More details about TED India unravelled

Its official now. A TED conference is to take place in November this year between the 4^th and 7^th in the Mysore campus of Infosys. I had earlier blogged about rumours regarding the location and its presentees. This is the first time that TED is taking place in South Asia. The theme for this year's TED is "The future beckons".

To quote from their press release, the speakers at TED India will include:

+ one of Bollywood’s most exciting directors
+ the entrepreneur whose emergency response team became heroes during the Mumbai terrorist attacks
+ an educator in the slums whose students outperform private-school kids
+ a best-selling novelist redefining the borders between East and West
+ a photographer documenting India as it's never been seen before
+ a fashion designer taking Indian aesthetics onto international runways

And, the topic discussed will revolve around:

+ Who are the young thinkers and doers capable of shaping the future?
+ What local innovations are destined for global impact?
+ Can there be economic advancement without environmental destruction?
+ Can a pluralistic democracy survive in the face of rising fundamentalism?
+ What should we learn -- or fear? -- from China’s investment in Africa?
+ Do we have enough water for everyone?
+ How do we keep our youth challenged and our aged healthy?
+ How can anti-poverty solutions be brought to scale?
+ Which ancient traditions can illuminate modern life?

Attending TED India is going to set you back by 2400 USD. 2000 USD for the conference itself and another 400 USD for the 4 nights of lodging.

If you want to see the entire press release, I have uploaded it to http://prashmohan.googlepages.com/ted-press-release.txt. More details of TED India to follow as and when it comes out :-).

P.S. Pattie Mae's presentation on technology developed at the MIT which is very similar to the Sixth Sense movie has been making the rounds over the internet world. Make sure to catch the video at http://www.ted.com/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html.

Edit: Tom Rielly comments on the post to additionally add about TED Fellows:

Hi, thanks for writing about TEDIndia. We're so excited about the conference. The $2400 price tag is correct. I wanted to let you know that we open applications for TEDIndia Fellows April 20th. We seek to bring 100 outstanding individuals to TEDIndia as Fellows (we pay expenses), in addition to our attendees Complete details will be at www.ted.com/fellows on the date. Questions fellows [at] ted dot com.

Tags: TED India, TED

Interview with BankBazaar.com - a personalized loan finder

DesiTech: Can you tell us how BankBazaar came into being?
Arjun Shetty: I was looking for a home loan in Chennai in early 2007 and found it really hard to get a good deal. I had to go to bank offices during working hours, stand in line and fill in forms to get a quote. Once I got the quotes, I still found it hard to compare them as banks quoted interest rates in different ways and they never spelled out the various fees associated with the home loan. Additionally I learnt that banks didn’t usually start-off offering me the best rate that I was eligible for. They’d usually try and charge me a higher rate, and I had to bargain hard to get them to lower their rates. At the end of a week, despite wasting a lot of time researching loans, being a good bargainer and being reasonably knowledgable about finance, I still wasn’t convinced that I was getting the best deal on my home loan. Many people I spoke to had had similar experiences. My wife, Rati and I brainstormed on whether we could make this process significantly more convenient, and we became convinced that we could. We looped in my brother Adhil, who was then working for Deloitte Consulting in New York, and we founded www.bankbazaar.com.

DT: How does BankBazaar solve this issue and how you intend to make money?
Adhil Shetty: Bank Bazaar makes it possible to get a great deal on any loan product including home loans and personal loans within 15 minutes, whereas doing so in the physical world requires about a week of work. On bankbazaar.com a customer can get customized rate quotes from all of India’s top banks instantly, compare the various offers using our easy-to-use tools and apply online. The end-to-end process literally takes less than fifteen minutes, and does not require any phone calls. Plus, because many banks are competing in a neutral marketplace, customers get very competitive pricing. The Banks pay us a fee for working with BankBazaar.com - however the economics of this channel works out better for a bank than distributing products via the traditional brick and mortar branch network- this benefit is shared with the consumer.

DT: Online financial products still appears to be in it's infancy in India. How big do you expect the market to become?
Adhil: Banking experts estimate that 20%-30% of India's retail home loan and personal loan distribution can be channeled online - BankBazaar.com's revenue numbers over the last six month's indicate that this estimate is correct. In times such as these consumers are becoming more price sensitive and discerning in their loan selection. In spite of the global credit meltdown I feel pretty confident that we entered this market at just the right time- we are quickly cementing ourselves as the de-facto loan marketplace in India.

DT: Online financial products seem to be a happening space currently. You have thick competition in the avatars of PolicyBazaar (recently acquired by Naukri), ApnaLoan and so on. How do you compare yourself to the competition?
Adhil: These are two different players - the former offers insurance comparison which is also offered by a bunch of other players in the market. Insurance is a good market to be in and BankBazaar.com will offer insurance products later this year.

Apnaloan is a loan referral player. Here’s how loan referral players work: they merely generate leads for banks i.e. they sell users’ contact information to banks. These banks then call the customer and try to market their product. So customers still need to provide their detailed information to each of these banks individually to receive customized quotes, they still need to bargain with each of these banks and they still have trouble comparing the complex offers they are being given. The bankbazaar.com model adds significantly higher value to the consumer as it offers an end-to-end solution i.e. the consumer gets to do everything online, right from getting customized rate quotes, comparing the offers and applying online directly to the bank. Another thing that distinguishes BankBazaar is that we are completely neutral i.e. no bank owns any part of us and we have absolutely no financial incentive to favor one bank over another.

DT: A large part of your work must deal with interacting with the Banks, and Banks are famous for being closed and secretive about their dealings? How did they react to being approached by a startup to do business with them?
Adhil: BankBazaar.com has a very senior Advisory Board that helps us with our banking interactions - our Board includes Mr N Rangachary, retired Chairman IRDA, Mr V.P. Shetty, retired Chairman IDBI, Mr Suresh Talwar, Partner, Talwar Thakore Associates and Dr Arvind Panagariya, retired Chief Economist ADB and professor Columbia University

DT: With folks hoarding up more and more money in these tough times, how are the people reacting to loans? Also, are the Banks holding their money closer to themselves?
Adhil: Yes Banks are extremely cautious with credit risk and Yes, folks are extremely cautious when taking loans. In such difficult times only truly differentiated products will survive the crunch- all copy-cats and non-innovators will die. BankBazaar.com was born in the midst of the world's toughest credit crisis since the 1920s and I have seen revenues double over the last few months - I think this is a true test of our differentiation - the same way Google was tested by the dot-com bust.

DT: While your current focus appears to be on bank loans, your business model readily extends itself to other financial products. Which other products is BankBazaar planning to provide in the recent future?
Adhil: Insurance will be our next move

DT: Personalization for individual customers is the basis of your business model. How do you compare your computerized customization to the current model of a teller helping you choose a product?
Adhil: Personalization is a pre-requisite for our business model - prior to BankBazaar.com this team ran the world's largest online credit channel for Amazon.com-Chase Bank in America, and strongly believes in the importance of providing a superior online customer experience. When a customer looks for a home loan re-finance product on www.BankBazaar.com we give them a personalized comparison of the switching costs involved with pre-paying their current loan and kick-starting a new loan with new processing fees, etc. However we provide users with multiple options and give a transparent comparison of the various costs, time to close, and customer service ratings - we NEVER recommend a particular product - that's for the user to choose. I believe in total personalization - however like Amazon.com and Google - my team believes that online innovation can drive personalization rather than one-on-one human interaction which is not scalable and has its own challenges.

DT: Can you share any tid-bits about your valuation :-)? Also what are your comments on the Venture Capital scene is in India?
Adhil: BankBazaar.com completed Series A in Q3 FY 2009 at a USD 10 Million valuation involving both Indian and Foreign Monies. We deal with a handful of VCs in both India and Mercia, and have a strong network of Angel and Strategic Investors who have also expressed an interest in Series B. The number of VCs in India is smaller than in the US - but provided one is able to bridge both worlds and also tap into Angel's there is a lot of opportunity for a differentiated idea.

DT: Finally, how do you see the economic slump affecting the startup scene in India?
Adhil: Only truly differentiated products will survive this slump - everyday suppliers will ask "why should I work with you and not cut your margins to nothing?" and buyers will ask "why should I buy from you and not a cheaper competitor?"- the answer to both is differentiation- can the start-up offer something that is so differentiated that suppliers and buyers will keep coming in return for the value they are getting in spite of this slump. BankBazaar.com has cracked that problem- we are the ONLY online marketplace in the world offering instant rate quotes on loans from multiple banks and we are out to make a difference in this world.

[Ed Note] Adhil is also on the look out for talented engineers and sales & marketting executives. Head on to http://www.bankbazaar.com/careers.html for more details.

DesiTech on Twitter

DesiTech is now on Twitter. If you want a channel to voice your opinions on how the blog is shaping up and how you would like to see it shape, connect to us on twitter.

http://twitter.com/desitech

Tags: twitter

TED India!!!

So it is confirmed now. TED is finally coming to India! If you don't know what TED, DAMN! Head over to http://ted.com first thing and check out their site. TED (short for Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a series of top quality conferences which goes by the tag line "Ideas worth spreading". And worthy they are! Speakers at the February edition of TED (at California) include Bill Gates, Nandan Nilekani, Tim Berners-Lee and Seth Godin. Previous speakers also include Bono, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, the Google founders, Richard Branson, Richard Dawkings, Jeff Bezos, Bill Joy, Clifford Stoll, and so many more interesting personalities. Each presentation at the conference lasts only 18 minutes, making it crisp and beautiful.

As TED descends to the Mysore campus of Infosys this November, if you are thinking of squeezing into the conference, be quick about it. TED has one of the most over subscribed conference registrations. Also, they are supposedly reducing their registration fees to 2000 USD (~1 lakh INR) from their usually hefty 6000 USD (~3 lakhs INR). However, don't be dejected. All of these high quality talks are posted online on http://ted.com. There is also an iTunes podcast for those interested.

Who is going to speak is anybody's guess. But given that it is held at the Infosys campus and Nandan Nilekani has already spoken at the February edition of TED, all eyes are on Narayana Murthy. And we can probably also expect a larger than usual focus on the developing worlds and how they are evolving.

Technorati Tags: TED, TED India, Infosys

Interview: CinnamonTeal founder Leonard Fernandes

DesiTech is starting with an Interview series: We’ll talk to founders about their companies and motivations and publish it in an interview format. I met Leonard at Headstart 2009 in Bangalore recently, where he was showcasing Cinnamonteal – a Publish-on-Demand (POD) service. We had a chat over the phone:

Q: Could you give a brief account of your history prior to starting Dogears etc. and CinnamonTeal?

I did my engineering from Goa and joined Tata Infotech back in 1999-2000. I worked there for a while and then moved to Ohio State University to do an MBA. I worked for a while in the financial sector and in 2004, I came back to India with my wife Queenie to start Dogears etc. Concurrently with our company, I teach at the Sri Sri Institute of Management Studies.

Q: From what I understand through your website, Dogears etc. is an online book store and CinnamonTeal is a Publish-on-Demand service. Is that correct? Can you also tell us about some aspects which make these businesses unique in their respective domains.

We started Dogears etc. when we moved to India. The idea behind Dogears was to have a web portal to facilitate trade of books, especially used ones. At that time, there were some online book retailers/stores but all of them were B2C; we saw an opportunity to do a C2C model in India. But this didn’t get the penetration required; basically people were reluctant to trade books online. So we came up with CinnamonTeal, which is as you said a Publish-on-Demand service with a lot of useful pre and post publishing services available to the author.

Q: Lets now talk about CinnamonTeal in a little more detail. What market are you trying to cater to with it? I feel POD is strongly biased towards regional/local books published in small or medium volumes.

We are targeting 2 broad sectors: Corporates/Companies wanting to publish brochures and manuals, and amateurs. We also have the capability to print in many regional languages and are aggressively looking to help authors publish in these languages. Some regional languages are dying due to lack of readership. Some have only 1 active author writing in the language. POD makes for a great model to help such people publish and sustain the language and it’s literature.

Q: What services can a potential author avail?

What CinnamonTeal offers is the option to publish a book without knowing any details of publishing. An author can just come to us with an idea of a book and we will help him take his idea to a marketable book and even market it. The services an author can avail are broadly in 2 categories: Pre-publishing and post-publishing. Pre-publishing covers stuff like editing, cover design, manuscript design, formatting etc. Post publishing covers getting the copyright, marketing the book through our partners, putting up a webpage and blog for the book, print-on-demand etc. We also get the book an ISBN number, and the book will be listed as published by CinnamonTeal. Though the author has the alternate option to acquire the ISBN number himself if he wants to be listed as the publisher.

Q: Marketing is a big part in ensuring success of a book. How do you compare against other POD services like Amazon's BookSurge, which obviously has a huge marketing advantage.

We have tie-ups with big Indian online retailers like Flipcart and Indiaplaza to sell our books on their properties. We are also looking at getting into the offline retail marketing space and are exploring partnerships in that domain.

Q: Also, there is some domestic competition in Pothi and also Lulu, which has a very strong team. How do you differ from these offerings?

We offer a comprehensive set of services, both pre and post publishing. We also have a vendor network all over the country so we have a very short turnaround time for publishing books. Our backend is entirely vendor driven. We have freelancers, mostly professionals who help the client with his editing, design requirements. This allows us to offer a bigger portfolio of services to our clients.

Q: What controls does the author have after publishing? Does he/she retain rights? Can he/she market the book independently to online as well as retail book stores?

Unlike the traditional publishing industry, the author retains full rights of his work and can also market the book independently from our network.

Q: What is the size of your company?

It’s just me and my wife. Our entire backend is vendor driven which allows us to scale and operate efficiently at a national level.

Q: CinnamonTeal is a very interesting name. How did you come up with it?

There’s no big story behind it. We wanted a name that has a nice ring to it and felt this name suits our requirements.

Q: Have you considered moving out of Goa to some other city? Why or why not?

It doesn’t make much difference where we are situated because of our national network. We can easily travel to other hubs in the country depending on periodic requirements.

Since this was a phone chat, I reproduced the conversation using my notes and thus I will not quote Leonard on any of the answers. Those are my recollections of his responses.

Technorati Tags: Publish on demand,booksurge

Weekly Readings

I read 2 interesting articles I’d like to share:

1. After Credentials by Paul Graham on his site: Paul discusses how we as a society are slowly but surely moving away from credentials such as university degrees and repute of university attended etc. to a more performance and merit based evaluation criteria. He collates this trend to the rise in people aspiring to own or work for startups as compared to jobs in big bureaucratic  companies. It makes an interesting discussion in the Indian context too, with the over-emphasis we lay on an engineering/management degree, and IIT vs other colleges, working for a known big brand company etc.

2. Sorry Google, You Missed the Real-Time Web! by Bernard Lunn on readwriteweb: He talks about his take on “Real-Time” web, especially Twitter (more specifically, it’s real-time search), and why this could prove to be Google’s Achilles Heel. We also wrote about Vertical Search being Google’s Achilles Heel sometime ago.

Bhavish

Technorati Tags: Twitter,Search

Engineers for Social Impact 2009 Fellowship Program

Engineers for Social Impact, a program started by NITK alumni and present students, has launched it’s 2nd Fellowship program. The aim of the organization in it’s own words “is to connect the best engineering talent to the most credible for-profit social enterprises that drive market-based solutions to development in India”.

The fellowship will be given to 10 undergraduate students selected from the top 15 engineering schools across India (IITs, NITs, BITS etc). The selected fellows will then be able to work with for-profit social enterprises in areas as diverse as microfinance, low cost power solutions, rural healthcare etc. The network of partner organizations is diverse with some very innovative and impressive companies like SELCO, Ujjivan, DhanaX and Vaatsalya.

Social Entrepreneurship is a very misunderstood area. A lot of people have a strong urge to work for the socially backward but very few consider the path of for-profit enterprises to work towards this aim. Many narrow their view of organizations working in this domain to NGOs or philanthropic efforts. One of the first to actually prove the model of for-profit Social Entrepreneurship was Muhammad Yunus, who built the first profitable microfinance institution, won a Nobel Prize and whose model has been recreated the world over in domains very diverse from banking. As an aside, I would strongly recommend his autobiography to people who what to learn more about for-profit social enterprise. It is a bit drawn out with a lot of Bangladeshi history and context thrown in, but is enlightening.

This would be an excellent opportunity for undergrads to connect with some of the huge challenges and opportunities in India and work with people passionate about social enterprise. Though I am not sure that selecting only engineers, and that too from only 15 colleges is the right strategy. Some colleges, like DA-ICT have a compulsory rural “intern” program and could have had strong potential aspirants.

Bhavish

Technorati Tags: Social Entrepreneurship,Microfinance