India's best Product Companies

Just few days back,there was a discussion here as to why there aren't more product startups/companies in India.The two main reasons for not having more product companies in India are listed below:

1. Development of a software product requires more investment and also needs excellent marketing.The risk involved is too high(This is the most obvious reason)
2. (This was really shocking for me)To launch a software product,you need to be in a First world nation and not India.This makes me wonder,though there is a huge IT boom in India,it is still not considered an ideal destination

Business Today has given a very good analysis of "India's hottest software Product Companies" and some of the prominent products like FlexCube, Tally were the obvious contenders in the list but there were some surprises too in the list.Keep on reading.....

The list of the India's 10 prominent product companies is given below(the complete article can found in Business Today-February25,2007):

1. 3i Infotech:
Revenues: Rs 445.1 cr
Flagship Product: Kastle-A universal banking product that covers origination, srvicing and collection of funds
Facts: As per a survey by Dataquest, 3i has become the forth largest player in the Indian products market.What helped 3i is acquisition of small firms like DataCons, FDG and Stet,half of 3i's revenues comes from Products!!!

2. Infosys Technologies:
Revenues: Rs 391 cr(4.83% of Infosys's revenues)
Flagship Product: Finacle- A universal banking solution
Facts: In the year 2006, Finacle fetched $81.86 million in revenues.As per Merwin Fernandes(VP-Global Head,Sales & Marketing), "Finacle is growing faster than products like FlexCube and Temenos,but at a smaller base"

3. IBS Software:
Revenues: Rs 225 cr
Flagship Product: aIRES-Passenger reservation and inventory management system.
Facts: After 9/11, IBS decided to improve its domain expertise in travel and tourism industry by building three software products- aIRES, iCargo and iLogistics.

4. Ittiam:
Revenues: Rs 36 cr
Flagship Product: DSP(Digital Signal Procssing) solutions for portable media players
Facts: The company name Ittiam is inspired by a one liner philosophy "I think therefore I am".For third year in a row,Ittiam has been voted as world's most preferred provider of DSP based IP in a survey of DSP professionals.

5. Ramco Systems:
Revenues: Rs 194 cr
Flagship Product: Enterprise Series-ERP package targetted at primarily small businesses
Facts: Ramco has never tried to compete with the bigger players like SAP , Oracle in the ERP market but has always focussed on smaller companies and domestic markets for its expansion.As per the COO of Ramco Systems,"Cost is not the only reason why customers come to Ramco but Ramco also provides an excellent software application that not only addresses functional requirements but also enhance IT capability of the customers"

6. Sasken Communication Technologies:
Revenues: Rs 339.69 cr
Flagship Product: NA - Solutions in millions of cellphones used globally
Facts: Sasken was founded by Rajiv Mody in 1989 in a garage in San Jose , California as "Silicon Automation Systems" and later moved to Gujarat as ASIC Technologies and than to Bangalore as "Sasken".Its modem software is into 55 million handsets globally and its application suite is installed in more than 8 million smart phones

7. Subex Azure:
Revenues: Rs 172 cr
Flagship Product: RocWare - Operational efficiency and service agility software suite
Facts: In seven years(since 1999), Subex is made seven acquisitions worth $323.5 million!!!With the acquisition of Canadian company,Syndesis(for $164.5 million) Subex's products have expanded from telecom fraud management(Ranger) and billing solutions(Concilia) to revenue enhancing solutions(Moneta and Optima)

8. Tally Solutions:
Revenues: Rs 120 cr
Flagship Product: Tally 9.0 accounting package
Facts: Tally has 90% market share in the domestic market for accounting software .Tally claims to have 2 million users in 92 countries.Now,Tally is looking at ERP solutions for small businesses and another one in the retail industry.

9. Talisma:
Revenues: NA
Flagship Product: Talisma CIM-Multi Channel customer interaction management solution
Facts: Even though, Talisma is in competition with the stronger players like SAP, Siebel etc in the CRM and CIM market ,it has around 800 customers worldwide and also expects to add 50+ customers(big and small) every quarter.For its progress,Talisma believes in word of the mouth marketing and on Search Engine based marketing.

10. Tejas Networks:
Revenues: Rs 250 cr
Flagship Product: Optical networking products
Facts: It as co-founded by Sanjay Nayak along with Gururaj Desh Deshpande of Sycamore Networks.Even with bigger players like ZTE, Huawei and Cisco operating in the same domain,Tejas has around 25% market share in the segment it operates in!!!

WikiCamp: In a Nutshell

It has been almost two days since the Wiki fever is over and I have been waiting and waiting for the slides to be uploaded on SlideShare.Finally,I was able to find Soumya's session on "How ways Wiki changed the way I work-A true story".I missed this informative session but finally got it on SlideShare

There was a session on "Semantic Web 2.0" by Narian-CEO of 360 degrees and trust me it was a wonderful session.For the people who have missed the session or have missed WikiCamp , do not miss this one by any chance
I hope that other presentations would be soon uploaded on Slideshare!!!

Unplug Videos with FireFox

May be, I was somewhat late in noticing this Firefox plugin but like me there would be many others who might have missed this one.Hence,thought of updating this on my blog

Many people might have wanted to grab the videos on YouTube(or some other site where live streaming of video occurs) and Unplug is the solution to all your problems

What is UnPlug?
UnPlug is an extension which lets you save video and audio which is embedded on a webpage - it's a video download tool

What can UnPlug do?
UnPlug works for lots of sites including Youtube, IFilm, current.tv, MySpace(video) and lots more.Unlike many other extensions, UnPlug scans the page, and if it doesn't know there the data comes from it can guess - correctly most of the time.

My Experience with UnPlug:
After installing UnPlug for FireFox 2.0,I tried unplugging my favourite movie "Guru" and as per my expectation,it was excellent.It saved the file in a .flv format and you can download flv player from here
I saw the feedback for UnPlug and found that the user might encounter some problems with the Firefox versions which are older than 2.0

[My Experience with UnPlug]

Wanna download UnPlug?

You can download this excellent extension from here.For playing Unplugged files,you can download the flv player from here

Jimmy Wales speaks at WikiCamp

Reached the venue Tidel Park at around 9:30 AM and was good to see so many techie guys around in one room.There was Jimmy Wales,the founder of the Wikipedia talking about WiKi and its journey.Some of the interesting during this entire session with Jimmy Wales which lasted around 1.5 Hours is below:

a. WiKi and Search Transparency:
The question is what the traditional search engine companies take some good stuff from the Wiki?.As per Jimmy,this is not a potential danger.Security through obscurity is a bad idea!!Hence,there is no danger in making the search open to the entire world.During the course of the same question,Jimmy revealed some facts of the Wikipedia foundation:
1. 10% of the money goes to the growth of the WikiMedia foundation.
2. There are only 31 employees working full time for Wikipedia.

b. What about the funding model of WikiPedia?
Donations come from the general public and this is where the major funding comes for Wikipedia and money comes from all over the world.There was recently a false news that the WikiPedia foundation had a fund problem and this is where Jimmy completely denied the news.

c. So where does Wikipedia get the revenues from?
The entire revenue comes from advertising and it is only through Google Ads

d. Why do you so less on your wordpress blog?
Jimmy Wales blogs here. Jimmy is very much afraid of the press and said that "What if he misses a comma in a sentence,than he has to wait 2-3 days with the press"

e. Business Model in the Open Source World:
Firefox is an excellent example of an open source browser.It gets around 100m$ every year.Also,I(Himanshu) was surprised to know that "Every Google search in the Firefox leads to some amount of donation to the FireFox(Mozilla Foundation)

f. How about donating of computer resources to the Wikipedia foundation?
1. Latency problems may arise in case of Peer to Peer networks.
2. User privacy would be a problem.For Wiki Foundation,the bandwidth would cost around 25000$/month.Jimmy found very difficult to reveal that "There is a major internet company in the US that has already offered to host Wikipedia for free but the Wikipedia foundation has not accepted the offer.

g. What about using Wikipedia as a source of delieverables in our day to day business?
The hierarchy business is all nonsense.I don't believe in it.Instead,grass roots communication can help a company grow better.BestBuy is an excellent retailer in the US.It is a company that follows the grass roots communications rule.In BestBuy,some guys install stereos since it is their job and some install them since they are all stereo geeks.

Reached Chennai but missed Genesis

This update would be late since, I reached Chennai at around 6:00 AM in the morning And my bus journey from Bangalore to Chennai was a pretty good one.The person sitting next to me Sayantan Dasgupta was reading "Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid by Dr C K Prahalad" and this made me wonder whether he wanted to be/he is a "Social Entrepreneur".So,with this note,I thought it would nice to start a conversation.

Sayantan is working as a Manager in a firm and his trip to Chennai was not for WikiCamp but a competition which I always wanted to attend "Genesis in IIT Chennai which was aimed at Social Entrepreneurship"and as you might have guessed "Sayantan's business plan was shortlisted among the finalists and he was there to give a presentation on the same".So what the winners of the competition get is given below:

Some of the presentations can be downloaded from here but except for one presentation by Mr K Satyanarayan,Director of Director,New Horizon Media rest all is general stuff on Social Entrepreneurship

I would be watching this space on Genesis for the presentations from the other participating companies as well

My best wishes to Sayantan for this competition.Wonder if my friend Harinath,the new age Social Entrepreneur would have participated in this competition?
Rest updates from WikiCamp tomorrow..Keep watching this space for more

Google Speaker Series: Vint Cerf,the father of Internet in India live!!!

22nd February 2007,5:30 PM was a date(and time) to remember since, people in India could hear the "Father of Internet" live in Ambedkar Bhavan,Bangalore.Yes,I am referring to Sir Vint Cerf,the brain who co-invented the TCP/IP protocol and has been in this internet stage since the early days of ARPANET.He is also called as the "Father of Internet".

Google has launched the Google Speaker Series and this is was the first and the most memorable one in the series.The talk by Sir Vint Cerf was about "The future of Internet" and what all innovations can be done using the internet.You can know more about Sir Vint Cerf here


Discussions at the Talk:
The talk started around 5 minutes late[which is acceptable as per Indian standards ] and Prasad Ram,CTO at Google India inaugurated the event and gave a warm welcome to Sir Cerf.Well, even though there was darkness in the auditorium, I was able to take down notes of some of the interesting points Sir Cerf mentioned about the internet.They are mentioned below:

1. Internet should make the world's information accessible across all the platforms
2. There has been a huge growth in the internet usage across the world and there are total 400 million internet users in Asia of which 40 million(10%) are in India.Along with the internet,mobile has also been becoming more and more important in day to day life.
3. All of us know internet operates with the transmission of packets from the source to the destination.Well,but Sir Vint Cerf had a point "Do the internet packets have the intelligence to know what information is going across the internet(ie. whether it is audio,video etc)"?
4. Things which we cannot predict in this industry:

• How long would it take to write a program
• How many bugs would we find in our code
• Does the program do what it was supposed to do
• Is this message spam?
• And many more......

5. Security issues in the internet:

• OS security
• DNS and BGP authenticity
• Dual core chips and project MAC's

6. Technology called as "Semantic Networking" can help make search better."Auto Tagging" can be used to make this happen.For eg. If you want to search for "Tommy", you might be referring to "Tommy Dog" or "Tommy Hilfigher" hence, a tag like "Dog" or "Hilfigher" against "Tommy" would help make search simple.
7. This is not Web 2.0 but it is the arrival of new phase of internet hence it cannot be tagged as 2.0.Technologies like Google Maps,Wikipedia and many more contribute to "Sharing of information which contributes to the power of internet"
8. Now this one is really called as "Out of the Box" thinking.There was a talk about "Refrigerator having intelligence to know what is there inside the fridge,what is the expiry date and this would be possible with RFID.Imagine,the Fridge sending an mail to the owner about the recipe that he can make with the vegetables kept inside the fridge.This is the power of RFID and the way Sir Cerf was speaking , it seemed that this age is not so far

Interesting inventions with the internet:
a. Project called "Interplanetary Internet".The objective of the Interplanetary Internet project is to define the architecture and protocols necessary to permit inter operation of the Internet resident on Earth with other remotely located internet's resident on other planets or spacecraft in transit.You can know more about "Interplanetary Internet" here. And yes important to know that is it not a Google Project

b. A guy thought that he cannot use the internet while he sliding and this led to the invention of the "Surf Board".So now he can slide as well as surf the internet at the same time

The session had a Q&A session where most of the questions were targeted to the recruitment in Google and hence was not as per the expectation

End of the Talk:
The memorable 1.5 hours session ended at a very nice note.There was a comment from the audience:
"Now I know why browsing on the internet is called "CIRF(ing)"(Surfing).Thanks to the Sirf Vint Cerf, the Father of Internet. -From the Son of Internet.

Photo Gallery:
Thanks to Lakshman Srikanth for his photo courtesy.You can find photographs covering the entire event here.

Memories from the event:
My friend Abhay Kumar was able to get Sir Vint Cerf's autograph in this PDA phone and that would be on my blog once I get his autograph

Dr CK Prahalad on 'Future India'

Just happened to speak to my friend Manish and guess what "He happened to meet Dr C K Prahalad, the author of the book "Fortune at the bottom of the Pyramid" and was he was lucky enough to ask him few questions".But the points that Dr Prahalad has stressed upon in this short conversation is excellent and definitely according India has a very bright future

The most interesting and motivating parts of the conversation are given below:

Availability of resources in India:
As per Dr Prahalad, these are types of resources in India
1. Misallocated resources
2. Trapped resources
3. Wasted resources

For effective utilization of resources , "we have to convert our asset to capital"

Strengths of India:
a. Remote Delivery:
The actual progress in India is not only IT but also Medical Transcription,Call Center.An excellent example : "Now it is very simple to make a Jyoti to speak English in an American Accent , all due to call centers in India

b. Global scale:
There are no of problems like water,power but we need to export it.There is excellent infrastructure to combat these problems and we need more companies like Reliance.

c. Emerging Competence Base:
Post-liberalization era has opened up the door for competition in the global market. We have opportunities in India also to utilize that same developed competency.

Manish's Q&A session with Dr. Prahlad:

Q. Your views about brain drain?
A. First of all, I do not like this word, brain drain. Let me remind you that Mahatma Gandhi was also NRI. When you are abroad, you can see the India form outside. You do not have to face day to day problem that you are facing here. You can see the phenomenal great strength of India.

Thanks Manish for sharing this wonderful piece of information with us.You can find the entire coverage of this interesting talk here

"The Entrepreneur" on CNBC TV18

It was just a few days back while watching CNBC , I came across the new show called "The Entrepreneur" which would be hosted by my favourite hostess Shereen Bhan(of the Young Turks fame).

Nothing much has been revealed about the show on the CNBC website, but the main aim of the show is "To bring out more entrepreneurs from India and hence promote the feeling of Entrepreneurship among Indians".

Now I guess,if the idea of any Entrepreneur is good than would it be funded by VCs?If this is a case, than surely it would be one of the most eagerly awaited shows in my list

Companies showcased in DEMO 2007

In one of my previous post,I had covered the companies which were covered in Proto.Just felt worth putting the current post on my blog, which has the list of the 10 companies which were showcased in DEMO 2007.

The 10 companies which were showcased for DEMO 2007 in US are listed below:

a. eJamming:
eJamming provides the musicians to be in synchronization over the internet.A lovely website for online music collaboration and a must for music lovers

b. Jaman:
Jaman is the way people discover, enjoy and share world cinema. Jaman's global on line community is pioneering social cinema. It is a new destination for movie-goers to watch and discuss the world's best films.
More information on Jaman Blog

c. MyDesignIn:
In plain words MyDesignIn is "A social planning and design site that simplifies any remodeling project".MyDesignIn allows users to collect home design ideas and artifacts online using browser buttons.

d. OurStory:
OurStory has taken one step ahead in the photo revolution.Now you can organize your favorite stories, photos, videos, quick notes, and letters once and for all.So why was OurStory founded, this is what Andy Halliday,CEO has to say:

Even when I was younger, I dreamed of having some place, some way to hold on to my memories and those life lessons gathered along the way. With each passing year there was more I wanted to record, but also growing was the feeling that I would never catch up with telling my story, the stories of the people I had learned from, or even be able to recall the moments and memories that had mattered most so far.
As I began to lose some of the important people who had been part of my life journey, I longed even more for a way to tell their story so that I, and those who came after me, could understand and learn from the people that they were. And that’s where OurStory began.

e. BlogWerx:
Their post Sentinel is targetted to combat blog theft and plagriasm.Sentinel monitors the blog content, scans the net use proprietary algorithms and informs the blog owner of full or partial content reproduction.There are more reasons to use Sentinel here

f. SplashCast:
This is what SplashCast says about itslf "SplashCast enables anyone to create streaming media 'channels' that combine video, music, photos, narration, text and RSS feeds. These user-generated channels can be played and easily syndicated on any web site, blog, or social network page. When channel owners modify their channel, their content is automatically updated across all the web pages 'tuned' to that channel"

g. Total Immersion:
Total Immersion’s software enables the real-time integration of interactive 3D graphics into live video flows.Applications range from media/entertainment to toys.And there is lots more to see which you can check on Total Immersion

h. TrailFire:
This is what TrailFire says about itslf "Trailfire enables you to discover the web through the expertise of others. Follow a trail and find what you need. Or share your own expertise by making a trail of web pages."

i. Whisher:
This is one of the coolest and unique facility given by any company.This is what Wisher says about itself "It’s a software application that you install on your computer and helps you get free WiFi access all around the world.Additionally it offers a range of tools and services that will take your wireless experience to a new level"
More information on Whisher Blog

j. ZoomInfo:
This is what ZoomInfo has says about itself "ZoomInfo, the premier summarization search engine, delivers fresh, comprehensive information on over 34 million business professionals and 2 million companies across virtually every industry.ZoomInfo finds, understands and extracts information from millions of online sources such as Web sites, press releases, electronic news services and SEC filings and summarizes the information into a comprehensive format. Basically, ZoomInfo creates structure out of the chaos of the Web".

You can find more detailed information on Alex's Blog

And the winner is Thoughtsprevail.....

Hey guys, if you remember I had participated in the startups.in contest which was targeted towards "promoting entrepreneurship"and the give away from the contest was my eagerly awaited book "Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki

Guess what, Thoughtsprevail was selected as one of the winners,with an overall rating of 4/5 by the elite panel of judges Ashish Kumar of Tekriti Software, Deap Ubhi of Burrp and Preeti Shah of CopperPages

All the contest entries can be found here and my entry is at location#10 in the comments section(see the image below).Do not miss my complete article which was sent for participation here

You can check what the other winners had to say about "Promoting Entrepreneurship" from the startups.in winners post

Also,my heartiest congratulations to my fellow participants Alok Srivatsava and Nigam.Way to go guyz!!!

India Entrepreneurship Week (Feb 24-Mar 03,2007)

India is celebrating the Entrepreneurship Week from February-March,2007 at the National Entrepreneurship Network.Before participating in the events you need to the Entrepreneurial Pledge after which you can register here.

Guess what,there are various contests ongoing on the National Entrepreneurship Network , but one which caught my attention was the One Liner Contest.The contest question(shown below in blue) is simple(yet difficult):

‘What does entrepreneurship mean to you?’ in your own words (carefully chosen sentence with a maximum length of 110 characters including spaces).

You can find more details about the One Liner Contest here

LinkedIn in a Box

LinkedIn is one of the best Business Networking sites which I have encountered till date.In the Indian scenario,we have TechTribe which is definitely hot among the Indians.

LinkedIn now has gone one step further and this time it has come with the LinkedIn widget which contains your LinkedIn information in a box.The settings of the widget are also configurable and it definitely gives a royal look

You can check out LinkedInaBox Official Blog for more information.

Time to see my LinkedIn profile in a box.Just click on the information appearing inside the box and there you can see the entire information in just a small box

Are difficulties (so) important for success in Life?

Just thought of writing this article four days back but had a very busy schedule.So let me go to the past tense and try to recollect my thoughts and put them in this post.

Dated 16th February,2007: It was just a normal working day and guess what "I walked all the way from Koramangala to my house in Indiranagar(which is around 15KM) and this where I tried to recollect some memorable things in my life that have changed my professional and personal life." and this post was born.So here it goes:

Lesson 1:
It was very difficult getting a good job after passing out in the year 2001.Yes,dot com bust and Y2K were responsible for this and to some extent even I was responsible!!! Imagine a situation where a middle class boy living in Mumbai is not getting a job even after doing his so called (computer) engineering and damn I finally got a job where I was getting paid mere 4000 bucks(there is nothing to hide here).It was in 2003 when I decided to quit my job and move to Bangalore, which was one of the biggest risks in my life and now I feel my life has traveled a full circle.
Learning:
I never thought of having any kind of entrepreneurial skills but this incident made me realize that I can take risks which is in the genes of Entrepreneurs.And yes,this blog has been my friend, philosopher and guide in this journey.Remember "The biggest risk in life is not taking one".
Did you know "N R Murthy was refused a job in Wipro before he started Infosys"

Lesson 2:
This incident would rather seem funny to you but I taken guts to write the truth.The same day,I got a call from Citibank officer for a credit card and he asked my Driving License as a proof(since,every person knows how to drive,isn't it?).I replied in negation and believe me,he was shocked after hearing this.But this is a truth which I have to accept.I still have to learn driving a car or a bike,but I don't regret this since,it opens a world of opportunities for me.
Learning:
I like going by bus and also by auto rickshaws since, I get to know more about a common man's thinking(though I am also one of them ).You would really know your worth from these people and they are your best teachers.This in turn helps in understanding consumer needs and also helps you building a network which you might have never thought about . I would be learning driving very soon but even after learning it,would prefer the other mode of transport since,"Business is all about relations,no matter with whom you are trying to get connected to".
Did you know "N R Murthy of Infosys also doesnt have a driving license and he had publicily announced on TV" and he was never afraid what people would think about it.

Lesson 3:
Be it my job,my blog or playing cricket,I do all the things with full enthusiasm and with a winning attitude.I have one thing in mind "I want to win(but by fair means)".I have lots of heroes(motivators) from different fields of life eg Sachin Tendulkar from cricket,Sunil Mittal of Bharti as an entrepreneur,Guy Kawasaki as a blogger/VC/entrepreneur but at the end of the day,it is me who has to perform.
Learning:
Enthusiasm is very important for your success.Do everything with a full heart and good results would follow soon.You need to be motivated to achieve something , but the first person with whom you should be motivated is yourself(ie. you need to be self motivated).If you are not motivated, no one else can be a source of motivation for you.
Did you know "Gururaj Desh Deshpande failed in his first venture but he stood up tall and started his next big successful venture Sycamore Networks"

Lesson 4:
Everyday,when I look at myself , I feel there are lots of improvements that I need to make and I need to work(a bit harder), in order to achieve my goals.I need to fight against my weaknesses,capture my dreams,work for other's betterment etc. Improvement is a continual process and would continue until the end of my life.I never thought that I would reach this stage(though I have a long way to go to achieve my dreams) but continuous improvement has helped me achieve it.
Learning:
Success is a journey and not a destination.Take small steps towards improvement and it would lead to a larger improvement(over a period of time).Try to celebrate your achievements but never be satisfied with them and learn from your failures.
Have a look at what Mr Laxmi Mittal has to say "He has not under achieved in life but there are more things that he wants to achieve" and this is what makes a successful person

Hope this post was motivating enough for you and all the best for achieving your dreams.

AllIndiaDeals : Cheap(er) deals online

Ever thought about how much proportion of the massive Indian population shops online?The answer to this question would soon follow.There are not many Indians going online and shopping but the trend is soon changing.One of the most powerful revenue models in the internet industry is advertising and you can find an explanation to these terminologies from Anurag Gupta's Blog

Just search for "Online Shopping in India" in Google and you would be surprised to see 19,800,000 results.With so many shopping portals in place,the choice of any one of them becomes difficult and leads to the following questions:

Q. How much percentage of the massive Indian population is connected to the internet and what is the growth?
There are 38.5 million Indians online today. The Internet offers an audience that will grow to a 100 million users by 2007-08. Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) forecasts that e-commerce transactions will cross the Rs. 2000 crore mark (2006-2007) which translates into an increase of over 300% from financial year 2004-05.

Q. Where is India with respect to Online Shopping?
Google has a very interesting study about the online shopping trend and where is India compared to other countries in the world.Well,definitely from the trend,we can say that India has to catch up

Q. Which are the different players and what different strategies selected few are following?
I just happened to see some of the sites mentioned in the Google search
a. Ebay India
b. India Plaza
c. IndiaTimes Shopping
d. I'm Wanting
e. FutureBazaar

Just kept me wondering,is there any place which provides me the best of the best deals online?.This is where I came across AllIndiaDeals , a shopping portal with a difference

What is special in AllIndiaDeals?
a. As mentioned in my previous post on CampusChai, from a naive user point of view,the user interface of a site is very important.The end user does not want a site cluttered with Ads,which makes life difficult to search for the actual content.AllIndiaDeals have got their fundamentals of web programming correct and have provided an excellent user friendly interface.

b. AllIndiaDeals is a place where you can get special discounts on any product which is called as "Lists Price" and yes,the discounts are also very high.Have a look at the discount in the image below
c. Finally,users can find their favourite content at a cheaper price without searching on different sites which is the biggest USP of AllIndiaDeals.Take the same example for "Airfares in India" and it is difficult to know the comparison of fares(of a single flight) offered by different online travel portals like MakeMyTrip, ClearTrip etc on the same flight.But there are players like Ixigo(which was showcased in Proto.in) which has understood the changing consumer needs and this would soon be a reality.AllIndiaDeals also falls in this category and they have trult understood the changing consumer needs.

Strategies AllIndiDeals need to employ for further growth:
a. It would always be more difficult to convince the Indian audience to go online and shop and this is where the entire team of AllIndiaDeals has to take a plunge and try to be more innovative not only in their idea but also the approach.Remember,Indian audience is very different from the US audience and this is where their should be and remain in future.

b. With so many players coming into the online shopping market(compare this with "A Blog is born every half a second),competition would be tougher and keeping the same service(maintaining the excellent discount offered on items) would always be a challenge.

c. It is becoming extremely important to understand the SEO fundamentals since,search results are becoming more and more important.It always helps being in the sponsored link in Google Search. eg. My blog got more traffic when Google search results for "Himanshu Sheth" had my blog as its first result(now I guess my blog comes at the forth place)

d. In this Web 2.0 age, it has become more and more important to use the power of Social as well as Business networking. Social networking sites like Orkut,Yaari,MingleBox and Indian business networking site TechTribe(which would also be helpful in getting funds) would definitely help to get more traffic as well as scale up the business of AllIndiaDeals.

FIRE(fox) in Internet Explorer!!!

Firefox(the browser which is a boon to everyone) is finally eating up Microsoft IE.Came across this logo from SpreadFirefox and seeing this logo,I decided that it had to be on my blog

You can download such great images from SpreadFirefox which could express your love for Firefox