Government’s Gifts To Indian Entrepreneurs–Company Incorporation In 24 Hours

Doing business in India is tough – it takes almost 2-3 months to really get the ball rolling (right from incorporation to getting business PAN card etc).

MCA (Ministry of Corporate Affairs) has outlined measures to ensure that entrepreneurs can float a company in 24 hours.

..the ministry outlined several measures including online verification and clearance of the name of the company being incorporated, online submissions of statutory forms, and issuing digital certificates of incorporation. “The simplified process of online incorporation of companies is likely to be implemented with effect from 11th August, 2011.

The MCA is putting in place a system that will help companies submit all the required forms online and enable the Registrar of Companies to process the application and issue a digital certificate of incorporation within 24 hours [source]

While this may sound like an utopian thought, Indian government is known to be least friendly to entrepreneurs (as compared to other developing nations). Such measures involve educating different government departments and that’s where such initiatives lose relevance.

Only time will tell how serious the government is in spurring entrepreneurship in India.

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News Roundup: Tariff Hike Hits The Telecom Industry, Micromax Withdraws IPO

According to the telecom regulator, there are 840 million mobile subscribers of whom only about 588 million users are active. However, the operators continue to count the inactive users as subscribers, thus blocking the numbers allocated to them. The Department of Telecom will ask telecom operators to weed out inactive mobile users in a bid to free up mobile numbers [source]

Our take: This is more fundamental issue – government allocates spectrum based on an operator’s subscriber count and that’s the primary reason why operators inflate the numbers.

Micromax Withdraws IPO

Micromax Informatics, has withdrawn its 426-crore initial public offering due to volatile market conditions. “Due to the volatile market conditions, the board has taken a decision to defer the proposed IPO. The board will …consult its advisors to determine a suitable period for a future public offering,” [source].

Tariff Hike: Vodafone, Idea Follows Airtel

Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular, are understood to have increased pre-paid tariffs by up to 20 per cent, in line with the recent Bharti Airtel move.[source]

Our take: The QoS (Quality of Service) has hit a new low and operators now really need to justify the hike in tariff. Playing Cartel doesn’t really help (hope government is regulating these tariff hikes).

Geometric implements virtual desktop to cut operational costs

Software services provider Geometric today said it has implemented a virtual desktop based on VXI cloud architecture with Cisco, NetApp and Citrix technologies to reduce operational costs. The deployment will allow Geometric employees to access their server-hosted virtual desktop from anywhere and from a broad range of devices, with the cloud infrastructure also helping to drive business productivity and reduced operating costs, the filing added [source].

- IndianRailways.Gov site has temporarily suspended booking of train tickets.

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Japanese DeNA Launched Mobage, the Mobile Social Game Platform for China

DeNA entered Chinese mobile market by acquiring the local mobile social network Tianxia back in July 2009. It’s been two years, we’ve been wondering how DeNA would bring its popular mobile games into Chinese mobile market. Finally today DeNA released its Chinese version of Mobage, the mobile social game platform which has ~30 millions users in Japan.

The Chinese version of Mobage is only available on Android phone now and it comes with 4 games including its two in-house social games, Ninja Royale and Aqua Collection. “All 4 games are originally Japanese games and localized by our Chinese team.” said Wang Yong, the CEO of DeNA China, “and by the end of next month, we will have 10 games in total available on Mobage China platform.”

On Mobage, the players are able to interact with others by adding friends, sending messages and even playing against each other etc. All games are free to download and play, but in order to buy some virtual goods you need spend real money to get so-called M-coin which is the virtual currency in the Mobage platform. The mobile version of Alipay payment gateway is integrated into Mobage.

As Wang Yong introduced, “Mobage platform will be open to all Chinese third-party mobile game development companies or individual developers. We will provide them with the Mobage SDK (ngCore) for the game development. More important, we will leave 70% of the earning from the game to the third-party.”

The Chinese company, Papaya is offering the similar service for both China and oversea market, and it now has ~23 millions users worldwide (80% of its users are actually from oversea), according to Richard O’Connell, the COO of Papaya.

Related posts:

1. Breaking: DeNA, Japanese Leading Mobile Social Networks Buying Chinese Tianxia
2. Papaya Mobile – mobile social game
3. What does an advanced Japanese mobile commerce and entertainment provider do in China?

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Google+ app for Android and iPhone now available in Singapore

The Google+ mobile app is now available on the iPhone App Store and Android Market in Singapore, declared at least two sources (read here and here). The app brings much of the functionality on the Google+ web platform to smartphones.

Features of the app include: Huddle, which allows group chat; Circles, which enables users to categorise contacts into different groups so that different things can be shared amongst them; Stream, which updates the user on what their friends are up to; and Instant Upload, which enables users to upload photos or videos onto the social network.

However, iPad users may have to wait a bit longer to download the Google+ app since it is only accessible on the iPhone for now.

Previously, we reported on how the social network has been rapidly gaining traction among users globally and in Asia, scoring 10 million users at last count. That figure has since ballooned to 18 million, according to Mashable. We also mentioned how businesses have been eager to set up accounts on the network, although Google+ has been embarking on a crusade to remove them.

And according to PC World, Facebook appears to be treating their new competitor seriously now, seemingly responding to the  Google+ deletions by launching a “Facebook for Business” page, which contains tips for small businesses on how to use Facebook.

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Get your BlackBerry problems solved via Twitter

BlackBerry users in Indonesia finding it hard to get tech support may find it easier now that BlackBerry Indonesia is on Twitter. Users can directly communicate with the official @BlackBerryBantu Twitter account, which first tweeted on July 13, and has to date 9,725 followers and registered 104 tweets.

The account is handled by three representatives, who are identified by their initials at the end of the tweet, and are available to help during weekdays from 7am to 4pm. As the issues are resolved privately via Direct Messages, you won’t see much on the public timeline — so those looking to see how issues are tackled between user and the service (just in case you have a strange curiosity for that sort of thing) will be rather disappointed by the dull-looking Twitter account.

Tracing back some of the conversations and replies, the issues being directed to this Twitter account range from queries such as connectivity problems to the BlackBerry App World, activation of enterprise accounts, and is now fielding several questions about why the updated Facebook app for the BlackBerry isn’t working well.

Issues are resolved with account representatives giving users relevant links to, among other sites, the BlackBerry Support Community Forum wherein members would ask and resolve BlackBerry-related problems involving smartphone devices, desktop software, and the BlackBerry Playbook.

This method of resolving customer issues is derived from RIM’s official Twitter account for International users, @BlackBerryHelp. Unlike the international account, however, @BlackBerryBantu tweets only in Bahasa Indonesia to cater specifically for the Indonesian market.

Another related account is @BlackBerryID, which posts up, in Bahasa Indonesia, links to BlackBerry-related stories, retweets of virtual pats on the back, and other tips and shortcuts that users might find useful.

The social media-led initiative was launched by Gerald Ang, Research in Motion’s Head of Digital, Asia, who previously started the BlackBerry Indonesia Facebook page, which gained over 1 million “Likes” within a year. The page contains links to stories, updates on the latest BlackBerry news, and user-engagement questions. Currently, it has close to 1.2 million Facebook users who “like” the page, and gets hundreds of comments from each post made.

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Blackboard Wars

Japanese high school students made stop-motion animations with blackboard, chalks and all school things for school festival.

The first one uses over 2,500 photos, the second one over 3,000.

According to the poster's comment, free tools like PictBea­r [J] and NicoVisualEffects [J] are used.

via @ryohgo_narita

Blackboard Wars

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Nokia Ovi Tops 7 Million Daily Downloads [Registration Removal Process Does The Trick]

Nokia has announced that OVI store recorded 7.62 million downloads per day and the reason why Nokia achieved this was the global removal of registration/login requirement to download free apps.

This significant jump in content consumption on Ovi Store follows the global removal of the registration/login requirement to download free items from the mobile web channel. The biggest increase was in India, where downloads more than tripled, making India the top country by downloads from the mobile web channel.[source]

Lesson Learnt?

• Keep it simple.
• Track the right metrics (what is important – downloads or signed in users?).
• Kill the usage barriers.

How many apps greet you with ‘register before we start’ screen? Think again.

Recommended Read: Mobile Application Usage Improvement Tips

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State of the Internet [India Among The Top 10 Countries In Cyber Attacks]

Akamai’s State of the internet report is out and as always has some pretty interesting statistics about India. The report is focused on “attack traffic” and “internet and broadband adoption”. India figures in all three domains of focus in this report. Here’s the most important India statistics.

Attack Traffic:

• India figured in the top 10 countries for the first time since the fourth quarter of 2009.
• The percentage of “origin of attack “ for India saw a quarter-over-quarter decline.

Broadband adoption and Internet connectivity:

• From a year-over-year perspective, only Indonesia and India saw increased levels of narrowband adoption, and the levels of growth are fairly significant for both countries.
• Of all the 55 geographies that qualified for inclusion in the high broadband( defined as speed more than 5Mbps), India and China were the only two countries with adoption rate lower than 1%, they are 0.4% and 0.5% respectively.
• India is also planning to take aggressive steps to improve broadband connectivity throughout the country, with the proposed construction of a USD $13 billion national broadband network,25 intended to connect all cities, towns and villages with a population of more than 500 in two phases targeted for completion by 2012 and 2013. published reports indicate that the network would be capable of supporting connection speeds of up to 10 mbps in 63 of the country’s metropolitan areas and larger cities by 2014, while speeds of up to 4 mbps would be offered in 352 additional cities.

You can view the report here

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Kookoo Enables Speech Recognition–Integrates With Google Places, Twitter And Facebook

Kookoo, the IVRS platform that integrates web apps with voice is toying with speech enablement and has launched a few speech integration demo applications (integration with Google Places, Twitter and Facebook).

1. Google Places over Voice
Dial 040-30512839 and say ‘hotels’ in ‘koramangala’  after beep and Kookoo will send SMS with hotels list. It could be anything. Of course, Google places should support data you are requesting.
Google places search code without speech can be found here.

2. Voicebuzz
Sync up Facebook with KooKoo by visiting Voicebuzz app in Facebook at http://apps.facebook.com/voicebuzz/?ref=ts. After Sync up, dial 040-30512834 and speak your status. KooKoo will transcribe your voice input and post the text to your wall.

3. Twittervoice
Sync up Twitter with KooKoo by visiting http://www.kookoo.in/twittervoice/. After Sync up, dial 040-30512845 and speak your status. KooKoo will transcribe your voice input to the best of its capabilities and post the text of the tweet. [get the code here].

Given that no player in India has solved the voice recognition challenge (Google had shut down its voice search service in India), it would be interesting to see how Kookoo attempts to look at speech integration with web apps (right now, the service is still in alpha stage, so expect some jagged edges).

» Kookoo demoed at UnPluggd2 | Related Service: HP’s SiteonMobile | TringMe’s VoicePHP .

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