THE Y-AXIS by Rajesh Kumar

Sabeer Bhatia, often identified as the guy who sold Hotmail to Microsoft to make his millions, is a serial entrepreneur. Quite a few of his post-Hotmail ventures have not quite been half as successful. Arzoo became a travel agency from what it initially was, and there is nothing to say that it has really been greatly successful either. Live Documents has been a mild ripple in an unproven market of online office productivity suites, which already has Zoho and Google Docs, both getting good reviews, but seeing poor corporate adoption, which is where the money is. Now Sabeer has launched SabSeBolo , which is a teleconferencing service, where you get a sort of ten party 24X7 permanent bridge(Like MML).And yes, unlike other service providers in India such as Webex and DSNL , it is a simple sign on. Will he succeed? Is it idea , timing , execution or business model , that would make SabSeBolo be a winner? Idea : Idea is not new, but India is an exploding telecom market and conference calls f

We returned fairly convinced from Kumarakom that those who have not experienced the backwaters of Kerala remain inferior beings. I hold similar views of Kashmir valley too but then circumstances are different there. Actually, along with the picture post card views of Vembanad lake, there was a freshness and calm in the breeze, that perhaps the visuals cannot capture. Thank God we planned this Kerala trip. Kumarakom town is few kms from Kottayam city, and the ambience completely changes once you reach there. The house boats, which are nothing but floating hotels, replete with a kitchen, sit-out and a bed room are an experience by themselves. The Kumarakom town is criss-crossed by canals and it is such a pleasure to be travel in one of them on a boat. It is also an expensive place. A night in a house boat will set you back by 7-10 k rupees. Worth every penny I would say. We certainly came back with what appeared to be a true out of the world experience. It was also noticeable that thank

Ever since I read Wikinomics and Naked Conversations , weird ideas come visiting my head sometimes. When I was waiting for a train at Ernakulam Railway Station, I was watching a fellow passenger looking at his ticket. Came an idea, how cool it would be, if all train tickets stationary have a dynamic ad printing logic like Adsense, which would analyse the to and fro location and the demographic information already available on the ticket. For instance, a train ticket for Ooty purchased by two students in Chennai would print ads of suggested locations of tourist interest in Ooty. A train ticket of a couple heading for Varanasi, would print ads of Saree Shops in Varanasi, and for a very old couple carry ads of easy to locate Hotels near Sankatmochan temple. This, rather than the standard ads that come on the ticket stationary. And depending on the class of ticket purchased, an a hint of the passengers buying power can be gleaned too - all operable marketing information. Imagine how coo

While I have written about Dr Kalam on this blog earlier, today I had the chance to see (and hear!) him from a close distance, when he visited Satyam. No matter how much you try, Dr Kalam's simplicity and open personality is bound to touch you. While the interaction was short, I had few observations: For all his apparently soft spoken personality, Dr Kalam gives the impression of being a demanding task master. (He challenged the very existence of the word 'impossible' in professional language) Homework: He appears quite meticulous with the targeting of his speech and comes prepared with a very well researched speech, full of facts, figures and anecdotes. His website is updated several times a day, and few minutes after he finished his engagement at Satyam, the text of his speech was up on the site . Extremely sharp and witty: A journalist asked him whether he would buy Tata's new car- Nano. Completely mindful that a yes or a no response would have the potential of g

A recent vacation trip took us to Periyar Dam in Kerala. We had fortunately arranged to stay inside the Park in KTDC run Periyar House (mind you, you are not allowed to step outside the Hotel after 6 PM) and experienced the wild like never before. The boat ride on Periyar Lake was quite an experience and gave us some amazing views like the one above taken from the upper deck of the boat . While the elephants refused to show up, it was still quite an experience. PS:I will attempt to post some more pictures in days to come.