Avnish Bajaj, previously co-founder Baazee.com and current co-founder and MD of Matrix Partners India, thinks that Web2.0 is a distant reality for India.

I think people are wasting their time on Web 2.0 in India. People talk about the Internet being convenient, but it is not so in India. You need to go to a cyber café or you have to dial up a telephone line or use a slow broadband connection. Whereas in the US, 150 million households have broadband access all around the clock, sitting at home. When you have such a situation you can do social networking, but where is that happening in India? Do you think a person will go to a cyber café or any public environment to discuss everything about their life?

He talks of how Indian market isnt mature enough and needs more focus on the consumer services. When asked about what sector he thinks is hot:

I think consumer services opportunities across sectors are hot. They are also exciting in that each one of us is a consumer, so we can relate to the businesses far easier than deep tech-driven ones. I believe that Internet and mobile opportunities suffer from a quality deficit; I expect higher quality opportunities in these sectors to start showing up on the radar in the next couple of years.

Rest here.

Penguin has published two books consisting of User Generated Content compiled from Sulekha. Satya Prabhakar, Sulekha founder is a strong believer in the power of blogging and says that bloggers form a niche testbed where marketers can reach out to other users in an unparalleled manner.

Read the rest of the story here.

Kamla Bhatt would need no introduction to many of you. For the uninitiated, she’s India’s first podcaster and a well known blogger. She produces and hosts the Kamla Bhatt Show and also contributes to the India section on PodTech.net. She recently started foraying into video blogging (3-4 video clips a week) and has also started a travel blog – Ifyougoto. You can read the rest of her bio here.

I have been following her podcasts for quite some time and became more and more intrigued by the wide variety of people she interviews as part of her podcasts. She’s interviewed some prominent personalities such as Shyam Benegal, Vikram Chandra, RK Laxman, Ameen Sayani, Dr. Salman Akhtar, Rakyesh OmPrakash Mehra to name a few. I wanted to know more about how she chooses the subjects, how she got into podcasting and how her podcasting experience has been.

So, without further ado, here’s the interview.

Continue reading →

Knowledge@Wharton has a great interview with Ray Ozzie – the chief software architect at Microsoft. A small tidbit:

Knowledge@Wharton: Which ones (competitive threats) worry you the most?

Ozzie: I’m paid to be worried, and so I worry about many things.

I worry about Linux and making sure that we’re really good in that market. I’m worried about the future of media and the devices we consume that media on — things like iPod and what Apple is doing. I worry about making sure that we continue to lead in email and that we’re delivering email on mobile devices and in the enterprise and to consumers. There is a different set of competitors in that realm.

I want to make sure that we deliver business solutions and development platforms for business solutions to customers. There is a different set of competitors there. And then, of course, I want to deliver online services to consumers and small businesses and big businesses. There’s a set [of competitors] there.

TutorVista has been in the news several times lately. Last year they announced $9 million in funding (first $2 million from Sequoia and next $7 million from Lightspeed venture partners). Last month, TutorVista CEO K Ganesh projected online tutoring revenues in India to rise to $2.4 billion in the next three years. Last week, they announced a tie-up with publisher HarperCollins.

Niladri Roy has an interesting interview with K Ganesh on the topic of online tutoring, related obstacles and the future of online tutoring.

Ok, this is off topic but I just had to post it. Kamal Nath gets grilled to the point that he drops off mid way during the interview.
A friend forwarded me the link to this video. Boy, never have I seen an interviewer getting their point across so vehemently. Kudos to this host. Anyone know who he is ?

The International Herald Tribune has a nice Q & A session with Kamal Nath – India’s minister of Commerce & Industry.

Read it here.