In My Opinion: MR Pamidi, C-Cube Consulting

BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY

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Startup of the Month : Interviewstreet
PUBLISHED SINCE 1997 IN THE U.S. & INDIA OCTOBER - 2011 SILICONINDIA.COM

Emerging Player in
Parul Mehta

the BPO Sector

Kaushal Mehta

Contents October 2011

COVER STORY

14

Motif Emerging Player in

the BPO Sector
By Vimali Swamy Parul Mehta

Kaushal Mehta

06 [In my Opinion] 08 [Infocus]

The Rising Tiger and The White Knight

By M. R. Pamidi, C-Cube Consulting

26 [Technology] 28 [Technology] 32 [Technology]

Technology is Leading Contact Centers to Profitability

By Saurabh Khetrapal, Sales Portal

38 [Technology] 40 [Technology] 42 [VP Profile]

Creating an Ecosystem for Semiconductor Design Services How to build Apps Business

By Ash Patel, Sankalp Semiconductor

10 [VC Chakra]

12 [CEO Spotlight]

InMobi raises $200 Million Adchemy raises $61 Million in Series E Funding

The Latest in Wi-Fi Trends

By Mohan Vellanki, Redpine Signals

Magazines in your Hand will go Digital

By Girish Ramdas, Magzter

Increase In Demand For Trained Patent Professionals In The IT Industry

By Atulya Nath, Global Institute of Intellectual Property

By Ruchit Patel, Amitech Business Solutions

Entrepreneurs need financial advisors from early stage

20 [Startup of the month] 22 [Technology]

Interviewstreet

34 [Technology] 36 [Business]

V.VoIP A reality With the Launch of , Mobile Broadband 4G LTE Networks

By Krishna Yarlagadda, HelloSoft

How the Cloud Resonates with Business Today

By Vineet Jain, Egnyte

The Next Big Thing in Mobile: The Personal Cloud

By Amit Chawla,Funambol

46 [Viewpoint]

44 [SI 20 Profile]

Kamesh Nagarajan, Morgan Stanley Smith Barneys Global Wealth Management Division

Kindle Fire: What India needs to learn?

By Pradeeep Shankar

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October 2011

siliconindia
OCTOBER - 2011
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October 2011, volume 14-10 (ISSN 1091-9503) Published monthly by siliconindia, Inc.

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The act of tithing, is one of the greatest acts of obedience a Christian can practice. The purpose of tithing was to teach the Christians to show God our desire to put him first in their lives. It also advises Christians to share a part of their income with the Church for the well being of the community. It is some thing similar that President Barack Obama is trying to attempt by implementing Buffet Rule where the richest Americans pay higher taxes to help cut soaring U.S. deficits by more than $3 trillion. By credible estimates, this would raise roughly $20 billion a year. While the move holds well, this move can back fire the U.S. economy. Obamas assertion has been based on element of "fairness," which is an emotional rather than an analytical basis. Tax hike on the rich would be self-defeating because it would undermine job creation and discourage people from working harder to make more money. If the tax is levied upon the richest Americans, it is going to confine the huge investment made by them, as huge earning means huge tax payment. This tax will even discourage the country's most productive entrepreneurs from creating jobs for millions. A study on The Importance of Startups in Job Creation and Job Destruction reveals that, both on average and for all but seven years between 1977 and 2005, existing firms are net job destroyers, losing one million jobs net combined per year. By contrast, in their first year, new firms add an average of three million jobs. A few percentage rise in the tax rate might not only affect the availability of VC funding, but will discourage the initial goal of the entrepreneurs of earning millions of dollars. As we all know Silicon Valley is the hotspot for most Indians to start their dream startup and pull off. Given the U.S.' massive budget deficit, raising more money from people who have been very successful, the decision on Buffet Rulecan be given a second thought. They can find alternatives to limit deductions for wealthier filers and close loopholes in existing policies. If someone is serving the community, its ok not to be a good shepherd who do not tith. At this point of time for the U.S economy its not the element of fairness that matters, but the cause that you stand for matters.

Fairness or Cause Matters?

Editorial

by BPA International. siliconindia is available through mainstream retail outlets such as Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Tower Records. It is also available at ethnic Asian Indian stores in major Indian hot spots across the U.S.The magazine is also distributed at major trade shows and conferences, including Comdex, Internet World and PC Expo.

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Please do share your thoughts with us. Christo Jacob Managing Editor editor@siliconindia.com

By M. R. Pamidi, Ph. D.

The author is Founder and CEO, C-Cube Consulting

in my opinion

The Rising Tiger and The White Knight

The Past The United States and India are the worlds richest and largest democracies, respectively. Democracy has survived and thrived in the U. S. for almost 240 years without a single hiatus, despite the various wars we have fought Civil, MexicanAmerican, World Wars I and II, Korean, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. And, the U. S. has never had a military coup d'tat since gaining freedom from the British Rule. Modern India is a much younger democracy, a little over 60 years old. Remarkably, India has not had a single coup since its independence, even though its neighbors Bangladesh and Pakistan have suffered a constant onslaught of dictators and tyrants. After gaining independence from the British in 1947, the new leaders in India were wondering what form of government they should set up. Under the British Rule, India was a Constitutional Monarchy. It could follow an American-style Constitutional Republic. What did India choose? Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a freedom fighter and often called the Father of Indian Constitution, rose to preeminence after attending the University of Bombay, Columbia University, University of London, and the London School of Economsiliconindia

China and Indias GDP Forecast ics. Having faced untold discriminations in India, because he was a dalit, an untouchable, and having lived in both the U. S. and England, he drew the best of both countries, thoroughly studied the Constitutions of both these countries after all, he was a lawyer and, with other leaders, recommended that India should adopt a Parliamentary Republic system. He was instrumental in drafting the Indian Constitution, which is relatively more malleable and hence by no means perfect, because there have been 94 Amendments to it since 1950 vis-vis 27 for the U. S. Constitution since it was adopted in 1787. Present These two great nations have had love-hate relationships over the last 60 years. Under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, India was inspired by Socialist ideals, led the non-aligned nations, yet became a close ally of the U. S. S. R. His daughter, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, banned all Constitutional Rights during a brief Emergency Rule in the late 1970s. The U. S., on the other hand, with its Communist phobia, supported oppressive governments and military dictatorships in Pakistan to establish a strategic presence close to the Soviet Union. Politics aside, on the economy front,

India eased its regulations and opened up its economy in the early 1990s thanks to a visionary, Oxford-educated and the then-Minister of Finance Dr. Manmohan Singh, albeit a bit too late vis--vis China for foreign investments, loosened banking regulations, and started privatizing many of its inefficient, money-losing, bureaucracybloated, state-owned enterprises. Had India embraced Capitalism and a freer economy in the 1950s, as Japan did in in the 1950s and China did in the late 1970s, it certainly would be an economic giant by now possibly ahead of both these countries. China trailed India in GDP in 1980, overtook it in 2000, and will continue this trend through 2030, and perhaps going even beyond, as the following graphic shows. As we have discussed in the chapter The White Knight and The Dragon,India has a much more transparent economy and open books than China, although both countries are battling the systemic malaise of corruption. Foreign entrepreneurs reveal that in China you bribe your way to get the work done, but in India there is no telling when and where the bribes will stop. Foreign direct investments in India fell by 31 percent in 2010, because investors are apprehensive that a large fraction of the money is eaten away by the corrupt bureaucratic machinery. If religious extremism has been Pakistan and Bangladeshs undoing, corruption is Indias number two nemesis, with Chinas growing geopolitical ambitions being Indias gravest threat. Corruption in India is at such an inflection point, with the black money circulating in the country estimated at $1.4 trillion larger than the nations GDP that a prominent social leader Anna Hazare recently went on an indefinite fast to demand the pass-

ing of the Lokpal Bill which seeks to curb, if not uproot, corruption at the highest levels of Indian polity. This is a tremendous start for India in its march towards cleaner governance. On the social front, Indian civil activists and social reformers over the years have played a yeoman's role in the fight against the caste system and the subjugation of women. The current president of India is a woman, and her predecessor hailed from the lowest social strata an untouchable. These facts point to the tremendous strides India has made on the social front. India has provided safe haven for asylum seekers and refugees from countries like Tibet ravaged by war or facing ethnic cleansing by China. India, very much like the U. S., is home to several faiths and numerous ethnicities, a country of diverse beliefs, dialects, and culture. Future No matter what political uncertainties its neighbors are going through, democracy will continue to flourish in India. The economic reforms made over the past 20 years should be left alone and, if anything, more aggressive reforms are needed. Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha and the worlds third-richest man, recently said that America will prosper more if countries like India prosper and indicated that he would like to invest in the insurance sector in India, but for the 26 percent cap on foreign investment imposed by India. The post-cold war politics has dramatically altered the U. S.-India relationship, making each a natural ally and a strong strategic partner of the other. Besides stronger economic ties, other measures, such as beefing up vital sectors of cooperation, including nuclear energy for

The article is based on the ebook Camus Does a Double-Take writen by M.R. Pamidi, K. B. Anand and Meera Pamidi The authors are alumnis of IIT and IISc. The book brings an Indian-American viewpoint in the U. S. mainstream and is a refreshing take on U. S. politics, economy, entrepreneurship in the age of social networking, current world events, and international affairs. It is available on Amazon Kindle Store, Google eBookstore and Apple iTunes bookstore.
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civilian use, sharing of intelligence information, collaboration in the defense and education sectors, and a hotline between New Delhi and Capitol Hill to facilitate communication in times of international crises, are needed to strengthen the relationship. India and the U. S. should work towards dual-citizenship and review and revamp the tax treaties between the two countries which date back more than two decades. Closer trade and education ties between the U. S.-India sister cities, like Salem, Tamil Nadu, India and Salem, Massachusetts, serve to strengthen the partnership between the countries. On the global scene, the U. S. should strongly back Indias membership in the U. N. Security Council. In fact, back in the 1950s India was invited to join the Security Council, but Prime Minister Nehru declined and suggested instead that the membership be given to China since it was a more populous country. China is becoming both an economic and military superpower. Already a manufacturing workshop for the world, too much dependence on China on not just petty stuff, but electronics, microprocessors, computers, and other high-tech gadgets that equip our defense and weaponry is dangerous. Chinas geographical and political growth ambitions and influence surrounding India in Myanmar (formerly Burma), Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Tibet pose major threats to India continuing as a democracy. It behooves the U. S. to further strengthen its ties with India, supply advanced weaponry, carry out joint military exercises to keep China at bay, and curb Beijings appetite for 21st centurystyle neo-colonialism not necessarily occupying foreign lands, but extending its tentacles beyond what is considered safe for world peace. si

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October 2011

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October 2011

What Bangalore should learn from the Rise & Fall of Detroit!
hat if the IT industry goes down? Yes, it is a highly unlikely, but is it an impossible scenario? No, in the present business world, no business scenario is an impossible scenario. It will be highly arrogant for the industry to think that it will never happen. If there is one thing the rise and fall of Detroit can teach the world, then that would be, 'no industry is fail-safe'. What better example is there than Detroit? A city that depended on one major industry that boasted it will never fail; the automobile industry. It was the base of the 'Big Three' automobile manufacturers; Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. The companies that literally believed, 'Whatever happens to this world, people will keep on buying cars'. Well, as usual, they were wrong, and that too by a huge parameter. The world was hit by recessions, oil price went up like a rocket, and the average American income was nowhere near catching up with it. Yet, for a while, the population stayed loyal enough to their home grown brands, and said no to the foreigners like Honda, Hyundai, Suzuki, and others. Finally, they had enough; they were no longer ready to pay hefty amounts to get cars that offered them lower mileages, and decided to try their luck with the low cost, better mileage foreigners. They tried them, they loved them, and they took them as their own. That was the start of the downfall of the Big Three, so was that of Detroit. Once a city of glory, the rich and the famous, a haven for the job seeking mass, Detroit is now nothing more than a haunted soul of its past. It is being engulfed by the disastrous and tragic fate of the very industry that brought it to the lime light. Now, there is something in this story that is for all the cities in this world, more so for Bangalore. What is the similarity between Bangalore and Detroit? Differences are aplenty, but similarities are rather few. Let us concentrate one of these few similarities; the backbone of the city. Like automobile industry was to Detroit, is IT to Bangalore. Around 35 percent of India's IT exports is based out-ofBangalore, and the city is known as the Silicon ValOctober 2011

Cele b

in

By Hari Anil
India Tourism Los Angeles indiatourismla@aol.com 1-800-422-4634

ing 25 rat

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19

8 6 -2 0 1 1

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ley of the country. It is not wrong to say that the heart of the city is its IT industry. Now, what will happen if this heart stops beating? What, is it not possible? Of course it is possible! We have seen what happened to the IT industry in the last recession and in the future more recessions would come. No matter what we do and how we try to fix the global economy, it seems to be going to end up with a similar fate, as that of Humpty-Dumpty. For some years now, the state lacks a stable government, and the politicians are working round-theclock, to keep their positions safe, and have practically little time to spare for anything else. This again, is meant to have a negative effective on the future prospects of the city. The infrastructure is becoming more and more congested, each passing day, and the citys traffic is becoming impregnable. All these, along with other cost factors, may also make the IT firms here, willing to migrate to Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. These Tier-2 and 3 cities are now offering many benefits, both financial and infrastructural, and a few companies have already started migrating. So, the question is what will happen to Bangalore if the IT industry abandons the city, or if it goes down and does not recover for a very long time? Do we have a backup plan? Don't we need one? There are other industries in Bangalore, which have been here for a while, way before the first IT Company came here; examples are the Silk, Manufacturing, Space Technology, Aerospace industries, and even Education. We need to concentrate more on these industries. The idea is not to reduce concentration from the IT industry, but to give equal recognition and concentration to the other industries as well. A balance should be acquired; where, even if one industry goes down, the others will balance the city. That kind of stability is vital for the longterm growth of any city. Detroit did not do this, and the city suffered for something that they did not do. Let us save Bangalore from a similar fate. However unlikely it is for the IT industry to go down, why take the risk when we can play it safe? si

INDIAS SYMBOL OF COMMUNAL HARMONY

www.incredibleindia.org www.bahaihouseofworship.in

BAH HOUSE OF WORSHIP

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InMobi raises $200 Million

nMobi, a mobile advertising company, raises $200 million fund from Japan based Softbank. The investment will take place in two tranches, with $100 million in September 2011 and the rest in April 2012. The current round of funding will be used to hire people, finance acquisitions and expand aggressively in new regions such as China. The fund will also be used to scale up its recently launched mobile payment service SmartPay. With the fund, the company aims to overtake Google as the world leader in the category. Founded in 2007 by three alumni of IIT-Kanpur, Naveen Tewari, Abhay Singhal and Amit K Gupta, InMobi, helps advertisers and developers serve

up mobile ads. Currently the company has more than 332 million unique phone users and more than 47.3 billion

Naveen Tewari monthly impressions. InMobi has its presence in five continents. It has offices in San Francisco, London, Bangalore, Tokyo, Nairobi and Singapore.

The company is planning to increase their head count from 350 to 700 in the next 12 months. With a global leader like Softbank behind us, we are now well positioned to fully capitalize on the opportunity before us through substantially increased product innovation, deeper market penetration, and acquisitions across the mobile ad value chain, says Naveen Tewari, Founder & CEO of InMobi. Recently, InMobi acquired a Silicon Valley startup 'Sprout', a platform provider for creating HTML5 rich media mobile advertising. It also has tied up with NDTV Convergence; the digital arm of media house NDTV, to deliver mobile ads on the latter's mobile applications.

dchemy, an advertising technology company, completed a $61 million Series E financing round with Microsoft, August Capital and the Mayfield Fund. Microsoft and Adchemy have broadened their existing partnership and will team to expand the availability of the Adchemy IntentMap technology that will help Microsoft adCenter customers create more relevant ads based on consumer intent. This 2004 founded company is backed by Accenture, August Capital, Mayfield Fund, and Microsoft. Moving away from keywords and focusing on a consumers underlying intent is a massive paradigm shift that radically simplifies ad campaigns and enables advertisers to address consumer queries in a significantly more relevant way, at a scale unprecedented in the industry. Our technology will

Adchemy raises $61 Million in Series E Funding

help transform how advertisers reach consumers in search, mobile, and other intent-rich channels, says Murthy Nukala, Founder and CEO, Adchemy. Nukala has earlier founded Digital Jones, which was acquired by Shopping.com, a $130 million company that was the nest-performing IPO of 2004. Before completing the Series E investment round the two companies completed the initial phase of a program focused on growing and improving the profitability of paid search campaigns for a select group of online retailers, including Macys and Overstock.com. The Adchemy IntentMap solution helps advertisers expand keyword coverage and improve relevance of paid search campaigns using consumer intent instead of individual keywords. Using consumer intent to

manage and optimize paid search campaigns significantly reduces complexity while helping to improve profitability and scalability. The funding supports the partnership, and enables Adchemy to grow its workforce in support of more clients and rapid platform development. si

Murthy Nukala

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October 2011

CEO SPOTLIGHT

Magazines in your hand will go

Girish Ramdas, Co-founder and CEO, Magzter and buy this started in the early 2000s but this never really took off. Users always had to log into the magazine website and then download the issues and it was very cumbersome. But when Apple launched their iPad in 2010, the ubiquitous in-app-purchase allowed buyers to buy anything with just one click. This transformed the readers buying behavior as they were able to buy magazines instantaneously and read them in their device itself which started a trend called frictionless publishing. The main drawback of individual magazines going this way was that they all had to create Apps and that too apps across disparate devices the cost of creating and maintaining such apps far outweighs the actual number of readers or subscribers an individual app has. This issue was effectively understood by the core team of Magzter which has years of experience in the internet, marketing and software industry and created the Worlds first cross-platform digital magazine store called Magzter which allows publishers to use a self-service tool to publish magazines across iPhone, iPad, Android and the web within minutes. The industry today is moving towards digital newsstands and even though the Top Tier magazines are creating their own apps we see a trend of those apps not being the entire magazines but certain niche content that is derived from the magazine content. The new age of magazines is surely going towards digital editions either with their own apps of through newsstands or a combination of both in order to get maximum reach and visibility of their magazines. The next few years will see a consolidation of the publishing industry and we will see a spate of digital-only magazines which wont have a print edition but only a digital one. Magazines themselves will strive to deliver better and exclusive content that is not available on the web or any free media and will reinvent themselves from just being monthlies or weeklies to even interactive magazines with daily content updates of certain sections. The other trend on digital newsstands would be the ability for publishers to sell single articles and monetize better that selling full magazines. Digital publishing has been around for a while now but the way forward is to allow magazine readers to buy magazines digitally across platforms and devices and digitally maintain the subscriptions and purchases on the various smarthandheld devices. Entrepreneurs have a great opportunity to mine data that is being generated from these digital platforms and newsstands in order to create better reading experiences and to create niche digital-only magazines which will be the way of the future. si

Digital

he magazine publishing industry has been witnessing a downtrend over the past few years and the advent of Smartphones and Tablets has given the entire publishing industry a new lease of life. Earlier, when a magazine wanted to reach more people they created an e-zine which was a way to put the entire magazine in a PDF version online and let people pay
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Girish Ramdas

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October 2011

cover

story

lmost one fourth of the back end operations for financial transactions and customer support across the world happen from India. The billion dollar BPO industry has in many ways strongly shaped the Indian IT industry, and provided several entrepreneurs with an opportunity to build world class companies. Kaushal and Parul Mehta graduated with a bachelors degree in Electronics & Communications Engineering from Ahmedabad, India and went to the U.S. in 1988 to pursue a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering. They were very clear about their objective for going abroad; they would gain experience in world class organizations and eventually return to India to become entrepreneurs. After living in the U.S. for ten years and having worked with Silicon Valley companies such as Sun Microsystems, Intel and LSI Logic, they decided to return to their home town, and set up a software consultancy company. They had managed this profitable company for two and a half years when India opened up internet services for the private sector. Recognizing Indias potential to evolve into a high quality service provider to the world, Kaushal and Parul started Motif in August 2000. Motif is one of the few ITeS companies that found success operating from a tier 2 city a decade ago. At a time when most prominent BPO companies set up base in tier 1 cities like Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai, the Mehtas set up Motifs operations in Ahmedabad, Gujarat with a 20 member team. Today, the company has grown to about 1500 people, and provides multilingual support through delivery centers in India, Philippines and Costa Rica. Motifs core business is customer support, BPO (Business or Back-office Process Outsourcing) and KPO (Knowledge Process
siliconindia

Motif Emerging Player in

the BPO Sector
By Vimali Swamy Outsourcing) services. It focuses on internet based businesses/e-commerce companies in the retail and travel industries, so as to provide a comprehensive range of services to help them operate their businesses in an effective manner. Several things can go wrong during online transactions, and customers expect companies to provide prompt and accurate support when they face problems, explains Kaushal Mehta. This is where Motif helps its clients. From online travel deals, to online retail purchases, Motif provides relevant customer support for the entire period of customer engagement. From pre purchase issues such as login, account management, shopping carts, payment options, to post purchase issues such as delivery, shipment, refunds, exchanges, etc. Motif offers its clients multi channel support via email, chat and support, and helps them choose the channels that improve customer experience and provide better ROI.

Focus on Customer Experience For example, one of Motifs clients, a leading Fortune 500 ecommerce company provides a portal for individuals and small businesses to buy and sell an assortment of goods and services online. The company had grown exponentially over the past 10 years and had a customer base of over 10 million members. To retain competitiveness in the market, the company introduced several new features and market-driven offerings. The growing complexity of the companys processes and constant changes in policies resulted in multiple customer recontacts that impacted customer experience. Introduction of multiple tools for customer support led to technical issues, directly impacting First Time Resolution and customer satisfaction. The company engaged

Kaushal Mehta

Parul Mehta

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Social Media Insights This is just one of the many success stories of Motifs engagement with its clients. In addition to customer support, the company also helps its clients with content moderation over social media. Consumers are truly empowered today, thanks to social
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Motif to overcome these challenges since Motif had a proven track record of providing multi channel support to millions of customers. Motif's process re-engineering team took a structured approach toward performance improvement and process enhancement to address the companys business challenges. The team implemented three independent projects to improve customer experience using the Six Sigma DMAIC approach (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control). They focused on three key customer metrics Net Promoter Score, Contact Reduction and First Time Resolution. Project leaders with domain expertise were assigned ownership for each of these three projects. Frontline Customer Support Representatives (CSRs) were actively engaged to identify and capture customer pain points and policies that needed to be reviewed. They conducted a systematic study of Voice of Customers (VOC). This gave the team insights into the problems customers faced. Within six months of implementing this project, the Motif team shared over 200 suggestions with the client to reduce re-contacts and improve resolutions. The team also identified issues with the maximum impact on Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Resolution. Simultaneously, Motif CSRs educated customers about changes in policies, the new features and their benefits. With such an in-depth engagement, the client saw a savings of $1.2 million annually.

A major service that Motif provides its clients to help them improve customer satisfaction and reduce risk is preventing fraudulent listings on ecommerce sites.
media networks and this is a medium that can make or break brands. Motif helps its clients understand customer sentiment towards their brand by analyzing User Generated Content posted online. Also, it goes one step ahead and provides actionable insights on the companys performance against the competitors.

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E-commerce Fraud Prevention Another major service that Motif provides its clients to help them improve customer satisfaction and reduce risk is preventing fraudulent listings on ecommerce sites. Many ecommerce websites tend to fall prey to fraud since anyone can easily list a product on the companys platform, and cheat buyers. In such cases, the reputation of the company is at stake because cheated customers will lose trust in it. Motif closely observes activities on these websites, and ensures that none of the policies are breached when a new product is listed. Motif studies user patterns and conducts a detailed analysis that combines human judgment with automated tools, to ensure that a listing is not fraudulent.

With its deep domain expertise, Motif has over the years developed a range of fraud filters that help detect such fraudulent listings. Motif also helps its clients by preventing fraudulent credit card transactions for travel companies in order to lower charge-backs and losses which have a direct impact on profitability. One of Motifs clients is a leading online travel service provider in the U.S. for value-conscious, leisure travelers. The company enables customers to purchase price disclosed hotel rooms, rental cars, airline tickets, vacation packages, destination services and cruises. The company and its subsidiaries maintain a wide network of affiliations with websites, hotels and airlines, and provide online services in around 100 countries covering 30 languages. The company needed to minimize fraudulent transactions in real-time. This involved authenticating genuine transactions, preventing fraudulent transactions and blocking service delivery in case of fraudulent transactions. In addition, the company had to communicate with vendor partners and customers in case of suspected or blocked transactions. The companys in-house team performed the tasks only during US business hours. Given that the client had operations in over 100 countries, this left a vast number of transactions unauthenticated and open to fraud each day. Further, budgetary constraints meant that authentication was performed only for transactions with a very high fraud score. This left a significant number of transactions unmonitored, affecting margins and more importantly customer satisfaction. The clients challenge was to find a partner that could monitor such transactions on a 24/7 basis on real time basis with lower costs, and Motif fit the bill.

Motif sent its experts to the companys operations site to understand the existing processes and business requirements. Through a detailed transition plan, Motif stabilized operations within 60 days of transition and provided 24/7 real-time monitoring across the globe. It identified suspicious transactions through appropriate keyword filters. These were authenticated to shortlist fraudulent transactions by reviewing customer's purchase history and contacting card holders and vendors. Motif then prevented fraudulent transactions by cancelling the purchase orders; prevented delivery of services if the fraudulent transaction was already completed by informing the service vendors and communicated with the affected vendor partners and members whose credit card was fraudulently used. It developed a team of experienced executives with analytical abilities, clear communication skills and prior exposure to the client's processes which helped in quick stabilization and rapid knowledge transfer across the team. In the four years of partnership, Motif has provided a 500 percent ROI to its client and the project team has grown by over 300 percent, thereby saving millions of dollars every year. Creating a World Class Business With Motif, Kaushal Mehtas dream of building a world class business has come true. His ability to accurately assess risks, ensure fiscal discipline and to be an efficient planner has helped him implement the right strategy to acquire several blue chip clients. Since it becomes difficult for end clients in the U.S. to gain a comfort level with a brand new start-up, he initially partnered with an existing service provider in the U.S., with blue chip clients and a dedicated sales force. Most BPO companies in India have built large

capabilities and employed highly paid sales force in the US to attract the first customer. By partnering, Mehta did just the opposite, and investments to the tune of a couple of million dollars, which most other companies made in building a sales force, were saved. Once cash-flow was stable, to further build its presence and capture a growing BPO market, Motif opened its sales offices in the U.S. Of the $4 million raised, we have a built-in infrastructure to support a team size of up to 3,000 people across our three centers in India, the Philippines and Costa Rica, and still have adequate cash reserves for expansion, explains Mehta. Parul and Kaushal knew that one of the biggest challenges in the BPO industry is People Management. They believed in team work and knew that to succeed in this workforce intensive industry, both talent and team work were critical for growth and success. Right from the beginning, they created the right organizational environment to attract the right people to Motif. The Mehtas also knew that to deliver services for the U.S., it was necessary to create a blend of U.S. and local culture. Hence, the company recruited a resident U.S. trainer who has been instrumental in establishing the Motif University, which offers valuable training programs/sessions such as Americanization, understanding U.S. culture, geography, business terminology, etc. for employees across Motifs delivery centers. Parul Mehta, who oversees Operations, has keenly worked towards training employees in their approach to the customers. She recalls an anecdote where during the first month of starting business, a customer had emailed saying, The flight tickets booked for me are for a very early morning flight. Ill have to leave with the chickens! The

support executive innocently replied, Sir, the airlines pet policy does not allow chickens on the plane. Today, the employees at Motif are among the best in the industry. Since quality is of utmost importance, the company has established a rigorous selection process which brings in the best talent available. They have consistently identified leaders and team players, and promoted deserving employees from within. Since Motifs

Kaushalability s to accurately assess risks, ensure fiscal discipline and to be an efficient planner has helped him implement the right strategy to acquire several blue chip clients

inception, Kaushal and Parul have laid great stress on selecting professionals with integrity and team spirit, and have worked closely with all their employees. Between the two founders, someone has always been available for each and every employee. Together, they have created an open and transparent work culture at Motif, unlike the typical hierarchical work structures seen in many organizations in India and the Philippines.
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October 2011

Motif Team At Motif, individuals are respected and encouraged to participate in issues and ideas. The work environment encourages issue based discussions versus individual based discussions. This openness in the environment results in the best ideas coming out as suggestions and then being debated thoroughly before being implemented, thereby creating an environment which focuses on quality and performance. This also enables the company to provide guidance to its clients on how they can improve their client facing processes. The company values creativity and innovation and announces Annual Innovation Awards for employees who come up with innovative ideas. This encourages and motivates employees to grow and excel. The Mehtas, who are keen to have their employees participate in wealth creation, have set aside 22.5 percent of Motifs equity for employees right from the companys inception. This is one of the highest percentages of employee ownership in any BPO company in the world, and has helped Motif build long term relationships with its employees, who in turn have cherished this
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gesture and built long term client relationships. The senior management practices and preaches a Work Hard, Party Hard philosophy and has created a fun environment within the company. This industry employs young graduates who work in round-the-clock operations to serve international clients. The Mehtas ensure that Motifs employees get an opportunity to enjoy and take care of their health along with their work. They have introduced various fun events such as Motif Annual Talent Evening, Picnics, Implementation of the FISH! principles, in addition to regular team events on the operations floor. Nutrition lectures, Fitness sessions and Yoga Workshops for health, and sports events such as Annual Cricket, Basketball, Table Tennis and Chess tournaments are an integral part of life at Motif. For the Mehtas, it is important that every employee at Motif sees value for their career, and so they have empowered all employees with the knowledge and freedom to excel. The company has invited various world class speakers and held seminars on communication and

leadership skills for its employees, to help them become world class leaders of the future. Parul Mehta involves the leadership team in various weekly and cross functional meetings to equip them with different domain skills. The focus is on ownership, transparency, discipline and fairness. Importance is given to productivity and quality. Parul herself is an exemplary role model to several woman employees within the organization, always encouraging them in their work and helping them become career driven professionals. Under Kaushal and Paruls able leadership, a confident team of employees interacts and provides quality services to Motifs blue chip clients across the U.S., Europe and India. Apart from all this, there is a constant drive within the company to give back to the society. Motif is associated with several NGOs, and holds several social activities like charity walks, blood donation camps and more. Over the years, these activities have gained prominence and several other companies have joined hands with Motif to make a better and healthier society. Kaushal Mehta cherishes the fact that clients have stayed and grown with Motif over the years. Motif is a boutique outsourcing company that is focused on building and nurturing long term relationships with its clients, he says. It is with this thought the company has focused on establishing and expanding services for existing clients, rather than increasing the number of its clients multifold. For Motif, the real testimonial of success is the fact that each of its clients is referenceable. Kaushal and Parul Mehta believe that while the first step towards achieving their dream of building a numero uno company was taken more than a decade ago, their journey has just begun. si

October 2011

Startup of the Month

CONNECT
To Outsourced Partners

Interviewstreet:

COORDINATE
Multisite Manufacturing

Helping you hire Programming Wizards

to create an online test that probable candidates need to take post before they are selected for a face to face interview. This filtering process consists of programming, multiple choice and subjective questions. The codechecker evaluates the candidates code against various test cases and provides a performance analysis of the code against them. From C, C++, C#, Java, Ruby, Python and other languages, programmers can code in any of these. The test consists usually consists of two coding questions, three multiple choice questions (MCQ) and one descriptive question. While the coding questions are developed by Interviewstreet the MCQ and the descriptive questions can be provided by the client. Currently they are working on allowing companies to make their own coding questions too. Also companies can customize the test by putting as many questions as they deem fit. The candidates get the answers to the coding questions and MCQs right after the test while the descriptive answers have to be manually checked.Interviewstreet charges $2 per candidate who takes test. Apart from this, Interviewstreet also develops independent coding challenges where in programmers/developers can participate and hack. This allows the company to create a database of good programmers/coders which to whenever a client comes up with a

SENSE & RESPOND

In Real Time

ENABLE
Lean Execution

e it a multinational corporation, a medium sized organization or a tiny startup, if there is one challenge that transcends all barriers across the three it is the challenge of hiring the right talent. With millions talented professionals out there in the market, how does a company ensure that they are grabbing the right professional suitable to their needs. Most recruitment companies help in generalized recruitment of professionals across different levels from a fresh out of college techie to mid level managers to CXOs. But when it comes to hiring programming wizards, they fall back and this is where Interviewstreet can help. Founded in 2009, by two NIT Trichy graduates Vivek Ravisankar and K Harishankaran, Interviewstreet is an online platform that helps companies and recruiters
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EXTEND
requirement. In a very short time the company has secured multiple clients both in India and the U.S. Facebook, Flipkart, Bank Bazaar are just a few of the 50 plus companies that are using its services. The company had initially started as a platform for taking mock interviews for management colleges and some top IT companies. But the idea did not take off and changed the business model by focusing on helping companies simplify the hiring process. The company has a strong backing from Morpheus Ventures but was recently chosen by Y Combinator, the iconic Silicon Valley seed fund, for its incubation program, making Interviewstreet the first Indian company to achieve this. The program comes with seed funding and an intense three-month mentoring regime from some of the world's leading technology investors. si
Vivek Ravisankar

Virtual Manufacturing
Just one click away!
Indu Navar CEO, Serus Corporation

K Harishankaran

ERP

A c h i e v e s i g n i f i c a n t R O I w i t h i n 3 - 4 m o nths
Serus provides solutions that automate key business processes across internal and external supply and distribution chains. Serus lls the GAP between ERP systems and multi-site manufacturing and fulllment processes. Serus enables proactive decision making, rapid response, operations eciency, turnkey supplier connectivity, automated execution and collaboration across your internal and supplier/customer facing business processes. Serus ensures accountability, traceability, visibility, compliance and precision across supply and distribution chains.

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2 of the top 5 Fabless Companies use Serus Largest Medical Device manufacturer uses Serus #1 supplier of Networking Equipment uses Serus World's largest Contract Manufacturer uses Serus

These forward-looking industry leaders have incorporated Serus Solutions in their decision making processes and been able to achieve significant ROIs within months. Find out how you can be part of Serus sucess story. Request@serus.com 7 8 5 N orth Mar y Av e., S te. 1 0 0 S u n n y val e, C A 9 4 0 8 5 ( US A ) Tel . 4 0 8 .7 1 6 .6 2 0 0 Fax . 4 0 8 .716. 6209 www. se rus. co m
Serus is a trademark of Serus Corporation. All other logos and trademarks and registered trademarks cited are the property of their respective owners and are hereby acknowledged.

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October 2011

The author is Co- Founder & CEO, Egnyte

Technology: By Vineet Jain

n both the consumer and business worlds, there is a thunderous stampede to adopt the cloud. The cloud products and services market, is currently worth more than $16 billion, and International Data Corp. projects a $56 billion dollar industry by 2014 [1]. The cloud is in rage for good reason; users can access their data anytime and anywhere; they can share, store and backup files without worrying about size limitations. Infrastructure, storage capacity, collocations, maintenance and support are the cloud providers responsibility; absolving business users of a mess of expensive responsibilities. With the cloud, data is stored redundantly, at multiple locations, so disaster recovery happens within a matter of minutesand for free
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How the Cloud Resonates with

Business Today

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rather than in several expensive ways. Users hit many barriers, when sharing files, including email attachment, size limitations, and difficulties of using ftp sites. The cloud takes the pain out of collaboration, by providing shared folders that can be easily managed by users, and the ability to share files as a link via email, or IM. Files are hosted in a central location, saving users the time of hunting down the most recent versions. Risk of unauthorized intrusions is minimal, as a good cloud service provider will authenticate each connection request, and encrypt communications over SSL. A provider should also have built-in permissions, to make sure files are shared, only with the right customers and companies.

Why Companies Need the Cloud? The cloud is truly a boon for companies of all sizes. The way business is done, has changed dramatically over the past decade or so; Cloud computing meshes smoothly with the distributed nature of todays companies. Collaboration has become real-time and cross-border, and time zones are not as important, as speed and efficiency. Many workers today, are also mobile and need access to data through their handsets or tablets. Businesses are running more productively, on leaner resources; having the ability pay for capacity as it is required, as well as to expand services using existing IT staff, is a requirement for many smaller companies. All of these factors mean, the cloud just makes sense, while the traditional file server could be on its deathbed.

SMBs and Security Small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), in particular should pay attention to the cost-efficient security, the cloud provides. According to the Wall Street Journal, companies with 100 or fewer employees were the victims of 63 percent of overall data breaches last year [2]. Meanwhile, simple or intermediate controls could have prevented 96 percent of last years breaching hackers like low-hanging fruit [3]. Companies think of the cloud as adding security risks, but in reality SMBs benefit from purchasing a service, that incorporates current best practices and technologies to minimize risk. With everyone in the company downloading and sharing files anytime and anywhere, and from pocket-sized devices, the need for granularity of controls becomes very real. In addition to the threat of hackers, an employee who betrays his own company, can bring down Lanka. The cloud service provider can solve this dilemma, by giving read/write/delete access to users and groups for files and folders. The administrator can see every new user who joins the account, as well monitor file access patterns. Through the cloud providers proffering of controls, the admin should know how strong everyones password is, how often they use and change passwords, and peak in download activity. The administrator, who reviews cloud audit reports to understand regular usage patterns, will more easily detect anomalies that indicate breaches. How Real-World Companies have benefited I have many real-life examples, of how companies have benefited from cloud file servers. One company needed to share large design files between a distributed US team, and

found itself clogging its email server, because the attachments were too large. A cloud solution solved this issue. Another company migrated to the cloud, to manage expansion to new offices, with existing IT staff. These distributed organizations are able to allow employees in distributed-offices, to collaborate, as if they were in a single office. A private equity firm that invests in developing nations, freed employees from carrying printed presentations and struggle to handle revision changes while on the road. They carry iPads with the files available offline, and they can easily update to the latest version, when they connect to the Internet.

rage for good reason; users can access their data anytime and anywhere; they can share, store and backup files without worrying about size limitations.

The cloud is in

vice, or enterprise server), hosts files in each office; allowing fast, secure access at anytime, regardless of internet connectivity. All these files are seamlessly kept up-to-date and access rules are fully configurable, to meet the businesses needs. This unique hybrid solution, also addresses the psychological discomfort that some users still have with the cloud. Some companies are concerned, that because they cannot physically touch their cloud file server, they are not in control of their data. A hybrid solution offers a local component for peace of mind.

[1] Enterprise Systems, Cloud Computing Set to Soar, June 2010. <http://esj.com/articles/2010/06/29/cl oud-computing-set-to-soar.aspx> [2]

The Cloud is Not Just a Trend In conclusion, businesses will see a continued need, to share increasingly-large and more complex files, through cyberspace; Cyber attacks will also continue to evolve. Technology has to meet these two trends, by facilitating companies file storage and sharing needs, while keeping up with the everchanging cyber threats. Going forward, the cloud, in particular the hybrid cloud will be an essential solution rather than just a trend.

These companies did not forsake their local area networks entirely; however, they implemented our hybrid solution, which delivers the speed of local storage, with the accessibility of the cloud. Users easily store, share, access, and backup their files, while IT retains centralized administration and control, to enforce business policies. Simultaneously, a local private cloud (setup on a mobile device, PC, NAS de-

[3] Verizon RISK Team, U.S. Secret Service, and the Dutch High Tech Crime Unit, 2011 Data Breach Investigations Report, 2011. <http://www.verizonbusiness.com/resources/reports/rp_data-breachinvestigations-report-2011_en_xg.pdf> si
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The Wall Street Journal, Hackers Shift Attacks to Small Firms, July 2011. <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000 142405270230456760457645417370 6460768.html>

October 2011

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October 2011

is Leading Contact Centers to Profitability

Technology
The author is CEO, Sales Portal

Technology: By Saurabh Khetrapal

Saurabh Khetrapal

hey used to be called call centers in-house or outsourced organizations that handled incoming and outgoing phone calls. Then came the 90s, and with it the Digital Age. Now, theyre called contact centers and rightfully so, because its not just about handling calls anymore. Todays contact centers need to be adept at multichannel communication including chat, email - even social media. Contact centers come in various shapes, sizes and flavors they can be outsourced companies specializing in multiple verticals and products, or they can be internal operations focusing on specific proprietary brands. They can provide customer service for Fortune 500 enterprises or handle inbound sales inquiries from consumers driven by direct response advertising. Whatever form todays contact centers take, they all share the common goal of achieving the highest possible customer satisfaction, while remaining profitable operations and/or containing costs. To that end, several methodologies and technologies have emerged from offshoring to self-service via IVR or web to revenue enhancement via cross-selling & upselling. However each of these approaches has tremendous difficulties and drawbacks. Shipping contact center operations offshore is a doubleedged swordwith initial cost-savings being the attraction, but often to the detriment of long-term sales and customer service levels. The effects of offshoring both positive and negative are well-documented. With advances in technology, enterprises have increasingly rushed towards customer self-service, where IVRs and websites serve as the main tool for customer interaction. Self-service systems while certainly a cost effective option and ideal for certain applications simply cannot deliver the best customer service experience. After all, if you are a consumer with a product question, would you prefer to navigate through an IVR and/or go online and read through the FAQs and online Help features, or make a phone call and get a human response? In a recent article in Customer Management IQ, author Tripp Babbitt describes: These sorts of broad assumptions [around replacing phone calls with a cheaper channel like self-service] lead to costly mistakes. Not talking to customers may be cheaper, but where is the relationship? Or the ability to find answers quickly? The focus usually turns to refining the self-service rather than re-evaluating it. Ever find a FAQ on a website that takes too long to find the answers to your question? If you are in the midst of a self-service strategy that lacks evidence or knowledge, stop and take account of your customers! You may find that costs - not the customers - are driving your thinking. The result will be increased costs. I tend to agree with Mr. Babbitts thesis and would argue that the combination of telephone and live operators con-

tinues to deliver the customer experiences and sales revenues that businesses strive to achieve. Another method used by some enterprises to mitigate contact center costs is by turning each customer contact into a revenue generation opportunity through implementation of cross-selling and up-selling - an opportunity to create revenue after the main transaction (either sale or customer service) is complete. However, several problems plague the traditional cross-selling/upselling processes used by contact centers. A recently published survey of contact centers conducted by International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) revealed several sets of statistics underscoring pitfalls associated with cross-selling: Associated costs: According to the ICMI survey respondents, the most critical investment their center made to enable cross-selling was training, with 68 percent describing the investment in special training for agents. Other associated costs include additional compensation/incentives, increased supervisor/coaching time, and new and/or enhanced technology. According to respondents, the three biggest challenges associated with implementing a cross-selling program are helping staff with the transition (40 percent said very challenging; 39 percent said moderately challenging); defining appropriate measures of success (24 percent very challenging; 42 percent moderately challenging); and finding/training staff (21 percent very challenging; 35 percent moderately challenging. Agents need to be trained on the cross-sell productcoaches need to supervise themAverage Handle Time increasesmanagement needs to review the cross-sells and when to implement themworking with third party product marketers means Contact Centers need to handle paperwork

and payments, while maintaining compliance with FTC and other local, state and federal laws. And the regulatory landscape is becoming increasingly treacherous to navigate, with new consumer privacy and protection laws being passed in Washington. Therefore, the question becomes: can contact centers have it all excellence in customer service, maximized profitability, and ease of implementation? Technology provides the answer specifically, Sales Portals trademarked and patent-pending technology (which earned the prestigious 2010 Direct Marketing Association Peoples Choice Innovation Award).

We call it: Cross-Pitching Sales Portals patent-pending technology enables Contact Centers to further monetize their phone traffic by replacing the traditional cross-selling and up-selling processes with a short sales pitch (offered to callers at the end of calls) for a highly relevant product from leading brand advertisers. Advertisers bid against each other for the end-of-call real-estate for all calls handled by a contact center and contact centers reserve the unfettered right to accept or decline bids from competing advertisers. At the end of a call, when a contact center agent is ready to cross-pitch, Sales Portal determines the most relevant and highest-bidding preapproved advertiser and presents a short teaser offer scripted by such advertiser, which is read by the agent to the caller. Callers interested in the cross-pitch offer are live transferred to the winning advertiser. Sales Portal even handles all the billing and collections, sending contact centers a check twice a month for the live transfer leads that have been sold. In this way, the Sales Portal CrossPitching system monetizes precious posttransactional real estate in a more seamless and non-intrusive manner than typical cross-selling and up-selling programs, achieving the highest possible conversions because callers are intro-

duced to products they already want. Additionally, since agents are not selling anything using Sales Portals cross-pitching and no customer data (including credit card or other payment information) is passed on to the Lead Buyer, Contact Centers can rest assured that they are 100 percent compliant with all legal requirements and regulations. Sales Portals auction-based cross-pitching platform also maximizes incremental revenue while minimizing Average Handle Time (AHT). At the core of Sales Portals technology is its robust reporting and analytics engine. A staple for Sales Portals growing customer base, the analytics module increases the online platforms real-time reporting infrastructure to give contact centers and advertisers industry-leading actionable data. As a result, participants in Sales Portals marketplace gain a total picture view for campaign performance, selection and tracking. Contact Centers gain real-time visibility into their end-ofcall incremental revenue and other campaign economics, such as cost per read, in order to calculate the effective ROI of their campaigns. At the same time, advertisers are able to adjust their pay-percall bid price, tweak their product offer, test new scripts and see the results of their adjustments instantaneously. Sales Portals robust real-time analytics and proprietary filters offer the metrics contact centers and advertisers need to maximize revenues. Since the official launch, Sales Portal has over 200 active registrants and numerous case studies of successful campaigns. After hearing carefully from Contact Centers, we have constructed a platform that is becoming an engine for maximizing incremental revenue, customer experience, and ease of adoption. While technology is changing the rules of the contact center game, Sales Portal is successfully demonstrating that technology can also play a valuable and effective support role for enhancing customer satisfaction and building businesses. si
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October 2011

The author is Product Manager, Redpine Signals.

Technology: By Mohan Vellanki

ireless connectivity with Wi-Fi, has become pervasive across many applications, from wireless devices, to medical devices, and smart grid. The advent of innovative implementations in Wi-Fi over the years, coupled with an all-IP nature of communication, has enabled it to be a default wireless interface for the emerging The Internet of Things market. WiFi was invented to be a networking technology, to play a complementary role along with the much successful Ethernet technology. Wi-Fi can be used in the home, on the campus, in offices and factories, in a hospital, or at public places, including restaurants, airports, or even on the street, to connect a variety of electronic devices. Today, the Wi-Fi interface is not only lower in power than many proprietary wireless interfaces; it is
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The Latest in Wi-Fi Trends

W
low cost and also supported by a very credible industry ecosystem. This article discusses the various target markets and applications for Wi-Fi.
Figure 1 Wi-Fi Alliance Group - http://www.wifi.org

Introduction Wi-Fi was first introduced in 1999, with Wireless Ethernet Alliance (WECA) endorsing 802.11b specification. This specification was branded as Wi-Fi technology. WECA was renamed to WiFi Alliance in 2002. The main focus for the specifications has been to enable electronic devices to connect seamlessly. Although, the idea was to replace Ethernet cabling; the initial technology was not mature enough to compete at

Wireless Technology Positioning(fig.3) The figure depicts the positioning of WiFi technology, in comparison to other prevalent wireless technologies. Notice that Wi-Fi is promising to become the leading technology in PAN (Personal Area Network) and LAN (Local Area Network), with advances in Wi-Fi Direct (Peer to Peer device connectivity) and 802.11ac (more than 800Mbps throughput support) standard launches in 2011.

high bit rates for wired connections. However, after a decade, the growth of Wi-Fi has been phenomenal with one billion Wi-Fi chips sold in the last 10 years. The major mass adaptors of this technology were the laptop and PC markets. This was aided by wide scale availability of wireless enabled networking routers and access points to home consumers at a sub-$50 price.

New Age of Wi-Fi With the launch of the Apple smartphone in 2005, it was considered significant for the exponential growth of Wi-Fi. The device pushed the focus away from the PC and laptop market, to devices in general. New product development was focused on task based computing. The advantage of machine to machine (M2M) connectivity, as a truly networked environment, was possible with Wi-Fi as the standard protocol. Wi-Fi provides the convenience of wireless connectivity, along with the flexibility to design intelligent applications on an IP network. This combination of standard and ease of development was missing in other wireless technologies, such as Bluetooth and ZigBee. The recent launch of Wi-Fi Direct has further strengthened the case of Wi-Fi for device to device connectivity. Wi-Fi is now competing with Bluetooth, as the leading technology for PAN area networks, with industry proven security and bandwidth support. Last year, a consumer electronictoy company, launched an RC model car, controlled by Wi-Fi from a consumer smartphone. The RC model car connected a smartphone, using an integrated Wi-Fi module embedded in the car. The market of wireless connectivity is now taking a turn, from providing internet access for browsing as the primary use case, to connecting devices to monitor, display and control a consumers lifestyle. For example, a customer can now use a smartphone to

Figure 2 Spectrum Usage and Licensing

electronic devices. The penetration in new markets will be driven by: Ability to support higher throughputs Ultra low power requirements of embedded devices Physical layer security, comparable to wired networks Ease of integration into complex embedded-electronic designs Ultra-low power functionality of the latest Wi-Fi chipsets, allows for usage of Wi-Fi in smart-grid networks and smart appliances. Smart appliances by definition, are energy efficient devices which can react to feedback, from a central smart grid. The idle-energy consumption over the lifetime of the product is the most critical cost factor, given the rising cost of energy generation. It is more important, than the actual production cost of the module. Wi-Fi energy requirements and average cost of production to support such high volumes, makes it the leader in wide scale adoption of technology, across all smart-appliances. Companies are planning to take advantage of Wi-Fis core internet protocol, reliable wireless connection, and robust WPA2 security mechanisms, for aggregation of real time energy consumption and control of appliances, using demand response algorithms within the home and municipality. This would lead to a true smart home area network.

Future Evolution of Wi-Fi Today, the industry is quickly adopting 802.11n standard in all Wi-Fi enabled devices. This standard, will soon stage a phase out of 802.11b and 802.11g standards. 802.11n is designed to allow for higher throughputs, with much lower average power consumption for the same performance as previous standards. The standard also has better error correction and ability to use bandwidth from the 40MHz channel. This is much larger than the 20MHz bandwidth, used by 802.11b. It took a decade since its launch in 1999, for the first billion Wi-Fi chipsets to be sold. Meanwhile, in 2010 alone, about 770 Figure 3 Wireless Technology Positioning million Wi-Fi chips were sold. It is expected, that it will take only one year, for the next billion units to be sold; with the increasing trend now for connecting all
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connect to their car and monitor the cars performance, using Wi-Fi designed into the car infotainment system. This market for Wi-Fi in electronics devices is also being referred to, as Embedded Wi-Fi.

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October 2011

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October 2011

as building au- the most appropriate wireless band tomation, security, to be used in such facilities, as the and surveillance, 2.4GHz band has become too busy automotive, and with Bluetooth, and other devices industrial controls. operating in this range. The system The new standard piggybacks on an already existing of Wi-Fi Direct hotspot technology, which needs be has opened the deployed to provide local internet door for any access to consumers in these locasmart-phone, PC, tions. This reduces any additional and laptop to con- operating expenses, apart from opFigure 4 Wi-Fi Enabled Smart Home Area Network nect to any other timizing on the initial capital exWi-Fi Enabled Smart Home Area Wi-Fi powered electronic device penditure. Network (fig.4) WLAN has also become the stanand exchange information. A significant advantage of Wi-Fi technology is its ability to adapt to different use cases. The standards body has designed open standards for ultra low power and also for high-performance and high-bandwidth required applications. Notice that Wi-Fi chips are all set to replace HDMI cables, with the launch of 802.11ac standard in the next 18 months. This standard will allow consumers to view DVDs from their television, without any wired connection between the DVD Figure 5 Wi-Fi Standards Evolution player and the television. Adoption in niche markets (fig.6) dard, with telecom operators worldWi-Fi Standards Evolution (fig.5) There are many more applica- wide for public internet access to their This technology is being used for tions being invented, with Wi-Fi as mobile subscribers. Operators are ofnew applications, in the area of the core connectivity solution. Real floading data traffic from their already home automation and controls in time location based services based congested mobile and POTS telecom industrial and automotive seg- on geographic location of access networks to local IP based wireless ments. The adoption of the WPA2 points, is fast gaining traction in networks, using the Hotspot connecsecurity standard, has given Wi-Fi hospitals, mining, and large ware- tivity solutions. These innovations are the maturity to compete with wired houses. Hospitals are fast adopting possible, because Wi-Fi remains an infrastructure for such applications, VoWiFi services, to enable medical open standard with constant push for personnel to stay optimizing the cost of technology connected over usage, along with innovations to invoice and data, crease performance of chipsets. With slightly over a decade now while in the facility. Companies have since Wi-Fi was introduced; the pelaunched dedicated riod of exponential growth is just VOIP phone prod- about to start, with adoption of this ucts, which use the technology in any type of consumer 5GHz spectrum to and industrial electronic device conallow for high fi- ceivable. We should all keep our eyes delity voice and and antennas open for new and more data connectivity. interesting use cases that will develop Figure 6 Wi-Fi Direct Use Case - Courtesy Wi-Fi Alliance Video on Wi-Fi Direct The 5GHz band is in the Wi-Fi market. si
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October 2011

The author is CEO, Global Institute of Intellectual Property

Technology: By Atulya Nath

INCREASE IN DEMAND FOR TRAINED PATENT PROFESSIONALS IN THE

nformation Technology (IT) has emerged as a key sector of the Indian economy in terms of its contribution to export earnings, employment opportunities, investments and overall socioeconomic development. India's IT potential has attracted multinationals to grab a share of the pie and cash in on the IT boom. Notwithstanding competitive pressures from around the world, the sector continues to grow as a consequence of access to trained English speaking professionals, cost competitiveness and quality telecommunications infrastructure Despite the rapid growth, experts have attributed the success of Indias IT sector and especially of its software firms mainly to outsourcing services to multinational firms for low-value, routine and standardized tasks. Lately, it has been observed that the IT companies are committed to boost their spending on R&D and innovation, which is evident from the increase in number of Patents that have been filed by these companies at the US Patent Office, European Patent Office and the Indian Patent Office.
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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY

Atulya Nath

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A patent is the right that the owner has and which sets about ensuring that others are excluded from creating, making use of or selling the invention defined in the assertions made in the patent. Typical process of obtaining a patent undergoes five layers: disclosures by the investor, search for patentability, filing of application, examination of the patent application and amendment of the application. A major portion of this work is undertaken by technical (BE, BTech, MS, PhD) professionals with sound subject matter knowledge and skills in patents and patent process. In India, software is protected under the Copyright Act and not the Patent Act (as in many western countries). However, Indian IT companies have filed patent applications for their software in other parts of the world and these companies continue to seek non-software patents in India. Many of them have also filed business method patents in US. As Indian IT companies restructure their operations for high value service offerings, they are focused on innovation and intellectual property generation and protection in India and abroad. The Indian IT industry has registered a 29-fold increase in patents over 2005-2008 and as opposed to this, growth in patent applications with the Indian Office of the Controller General of Patents was negatively affected in 2009, says the Nasscom Strategic Review, 2010. As opposed to this, both in 2009 and 2010, the number of patents filed by Indian IT companies in the European Patent Office (EPO) and the United States Patent and Trademarks Office (USPTO) has witnessed a growth of over 20 per cent. Information available on the official web site of the United States Patents and Trademarks Office (USPTO) indicates that the major

are committed to boost their spending on R&D and innovation, which is evident from the increase in number of Patents that have been filed by these companies

It has been observed that the IT companies

patent filing, from India, has been in the field of chemistry followed by software and Automotive. The major filers include Mahindra Navistar Automotive, Infosys Technologies and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. The other filing is coming from Ittiam Systems whose patents were granted for Software and Communication, also STMicrelectronics for microprocessor and sensor.

The patent filing statistics of the Intellectual Property Office India shows that the number of patent filings in the field of computer science & electronics has been on the rise since 2004 (except for the year 2009). From 5700 patent applications in 2005-2006 the number has gone upto 7646 applications in 2009-10. The top five Major Indian application for patents in the field of IT are Infosys Technologies, LG Soft India, C-DAC, NewGen Software Technologies and Samsung India. Whereas Microsoft is the top foreign filer for patent applications in India For Indian IT companies to have a sustained growth in terms of intellectual wealth creation and patent portfolio, they need focused inhouse IP development and commercialization of these innovations. This needs to be supported by an increased thrust on Patents for these companies to stay ahead in the technology licensing market.

Thus, there is a growing need for trained patent professionals in the IT sector as the number of technical professionals having skills in the area of patents and patent process is very low. These skilled IP technical professionals can work as a patent engineer, patent analysts, patent consultants, patent associates, IP business analysts in the in-house teams at the Corporate. Another sunrise Industry booming in India is the Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) sector. KPO work requires knowledge expertise, technical and analytical, and a skilled workforce. The sectors that have potential within the KPO industry include data search, integration and management services, financial services, research and analytics, technology research, computer-aided simulation and engineering design, and professional services such as business research and legal services. Today the KPO industry in India employs approximately 2,55,000 professionals out of which approximately 12,000 are involved in Legal, Paralegal and IP related services. Assuming 25 percent of these professionals are involved in IP related services, the KPO industry today employs approximately 3000 IP professionals. Further a study by independent research company shows India will have a higher growth rate in KPO segment of 45 percent compared with 25 percent in the BPO segment. This shows that the number of IP professionals engaged in the KPO industry will be approximately 30,000 by March 2015. It is estimated that half of the countrys patent professional community, working at KPOs, will be professionals with technical degree in field of Computers, Electronics or Telecommunication. Approximately 12,000 14,000 such patent professionals will be required by 2015. si
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October 2011

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October 2011

The author is Founder, President & CEO of HelloSoft

Technology: By Krishna Yarlagadda

V.VoIP, a reality with the launch of

onsumers and Enterprise users are both eagerly waiting for the high resolution, good quality, 2-way, video and voice-chat for years now. This is all the more important for Silicon India Parivaar, who has their folks, eight thousand miles away. Their dream got close to reality, with Apple launching the Facetime, and multiple Video and VoIP applications on Android devices. But these have their own limitations--migrating between the networks and compensating for packet losses in the real-time environment. Apart from the client issues, the media quality was un-acceptable on 3G networks, due to bandwidth limitations and limited coverage of 4G WiMax Networks. This article provides an overview of some of the challenges for implementing a V.VoIP, in a real-time environment and possible improvements on 4G LTE networks.
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Mobile Broadband 4G LTE Networks

V.VoIP, over the fixed broadband (both Cable & DSL), has been around for quite some time, has been deployed and very well-accepted globally. The primary factors that contributed to its success were the guaranteed QoS, low latency, high capacity, and hence acceptable user-experience. Second and Third generation wireless-technologies, have not be able to cater to the user requirements to offer reliable V.VoIP service. While the fourth generation WiMax network was a teaser, the LTE network guarantees all the primary requirements mentioned above--bringing revolution to the world of mobile V.VoIP. LTE is now rapidly gaining momentum, with large mobile operators like AT&T, Verizon, MetroPCS, Vodafone, China Mobile, DoCoMo, showing a sense of urgency to deploy the LTE networks in short order. This is first

time ever that the operators are committed to using the Mobile broadband pipe for Voice communication. Many have already announced their plans to launch the Voice, over LTE (VoLTE) service in near future, with some launching as early as the first quarter of next year. While there were attempts made in the past to bring the voice over IP networks in a Mobile perspective, they have not been as successful due to the lack of support from the network infrastructure and operators. There was increased pressure on the operators to adopt the superior quality Video and VoIP over the mobile broadband networks, since the evolution of Smartphones. SmartPhone penetration is expected to flourish many folds over the next few years. About 65 percent of the U.S. population, or over 200 million people, will have a smartphone and/or tablet in 2015, according to the research firm In-Stat. Most of the Smartphones shipping today have multiple GHz processors, integrated with high-end graphics and video hardware; thus enabling superior quality V.VoIP user experience. Todays SmartPhones, invariably have large screens; thus further improving the end-users viewing experience. User expectations for a rich multi-media experience have exponentially increased, with the rapid growth of LTE and Smartphones. Key factors that determine the success of V.VoIP technology are as follows: 1. Improved User Experience Unlike the other wireless technologies, LTE guarantees QoS and low latencies that are pre-requisite for an intelligent 2-way conversation. In addition, higher capacity in a LTE environment enables an improved, 2-way video experience. Thus, LTE has all the ingredients to

3. Increased Battery Life LTE technology inherently, is lower power than its predecessors, such as WiMax. This can be further improved, by implementing an optimized V.VoIP application on a handset. Some of the techniques include Optimizing the voice algorithms, for the targeted processor, to run at a reduced speed; thus lowering the power consumption and increasing the battery life. Making use of the hardware accelerators, such as the hardware Video engine. Shutting down the sub-systems when not in operation. 4. Extensive Interoperability Some of the early V.VoIP implementations, though very attractive, failed miserably, as they could not communicate with other equally attractive devices and networks. For adoption across wide-range of the users, the ecosystem of Operators, Infrastructure vendors, and Client vendors have to work together very closely, to ensure that they deliver a standard-based solution that can

2. Seamless Roaming As LTE is just starting to get rolling, continuous coverage is an issue; hence it is mandatory to switch to the legacy circuitswitched, where LTE is not available. During the early deployment stages, it is very important to implement a very efficient Voice Call Continuity (VCC) algorithm, to provide a seamless voice-experience, when moving between the circuit-switched and packet-switched networks. This can be further extended to, between packet-switched networks, such as WiFi and/or 3G networks.

provide superior quality V.VoIP and increased user adoption.

Krishna Yarlagadda

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5. Reduced Time to Market While VoLTE does require implementation of some additional RFCs and features, it mostly uses the legacy VoIP and IMS-based standards, where many of the client vendors have invested heavily to make them work on low bandwidth 3G and earlier generation wireless networks. This has also given the client vendors, extended learning curve, to understand the complexities of wireless environment and address any consequences. Some of the legacy standards and protocols that 3GPP based VoLTE uses include Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) signaling, Real- time Transport Protocol (RTP), Real-Time Transport Control Protocol (RTCP), and Session Description Protocol (SDP) IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) Voice Call Continuity (VCC) Supplementary enterprise call features, like 3-way conferencing, call waiting, call transfer, call hold/resume Voice and Video Media engine, including Video and Speech Codecs, Acoustic Echo Canceller (AEC), Voice Activity Detection (VAD), Comfort Noise Generation(CNG), and other media modules Since there was no QoS on the infrastructure side, on third generation and earlier wireless technologies; it was mandatory, to handle the inefficiencies in the network, on the client side. The very robust Packet Loss Concealment (PLC) and Adaptive Jitter Buffer (AJB) algorithms were developed to cater to the packet losses in the network. To summarize, LTE ecosystem, is very much committed to provide a rich multi-media experience to the users over the mobile broadband. si
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communicate with any device, at any location, and at any time.

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October 2011

The author is CEO, Funambol

Technology: By Amit Chawla

The Next Big Thing in Mobile:

the Personal Cloud

major change is brewing in the mobile industrythe advent of the personal cloud. Mobile users, of which there are now more than five billion, will be storing more of their data and rich media in personal accounts in the cloud, also called 'digital lockers.' Personal clouds are beginning to be used by both consumers, as well as enterprise users, and there are three primary reasons why they will be storing even more data and rich media in the cloud: 1. Smartphones are evolving into powerful personal computers, which store increasing amounts of data and media. While, in the past it might have been just a minor inconvenience if your phone was lost, broken or stolen, it is now a major nuisance-given the amount of data and content stored on a users phone. Just as

Amit Chawla
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people have become aware of the need to back up critical data on personal computers, the same reasoning applies to mobile devices. By saving one's data and rich media in the cloud, the user is assured of a reliable backup of their personal or business data. 2. As smartphones and mobile data plans become ubiquitous, consumers are increasingly using multiple wireless-devices, such as two phones (one for work and another for personal use), a phone and laptop, or a phone and tablet. This will make it progressively more difficult to keep them in sync, if for example, you have some contacts on one phone and other contacts on another device, or you want to access your calendar across multiple devices. The same goes for email, pictures, videos, files, etc. While it is possible

to sync devices using a cable, the reality is that, many people do not do this, for a variety of reasons inconvenience, tediousness, technical challenge, and more. Thus, the cloud is a natural warehouse, to store digital information and to keep things in sync across devices for easy access. It also becomes an easy way to share data and media with other systems (e.g. email systems and social networks), as well as with other people (e.g. family, relatives, co-workers and colleagues). 3. The cloud will grow to become an important tool for people, to access and purchase mobile content; including music, videos, movies, e-books, games, apps, and other digital content. Although this is still in its infancy; the trend is clear that companies will use the cloud as a distribution channel, to offer users additional digital goods. Based on these trends and others, Forrester Research recently predicted, that the personal cloud will become a new mobile market, amounting to $12 billion by 2016 in the U.S. alone. Extrapolating this to a worldwide population, the market is projected to be worth $40 billion, which by comparison is twice as big as the current market for online music.

How the Personal Cloud Will Change the Mobile Industry Companies in the mobile industry are aware of the likely 'sea change' potential, of the personal cloud. They can see that mobile users will be storing additional data and rich media in the cloud, and that it is going to change the structure, as well as fortunes of many companies in the industry. Here are some of the more significant changes on the way. Apple is feverishly putting the finishing touches, on its new iCloud service, which lets users store a variety of data and media, on personal ac-

counts in the cloud. It is primarily intended for users of iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch), as well as Mac computers and laptops. As part of iCloud, iTunes will be integrated-allowing users to store iTunes purchases in the cloud, for access across Apple devices, PCs, and TVs. Google is increasingly pursuing opportunities in the mobile space. This shows that, to thrive in the mobile industry, at least three major components are needed: great handsets (hardware), a modern mobile operating system (e.g. iOS or Android), and integrated cloud services (e.g. iCloud, or Google cloud services such as Gmail, Picasa, and YouTube). Another component, as noted, is the ability to offer commercial content, such as music and videos, so that users can store both their own usergenerated content (such as their pictures and videos), as well as commercial content (such as music and movies), in one place. Other large companies, in and around the mobile industry, for example, LG, Samsung, Nokia, HTC, and RIM, are aware of how the personal cloud is changing the mobile game, and are taking various steps to address it. Mobile operators and other telecommunication service providers, such as cable companies and landline phone companies, face the question, of whether it makes sense to offer customers a personal cloud (or a personal 'business' cloud). The challenge for them is that they need to support many different phones and devices on their network, from different vendors; whereas Apple and Google, for example, only need to support their own devices. The challenge and opportunity, for them, is to support a diversity of devices, while still providing the ease-of-use, offered by the likes of Apple. At the same time, the customer relationship that service providers have

with customers, gives them a potential advantage. For example, if all of the members of a family or a workgroup use the same operator, it makes sense that the operator would provide a cloud service that works with all of their devices; allowing people to store their data and media in the cloud, and share it with each other. Another group of companies impacted by the rise of personal clouds are content companies such as Amazon and social networks, such as Facebook. They want to make sure that mobile users continue to use their sites as the primary place to access content. However, if a mobile user has multiple alternatives for storing their data and media online, it obviates the need to save data and media with the content company, or social network. In this respect, the personal cloud is both a threat, as well as an opportunity for content companies. There are numerous startups, as well as established companies, that are introducing new personal cloud services--practically on a weekly basis. This is increasing the number of options available to users, and increasing the levels of innovation and ease-of-use in the industry. In summary, the mobile world is rapidly changing. Many more people will be storing significantly more data and rich media in the cloud, which is changing many aspects of the mobile ecosystem. This will create both many new challenges, as well as opportunities. If you are interested in learning more about how people intend to use personal clouds in detail, you are invited to download a free research report, "Personal Cloud Survey: Hype vs. Reality," at http://www.funambol.com/solutions/library.php. The report analyzes people's intentions to keep data and media in the cloud, and highlights potential obstacles to adoption. si
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October 2011

The author is Director of Business Development, Sankalp Semiconductor

Technology: By Ash Patel

Creating an Ecosystem for Semiconductor Design Services

Overview The semiconductor an ecosystem with vertical design services industry is a partners, it can grow faster and growing field, due to rising costs adapt better to changing market and shortage of engineers in needs. The figure below shows countries, where IC companies the various components of a are located. According to Garsemiconductor design services nter, the number of outsourced ecosystem. chip design stats, grew by 21.4 Talent Source Engineering percent in 2010; compared to a talent is scarce and especially decline of 9 percent in 2009, and well-trained engineers. Every a rise of 6.5 percent in 2008. The service company should recogchip design services revenue, innize and understand that, engicreased by 34 percent in 2010. neers are their key assets. Chip design companies, are Business growth will be progetting comfortable working, portional to the number of enwith service providers; resulting Figure 1: Semiconductor Design Services Ecosystem gineers they can hire and in complete projects to be outretain. sourced, instead of just individFor a company to succeed, it ual blocks. For supporting the current Ecosystem The capital investment needs to have access to students and future needs of their customers, needed to start a design service from good schools, and to do so it the design service providers need to company may restrict the growth of should build strong relationships the company. If the company creates with the school management. focus on building an ecosystem.
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Training Institute Talent acquired from schools does not always have the practical experience needed to contribute to the billability of the service company. Engineers need to be trained for industry needs, and hence the need of a stateof-the-art training institute. Training institute should be run on an independent basis, by experienced teachers; at the same time it should impart some knowledge about the company culture. Partners Companies with matching ideologies and non-overlapping domains can accelerate mutual growth, by forming partnerships. Partners are a key ingredient of a semiconductor design service providers ecosystem. Chip design and manufacturing is a capital intensive and complex process, making the need for partners a necessity and not an option. Various types of partners are as follows EDA vendors Foundries Packaging vendors Test houses Service Providers covering Complimentary Domains Industry Standards Bodies Sales Representatives Service Company The design service company is the centerpiece of the ecosystem and its main objective is to provide customer satisfaction, by utilizing all the components of the ecosystem. To build a long lasting company, all factions of the ecosystem should collaborate and work as a unit. For a service company to scale, the management system should promote ownership and develop leaders. This can be done by empowering employees to make their own decisions, even though they might make some mistakes. By giving the power to make decisions, you let the employees feel that they are an integral part of the company

and they will go the extra mile to create customer satisfaction. Performance rewards should be well structured, so that the employee can correlate his or her hard work with the reward. The sense of ownership can be further strengthened, by providing stock ownership to the employees. A sense of pride and ownership is a key for long term retention of employees, and stable work force is a key to a companys success. Every company should have a social cause and allocate some of its resources towards the improvement of society. Charity work can be in the form of time or money. Companies can help local schools infrastructure or by creating employment. Goodwill created among the society and employees by social contributions, results in better business growth, hence making social cause a mutually beneficial item. Employee Development directly translates into company development and is a great tool for recruiting. Having invested in training and retaining the employees, companies should not be short sighted but should always invest in employee development. This can be done, by understanding the career aspirations of the employee and enabling him or her to achieve those goals. Leadership classes, supporting higher education, mentoring on the job, exposure to industry events, are some of the tools a company can use to develop their employees. A satisfied employee results in a satisfied customer, which translates to better business.

Company events and benefits, should be framed keeping in mind the entire family and not only the employee. If the family is happy, it is a great incentive for the employee to work hard and also a recruiting tool for the company. Medical, retirement, and emergency loans are some of the benefits a company can provide to assist the employees family. Events, such as offsite activities, sports, and cultural functions should include family, to create a strong bonding between employees. Summary - The growing focus of the semiconductor industry on reducing chip design cost and time and acquiring the ability to churn out ever more new products at shorter intervals will be a key factor, in shaping the chip design services market in 2011 and beyond. 2010 was the year of return to growth, for many third-party chip design service providers. However, in 2011, design service providers will need to "go the extra mile", to retain their customers and keep growing by providing value-added services. This further solidifies the reason to have a well functional ecosystem. si

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October 2011

The Author is Co-founder, Amitech Business Solutions

Technology: By Ruchit Patel

obile applications have become a technological battlefield today. The market has "exponential growth" phenomenon and downloads are predicted to reach 4 billion this year alone; rising to 21 billion by 2013. This isn't surprising when you look at the number of smartphones in the market and the worldwide shipments are reported to surpass 390 million by 2013; growing at a rate of 20.9 percent per year. A new report from the research firm Canalys indicates that the direct revenue from mobile app stores will almost double within the next year, to hit figures of $14.1 billion a 92 percent rise from an expected $7.3 billion in 2011. According to the Germany-based research2guidance, Android would surpass Apple's App Store by August 2011. The firm expects Android Market to reach 425,000 apps next August, effectively overtaking App Store in size. The good news for application developers is that, as the number of smartphone users increase, so does the demand for a wide range of mobile applications. Today App business is billion-dollar-Pie and everyone is jumping in to take their part of pie. The only question that remains is how do you take advantage of this opportunity, when there are already so many apps out there, and more constantly being developed? But it's never too late. At Amitech Business Solutions, we decided to get into the App business in January 2011; the next thing we had to think about, was the platform. We had few options: iOS, Android, and Blackberry to choose from. I have been iDesiliconindia

How to build Apps Business

listed in the App Store. Research says that an eye-caching icon increases the sales. What Customer can see before buying, are the Screenshots of the App. Good UI design is an important factor affecting app sales. Develop It Work on the app, according to prototype. If you don't have a team, you can hire developers from Odesk, or other freelancer portals. Developers must follow the iOS Human Interface Guidelines; read the guidelines once. Application having bad or inaccessible UI might get rejected from App Store. Get the advantage of Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Compass, and other hardware sensors.

How to Get Started? Idea: All it takes is a Good Idea. The idea can be entertaining, or a problem solver. There are unlimited possibilities what you can do with mobile devices. Your Idea can target a people, or category of store. Market research can help you, if there is already an app similar to your Idea-Read the reviews and comments of users in App store, and enhance your Idea. It's not always needed to do market research; there are hundreds of examples that developers have put wired Apps which have broken records. (Like iFart) Select a Technology Android: Get yourself an Android phone and an Android SDK. You must register to be able to distribute your products through the Android Market. There is a onetime registration fee of $25. iOS: To develop iOS, you need a Mac Computer and an iPhone/ iPad to test your Apps on the device. Get enrolled

vices fan so went for iOS and the next February we launched our first iOS app BeatMaster. After a month, we ventured into our first Android app. We realized that, for new developers the Apple's App Store platform is better to lookout, as Return-on-Investment are higher in iOS, than any other platform. There's no doubt Android Market will at some point offer more applications for download and/or purchase than Apple's App Store, as the latter's growth has been slowing down of late, while the Android application store's growth rate has been accelerating.

in the Apple iOS developer program, which costs $99/year. Download the iOS SDK and development kit from member area. Cross-Platform: There are some tools, which allow you to deploy application in multiple mobile formats. That saves time and money, if done right way. HTML5 developers can make mobile applications with the PhoneGap or Titanium Mobile frameworks. Advanced game development softwares like Unity3D, also deploys games in multiple platforms. Still, you will need to join Developer programs, to publish your apps to the App store.

Gather the Team If you are a developer, you can start on your own, but for sophisticated Apps its team game. If you are an entrepreneur having no developing experience, you need a good team of developers, and a good UI designer. Prototype Don't forget to research your competitor's app, and solve and add features which they lack. Make blueprints of the screens of the App you are planning; sketch the screens. For sophisticated app, you may sketch screen in different resolutions and landscape/portrait modes of your choice.

Prepare for Submission Once your app is ready, developers need to do several tasks, like configuring different sizes of icons, screenshots, and signing binary with provisional certificate. After submission of app, Apple takes 3to-7 days to test and approve your application.

Testing and Polishing Test your apps in all possible versions of iPhone/iPad, or other devices. It's highly recommended to test on a device, because many bugs and crashes happen only on hardware. Crashing of your app will cause the negative reviews on your App page, and high return rate. Polishing the app will make a major difference. Enhance the app with animations, Social sharing options, functionality to ask users to review your app, and custom loading animations.

Facebook fanpage. Decide the launch date, and write press releases and Blogposts; be interesting and Tweetable, post video reviews on YouTube. Send promo codes to famous blogs, and app websites to review your app. The App might get picked by famous websites, like TechCrunch, or LifeHacker ; TUAW gives high peak in app sales. You can also run an ad-campaign on ad-networks, like Admob and iAds to get targeted downloads. Getting more downloads and reviews in initial days of launch will help to get your app gain good position and get featured in stores. Massive quantities of mobile apps create competition to stay viable. A price drop, for few days will also help to get more reviews on paid-apps. Keep a track, Give updates Now your app is generating good revenues from Appstore, but your job is not over. To generate revenue for long term, you should keep a track of your users. Read the reviews they write on App Store and check crash logs. Fix the issues and problems users facing, add new features, enhance the app, and release an Update. Those were 10 steps to launch your first App in the market. Now you can try different ways for monetizing your app and generate some extra revenue.

Design It Designing is most important thing in App development. If you are a developer, hire a designer to design the UI and screens of your App. Design is very important, as you get few seconds to attract the customer when your app is

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Market your App App Store is a competitive environment; more companies and marketplaces release more applications. Against more than 140,000 apps, all screaming for attention, how do you make sure your app gets its time in the spotlight? Get a nice website and a

Pricing Strategy Download revenue can be more complex, as it involves pricing strategy. The secret to maximize download revenue, is pricing. The most popular paid applications are priced between $0.99 and $3.99; with a predominance of 99 cents applications. These applications are what we call, the "big-fast sales." Most users download them and use them once or twice; they're predominantly entertainment-based, and provide small value to the consumer, but the mass download provides great initial revenue and then stops. The most grossing applications are actually priced between $4.99 and $9.99, and account for 44

Freemium Business Model The Freemium model has a strategy that user gets the app for free, but they can pay to get more features and enhanced experience using In-AppPurchase. According to a new study by mobile app search firm Xyologic, about 11 percent of all free games in Apple's App Store, have in-app purchase for virtual goods, currency and additional features. But these Freemium apps, have an outsized influence on the App Store, making up 40 percent of all free game downloads from the store in March. This year stats are showing spectacular growth in Asian App market; especially in China app downloads have increased by 46 percent, 1.5 million daily downloads in China. Being in app business, you can take advantage of this growth, hire translators, and localize your apps for Asian languages. Amitech Business Solutions has been in app business from 10 months and have produced top ranking apps; I have been developing iOS apps and I have learned that, you have to think like a user, to get successful in the app business. si
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Monetize app with Advertising Revenue from advertising is similar to brand-driven applications; the approach aims to reach as many users as possible, by providing free entertainment or utilities, and to collect revenue through third party advertising like Admob from Google, iAds from Apple, or inMobi from Mobclix. Mobile Ads give higher eCPM values than web ads; whch means you can generate revenue for an ad impression. Monetizing app with Ads is more preferred for apps which engage users for long time.

percent of revenue. These applications are downloaded less frequently, but used more often, as they usually provide tangible value

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October 2011

Kamesh Nagarajan is a Senior Vice President in Morgan Stanley Smith Barneys Global Wealth Management Division with over 12 years of experience. His team, The Fifth Avenue Group, specializes in helping corporate executives with concentrated stock planning, and in advising physicians and entrepreneurs on comprehensive wealth management issues. Nagarajan began his career in Rochester, New York, practicing law at Harris Beach LLP prior to joining Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. Nagarajan has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Vassar College and a Juris Doctorate from Syracuse University College of Law. Entrepreneurs need for financial advisors Entrepreneurs never have set income; they never take income out of the company. The incomes they make are minimal. So learning to manage that is very important. Hence, for an entrepreneur it is really important to surround himself with advisors whom he can trust from the early days. Trust only comes with time. Once your company evolves and grows big, everybody wants to be your friend. Getting very strong advisers early on from the personal side and from the business side is very crucial for the entrepreneur. These advisors can help him with questions like How do I structure my contract, How do I go to VCs?, How do I divide the shares of the company? Entrepreneurs usually face liquidity issues. Startups and entrepreneurial ventures need money, but as they grow, they need good strong advisors. For lot of these entrepreneurs they need tax advisors. So they need to work closely with their CPAs on creating tax sufficient investments. I also think that
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Entrepreneurs Need Financial Advisors from Early Stage

VP Profile: By Jaya Smitha Menon

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Kamesh Nagarajan

India when compared to U.S. The way of doing business is very different in both the countries.But there exists a commonality which is very exciting. India today is probably what U.S. was when the Rockefellers and JP Morgan were building this country. Its a time of phenomenal entrepreneurship in India; its a time of unbelievable growth. It is like their renaissance. But we being

Entrepreneurs Dilemma I think some of the things that have changed over 13 years is, the financial world has become a lot more complicated today, between tax laws and global investments, the landscape is more sophisticated which means the need for good advice is stronger than its ever been. You have economic volatility globally. You get so much information when you pick up the newspaper, or you see the CNBC and Bloomberg. But that lacks good advice. The more the information, more people get over loaded; but then they dont know what to do. So the financial landscapes are lot more sophisticated with ever changing tax laws and globalization. The need to have good strong advisors has never been stronger.

for an entrepreneur it is very important to look at the liability part of the balance sheet. Everyone thinks that wealth Manager is for Managing wealth. Its true, but they also manage liability, whether it is about the entrepreneur buying a house or leasing a car. Also in future they might think of going public. So how do you go about on the IPO road? There will be a lot of people who will be pitching you at that point because you have built a great company. But if you have an advisory core group already in place, it is easy to plan things such as succession planning, expansion and so on.

Indians, we tend to be more pessimistic. We hear everyone talk about the problems in India; but according to me India has attained an impressive growth. To be more specific, it has been only 63 years since India got its freedom, whereas U.S. got it almost two centuries back. India has achieved significant growth in this small period.

Reflections of a Second Generation Indian American My value system came very early on by watching my parents. My dad came to U.S. in 1952, travelling 22 days on a boat, not even a plane. He worked very hard in IBM for his career. He never asked for glory, he humbly did his job. My mom also came here, she did her double masters. They set a very good example of work. We understand the value system that our parents gave us which was to understand our culture and above all know your subject matter. However during our times, we dont strive for money or glory but we do strive to measure up to sacrifices our parents made. They made great sacrifices that we never have to make. They did it for a better life and we almost owe it to them and ourselves to be the best we can be. You look at what Sanjay Gupta is doing in the Second generation hes always pushing himself to be better. Its not about money, its about how can I be better? When you see Indra Nooyi, when you see these people, its not about striving for money but its a passion for knowledge that I think is the greatest lesson we learnt in the Indian community. A passion for education to keep learning always. This is the greatest gift my parents have given me. I am a Senior Vice President now but I never assume I know everything. I think its the greatest lesson that we have and will be giving to the future gen-

Role models in the journey I had a lot of role models. When I read stories of Dhirubhai Ambani, I very much look up to the things he stood for, the things he was able to do in his lifetime, though the kids are different. But surely Dhirubhai Ambani! I like Warren Buffet here, and Donald Trump. I like any entrepreneurial story for that matter. There is a lot of ways that your parents have influenced you, because as Indian kids growing up back then we were pretty sheltered. We went home to our dosa, rice, rasam, sambar and our lifestyle. And not till were we much older did we go to other peoples households and learn what American families did. I was born in the 69 and growing up in the 70s, so really our role models were the ethics and values we learnt from our parents and our in-laws. si

eration. I might have resented it earlier on when I had to study and the other kids were playing. But that is a pretty big lesson of growing up and its very helpful to have role models to look up to.

According to Gartner, CIOs need to consider adopting industrialized, low-cost IT services to reduce the cost of running the business, while controlling the risk, integration and customization issues, to increase the business value of IT and enhance its perception by the business.

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October 2011

siTech20
U.S INDEX
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 RANK COMPANY
Index of the top tech public companies in U.S founded and managed by Indians

Stock Price (US$)Closing 09.29.2011 65 44 18 41 32 23 22 23 13 28 39 12 8 12 8 5 19 39 22 22

52 Week HIGH 83 62 45 54 42 31 36 41 19 48 58 25 19 28 13 8 34 45 27 26

52 Week LOW 54 38 18 32 29 17 16 16 12 25 34 9 7 11 6 4 16 32 18 11

% CHANGE IN PRICE 4 Weeks 52 Weeks 3 -4 -18 11 -3 10 5 21 -7 -13 -5 9 0 -14 0 0 12 0 -12 0 0 5 -42 8 0 28 0 -43 -28 -3 -19 -33 -33 -43 -33 25 -42 8 16 83

CAPITALIZATION In $ Millions 19750 1850 9810 9720 6100 3790 2280 854 1370 1370 2090 681 547 503 847 326 533 674 663 369

Cognizant Tech. Syntel Juniper Networks SanDisk Corporation Microchip Tech Tibco Software Aruba Networks Make My Trip Qlogic Corporation Cavium Networks Concur Technologies iGate Ixia NetScout Infinera Corporation Magma Design Sycamore Networks OSI Systems EXL Service holdings Keynote Systems

CTSH SYNT JNPR SNDK MCHP TIBX ARUN MMYT QLGC CAVM CNQR IGTE XXIA NTCT INFN LAVA SCMR OSIS EXLS KEYN

INDIA INDEX
RANK COMPANY 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Index of the top tech public companies in India

Stock Price INR Closing 29.9.2011 2551 1061 348 571 410 71 348 835 289 58 84 63 351 23 834 135 44 112 28 43

52 Week HIGH 3499 1247 500 802 527 102 712 1239 509 462 188 127 571 75 1395 213 72 237 64 95

52 Week LOW 2162 869 311 539 368 54 308 657 250 48 83 58 321 20 791 115 43 95 27 41

% CHANGE IN PRICE 4 Weeks 52 Weeks 11 4 6 -10 5 9 -4 13 2 16 -28 -7 3 0 -13 4 -6 12 -7 -2 -16 15 -21 -28 -2 -28 -44 -30 -34 -86 -49 -47 -30 -67 -49 -19 -35 -40 -45 -17

CAPITALIZATION In Rs. Crore 146000 208000 884845 7195 28100 8354 7312 3849 3871 561 1366 1400 1405 382 2527 1345 732 300 289 296

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Infosys Technologies Tata Consultancy Services Wipro Ltd Tech Mahindra HCL Technologies Mahindra Satyam Mphasis Financial Technologies Patni Comp GTL Ltd Rolta India HCL Infosystems Mindtree Moser Baer CMC Ltd Polaris Software NIIT Ltd Sasken Communications Technology Sonata Software Subex Systems
October 2011

t is true that Tablets are here to stay. These small, sleek and easy to use devices, have definitely caught the consumers attention. We saw Apple ruling the market, but with a price which does not suit everyones wallet. After the phenomenal success of iPad, we saw many big players entering the same space.But none has been able to crack the dominance of Apple's iPad; whether it be Samsungs Galaxy Tab, Motorola Xoom, HP TouchPad, RIM Playbook or LGsOptimus Pad. Most of them have been greeted with mediocre reviews and tepid sales. In a market where all is not going well, on September 28, 2011 Amazon's Jeff Bezos introduced the 7-inch Android tablet with a $199 price tag. At $199, Kindle Fire will be the cheapest of its kind when it is released in the U.S. next month.According to research firm eDataSource, pre-order sales for new Kindle Fire tablet totalled 95,000 units in the first day of sale. Though price and preorder volumes say it all, these are not the only indicators of an approaching success which is going to fizz the tablet market. So what can the players learn from Amazons approach? Especially the Indian players who did try their luck in this market, have much to learn from Amazons strategy and approach. The Desi Euphoria Back home, there has been some action in the tablet space by home grown companiesOlive Telecoms Olivepad, Notion Inks Adam, Reliances 3G Tab, Infibeams Phi tablet, BhartiAirtelsBeetel, HCLs ME tablet, Binatone Home Surf, Accord@pad, Wesproepad,
siliconindia

Kindle Fire: What India needs to Learn?

By Pradeep Shankar

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Beyond the Device In the modern era of consumer electronics devices, if you are just building a device, you are unlikely to succeed, Bezos says, Today it is about the software, the software on the device and the software in the cloud. It is a seamless servicethis is Kindle greeting you by name when you pull it out of the box. Some of the companies building tablets didnt build services, they just built tablets. For example, Kindle Fire comes with a new kind of Web browser called Amazon Silk, which weds the tablet to Amazon's cloud network.

Lava, Micromax are battling for a share of the Indian tablet market. Their mantra: Affordable tablets. However, affordable product or technology alone is not the recipe for success in the marketplace. There is no new technology introduced that gives Fire an advantage over anyone; all they did was make a good product at a reasonable price. The key to the success, is smart marketing or smart business strategy. The Kindle Fire may be poised to win the Android tablet war, but Bezos doesnt think of it as a tablet. We think of Kindle Fire as an end-toend service. The new Kindle strategy is terrific. It's about the content and the price. Bezos sees the Kindle Fire, holistically as a delivery device, which will help unleash all the digital media services Amazon offers. As Amazon puts it, "18 million songs, movies, TV shows, books, magazines, apps and games." Can the other players in the android market beat this volume of content?

Thats the reason Kindle Fire is producing more optimism, than all the non-iPad tablet launches combined. People do indeed like the idea of a purpose-built device that does a few things well. Bezos exceptional ability, to marry commerce and technology in creative ways," and "his sheer inventiveness and willingness to take the risks," should decide the success of Amazon and that of Kindle Fire.It is now going to be an exciting market, where Amazon is leading and paving the way. Innovation also means filling the gap and improvising the product. Can the other players follow suit? Lets wait and watch. si

In the modern era of consumer electronics devices, if you are just building a device, you are unlikely to succeed

October 2011