, they are a little short on Patent filings, but they are getting there. Read the whole story here.

Arun Natarajan reports about an article appearing in Business Standard that beginning January 2005, Zee Telefilms (a premiere Network channel in India, also a chief competitor of Sony Asia) will air an 36-episode show in which entrepreneurs will get an opportunity to pitch their B-plans on TV.
While the US has moved to the likes of Survivors, Fear Factors and Apprentice, it is very apparent that grass-root entrepreneurial spirit has caught up in India. This is a fundamental and a very positive change. The number of companies getting funded in India has increased and every month one or the other groups of VCs are scouting in India.
I remember that while trying to raise money in early 1999, I was bluntly asked what is my collateral for raising 500,000 Rupees ($11,000 approx.). The majority of VC firms (most of which were run by banks and other government institutions) were only funding core infrastructure and not software startups. I did get couple of appointments from two VCs, the parents of which were actually funding software companies here in the Valley. Both the sessions were actually spent in orienting them of the developments on the WWW. No wonder my ‘crappy’ software idea never got any attention.
Guess, which side the wind is blowing for people like me? But then, there is Murphy’s Law–Ha, I’ll always miss the train!