The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), in a recent survey, predicts the growth of the online display and text advertising industry at 23% from Rs. 785 crores in 2009-2010 to Rs. 993 crores in 2010-2011. The display side of online advertising should grow by 28% to Rs. 534 crores and the text side by 26% to Rs. 459 crores. Not surprisingly, BFSI (Banking, Financial Services and Insurance)...

With the entire hoopla surrounding Government of India’s attempts to gain rights to accessing encrypted information for security purposes, this story seems to be taking a similar path. Google representatives have said that sharing encryption keys of Gmail with the Government is not going to happen citing user privacy. Ofcourse, they did go onto say that they would do so “in the event of...

Mobile banking services provider Eko India Financial Services Pvt. Ltd. has secured additional funding from 4B Capital Fund A, a Colorado-based social fund set up by 4B, a Christian charity group. The funding comes in return for a 30% stake in the company. 4B Capital’s General Partner, Christopher Murdoch has joined Eko’s board with this acquisition. WATBlog featured a review on Eko and...

I studied in an engineering college which has churned out some amazing geeks in the last few years. From the inside, I see absence of an official structured support system for software developers. If that is the case in my college, it is certainly gloomier over at many others. This kills dormant talent completely which, ironically, universities are supposed to nurture. Microsoft Innovation Alliance...

Cut. Pain. Endure. Heal. This is the story of the Indian telecom sector. Last time around, Telenor was bleeding and we dripped that here. Now, it is not that it has stopped bleeding but the commitment to endure has come. Mr. Sigve Brekke, Asia Head and Managing Director of Indian Operations of the Telenor group, announced the change in strategy for the Indian market stressing on focusing on the mass...

Riding on the wave of the post – recession focus on “cost cutting”, Nokia’s application, christened Tej, has partnered with CavinKare, a personal care products company. Tej is a mobile – based order and supply chain management application. It basically allows a user to transfer information, typically sales related, using a mobile phone. The hosted application is a boon for companies having...

For so much hoopla about online businesses and the advantages of going onto the web, it was VERY surprising that highly dynamic entities like stock markets and investment activities hadn’t taken to the internet earlier. We, recently, tracked the mobile trading proposal and implementation. Now, mutual funds are going online in a major way. The mutual fund industry came about for those who do not...

Normally, you would associate ‘bailout’ with the painful recession of 2008. This one is not so much about that. Over the past 12 – 18 months, news has consistently flooded us with launches of mobile service operators with a little more competitive pricing, 3G auctions (good, bad AND a lot of ugly!), mobile revolution and a certain “cheapest tariffs in the world” all related to the Great Indian...

The United Nations had a Summit on the Millennium Development Goals this week and the big tech news out was the International Telecommunications Union call for global leaders to act towards ensuring broadband access to half the world’s population by 2015. Yes, around 3.5 billion people in 2015 should have broadband up from 1.146 billion subscribers at the beginning of this year – a staggering 305%...

I’ve been going on and on about the boom in Indian telecom sector and internet penetration in India. Quick on the heels of both of these, comes a report titled “The Digital Universe in India” pegging India’s digital information growth at 60 times over the next decade. The study was jointly conducted by EMC Corporation, a provider of information infrastructure systems, software and services,...