Social Healthcare Enterprises : Kapil Khandelwal, EquNev Capital,
1
c m y k c m y k Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to feature in a cartoon. Technomics Apps in works for RIM tablet, says Oliver Bussman, CIO of SAP. iPhone beats RIM, others in satisfaction survey. 11 New Delhi ● Monday ● 22 November 2010 Indian product start-ups begin to attract serious attention Notepads that keep you on the same page ANNE EISENBERG NEW YORK Nov. 21: Three-by-five index cards, those hallmarks of research, may be fading away in these digital times, but the need to take notes endures. Human memory is as weak as ever, and people are still shoring it up by recording their observations, research and grocery lists, though many now use computers instead of pens and paper. But the electronic notepads on smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops don’t synchronize with one another automatically. Say you’re sitting on a plane with your laptop, jotting down some brilliant words for that speech you’re giving next week. Back at the office, those notes will never find their way to the copy of the speech you’ve stored on your desktop, unless, for example, you e-mail them to yourself. Now companies including Simperium and Evernote offer applications you can install on your various mobile and stationary devices. The companies’ servers gather and coordi- nate those notepads, keeping all the entries up to date The source of the notes may be typed text, Simperi- um’s specialty. Evernote’s expanding services, mean- while, can handle notes sent by keyboard, digital pen, scanner or camera phone. Simplenote, a free applica- tion from Simperium, runs on desktops and laptops via the Web. It can also be installed on iPhones, iPads and the iPod Touch, says Michael Johnston, a co- founder of Simperium, a start-up begun this year in San Francisco. Other com- panies, he says, also use Simperium’s synchroniza- tion platform as part of apps that run, for instance, on Android phones. The company is already profitable, he said, in part from premium subscriptions ($12 a year) and in part from advertising displayed on the site. Jonathan Beilin, a game developer and writer in Sun- nyvale, Calif., uses Sim- plenote with his desktop PC, his Apple laptop, his iPad and his iPhone. He may write down ideas for his blog in the morning on his iPad; then, when he switch- es to his laptop later in the day, the rough draft is wait- ing for him. “It’s the only sane way to share between my comput- ers and my mobile devices,” he said. (He still carries pen- cils and a Moleskine note- book, mainly for drawing.) The Simplenote app is intended for keeping text notes. For those who want to capture additional informa- tion — like Web page clip- pings, photos and voice memos — Evernote offers both a free and a premium service ($45 a year) that work across most devices and platforms, says Phil Libin, the CEO of the com- pany, which is in Mountain View, Calif. If users are away from home without laptops, they can still use a smartphone or a hotel com- puter, for instance, to access an account and retrieve notes. Mr. Libin says Evernote has been adding and refining its offerings, buoyed in part by $20 million in recent funding led by Sequoia Cap- ital. One of its new services, available to those who install Google’s Chrome browser, is a dual search — one of public sources found by Google, and another of the private data on a user’s Evernote account. It also added one-button service on scanners from Canon and other companies that auto- matically send scanned doc- uments to the Evernote account. David Pierce, 22, a junior analyst at PC Magazine in Manhattan, uses Evernote on his BlackBerry, iPad, iPod Touch, Mac and PC. “I take notes on whatever device I have in hand at the moment,” he says, “but then all the information in my notes is in one, single, accessible place.” He also uses his phone to take photos of business cards and white boards at meetings. — NYT Nokia’s N8 phone has power issues N okia, the world's top cellphone maker, said on Friday some of its flagship N8 smart- phones were sold with a power fault that meant they switched themselves off. The success of the N8 — Nokia's first real challenge to Apple's iPhone, more than three years after its launch — is seen as crucial to Nokia's profit margins in the current quarter, analysts say. Nokia sales chief Niklas Savander said “a limited number of N8 users” were facing the problem of their phones switching off, and they are not able to turn them on again. A spokesman said the fault was due to a problem in production, which has since been fixed. He said the issue was lim- ited to the N8 model, but declined to comment on how many phones were impacted. “Probably not all consumers have informed Nokia about the problems, so the final number of faulty products is likely to increase,” Nordea analyst Sami Sarkamies said. “Hardware problems can be tricky to find and solve,” he said. The fault in the power management stems from the way in which the engine component — which includes most of the tech- nology in the phone, excluding covers and bat- teries — in the Nokia N8 was being installed. “If you look at the total number it is a small num- ber,” Savander said in a video on company website. The N8, first to use Nokia's new Symbian soft- ware, was originally sched- uled to reach consumers in June. In April, Nokia warned the software renew- al would take longer than expected due to quality problems, and said that the model would reach con- sumers by the end of Sep- tember. The model was finally in the shops last month. A weak offering of smart- phones and problems with software were seen as the main reasons for Nokia replacing Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo with Stephen Elop. — Reuters SANGEETHA CHENGAPPA BENGALURU Nov. 21: Although India has shed the “land of call cen- tres” stereotype over the last decade to emerge as an indomitable player in the IT/BPO industry, it is yet to make a mark with IP cre- ation globally. The good news is that Indian product story has arrived at an inflection point, with a handful of potential billion- dollar companies that are already creating waves in the US and UK. The better news is that there are many more product start-ups with great value propositions emerging. Here’s a look at three promising start-ups in the media, social network- ing and mobility space. AMAGI MEDIA LABS TV is the most compelling media option in India, reaching close to 500 mil- lion people across the nation, and benefits adver- tisers who require national reach to sell their products across the country. Howev- er, it is a very expensive and wasteful proposition for local advertisers to promote their products on national networks. To address this problem, Bengaluru-based technology start-up Amagi Media Labs has built a DSP technology infrastructure on analog cable, digital cable and DTH platforms to help local advertisers such as jewellers, consumer durables companies, real estate developers, etc., to target their offerings only to people in their cities on a national TV channel. National TV channels put a special marker on the con- tent which they stream to MSOs or national cable TV operators. This marker is identified by the ‘Insertion Box’ provided by Amagi to the MSOs, which allows the national ad-spot to be replaced by a local ad-spot in the exact place which is marked. This modified con- tent is then streamed to the local cable TV operators. “No onion, no garlic Maggi noodles is sold only in Gujarat, Bio-yoghurt is retailed in a few metros, and SUVs sell a lot in Bengaluru and Delhi – our solution allows advertisers to target their advertising to a specif- ic consumer base through city-specific ad-spots which they can buy from Amagi, at a fraction of the nation-wide price. At present we connect 8 million cable TV sub- scribers across the country in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Patna, Nagpur and Indore and have completed over 100 advertising campaigns,” said Amagi's co-founder, Bhaskar S. EYESANDFEET.COM Some of the questions that might cross your mind if you are a local business owner of a bar, restaurant, café or spa could be: Which restaurant’s got the most Facebook fans in your local- ity, what they do so well to deserve this fan club and so on. Chennai-based start-up, EyesAndFeet.com has developed a web application that helps local business owners in the US figure out what their immediate neigh- bours and competitors are doing on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks and the kind of business that they rake in from actively engaging with people on these networks. “We are creating what we believe to be the most com- prehensive and usable data- base of local business social media activity – all deliv- ered at EyesAndFeet.com through our ‘See Module.’ Our web application also has a ‘Do Module’ which helps local businesses embark on their own social media efforts and we help them customise it for Face- book, Twitter etc,” said Lak- shmanan Narayan, founder- CEO, EyesAndFeet.com. Interestingly, the business also gets a ‘score’ based on how well they’re using social media for their busi- ness. They can compare their score with other small and local businesses to see how good or badly they are doing. “We expect this gam- ing element to further cat- alyze a local business’s adoption of social media," said Narayan, who has rolled out a beta version of the solution across 10 cities in the US with over 500 reg- istered users. INFIMATRA TECH- NOLOGIES PlanEasy2D, a mobile application developed by a technology start-up InfiMa- tra Technologies, addresses the numerous painpoints of people who are in the process of buying or design- ing their homes. The 2- dimensional application allows users to start drawing rooms and walls of their dream home in the dimen- sions of their choice in square feet or metres, on a basic blank screen on their mobile phone or desktop. The furniture library for each room – living room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, study, etc – allows users to drag and place a sofa, chair, table or cot and rotate it in any direction to fit snugly into the selected rooms. Floor tiles in differ- ent colours can be placed along with landscaping ele- ments, such as green grass in the balcony and terrace, potted plants in the drawing room and kitchen window- sill, etc. The basic floor plan can be saved to be worked upon the next day. “With more and more youngsters going in for homes at the beginning of their careers, we decided to develop a mobile floor-plan- ner solution that would help them plan their dream home down to the last detail. We are currently working on developing a 3D version of the application for the desk- top where the wall colouring or tiling and the effect of sunlight on a patch of floor- ing can be viewed and a vir- tual walk-through the home will be possible,” said Srikanth Krishnamohan, founder-CEO, InfiMatra. (Left) Bhaskar S. of Amagi Media Labs. (Centre) Lakshmanan Narayan of EyesAnd- Feet.com. (Right) Srikanth Krishnamohan of Infimatra. Bhaskar, Lakshmanan and Srikanth head promising Indian start-ups. —ASIAN AGE Lawsuit indicates Dell hid computer faults ASHLEE VANCE SAN FRANCISCO Nov. 21: Documents unsealed Thursday in a three-year-old lawsuit against Dell have raised more questions about how the company handled an unprecedented number of faulty computers sold to governments, schools and corporations from 2003 to 2005. A judge in the Federal Dis- trict Court in North Carolina unsealed hundreds of docu- ments linked to a lawsuit filed by Advanced Internet Technologies that had accused Dell of trying to hide defects in its desktop computers from customers. For instance, the court documents show that the City of New York filed inci- dent reports with Dell on 20.2 percent of a batch of 5,000 computers purchased during this period. A pur- chase of 2,800 computers by Microsoft resulted in issues with 11 percent of the machines; General Electric, William W. Backus Hospi- tal, Denison University and the Montana Justice Depart- ment were among dozens of other organizations that experienced similar results. The documents also show how Dell had resisted informing many of its cus- tomers about the extent of the problem. Despite wide- spread reports from the field, Dell salespeople and technicians were encour- aged to keep customers in the dark about the known defects that left computers inoperable. As it tried to deal with the mounting issues, Dell began ranking customers by importance, putting first those who might move their accounts to another PC maker, followed by those who might curtail sales and giving the lowest priority to those who were bothered but still willing to stick with Dell. The company declined to recall the systems and did what it called “proactive field replacements” for cus- tomers that met certain sales and failure rate thresholds. In September, Dell settled the lawsuit with Advanced Internet Technologies with- out disclosing the terms of the agreement. The New York Times sought access to the documents that had remained under seal. The issues with the com- puters revolved around the capacitors that dot computer motherboards. A typical Dell computer could have up to 20 of these capacitors, which cost a fraction of a penny each and help regu- late electrical operations of the machines. Earlier this decade, capaci- tors made in Asia with a bad chemical recipe were sold to numerous makers of televi- sions, PCs and other elec- tronic devices. The capaci- tors would bulge when they became too hot and cause devices to malfunction or stop working altogether. Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Apple and others were aware of these issues and tried to pull faulty comput- ers from the market and to fix the computers. But even while keeping an eye on the problem, Dell continued to receive faulty capacitors from suppliers. It waged a three-year battle to identify the troublesome components. Studies con- ducted by Dell and a third party showed that the com- pany shipped 11.8 million computers from May of 2003 to July 2005 that were at risk of breaking. What shocked customers and Dell was the rate at which the computers failed. For example, the unsealed court documents included a Dell study from 2004 in which the component issues charged past the company’s initial forecasts. In June of that year, Dell expected that a minimum of 12 percent of its SX270 Optiplex comput- ers would result in incident reports from customers over a period of three years. By September, Dell raised the minimum incident report forecast to 45 percent and noted it could run as high as 97 percent. The same Dell study cov- ered issues with the GX270 computer and noted that the company planned to help customers who had bought more than 50 computers and who had at least 5 percent of those systems fail. — NYT Groupon Inc considering selling itself out E -commerce coupon site Groupon Inc is considering selling itself to Google Inc, according to media reports on Friday. The two are in discussions about an acquisition for more than $3 billion, reported the technology blog AllThingsD, citing anonymous sources, on Fri- day. Groupon is a privately held, Chicago-based com- pany which was launched about two years ago. The company, which sends its members daily emails with about 200 deals, is present in 250 markets in North America. The deals are activated only when a mini- mum number of people agree to make a purchase, giving Groupon clout to negotiate steep group dis- counts.” There is nothing for us to comment on. These are just rumors,” said Groupon spokeswoman Julie Mossler. A Google spokesman said the compa- ny does not comment on rumors or speculation. — Reuters “Dell salespeople and technicians were encouraged to keep customers in the dark.” Keep looking for your ‘Grameen’ KAPIL KHANDELWAL S ince the success of SKS Microfinance and its IPO, a new breed of wannabe healthcare social entre- preneurs have emerged that would like to incu- bate the “Grameen” like social business models in healthcare and ICT (Information, communi- cation and technology) in rural and urban slum of India. These initial attempts by wannabe social entrepreneurs in mobile health are quite laudable and encourag- ing. A couple of years ago, I had urged to the Health and ICT Minis- ters of African continent to bring the stakeholders from government, civil society, academia, ICT and health industries to create an opportunity for aligning on key priori- ties in the development of the mHealth ecosys- tem. The same applies to India as well. For 16% of world's population, we have around 20% of the world's disease bur- den, less than 8% of world's hospital beds and doctors (around 0.8 million each) and we have around 625 million mobile phones users which are the second largest base in the world and the health and ICT needs to catch up to the opportunity of leverag- ing the half billion mobile handsets. The social entrepreneurs in the healthcare still don't know the right business models for empowering the ‘aam admi’ to con- trol have over their health and, as such, help transform the manner in which new solutions are created. Our wannabe Nobel Laureates, the Grameen look alike social entrepreneurs in healthcare think though the business models that they should work out to be another successful disruptive SKS-like social venture. After having reviewed hundreds of business plans for different healthcare ICT ventures as advisory board mem- ber, here are three key points that most wannabes forget to vali- date and become too passionate with their panacea to the world's healthcare problems. There are three key components to building your successful venture — value proposition, delivery proposition and lastly the financial proposition. Firstly, what is the value propo- sition that you are addressing and what are the key service lines that you propose to incubate. In the short to medium term, mHealth is a per- sonal, additional, discre- tionary spend. Value proposition would need to address consumer spending on healthcare and what they are will- ing to pay for. Once you have zeroed into the value proposition then you need to define the compelling services that would be payed for by the consumers. A word of caution here is to engage with those consumers that do care for their health and use their experience to build compelling feedback to other potential con- sumers. Most of the good ventures have been killed due to over indul- gence with the medical profession and regula- tion rather than thinking like aam admi. Having defined the value proposition and the services, the second component is to define the delivery proposition and competencies that would be required to deliver your “Grameen” mhealth venture. Many techies often start by building the technology castles rather having an understanding of the value proposition they would like to deliver to the consumers. The idea here is to stop thinking like doctors and techies and start thinking like patients and consumers. Lastly, the business plan or the financial proposition of running a social healthcare ven- ture. Obviously with good intent, there is a health indicator that the ven- ture would strive toim- prove upon. The revenues and costs need to be balanced to ensure that there is prof- it for the venture. The acid test is to define all these proposi- tions to build another Grameen or SKS in healthcare and ICT. Keep on looking… there's a business model somewhere taking shape… Kapil Khandelwal is a leading healthcare and ICT expert. [email protected] A dose of IT A dose of IT Evernote coordinates the notes you collect daily, whether on your phone, laptop or desktop. A GE THE
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Transcript of Social Healthcare Enterprises : Kapil Khandelwal, EquNev Capital,
c m y k c m y k
FacebookCEO MarkZuckerbergto feature ina cartoon. Technomics
Apps in worksfor RIM tablet,says OliverBussman, CIOof SAP.
iPhonebeats RIM,others insatisfactionsurvey.
11New Delhi ●● Monday ●● 22 November 2010
Indian product start-ups beginto attract serious attention
Notepads that keep you on the same pageANNE EISENBERG
NEW YORK
Nov. 21: Three-by-fiveindex cards, those hallmarksof research, may be fadingaway in these digital times,but the need to take notesendures.
Human memory is as weakas ever, and people are stillshoring it up by recordingtheir observations, researchand grocery lists, thoughmany now use computersinstead of pens and paper.
But the electronicnotepads on smartphones,tablets, laptops and desktopsdon’t synchronize with oneanother automatically. Sayyou’re sitting on a planewith your laptop, jottingdown some brilliant wordsfor that speech you’re givingnext week. Back at theoffice, those notes will never
find their way to the copy ofthe speech you’ve stored onyour desktop, unless, for
example, you e-mail them toyourself.
Now companies including
Simperium and Evernoteoffer applications you caninstall on your variousmobile and stationarydevices. The companies’servers gather and coordi-nate those notepads, keepingall the entries up to date
The source of the notesmay be typed text, Simperi-um’s specialty. Evernote’sexpanding services, mean-while, can handle notes sentby keyboard, digital pen,scanner or camera phone.
Simplenote, a free applica-tion from Simperium, runson desktops and laptops viathe Web. It can also beinstalled on iPhones, iPadsand the iPod Touch, saysMichael Johnston, a co-founder of Simperium, astart-up begun this year inSan Francisco. Other com-panies, he says, also useSimperium’s synchroniza-
tion platform as part of appsthat run, for instance, onAndroid phones.
The company is alreadyprofitable, he said, in partfrom premium subscriptions($12 a year) and in part fromadvertising displayed on thesite.
Jonathan Beilin, a gamedeveloper and writer in Sun-nyvale, Calif., uses Sim-plenote with his desktop PC,his Apple laptop, his iPadand his iPhone. He maywrite down ideas for hisblog in the morning on hisiPad; then, when he switch-es to his laptop later in theday, the rough draft is wait-ing for him.
“It’s the only sane way toshare between my comput-ers and my mobile devices,”he said. (He still carries pen-cils and a Moleskine note-book, mainly for drawing.)
The Simplenote app isintended for keeping textnotes. For those who want tocapture additional informa-tion — like Web page clip-pings, photos and voicememos — Evernote offersboth a free and a premiumservice ($45 a year) thatwork across most devicesand platforms, says PhilLibin, the CEO of the com-pany, which is in MountainView, Calif. If users areaway from home withoutlaptops, they can still use asmartphone or a hotel com-puter, for instance, to accessan account and retrievenotes.
Mr. Libin says Evernotehas been adding and refiningits offerings, buoyed in partby $20 million in recentfunding led by Sequoia Cap-ital. One of its new services,available to those who
install Google’s Chromebrowser, is a dual search —one of public sources foundby Google, and another ofthe private data on a user’sEvernote account. It alsoadded one-button service onscanners from Canon andother companies that auto-matically send scanned doc-uments to the Evernoteaccount.
David Pierce, 22, a junioranalyst at PC Magazine inManhattan, uses Evernoteon his BlackBerry, iPad,iPod Touch, Mac and PC. “Itake notes on whateverdevice I have in hand at themoment,” he says, “but thenall the information in mynotes is in one, single,accessible place.”
He also uses his phone totake photos of businesscards and white boards atmeetings. — NYT
Nokia’s N8phone haspower issues
Nokia, the world's topcellphone maker,said on Friday some
of its flagship N8 smart-phones were sold with apower fault that meant theyswitched themselves off.
The success of the N8 —Nokia's first real challengeto Apple's iPhone, morethan three years after itslaunch — is seen as crucialto Nokia's profit margins inthe current quarter, analystssay.
Nokia sales chief NiklasSavander said “a limitednumber of N8 users” werefacing the problem of theirphones switching off, andthey are not able to turnthem on again.
A spokesman said thefault was due to a problemin production, which hassince been fixed.
He said the issue was lim-ited to the N8 model, butdeclined to comment onhow many phones wereimpacted. “Probably not allconsumers have informedNokia about the problems,so the final number offaulty products is likely toincrease,” Nordea analystSami Sarkamies said.
“Hardware problems canbe tricky to find and solve,”he said.
The fault in the powermanagement stems fromthe way in which the enginecomponent — whichincludes most of the tech-nology in the phone,excluding covers and bat-teries — in the Nokia N8was being installed.
“If you look at the totalnumber it is a small num-ber,” Savander said in avideo on company website.
The N8, first to useNokia's new Symbian soft-ware, was originally sched-uled to reach consumers inJune. In April, Nokiawarned the software renew-al would take longer thanexpected due to qualityproblems, and said that themodel would reach con-sumers by the end of Sep-tember.
The model was finally inthe shops last month.
A weak offering of smart-phones and problems withsoftware were seen as themain reasons for Nokiareplacing Chief ExecutiveOlli-Pekka Kallasvuo withStephen Elop. — Reuters
SANGEETHA CHENGAPPA
BENGALURU
Nov. 21: Although India hasshed the “land of call cen-tres” stereotype over the lastdecade to emerge as anindomitable player in theIT/BPO industry, it is yet tomake a mark with IP cre-ation globally. The goodnews is that Indian productstory has arrived at aninflection point, with ahandful of potential billion-dollar companies that arealready creating waves inthe US and UK. The betternews is that there are manymore product start-ups withgreat value propositionsemerging. Here’s a look atthree promising start-ups inthe media, social network-ing and mobility space.
AMAGI MEDIA LABSTV is the most compelling
media option in India,reaching close to 500 mil-lion people across thenation, and benefits adver-tisers who require nationalreach to sell their productsacross the country. Howev-er, it is a very expensive andwasteful proposition forlocal advertisers to promotetheir products on nationalnetworks. To address thisproblem, Bengaluru-basedtechnology start-up AmagiMedia Labs has built a DSPtechnology infrastructure onanalog cable, digital cableand DTH platforms to helplocal advertisers such asjewellers, consumerdurables companies, realestate developers, etc., totarget their offerings only topeople in their cities on anational TV channel.National TV channels put aspecial marker on the con-tent which they stream to
MSOs or national cable TVoperators. This marker isidentified by the ‘InsertionBox’ provided by Amagi tothe MSOs, which allows thenational ad-spot to bereplaced by a local ad-spotin the exact place which ismarked. This modified con-tent is then streamed to thelocal cable TV operators.
“No onion, no garlicMaggi noodles is sold onlyin Gujarat, Bio-yoghurt isretailed in a few metros, andSUVs sell a lot in Bengaluruand Delhi – our solutionallows advertisers to targettheir advertising to a specif-ic consumer base throughcity-specific ad-spots whichthey can buy from Amagi, ata fraction of the nation-wideprice. At present we connect8 million cable TV sub-scribers across the countryin Bengaluru, Hyderabad,Pune, Ahmedabad, Kolkata,Patna, Nagpur and Indoreand have completed over
100 advertising campaigns,”said Amagi's co-founder,Bhaskar S.
EYESANDFEET.COMSome of the questions that
might cross your mind ifyou are a local businessowner of a bar, restaurant,café or spa could be: Whichrestaurant’s got the mostFacebook fans in your local-ity, what they do so well todeserve this fan club and soon. Chennai-based start-up,EyesAndFeet.com hasdeveloped a web applicationthat helps local businessowners in the US figure outwhat their immediate neigh-bours and competitors aredoing on Facebook, Twitterand other social networksand the kind of business thatthey rake in from activelyengaging with people onthese networks.
“We are creating what webelieve to be the most com-prehensive and usable data-
base of local business socialmedia activity – all deliv-ered at EyesAndFeet.comthrough our ‘See Module.’Our web application alsohas a ‘Do Module’ whichhelps local businessesembark on their own socialmedia efforts and we helpthem customise it for Face-book, Twitter etc,” said Lak-shmanan Narayan, founder-CEO, EyesAndFeet.com.Interestingly, the businessalso gets a ‘score’ based onhow well they’re usingsocial media for their busi-ness. They can comparetheir score with other smalland local businesses to seehow good or badly they aredoing. “We expect this gam-ing element to further cat-alyze a local business’sadoption of social media,"said Narayan, who hasrolled out a beta version ofthe solution across 10 citiesin the US with over 500 reg-istered users.
INFIMATRA TECH-NOLOGIES
PlanEasy2D, a mobileapplication developed by atechnology start-up InfiMa-tra Technologies, addressesthe numerous painpoints ofpeople who are in theprocess of buying or design-ing their homes. The 2-dimensional applicationallows users to start drawingrooms and walls of theirdream home in the dimen-sions of their choice insquare feet or metres, on abasic blank screen on theirmobile phone or desktop.
The furniture library foreach room – living room,bedroom, bathroom,kitchen, study, etc – allowsusers to drag and place asofa, chair, table or cot androtate it in any direction tofit snugly into the selectedrooms. Floor tiles in differ-ent colours can be placedalong with landscaping ele-ments, such as green grassin the balcony and terrace,potted plants in the drawingroom and kitchen window-sill, etc. The basic floor plancan be saved to be workedupon the next day.
“With more and moreyoungsters going in forhomes at the beginning oftheir careers, we decided todevelop a mobile floor-plan-ner solution that would helpthem plan their dream homedown to the last detail. Weare currently working ondeveloping a 3D version ofthe application for the desk-top where the wall colouringor tiling and the effect ofsunlight on a patch of floor-ing can be viewed and a vir-tual walk-through the homewill be possible,” saidSrikanth Krishnamohan,founder-CEO, InfiMatra.
(Left) Bhaskar S. of Amagi Media Labs. (Centre) Lakshmanan Narayan of EyesAnd-Feet.com. (Right) Srikanth Krishnamohan of Infimatra. Bhaskar, Lakshmanan andSrikanth head promising Indian start-ups. —ASIAN AGE
Lawsuit indicates Dell hid computer faults ASHLEE VANCE
SAN FRANCISCO
Nov. 21: Documentsunsealed Thursday in athree-year-old lawsuitagainst Dell have raisedmore questions about howthe company handled anunprecedented number offaulty computers sold togovernments, schools andcorporations from 2003 to2005.
A judge in the Federal Dis-trict Court in North Carolinaunsealed hundreds of docu-ments linked to a lawsuitfiled by Advanced InternetTechnologies that hadaccused Dell of trying tohide defects in its desktopcomputers from customers.
For instance, the courtdocuments show that theCity of New York filed inci-dent reports with Dell on20.2 percent of a batch of5,000 computers purchasedduring this period. A pur-chase of 2,800 computers by
Microsoft resulted in issueswith 11 percent of themachines; General Electric,William W. Backus Hospi-tal, Denison University andthe Montana Justice Depart-ment were among dozens ofother organizations thatexperienced similar results.
The documents also showhow Dell had resistedinforming many of its cus-tomers about the extent ofthe problem. Despite wide-spread reports from thefield, Dell salespeople andtechnicians were encour-aged to keep customers inthe dark about the knowndefects that left computersinoperable.
As it tried to deal with themounting issues, Dell beganranking customers byimportance, putting firstthose who might move theiraccounts to another PCmaker, followed by thosewho might curtail sales andgiving the lowest priority tothose who were bothered but
still willing to stick withDell.
The company declined torecall the systems and didwhat it called “proactivefield replacements” for cus-tomers that met certain salesand failure rate thresholds.
In September, Dell settledthe lawsuit with AdvancedInternet Technologies with-out disclosing the terms ofthe agreement. The NewYork Times sought access tothe documents that hadremained under seal.
The issues with the com-puters revolved around thecapacitors that dot computermotherboards. A typicalDell computer could have
up to 20 of these capacitors,which cost a fraction of apenny each and help regu-late electrical operations ofthe machines.
Earlier this decade, capaci-tors made in Asia with a badchemical recipe were sold tonumerous makers of televi-sions, PCs and other elec-tronic devices. The capaci-tors would bulge when theybecame too hot and causedevices to malfunction orstop working altogether.
Dell, Hewlett-Packard andApple and others wereaware of these issues andtried to pull faulty comput-ers from the market and tofix the computers. But evenwhile keeping an eye on theproblem, Dell continued toreceive faulty capacitorsfrom suppliers.
It waged a three-year battleto identify the troublesomecomponents. Studies con-ducted by Dell and a thirdparty showed that the com-pany shipped 11.8 million
computers from May of2003 to July 2005 that wereat risk of breaking.
What shocked customersand Dell was the rate atwhich the computers failed.
For example, the unsealedcourt documents included aDell study from 2004 inwhich the component issuescharged past the company’sinitial forecasts. In June ofthat year, Dell expected thata minimum of 12 percent ofits SX270 Optiplex comput-ers would result in incidentreports from customers overa period of three years. BySeptember, Dell raised theminimum incident reportforecast to 45 percent andnoted it could run as high as97 percent.
The same Dell study cov-ered issues with the GX270computer and noted that thecompany planned to helpcustomers who had boughtmore than 50 computers andwho had at least 5 percent ofthose systems fail. — NYT
Groupon Incconsideringselling itself out
E-commerce couponsite Groupon Inc isconsidering selling
itself to Google Inc,according to media reportson Friday.
The two are in discussionsabout an acquisition formore than $3 billion,reported the technologyblog AllThingsD, citinganonymous sources, on Fri-day. Groupon is a privatelyheld, Chicago-based com-pany which was launchedabout two years ago. Thecompany, which sends itsmembers daily emails withabout 200 deals, is presentin 250 markets in NorthAmerica. The deals areactivated only when a mini-mum number of peopleagree to make a purchase,giving Groupon clout tonegotiate steep group dis-counts.” There is nothingfor us to comment on.These are just rumors,” saidGroupon spokeswomanJulie Mossler. A Googlespokesman said the compa-ny does not comment onrumors or speculation.
— Reuters
“Dell salespeopleand technicianswere encouragedto keepcustomers in thedark.”
Keep looking foryour ‘Grameen’
KAPIL KHANDELWAL
Since the success ofSKS Microfinanceand its IPO, a new
breed of wannabehealthcare social entre-preneurs have emergedthat would like to incu-bate the “Grameen” likesocial business modelsin healthcare and ICT(Information, communi-cation and technology)in rural and urban slumof India. These initialattempts by wannabesocial entrepreneurs inmobile health are quitelaudable and encourag-ing. A couple of yearsago, I had urged to theHealth and ICT Minis-ters of African continentto bring the stakeholdersfrom government, civilsociety, academia, ICTand health industries tocreate an opportunity foraligning on key priori-ties in the developmentof the mHealth ecosys-tem.
The same applies toIndia as well. For 16%of world's population,we have around 20% ofthe world's disease bur-den, less than 8% ofworld's hospital bedsand doctors (around 0.8million each) and wehave around 625 millionmobile phones userswhich are the secondlargest base in the worldand the health and ICTneeds to catch up to theopportunity of leverag-ing the half billionmobile handsets. Thesocial entrepreneurs inthe healthcare still don'tknow the right businessmodels for empoweringthe ‘aam admi’ to con-trol have over theirhealth and, as such, helptransform the manner inwhich new solutions arecreated. Our wannabeNobel Laureates, theGrameen look alikesocial entrepreneurs inhealthcare think thoughthe business models thatthey should work out tobe another successfuldisruptive SKS-likesocial venture.
After having reviewedhundreds of businessplans for differenthealthcare ICT venturesas advisory board mem-ber, here are three keypoints that mostwannabes forget to vali-date and become toopassionate with theirpanacea to the world'shealthcare problems.There are three key
components to buildingyour successful venture
— value proposition,delivery proposition andlastly the financialproposition. Firstly,what is the value propo-sition that you areaddressing and what arethe key service lines thatyou propose to incubate.In the short to mediumterm, mHealth is a per-sonal, additional, discre-tionary spend. Valueproposition would needto address consumerspending on healthcareand what they are will-ing to pay for. Once youhave zeroed into thevalue proposition thenyou need to define thecompelling services thatwould be payed for bythe consumers.
A word of caution hereis to engage with thoseconsumers that do carefor their health and usetheir experience to buildcompelling feedback toother potential con-sumers. Most of thegood ventures have beenkilled due to over indul-gence with the medicalprofession and regula-tion rather than thinkinglike aam admi.
Having defined thevalue proposition andthe services, the secondcomponent is to definethe delivery propositionand competencies thatwould be required todeliver your “Grameen”mhealth venture. Manytechies often start bybuilding the technologycastles rather having anunderstanding of thevalue proposition theywould like to deliver tothe consumers. The ideahere is to stop thinkinglike doctors and techiesand start thinking likepatients and consumers.
Lastly, the businessplan or the financialproposition of running asocial healthcare ven-ture.
Obviously with goodintent, there is a healthindicator that the ven-ture would strive toim-prove upon.
The revenues and costsneed to be balanced toensure that there is prof-it for the venture.
The acid test is todefine all these proposi-tions to build anotherGrameen or SKS inhealthcare and ICT.
Keep on looking…there's a business modelsomewhere takingshape…
Kapil Khandelwal is a leading healthcare andICT expert. [email protected]
A dose of IT
A dose of IT
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