Indian Entrepreneurs & Social Networking

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Entrepreneurs, Social networking

Reuters has a blog post about recent cases of Indian entrepreneurs hitting it big through social networking sites such as DesiMartini and MingleBox .

Reliance Entertainment plans to invest US $100 million on its own social networking website BigAdda.com.

The blog post lists some facts why Indian Entrepreneurs and Venture Capitalists bet on social networking business models :

• 44% of the total number of Indians who logon to the internet use the social networking websites

• Out of that, Orkut which is owned by Google owns 64% of the social networking market share. It is estimated that Orkut has approximately 69 million users as per August 2007 estimates. Out of which, at least 16.9% Orkut users are from India.

• Nasscom in its 2007 report has estimated that the number of broadband subscribers, currently 1 Million, will hit 20 million users in the next 3 years and the number of internet users in India which is currently 40 million will rise to 100 million users by 2010

• According to our source, 54% of India’s population is under the age of 20 years which is nearly 540 Million people under 20 years of age

• India is known as the IT hub of the world

• India signs up more than 7 Million new telecom users each month. Indian telecom service providers such as Bharti, Vodafone, Essar, and Tata Teleservices are considering the proposition of adding social networking services to their user base

• According to a Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Report, the number of Indians using their mobiles to login to the internet has almost doubled last year from 16 million to 38 million just last year

• With a population of more than a billion people, India has become the golden pot for investors worldwide.

These are impressive numbers indeed and speak volumes of the potential business opportunities ahead for entrepreneurs in this space.

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Subroto Bagchi: Gardener

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leadership, MindTree Consulting, Subroto Bagchi

Subroto Bagchi, COO of MindTree Consulting is to my mind an example of today’s successful executive.

He is the author of “The High Performance Entreprenuer” . This book has excellent and highly practical insights to offer to those who wish to pursue the entrepreneurial path.

Today’s newspapers carry the announcement of his assuming a new position and- almost definitely an unique title -within MindTree , that of “Gardener”.

In the old days, we used to say of those who were good with people development that they had “‘green fingers”. An analogy from gardening where some have the knack of making plants bloom in almost any circumstance.

Knowing Subroto as I do, I am sure this investment being made by MindTree (and it is a big investment, make no mistake about that) will pay off manifold.

He is excellent with people – be they employees or customers and that makes him one of the best leaders I have come across.

Well done, Murali

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Muralitharan, Test cricket records

It was simply a matter of time. Muttiah Muralitharan became the highest wicket taker in Test cricket when he took wicket no. 709 yesterday.

What made the celebration doubly sweet was that he achieved the feat in his hometown of Kandy yesterday against England.
Murali’s feat should be seen in the context that he reached the milestone in his 116th game.  Shane Warne retired from Test cricket this year with 708 wickets from 145 matches.

The 35 year old Muralitharan holds other bowling records in Test cricket including the most five-wicket (61) and ten-wicket hauls (20). His family is encouraging him to reach his target of 1000 Test wickets.

Murali is an ace. I feel this target is within his capabilities.

Action Planning – Key to Success

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A Step A Day, action plans, personal development

What separates achievement from desire?
What separates excellence from mediocrity?

Action planning is the key to success. If you don’t formulate and implement carefully thought out action plans for personal development, I am afraid, the desire to improve will remain- a desire.

Many of us have dreams of what we want to achieve, what we want to be. However, not everyone achieves these dreams. The failure to achieve our fullest potential can be traced back to a lack of action to fulfill those dreams.

Saying “I want to be a more effective manager” or “I want to improve my leadership capability” is not enough. These are broad statements of intent. To improve your chances of success, your action plans should satisfy the mnemonic SMART.

S-Specific
M-Measurable
A-Achievable
R-Realistic
T-Time bound

Here’s a process I suggest:

1.    Refresh yourself on what you want to achieve.
2.    Draw up a short –list of possible actions.
3.    Run each of the possible actions against the criteria of “Criticality” and “Immediacy”. Those actions which score high on both these dimensions should feature in your final list.
4.    Formulate your action plan keeping SMART in mind.
5.    Begin with an action verb.

Examples:

•    Prepare Mr. Bala to take up the higher responsibilities of Program Lead for Project xyz by March 2008
•    Reduce costs on item 4 by 10 % with reference to same period for last year
•    Complete certification program of abc conducted by xyz with grade pqr by March 2008.

And yes, don’t try to implement too many actions at one time. Choose no more than 3-5 actions. Choose these well.

Choose those which will have the biggest impact on your overall performance.

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