Government to setup 20 new IIITs with private players, to spend $500 million [NOT IITs]

The Indian government wants to set up nearly 20 top level Institutes for Information Technology with private players and has set aside more than $500 million to do so, junior minister for human resources development Shashi Tharoor said yesterday.

Mr Tharoor said in the Lok Sabha

While land for the purpose would be made available free of cost by state governments concerned, an IIIT would be established at a capital cost of Rs 128 crore each to be contributed in ratio of 50:35:15 by centre, state and industry partner respectively.

Unlike reported widely in the press, these aren’t the Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) which have a wider curriculum and are a force to reckon with. These new will be named Indian Institute of Information Technology and will deal with IT related subjects.

Based on the recommendations of the Scientific Advisory Council, the government has established 8 new IIITs during the 11th five year plan, the minister said. The 11th five year plan is between 2007- 2012.

The Center has given in-principle approval to set up IIITs in Assam, Tripura, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

This could help in increasing the number of the so called “employable” talent for the IT industry. The gap between industry and the academia is a topic of discussion at most education forums and so is the lack of research funding for high tech in India.

Dilbert‘s Asok on IIT

Hopefully, these institutions will prove their worth in the years to come.

We aren’t sure to what extent this will address the immediate problem many product companies are facing. Product companies often look for engineers with a lot of depth and usually face challenges putting together teams with high talent density.

For instance, when we interviewed Poonacha Machaiah, CEO, Qyuki- the social media platform promoted by A R Rahman and Shekhar Kapur a few months ago, one of the challenges he pointed out was the availability of deep talent. Machaiah managed to put together a team and launch Qyuki earlier this week but there are hundreds of startups facing a similar situation in India.

Then there are some questions that draw sharply polarized reactions. Should education at this level be privatised? Or should it remain government sponsored? Does the government really have a choice because the demand is so high? How will this impact the quality of education? What do you think?

Recommended read: Last wishes before putting the IIT JEE on the electric chair

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‘Pushstart Mentor Live’ Connects Australian Startups with Industry Veterans

‘Pushstart Mentor Live’ is a speed networking event that connects startups with tech industry mentors. Each startup team was able to meet with three mentors for 15 minutes each. The event was held on Wednesday night at the Fishburners co-working space in Sydney, Australia.

The value for startups is being able to meet people that have done it before and can provide an experienced perspective. For the mentors, it is a way for them to give back to the industry and to meet up-and-coming startups.

The room was abuzz with noise as startups pitched to the mentors their visions, their problems, and where they needed help. There were 80 people representing 60 startups in attendance on the night. 25 mentors were available, and 150 mentor sessions were held.

Kim Heras, the co-founder of Pushstart told us:



This is our fourth event – three in Sydney and one in Melbourne. Between all of them we’ve done over 500 mentoring sessions. Add to that the mentoring sessions through Mentor Connect and in total PushStart has helped facilitate over 1,200 mentoring sessions between mentors and startup founders since launch 18 months ago.

From my own personal perspective, it is a rare opportunity to be able to sit down with three experts in their respective fields on one night. I attended the event personally and each mentor was able to provide valuable advice to my own startup, Native Tongue.


1. Luke Carruthers, founder of mobile startup, Closebuys, and previously a director of Game Developers Association
2. Rick Baker, investment director for Blackbird Ventures
3. Patrick Crooks, mobile payments industry expert

Many other startup communities could learn from the Mentor Live events to connect their ecosystems. 
Here are my five tips to get the most out of PushStart Mentor Live events:

• Do research beforehand on the mentors.
• Select the mentors who would be a good fit based on their past experiences.
• Choose different types of mentors to get various perspectives.
• Prepare your questions prior to the event.
• After the event, followup with a short email and add them on LinkedIn.

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CipherGraph secures funding from Chamath Palihapitiya [and makes the NextBigWhat team happy]

CIpherGraph, cloud based VPN service has secured funding from Chamath Palihapitiya, the founder of The Social+Capital Partnership and earlier was responsible for overseeing Facebook Platform as well as launching Facebook’s online advertising channel.

CipherGraph Networks offers Cloud Security Gateway for security and mobility. CipherGraph Networks’s value proposition lies in the fact that it is completely hardware-free VPN service and offers enterprise class security and role-based access control. The product is available in managed SaaS service model and is supported on all major platforms and devices.

The sweet part about funding is a NextBigWhat post (this) that got CipherGraph it’s first investor, Satya Ganni, 8X entrepreneur from US!  Of course its a great idea that stands on its own, but our earlier post covering CipeherGraph did help the investor discover and connect with them and we’re super happy to have played a role in this.

As far as Ciphergraph’s future plans are concerned, the company aims to expand its operations in the US and the big bang push starts after the December holidays.

CipherGraph is also a part of 11 startups that are incubated at Microsoft accelerator. Post this funding, Chamath Palihapitiya has joined the board of CipherGraph.

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Monster Fantasia: Nijibox Brings its Second Title to Southeast Asia via Kotagames

Japanese game developer and publisher Nijibox has announced today that it has released its latest title Monster Fantasia for the Kotagames platform. Kotagames is a feature phone game platform that is rapidly growing in Southeast Asia, and apparently there’s good money in it too. It has over 2.5 million users.

Monster Fantasia is a card battle game in which you assume the role of a monster tamer trying to save the world from out-of-control monsters. Like many games in the genre, you’ll collect monster cards, perform missions, and right bosses. The gameplay is simple, but looks fun for a feature phone title. You can check out a few of the promo screenshots below.

It’s interesting to see Nijibox exporting the card battle genre to Southeast Asia, and I can’t help but find it somewhat surprising that it is having some success. Elsewhere in the world, DeNA and Cygames has succeeded in pushing its Rage of Bahamut card battle game in a number of markets, most importantly in the US market, and more recently in Korea.

Nijibox previously launched another title from its Fantasia franchise, Costume Fantasia, on Kotagames back in September. The folks at Nijibox say that that game has been well received so far.

The Japanese publisher plans to follow this launch on Kotagames by bringing Monster Fantasia to the Mig33 platform soon as well, with that launch scheduled for December 18. Mig33 has over 50 million registered users around the world.

Nijibox is owned by Japanese human resources giant Recruit. I had a chance to speak with its CEO Yoichi Aso back in October, who noted that the company is also eyeing Korea, Malaysia, and China as a part of its expansion plans.

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China’s Boldest Groupon Clone to Launch Open Group Buying Platform: a World First?

Tuanbao CEO Ren Chunlei

Innovation isn’t something you would normally expect fron Tuanbao, China’s most blatant Groupon clone. After all, Tuanbao CEO Ren Chunlei not only snapped up the groupon.cn domain name before Groupon could, he designed his site to look almost exactly the same. It allowed the company to expand with some initial success, but it certainly wasn’t what anyone could call creative.

But that was a long time ago, and China’s group buying sites have had a devastating year. The last time we heard from Ren Chunlei, Tuanbao was on the verge of bankruptcy and Ren himself was already planning a new startup. But six months later, Tuanbao is still around, and Ren remains at the helm. What’s more, according to Sina Tech, Ren has unveiled a bold new vision for the company: an open group buy platform where companies and even individual users can submit deals.

At present, Tuanbao is basically an advertising platform with only free deals listed, because the company still owes money and can’t get any credit. Under the new system, free listings will remain an option, but vendors will be able to choose whether they want to list a free deal or a more traditional paid one. At the same time, designated power users will have the freedom to speak with vendors on their own and arrange deals, which they can then earn commissions on. In addition to setting up deals, there will also be users who get paid to draft and design deals listings, and users who are paid to help promote deals. Tuanbao will no longer arrange deals directly with vendors; it will simply take a 10 percent cut of the commissions paid by vendors to these various types of power users.

I’m not aware of any other group buy site that operates quite like this; it is possible that Tuanbao could be the world’s first open-platform group buy site. But it’s also true that many of these ideas are somewhat familiar. Alibaba’s Juhuasuan is an open platform of sorts, allowing vendors (but not users) to list deals. And Taobao’s “Taobaoke” and Vancl’s “experts” are extant examples of the kind of user-created promotional system Tuanbao seems to be going for. Even so, though, it’s clear that Tuanbao will be breaking some new ground here.

The question that remains unanswered — the new version of the site hasn’t yet launched — is whether or not the users’ compensation will be significant enough to inspire anyone to get that involved. Ren Chunlei hopes the site will be something like an entrepreneurial platform that will allow users to establish their own daily deals and marketing businesses through Tuanbao’s platform.

Amazingly, despite the very ugly fallout with his last set of investors, Ren has apparently secured more funding that he says will be sufficient to operate the new site for one to two years, so we should get to see for ourselves whether users buy into Ren’s new idea, or whether it all just falls apart again. Either way, with Ren Chunlei at the helm, it’s not likely to be boring. If Tuanbao wasn’t on your map before, put it there now, because this could get interesting.

[via Sina Tech]

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Workaround: How you can still use Google Apps for free for new domains

Google has killed the free version of Google Apps, which simply means that now you will have to pay for the service, which earlier had an option to use the service for free up to 10 users.

“When we launched the premium business version we kept our free, basic version as well. Both businesses and individuals signed up for this version, but time has shown that in practice, the experience isn’t quite right for either group. Businesses quickly outgrow the basic version and want things like 24/7 customer support and larger inboxes. Similarly, consumers often have to wait to get new features while we make them business-ready.” [Google blogpost]

For bootstrapping entrepreneurs, Google Apps was the default service for configuring email/calendar etc services and while this is a huge blow to them, there is a workaround which enables you to signup for Google Apps for new domains, without actually paying for the service!

Assuming that you already have an existing Google Apps account, hop to Domain settings and click on ‘Domain names‘ tab to add another domain to the account.
Now all you need to do is *Add another domain* in your existing Google Apps account, verify the domain (via meta tag or file upload) and you are all set to use the new domain.

Google Apps Subdomain

And if you are among the early adopters of Google Apps, you luckily have 50 free users to exhaust – i.e. even the new domain that you add can easily be used for free up to 50 users (in total including the primary domain). Around 2 years back, Google dropped the free user count from 50 to 10, so pat yourself for being an early adopter.

Important point to keep in mind is that the domain will be accessible from the parent Google Apps account and maybe,  somebody somewhere is planning to start selling such services on ebay :)

Limitations of a non-primary account?

A lot! But not that significant.

For instance, you cannot set different policies or configuration settings for different domains – this is only controlled by primary domain.

Services like Google Docs also come with limitation for non-primary domains : For example, you cannot share Google Docs documents across domains using “Get the link to share” option. Similarly, you cannot restrict sharing to the users in a single domain (more details here).

In short, using non-primary domain has it’s own limitations but works very well if all you want to use is basic set of services and access control.

What if you are starting totally afresh?

Unfortunately, there is no work around my friend. You will have to pay for the service if you want to use Google Apps. Though there are a few alternatives (like Zoho), but Google definitely has surely lost a lot of future business from startups and hackers.

Maybe, it’s time for Zoho to do some guerrilla marketing?

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China’s WineNice Raises Over $15M in Funding, Rumored to Involve Rothschild Support

Yes, this is the third bit of news for a China-based wine e-commerce site in as many days. This time it’s the turn of WineNice to count some cash as it wraps up series B funding thought to be worth over RMB 100 million (US$15.8 million). No financial details have been given, but CEO Lu Yide, teased the investment news a few months ago and also mentioned that exact figure.

Rumors in the industry suggest, however, that the funding is led by the N M Rothschild Group, the investment arm of the centuries-old Rothschild family empire that also runs Château Mouton Rothschild and Château Lafite. That’s because WineNice has suggested that it’ll reveal its source of funds at a Rothschild event in China on the evening of December 10th.

WineNice’s funding will be used to to build up both its online B2C infrastructure and its offline “experience stores” that now number just over a 100 across China.

The site started in 2008, one of the pioneers of premium wine e-tailing in China. WineNice saw RMB 150 million ($23.7 million) in sales revenue last year, and aims for this to grow to RMB 1 billion ($158 million) in revenue within two to three years.

Earlier this week we saw WangJiu launch as a high-end rival to WineNice (and others like Jiuxian and YesMyWine), and Vinehoo raised a more modest round of funding.

[Source: QQ Finance - article in Chinese]

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DailyDose: Google kills free signup for apps, no such thing as free apps for businesses

Google kills free signup for apps, everyone pays

For Businesses, instead of two versions–the free version and the premium version–there will be one. Companies of all sizes will have to sign up for Google’s premium version only. Google Apps for Business, which includes 24/7 phone support for any issue, a 25GB inbox, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee with no scheduled downtime will cost $50 per user per year. Source: Google Enterprise Blog.

Kim Dotcom can sue New Zealand Spies

Kim Dot Com in 1996 (Image: Wikipedia)

A ruling by a High Court judge today means that New Zealand’s spy agency will have to reveal details of their secret surveillance of Kim Dotcom. The decision, which will see the Government Communications Security Bureau added to Dotcom’s lawsuit over an illegal January raid on his mansion, means that the GCSB may now be sued for damages after it was revealed the agency illegally spied on him. [Source]

Guatemala detains McAfee, to expel him to Belize

Guatemalan police arrested U.S. software guru John McAfee on Wednesday for illegally entering the country and said it would seek to expel him to neighboring Belize, which he fled after being sought for questioning over his neighbor’s murder.

McAfee, who had been in hiding for three weeks, crossed into Guatemala with his 20-year-old girlfriend to evade authorities in Belize who wanted to quiz him as “a person of interest” about the killing of fellow American Gregory Faull. [Source]

US opposes UN Internet governance unanimously

The US House of Representatives has unanimously approved a resolution to oppose U.N. intent to govern and regulate the Internet at its WCIT-12 conference in Dubai, currently underway. In a historical moment of unanimous agreement — an eye-opening 397-0 vote — the U.S. House of Representatives voted today to approve a resolution pushing the U.S. government to fight the United Nations in its bid to control and change the Internet at the WCIT-12 summit, currently under way in Dubai. [Source]

Apple to make Made in US Macs

Apple plans to take some manufacturing jobs back to the United States. On Thursday, Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, said the company would invest $100 million in producing some of its Mac computers in the United States, beyond the assembly work it already does in the United States. [Source]

New Galaxy phone may have bendable, unbreakable screen

Samsung Electronics, the world’s leading technology company by revenue, is likely accelerating the launch of its next-generation flagship Galaxy smartphone – which may come with a breakthrough unbreakable screen. Codenamed “Project J” after mobile division chief JK Shin, development of the new Galaxy S IV could be aimed for release by as early as April, according to analysts and tech blogs. [Source]

Intel CEO Otellini wants an insider

Intel’s outgoing chief executive, Paul Otellini, said he expected to be replaced by a company insider and also signaled that the top chipmaker could open its factories to strategic customers. Otellini’s comments at a Sanford Bernstein investor conference on Wednesday stoked speculation the top chipmaker may manufacture mobile chips for Apple and pushed Intel’s shares higher on Thursday morning. [Source]

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