Muthu Nedumaran-Technology&Language

My video with Muthu Nedumaran- a language guru working on indo-chinese languages whose technologies have been adopted by Apple. We start speaking in Tamil from 7:35.

" For the english page, the cost of printing was 7 bucks, and for the Tamil page, it was 35 bucks- i wanted to change that" . The smartphone is a huge opportunity where i have licensed stuff to Apple and HTC. "In india you can sell a device with every language except indian language- unlike in Thailand or in China". UGC will change the landscape. Early days were focused on rendering the font, but today, people want intelligent input- predictive text, linguistic spelling analysis, etc.

Muthu Nedumaran has over 25 years of experience in developing technologies for the Tamil language.  He authored Murasu Anjal and Sellinam, the popular desktop and mobile application for Tamil input, rendering and content. His creations have been officially adopted by the education ministries in governments of Singapore and Malaysia. Muthu developed the fonts for Indian and Indo-Chinese languages that are included in the iPhone and the latest Macintosh operating system from Apple Inc. He is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Knowledge Channels Synergy Sdn. Bhd., Malaysia. Besides driving Technology and Product Marketing initiatives for large corporations like Sun Microsystems and Oracle Corporation in the Asia Pacific region, he was also actively involved in niche technology developments such as Java, Web and Mobile technologies. Muthu holds a degree in Electronic Engineering with a major in Computer Engineering from the University of Technology Malaysia (1985).

Muthu's links
https://twitter.com/muthunedumaran
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Muthu+Nedumaran&hl=en
my.linkedin.com/pub/muthu-nedumaran/0/76a/17a/
http://www.singaporetamilwriters.com/wtwc/en/index.php/paper-presenters

ManojGupta-Micromax

My video with Manoj Gupta, head of VAS and Applications, Micromax.

A Gamechanger, with their entry level android phones being priced @ $50, micromax has been a trailblazer in india. Their latest is Canvas. Some of his quotes : "The speed at which we can bring a phone into the market is 1/5 th the speed as compared to the MNC phone manufacturers." "The indian consumer is an emotional consumer, who needs less doubt in his purchases, and hence looks for value for money." "Even our Rs2.5 K feature phone is a 4 inch touchscreen phone" " The middle class will demand to read, write and discover in their mother tongue". " India will still need a lot of feature phones, because on a bike, when you want to make a call, you still need a keypad as compared to a touch screen".

About Micromax: Micromax, is the 12th largest handset manufacturer in the World (According to Global Handset Vendor Market share report from Strategy Analytics). The Indian brand is reaching out to the global frontiers with innovative products that challenge the status quo that Innovation comes with a price. With an in-depth understanding of rapidly changing consumer preferences coupled with the use of advanced technologies, Micromax has been able to differentiate itself from the competitors through innovation and design.

Manoj's Links:
http://www.micromaxinfo.com/about-us.aspx
https://twitter.com/Micromax_Mobile
http://m.economictimes.com/features/brand-equity/how-mobile-phone-manufacturers-are-trying-to-save-music/articleshow/18239560.cms

KirubaShankar DigitalRockstar&Farmer

One of the most interesting people  i have met this year, a digital guru with +50,000 followers on Twitter, Kiruba talks about his passions, Internet, social media, his farming , blogging - he started blogging late 90s...and about his inspiration, Derek Sivers...

Kiruba Shankar is an entrepreneur, social media consultant, speaker, author, teacher, podcaster and a farmer. He is the CEO of BusinessBlogging, a social media consultant firm. He also heads Vaksana Farms, a farming venture and Verdure Books, a publishing house. He has authored 4 books and is working on the next.  He has written articles in leading business newspapers and magazines. He runs various projects catering to diverse interests such as Kiruba TV, Kiruba FM, Cerebrate, Sponge etc. He is passionate about comics, antiques, vinyl records, business cards, running, cycling, rowing, traveling and blogging.

Kiruba's Links:
http://www.kiruba.com/
https://twitter.com/kiruba
in.linkedin.com/in/kiruba/
http://businessblogging.org/blog/tag/kiruba-shankar
http://sivers.org/

Sukirti Jagran Online CEO

My video with Sukirti Gupta, head of Jagran Online who talks about vernacular language and the digital ecosystem. Jagran is the world's largest newspaper, with +55 MM readers. In india, amongst the dailies, the language dailies are top 7 and the earliest english daily is at #8. The growth has been from 4 lakh NRI dominated  4 years ago to 36 Lac users monthly in india alone. Jagran.com has 247 editions and +10,000 stories daily. The key challenges according to her are content discovery, revenue sustainability and technology rendering on devices. Despite this, even in the digital space, they are as big as The Hindu and Indian Express and they have +6Lac followers on Facebook. She talks about Hinglish, English and Hindi.

Sukirti Gupta is CEO of MMI Online which manages the online media properties of the Jagran Prakashan Group, including Dainik Jagran, the worlds’ largest ready daily. Jagran.Com, the online portal of Dainik Jagran, is the largest vernacular language portal in India.

Sukirti's Links:
www.linkedin.com/pub/sukirti-suki-gupta/0/92/a85
http://www.jagran.com/
http://www.medianama.com/2010/06/223-jagran-onlymyhealth-mmi/

ArvindPani Reverie Entrepreneur

Meet Arvind Pani, Entrepreneur-founder of Reverie, focused on solving the language divide in the mobile  and digital world- his mission is "to make language irrelevant on digital platforms".

The magnitude of the problem: Though Indian literacy is 76%,  English literacy is about 10%, which means people that use mobile phones have paper stickers in their native languages to guide them, a ridiculous situation.80% of devices today sell in non latin regions where support for languages is very difficult in the digital ecosystem. They partner with Qualcomm and have rolled out devices with Micromax- they are also targeting Set Top Boxes... and are the engine behind PluxText

The big challenge Reverie has set itself- to create a digital user experience that has to match up to the next best experience- Print media- (the largest newspaper in the world is a local language newspaper in India) -Reverie has solutions, tools and technologies in three areas- consumption, interactivity and content processing to solve the language divide.

Reverie is a Bangalore based product startup that makes text communication possible in any language on digital platforms.It provide users the ability to read and type in any language of choice and also provide automated contextual text conversion of one language to several other languages.This framework not only allows for rendering multiple languages on such devices for text display, but also for text entry and other value adds such as contextual conversion of languages dynamically.


Arvind's Links:
http://www.reverie.co.in/
https://twitter.com/arvindpani
in.linkedin.com/pub/arvind-pani/2/253/a6/
http://www.pluggd.in/tv/interview-with-arvind-pani-of-reverie-language-technologies-297/

NevilleTaraporewalla Microsoft

My video chat with Microsoft's senior director for Advertising for emerging markets, Neville Taraporewalla. Here he talks about how Technology can deliver to business. and about how he started his digital media excursion with the Times group, Yahoo, where he led the turnaround to a profit making company in India and to his current role in Microsoft where he evangelises digital. He says - "I see all technology companies have now become media companies"

An expert on the digital advertising industry, Neville Taraporewalla spearheads the Advertising and Online Business at Microsoft India. In this role, he drives long term success and market growth across Microsoft’s advertising and online offerings in India.

Overall, Taraporewalla has over 23 years of industry experience and has been one of the earliest adopters of the Internet. During his tenure with Yahoo! India from 2002-06, he was instrumental in reversing Yahoo! India’s fortunes and had played a pivotal role in converting the India office into a profit centre. In 1996, he led The Times of India Group’s foray into the Internet space, where he was in charge of online media sales, content production and marketing.

APOLOGY: my audio recording device malfunctioned during this interview, so apologies if the sound is not great- it is audible, but not clear- sorry about this.

Neville's Links
in.linkedin.com/in/nevilletaraporewalla/
http://www.medianama.com/2009/07/223-neville-taraporewalla-to-join-as-india-head-of-microsofts-advertiser-publisher-solutions-group/
http://www.exchange4media.com/Digital/InterView.aspx?ID=92

MaheshMurthy MarketingRobinhood

My video chat with Mahesh Murthy, who has styled himself as the Marketing Robinhood, because he makes money out of advising big brands and funds startups with it... with +50K followers on twitter and a Digital Guru,he talks about the future of Marketing. A great example is Redbull, which spent  $20 MM and got $0.5 Billion of publicity getting a man to jump off space (Felix Baumgartner).

Mahesh Murthy, founder and CEO, has 24 years of marketing and communications experience – of which over 14 years are in online marketing. After dropping out of college, Mahesh sold vacuum cleaners from door to door and then found a home in advertising with Grey in India and Ogilvy in Hong Kong, where he won international notoriety as a creative director on HP, Microsoft, Unilever, The Economist, Pepsi and MTV - for whom he wrote and directed a spot voted “Asia’s best commercial of the decade”. Mahesh then moved to a Silicon Valley firm, CKS Partners (later, USWeb/ CKS) as Creative Director and eventually, Partner – where he helped create and launch the first commercial version of Yahoo in 1995 and the “Earth’s biggest bookstore” campaign for Amazon.com in 1997. After a successful IPO for CKS, Mahesh moved to head marketing at iCat, an e-commerce firm in Seattle, which was subsequently acquired by Intel. Mahesh then returned to India to run Channel V, a rival to MTV, till its sale to Newscorp in 2000 and then founded Passionfund to invest in and guide startups. Among his investments were Geodesic, a mobile software firm with a 2008 market cap of over $500m; EBS Direct, a multinational loyalty and marketing services firm; Compassbox, acquired by CareerLauncher and WebDunia, India’s leading multilingual portal. Mahesh pens reasonably infamous columns across various business publications and has played the Donald Trump-equivalent role in an Indian rip-off of The Apprentice, involving entrepreneurs and business plans. While running digital marketing campaigns for his favourite charity in late 2003, Mahesh saw an opportunity to change the basic business model in advertising and set up Pinstorm with a bunch of great people to do so. As the company has grown and better people than him - like others listed here - have come on board, his contribution to business is increasingly restricted to deciding whose lunch box to raid at the communal table. Mahesh co-founded his second fund, Seedfund in 2006 with the backing of investors like Google and Motorola to create and guide even more revolutionary companies.

About Pinstorm: Pinstorm is a digital advertising firm headquartered in Mumbai, India with offices in New Delhi, Bangalore, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Zurich and Santa Clara. It was founded in 2004 and ranks amongst the leading digital advertising firms in the world.[1] The company is founded by Mahesh Murthy who was also its COO until recently.,[2] and in 2005 stood amongst the "Asia's Top 100 Technology Companies" in first "Red Herring 100 Asia list" published by Red Herring magazine.[3]

Links:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/maheshmurthy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinstorm
http://www.pinstorm.com/team.htm
http://www.mxmindia.com/2012/06/indias-new-most-influential/
http://www.rediff.com/money/2006/sep/26inter.htm
http://blogs.wsj.com/india-chief-mentor/2009/12/15/mahesh-murthy-founder-and-ceo-pinstorm-and-founder-seedfund/
https://twitter.com/maheshmurthy
http://www.seedfund.in/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bull_Stratos

HemangPandit CEO,Entrepreneur GaneshaSpeaks

My video chat with Hemang Pandit, CEO, Founder Entrepreneur of the world's 3rd largest astrology portal, fast headed to #1 slot- with +3 MM visits monthly. Hemang talks about Astrology, its nuances and its fascination to humanity, "there are 20 Million astrologers in India" Astrology has moved from the "definitive" to a direction/ trend indicator.

GaneshaSpeaks : Initiated in the year 2003 with a definitive vision,  GaneshaSpeaks.com is a pioneer in more than one ways. Back then, E-commerce space was yet in its infancy, and the examples to follow were far and few. The aim and vision of the company, however, was set from the day one – to streamline a scattered, direction-less astrology market. Today, the parent company i.e. Siddhi Vinayak Astrology Services Private Limited has come a long way since its nascent days, and has expanded its vistas in myriad ways. Besides GaneshaSpeaks.com, which is undoubtedly the Numero Uno astrology website in India, the company now boasts of an impressive portfolio of running and upcoming products, services and brands.

About Hemang : The young, charismatic innovator and techno-entrepreneur, who never shies away from experimenting with novel concepts and uncharted territories, Hemang Arunbhai Pandit has been the key driving force and the brain behind the foundation and creation of the entire GaneshaSpeaks.com business, and its running/ upcoming subsidiaries. The architect of the website www.GaneshaSpeaks.com, Hemang has powered the business with his eye-on-the-target approach and inventive spirit. He holds great respect and preference for high quality service standards, and his vision and firm belief in tenets of hard yet smart work have, time and again, yielded spectacular results. His unique entrepreneurial spirit and dynamism have been instrumental in writing the success story of this organisation.

Hemang's Links:
in.linkedin.com/in/hemangarunbhaipandit
http://www.ganeshaspeaks.com/about-ganeshaspeaks.action
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/a-fortunate-man/583541/0
https://twitter.com/GaneshaSpeaks

Saikumar CEO Network18

My video with Sai, CEO, Network18. some of his quotes-" I see borders collapsing between broadcast, digital and print". " Content is king, but has many kingdoms".

B. Sai Kumar, 37 years, is the Group CEO of Network18. He oversees the group’s diverse portfolio of assets spanning news & entertainment broadcasting, digital & print publishing, filmed entertainment, e-commerce and other allied businesses. This includes a TV network comprising fifteen national and regional channels straddling General & Business news, Mass entertainment, Youth, Kids, English entertainment, Factual entertainment and Home shopping genres. The group also operates a bouquet of web portals and a stable of special interest magazines, yellow pages & search services apart from having a presence in areas such as entertainment ticketing, event & sports management, broadcast services and financial data terminals.

Responsible for the strategic and operational management of the group, Kumar leads management teams of all group businesses including the IBN general news network (CNN-IBN,IBN7,IBN-Lokmat),CNBC-TV18/Awaaz business news network (CNBC-TV18,CNBC Awaaz,CNBC-TV18 Prime HD), Web18 (moneycontrol.com,ibnlive.com,in.com,firspost.com etc), Forbes India,Infomedia18 (Overdrive,Chip,Entrepreneur etc) amongst others. Apart from this, Kumar oversees the group’s interests in A+E Networks|TV18 (HistoryTV18),Viacom18 (Colors, Colors HD, MTV, Nick, Vh1, Sonic, Comedy Central, Viacom18 Motion Pictures), HomeShop18 and Bigtree entertainment (bookmyshow.com)


Sai's links:
http://www.network18online.com/people.html#sai
http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/b-saikumar-promoted-as-group-ceo-network18-group_626710.html
twitter.com/ibnlive

LVKrishnan CEO TAM

My video with LV Krishnan, CEO of TAM media.  He talks about the evolution in media accountability...makes for an interesting chat, coming from the guy who is the holder of the Universal TV currency...
"Measuring the pulse of Indian TV audiences" - one sees these words almost everywhere in the Mumbai headquarters of TAM India. With services in more than 20 countries spanning Asia, Europe and Americas, TAM has come a long way in India (since its inception in 1998) to be regarded not only as the universal television currency but also as a complete television solution provider.
 In the hot seat is TAM India CEO LV Krishnan who has successfully donned the mantle of guiding the firm through uncharted territories and a turbulent phase. His ad agency background and previous experience that involved working with some of the best brains in the country have helped him shoulder the multitudinous responsibilities with great panache. In October 2013, the soft-spoken but highly assertive Krishnan will be completing thirteen years at the helm. A 'team man' to the core, Krishnan says that he wouldn't have been able to do justice to the 'extremely challenging assignment' without the support of his team.
TAM India - or rather Television Audience Measurement Media Research, a 50:50 joint venture between Nielsen Media Research(NMR) / AC Nielsen and Kantar Media Research(KMR) / IMRB, is the only TV measurement system in India. Post-expansion plans starting from  January 2013, TAM has staked its claim to become one of  the biggest measurement systems in Asia Pacific with a panel strength of 10,000 meters covering nearly 40,000 individuals across 225 sample urban towns to represent Urban India markets in almost all states of India other than J&K and the North East. TAM India has offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and Vadodara (TAM Adex team).

Krishnan's links:
in.linkedin.com/pub/l-v-krishnan/0/68a/bbb
Intro text from : http://www.indiantelevision.com/interviews/y2k3/executive/lvkrishnan.htm
http://www.exchange4media.com/49093_how-das-affects-you-ask-lv-krishnan.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6UqFYD-QCE
http://www.afaqs.com/cafaqs/newsmaker/people.html?id=15

http://www.tamindia.com/tamindia/

MaxHegerman JWT DigitalHead

My video chat with Max Hegerman, digital head, JWT. he talks about consumer evolution in the digital age- he says today brands have 4-5 digital agencies they work with- he also talks about his experience in working with Apple and launching them in china.

In his own words: With 20+ years under my belt, I have worked in advertising, marketing, branding and communications planning for brands like Saturn, Nike, Oakley, Pizza Hut, Land Rover, Volvo, Scion and Apple. I have spent the past five years in key (digital) agency leadership positions in China and India. My experience includes a wide range of media and integrated creative solutions for new brand launches, product line introductions/extensions, specific targets and the re-engineering of brand positioning/messaging. By no means a digital native, I could certainly be considered a digital early adopter. And, I am working, campaign-by-campaign to change the digital landscape forever...

Max's Links
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/max-hegerman/5/60a/703
www.twitter.com/maxhegerman
http://www.jwttpi.com.tw/maxhegerman
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-10-12/news/30270967_1_jwt-india-ceo-colvyn-harris-digital-agency
http://www.exchange4media.com/48752_digital-is-a-global-mandate-for-jwt-max-hegerman.html

Charles Wright WolffOlins Brand Consultancy

My video with Charles Wright, Partner, Wolff Olins, a leading brand consultancy that was responsible, most recently, for the logo of London 2012 olympics. He says "consistent is dead, because managing things by the rules doesn't work"

Charles is a CA by profession. He worked with Accenture before joining Wolff Olins as CFO. He has worked throughout Europe, China and India. Some of his international clients include the London 2012 Olympics, Tate, GE, Unilever, Sony Ericsson, (RED), New York City, Mercedez-Benz, AOL, PWC, Asian Art Museum, and Orange. In India, he has worked for the Adani Group, Hero Moto Corp, Tata Docomo and the Tata Group.

Charles' Links:
ae.linkedin.com/pub/charles-wright/0/726/6b5/
https://twitter.com/WolffOlins
http://www.campaignindia.in/Article/279990,indian-cmos-need-to-shed-their-8216branding8217-reticence-wright.aspx
http://iicofiiml.blogspot.in/2012/10/21st-century-branding-mr-charles-wright.html
https://twitter.com/WolffOlins/status/52726691822448640
http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-why-the-designers-of-the-olympic-logo-broke-the-rules/20120806.htm

SheldonMonteiro CTO SapientNitro

My video with Sheldon, CTO of SapientNitro. Here he talks about whats really changed in marketing with bigdata. Its now economical to deal with volume, velocity and variety in data as compared to 5 years ago. The opportunity to create customer experience using big data is the big idea. he mentions  Autotrader(UK) as an example.

Sheldon is a quality evangelist, process guru and technologist who joined Sapient in 1995, when the firm was under 200 people. He has been instrumental in practice and services development through Sapient’s growth to nearly 10,000 people. Based out of Chicago, he leads Quality and Methodology for SapientNitro’s commerce delivery teams globally. Prior to his current role, he led the delivery of various digital commerce and service platforms for SapientNitro clients, including several Fortune 500 companies.

His main interest is to improve the culture, tools and processes of multi-disciplinary teams - to maximize their productivity, quality and innovation quotient.

Sheldon's Links 
www.linkedin.com/in/sheldonmonteiro/
https://twitter.com/sheldon_tm
http://ideaengineers.sapient.com/author/smonteiro/
http://www.exchange4media.com/48504_being-afraid-of-data-is-being-short-sighted-sheldon-monteiro.html
http://www.slideshare.net/sheldontm
http://www.sapient.com/Assets/AssetHandler/ArticlePdf/1361.pdf
http://www.sapient.com/en-us/sapientnitro.html

SatyanGajwani CEO TimesInternet&TBSL

My video with Satyan Gajwani, CEO of Times internet and TBSL, with +1 billion views, who talks about "marketing being headed by a nerd"... essentially talking about the increasingly quantitative approach marketing is taking, as compared to the qualitative... " he signs off with " I just like building great stuff".

Satyan Gajwani is the CEO of Times Internet Limited. Times Internet Ltd. is the largest Indian digital company, according to Comscore. Times Internet Ltd. owns and operates all major digital initiatives for the Times Group, including ventures in news, business news, lifestyle, music, video, local, e-commerce, deals, mobile, MVAS, and digital investments.. Satyan's goal is to operate Times Internet Ltd. as a collective of nimble startups with a dedicated focus on making each business a success in its respective vertical.
Satyan earned his Bachelor’s in Mathematical and Computational Science from Stanford University, and earned his Masters in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford as well. He previously worked at Barclays Bank in New York, and moved to India four years ago as Director of New Media for The Times Group.

I mention a presentation of Satyan's in the video- a synopsis is available here :

Satyan's Links
http://youtu.be/ALYOSpJD0BA
in.linkedin.com/in/satyangajwani/
https://twitter.com/satyangajwani
http://techcircle.vccircle.com/500/satyan-gajwani-to-replace-rishi-khiani-as-ceo-of-times-internet-khiani-to-start-his-own-venture/
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-10-15/news/34473201_1_young-leaders-digital-products-digital-business
http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/09/times-internet-ceo-satyan-gajwani-discusses-his-companys-new-alliance-with-gawker-media/
http://www.timesgroup.com/bccl/management.html
http://timesinternet.in/
http://www.exchange4media.com/48509_it%E2%80%99s-not-22-but-two-times-two-satyan-gajwani.html

AnandBhushan, FashionDesigner

My video chat with  Anand Bhushan, Delhi based designer who i caught up with at the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion week in Delhi.  Says Anand-" I do statement pieces with a  modern, edgy take to them"

Anand is an award winning post graduate from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad and a graduate from the National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi, but his training and experience as a designer informs about him more than his formal education.

An understanding of where fashion and textile has been and where it may be going is vital to Anand's technique and to his creative process. The label 'Anand Bhushan' makes fashion creative but also continues to cultivate the modern, edgy take on upscale dressing which the designer has become known for.

Anand's Links:
http://www.willslifestyleindiafashionweek.com/single_designer.php?did=17
http://www.vogue.in/content/five-questions-anand-bhushan
http://www.bharattextile.com/features/wills-lifestyle-india-fashion-week/2012/spring-summer/profiles/anand-bhushan.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMnAnPH_VTo
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Anand-Bhushan/photos/
http://www.fdci.org/Member.aspx?mid=2120588169

PradeepKar-Entrepreneur-Chair&MD Microland

My video with Pradeep Kar, of Microland- here he talks about the vision for the technology industry and how cloud will transform the world. He is particularly excited about the managed services model and how business users are back in charge...

Pradeep Kar is the founder,  chairman and managing director of Microland,  India’s leading provider  of outsourced IT infrastructure management services.A serial entrepreneur, Pradeep founded and sold three companies namely Indya.com, Planetasia.com, and Net Brahma Technologies. He sits on the board of United Business Media Limited, a leading global business Media Company listed on the London Stock Exchange, on the Advisory Board of Leaders’ Quest, an international social enterprise and
on the South Asia Initiative Board of Trinity College, Dublin. Pradeep is  the immediate Past President of TiE, Bangalore Chapter and is the Founding Member of the Bangalore Chapter of the Young Presidents Organization.
Pradeep has been recognized with numerous accolades. Notable among these are the Indian Express “India Young Business Achiever Award” and 'Global Leader for Tomorrow’ by the World Economic Forum. He has been featured in ‘Newsweek International’ as ‘Stars of Asia’ and in ‘Business India’ as ‘Stars of India’.

Pradeep's Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pradeep_Kar
http://in.linkedin.com/pub/pradeep-kar/14/6a3/999
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/features/the-leisure-lounge/sundowner-with-pradeep-kar/articleshow/2605795.cms
http://www.informationweek.com/pradeep-kar-chairman-of-microland/178601859

DrAshwinNaik-Vaatsalya-Affordablehealthcare

"We operate mostly in Tier 3 towns that are 250K, only two of my hospitals are in Tier 2 cities"

My video with Dr. Ashwin Naik, , the co-founder and CEO of Vaatsalya, aims to provide affordable and quality healthcare services to India’s underserved, rural, and semi-urban populations. The success of his health care service company has demonstrated the viability and potential of small-medium sized private hospitals to efficiently serve impoverished citizens in India. Furthermore, Ashwin is working to make these hospitals magnets for the growth of the service economy, especially in sectors such as pharmacies, diagnostic labs, and medical-related training.

Ashwin, co-founder of Vaatsalya, has more than 10 years experience in the life sciences and healthcare industry. Prior to founding Vaatsalya, Ashwin was Vice President of Business Development and Informatics, Triesta Sciences, a specialty clinical research organization involved in conducting advanced genomics based research in the field of oncology. Prior to that, he has worked in various capacities at Molecular Connections (Bangalore/Rockville), Celera Genomics (Maryland), Los Alamos National Laboratory (New Mexico) and Genetic Information Research Institute (California).
Ashwin has a medical degree from Karnatak Medical College, Hubli and a masters degree from University of Houston, Texas.

Vaatsalya Honors and Recognition:
Winner of the Porter Prize 2012, Vaatsalya has been recognized as a leader in strategy for redefining the idea of patient care and fundamentally challenging the economic models in the healthcare industry. Vaatsalya was ranked the 5th fast-growing-company in India by All World Network, in 2010. Forbes magazine, in 2011, featured Vaatsalya as one of 5 hot startups. Prior to that, Vaatsalya bagged a number of prestigious awards: BiD Challenge India 2007 for the best business in development sector, LRAMP Award for Innovation 2008, Sankalp Award for Social Enterprise 2009 and Frost & Sullivan Healthcare Excellence Award 2010.

Ashwin's Links
http://www.vaatsalya.com/web/
http://vaatsalya.com/online/ygl
https://twitter.com/ashwinnaik
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ashwinnaik
http://ashwinnaik.com/blog
http://vaatsalya.com/online/EXTEAM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPmGtebW9Sc
http://www.changemakers.com/users/ashwin-naik
http://catalign.com/data/Managing%20a%20big%20bet%20Dr.%20Ashwin%20Naik%20Vaatsalya.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPmGtebW9Sc
http://www.changemakers.com/users/ashwin-naik
http://bit.ly/AshwinNaik

DeepKalra-MakeMyTrip-EntrepreneurCEO

My video with Deep Kalra- an entrepreneur who focused on a whitespace and created an entire industry- an inspirational story for every entrepreneur. His key takeaway-"Figure out what makes you tick- once you do that, its so easy!"

Deep is the Founder and CEO of India's leading online travel company,MakeMyTrip.com. Launched in India in 2005, MakeMyTrip offered the convenience of online transactions coupled with great value prices, thus revolutionizing the way Indians research and purchase travel services. Under his stewardship, MakeMyTrip is today the largest e-commerce business in the country and the largest travel company in India and listed its shares on NASDAQ in August 2010.

Deep is a member of the NASSCOM Executive Council and chairs its Internet Working Group. He also serves as a Board Member of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) Delhi and is an active Angel Investor in the internet space. Deep is a founding member of “I am Gurgaon” - an NGO focused on improving the quality of life in Gurgaon.Deep has been recognized by Ernst & Young as Entrepreneur of the Year - Business Transformation (2011) and was also felicitated as a 'Distinguished Alumni' of IIM-Ahmedabad in December 2011.

Prior to his entrepreneurial venture with MakeMyTrip, Deep has had corporate stints with GE Capital, AMF Bowling Inc. and ABN AMRO Bank. Deep holds an MBA (PGDM) degree from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and a Bachelor's degree in Economics from St. Stephen's College, Delhi. His interests include swimming, yoga, quizzing, adventure sports and, of course, travelling.

Deeps' Links:
http://www.makemytrip.com/about-us/management_list_view.php
https://twitter.com/makemytrip
http://www.makemytrip.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/deep-kalra/2/486/295
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/et-now/corporate/deep-kalra-talks-about-his-company-makemytrip/videoshow/6723019.cms
http://info.shine.com/Career-Advice-Articles/Career-Advice/CEO-Make-My-Trip-Dont-give-up-easily/5780/cid2.aspx

SandipDas Maxis TelecomVisionary

My video chat with Sandip Das, the visionary telecom guru behind Aircel- " India is ready for the next data tsunami"- he talks about how underserved India is on the data highway and how he sees the future potential for data, but also recognizes the difficult transition India is making from voice to data. He also talks about the impact of Telecom on the Economy "Telecom has Done to India What Motorcars did to the US"- "Growth in Data is Asymmetric- and we can have the data equivalent of gas guzzlers- india could end up having the demand for a trillion sim cards".

Sandip Das joined Maxis Communications Berhad ("MCB") group in January 2007 and upon listing of Maxis Berhad (Malaysia), was appointed its Chief Executive Officer on 1 October 2009, and as an Executive Director of the Company on 17 September 2009.

Sandip is currently also the Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director on the Board of Maxis Communications Berhad, a Director on the Board of its subsidiaries in India. In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors of Sri Lanka Telecom PLC, Mobitel in Sri Lanka and Bridge Mobile Pte Ltd, a strategic alliance of regional telecommunication providers. He has been listed as one of the 100 most powerful people in the telecoms industry worldwide in Global Telecoms Business for two years running in the 2011 and 2010 GTB Power100 list. In 2011, he was polled as one of the Best CEOs in Malaysia by FinanceAsia's Asia's Best Managed Companies country listings. .

Sandip has more than 33 years of work experience in the consumer durable, automobile and telecommunications industries. Prior to joining the Company, he was Deputy Managing Director and a Director on the Board of Hutchison Essar Limited (now known as Vodafone Essar Limited, India), one of India's largest mobile operators. He joined Hutchison Essar, then known as Hutchison Max Telecom, and started that company's operations in India with its paging business in 1994. Before working at Hutchison Essar Limited, he spent five years as Franchise head of Al Futtaim Motors, the Toyota franchise of the Al Futtaim Group, in Dubai, UAE, and 10 years with Indian consumer durable giant Usha International, Shriram Group, where he started as a management trainee and left as joint divisional manager. .

Sandip holds a Masters of Business Administration degree from the Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi, and a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Regional Engineering College (now the National Institute of Technology), Rourkela, India. Sandip is a member of the ESOS Committee

Sandip's Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandip_Das
http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/aircel-onemost-focussed-telcosdata-biz-sandip-das_729691.html
https://twitter.com/MaxisComms
http://www.maxis.com.my/personal/about_us/people/senior.asp
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/et-now/corporate/will-remain-invested-in-india-sandeep-das-maxis/videoshow/11928182.cms
http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/5/30/business/3906897&sec=business

MelissaScott-FSGConsulting

My video chat with Melissa, who works in the Mumbai office of FSG- a consulting company that is in the non-profit sector- founded out of Harvard Business School by Michael Porter 12 years ago with +100 staff worldwide.  She describes FSG as "half think tank, half management consulting firm"- she talks about the potential for not-for-profit enterprises and activities in India.

Before this, Melissa worked at Marketing and Planning Systems (MaPS), performing market research and analysis for Fortune 100 companies. While in business school, Melissa worked with Ashoka’s Housing for All initiative to scale affordable housing solutions across India. She has also worked with the European Venture Philanthropy Association (EVPA) to execute the first benchmarking study of trends in the venture philanthropy landscape in Europe. Melissa also brings her experience as Program Manager in FSG’s CF Insights division to her consulting role, where she focused on issues of sustainability in both consulting engagements to individual foundations as well as field-building activities.

FSG is a nonprofit consulting firm specializing in strategy, evaluation, and research. They were founded in 2000 as Foundation Strategy Group and have completed more than 400 consulting engagements with many of the world's leading corporations, nonprofit organizations, and charitable foundations.

FSG's international teams work across sectors by partnering with foundations, corporations, nonprofits, and governments in every region of the globe to develop more effective solutions to the world's most challenging social issues. Their stated goal is to help organizations and companies -- individually and collectively -- create greater and more effective social change.

They do this thro regularly published research reports, and influential articles in Harvard Business Review and Stanford Social Innovation Review. FSG is also frequently featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist, Financial Times, BusinessWeek, Fast Company, Forbes and NPR, amongst others.

Melissa's Links
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/melissa-scott/3/85b/683
http://www.fsg.org/AboutUs/Overview.aspx
http://www.fsg.org/AboutUs/OurPeople/MelissaScott.aspx
http://www.fsg.org/
http://twitter.com/FSGtweets
http://www.fsg.org/AboutUs/Overview.aspx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzHwGe8LB2g