Will mobile phones be the future for cash payment? Will mobile payment usher in a cashless society? Are services like Western Union threatened by mobile payment? These are all the questions that Aditya answers in this podcast. Aditya Menon is Chief Information and Technology Officer of Obopay India. He started the US company’s India operations.

Obopay is a comprehensive mobile payment service that lets you instantly get, send and spend money anywhere, anytime using a mobile phone.

He was previously CIO of YES Bank. Prior to this, Aditya was Group CIO at MphasiS.

Aditya has 20 years of experience working in the field of banking software product development. , specially in the payments and cash management domain. He was a pioneer in the field of electronic payments and banking, launching the first PC based high value payments systems in 1986 for global banks like ABN and Standard Chartered Bank.

Let’s listen to Aditya talk about Obopay.

Comments Continue reading

Futurebazaar.com is India’s latest big ticket shopping site that comes from the group which owns India’s largest retail chain.

FutureBazaar.com recently got infused with a funding of $25 million and is bound to give established etailers in India many sleepless nights.

Led by Kishore Biyani, the group owns and operates huge retail chains including Pantaloons, Big Bazaar, Food Bazaar, Central, E-Zone, Fashion Station, Depot and many others.

I caught up with Sankarson, CEO of FutureBazaar.com at the eTailing Conference in Chennai. Shanky, as he prefers to be called, has had impressive experience in the online retailing market having set up shopping sites for Rediff and Shoppers Stop.

In this podcast, Shanky gives his honest opinions about etailing in India and about FutureBazaar in particular.

Comments Continue reading

Listen to the man who heads Sify.com, one of India’s biggest portals and also heads marketing for Sify Iways, one of Asia’s biggest cybercafe chains with over 3300 cafes in more than 150 cities in India. Sivaramakrishnan talks about his experience and challenges in both these businesses.

Sify is a leader in Consumer Internet and Enterprise Services in India with global delivery capabilities.

Siva, as he is popularly called, has over 18 years of experience in marketing consumer brands and building their businesses.

In his role as Vice President of the iWay cyber cafe business at Sify, he was instrumental in leading their transformation from Internet browsing centers to e-stores by introducing break-through alliances and initiatives.

Earlier, He was part of the Ford India marketing leadership team and led the successful launch of Ford’s Ikon, Fusion, Fiesta and Endeavour in India.

For the launch of the Ford Ikon, Siva initiated a path-breaking online promotion considered one of the leading web initiatives of that time.

In August 2006, Siva took over as President, Portals.

He is a management graduate from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), New Delhi, with a successful track record of managing brands, sales, and customer service for global market leaders such as Procter & Gamble and Ford, both in India and abroad.

During his career with them, he has led brand, sales and customer service teams, championing successful marketing and sales initiatives for brands such as Vicks, Pampers, Old Spice, Ford Fiesta, Ford Ikon and the Ford Endeavour.

Comments Continue reading

Harish founded Smile Interactive, the company that incubated Quasar, one of India’s top digital advertising agencies. It’s also behind Tyroo, an advertising network that Yahoo recently bought a substantial part of. It also built the technology behind MakeMyTrip, India’s biggest travel portal.

In this podcast, Harish talks about what it takes to incubate small companies internally.

Harish, an engineering graduate in Computer Sciences, is a serial entrepreneur. prior to getting into Internet business, he built bullet proof cars.

Harish is considered a thought leader on the subjects of digital technology, interactive advertising, online travel, and entrepreneurship and is a regular speaker at various forums for the same.

He is an active member of NASSCOM and IAMAI and proactively represents the Indian internet community for addressing issues related to the growth and smooth functioning of the industry with various regulatory bodies.

Comments Continue reading

Traffic Jams are a curse to city life. Finally, a startup has found a solution to overcome some of the problems.

When I was in Bangalore recently, a city notorious for its atrocious traffic jams, I was pleasantly surprised to see a sign at a traffic signal which told me how much time it would take me to reach the airport.

And that’s dynamic data based on traffic situatinos along the route I’m taking. Now, that’s useful information, I thought. I wondered who is behind this and I finally found out.

Mapunity Information Services has partnered with the Bangalore City Police and Airtel Karnataka, the city’s largest mobile operator, to provide a comprehensive urban traffic information system for Bangalore city.

With BTIS, real-time traffic information is deduced from the cell phone tower logs of Airtel’s city-wide network, and made available to commuters to see live congestion hotspots, find directions and plan their travel routes.

The entire information system is available through SMS to Airtel customers using a shortcode, and to others by dialling a ten-digit number. During the next few weeks, the system will remain free to users, while the product is rolled out to cover all neighbourhoods. This live traffic information system is the first of its kind in India. It addresses the growing need of traffic administrators for centralized traffic monitoring and control infrastructure.

Mapunity was cofounded by three persons, Ashwin Mahesh,an atmospheric scientist, D Alagesa Pandian, a botanist and B V Pradeep, an engineer.

Ashwin is a consultant for the Second Administrative Reforms Commission, Govt of India. He was earlier Director of GIS, Egovernments Foundation, Bangalore. Ashwin holds a Ph. D. from University of Washington in Geophysics and an M.S. from Vanderbilt University in Astronomy.

Comments Continue reading