Squashing BoP Myth no.7

The Payoff for Investing in Poor Countries : HBS Working Knowledge: "Conventional wisdom says that people in BOP markets cannot use such advanced technologies, but that's just another misconception."

How Anil Ambani plans to woo rural India: "If you thought customers in semi-urban and rural markets were using mobile phones only to make calls, think again. If Reliance Communications Ventures Ltd is to be believed, this is a myth, which has been broken.

Much to its surprise, the company realised that a sizeable portion of its customers in the towns and villages of the Bimaru (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) states were using cellphones to log on to the Net, stream video clippings and for infotainment.

GSM companies might be concentrating only on voice revenues in their quest to address the rural markets. Reliance, however, is banking on data and video to do the magic. Not that it is giving up on voice. It only means that the company is increasingly expecting a large part of the revenue to come from data. This is the key plank of Reliance's big new push into the hinterland of the country.

The company means serious business. It currently has its network available in over 240,000 towns and villages across the country constituting for 42 per cent of the rural population. But by the end of the year, it wants to nearly double the rural coverage to 400,000 villages - about 50 per cent of the rural population."

More on Bottom of Pyramid here and here

Amusing

Clear Admit: MBA Admissions Consulting and Counseling Blog:
"Now, the big U.S. tech companies, investment banks, consulting firms, and consumer-goods companies are trying to find people who can function globally. An MBA with overseas work experience, or familiarity with one or more foreign markets, has a real advantage. That person can probably choose among several great job opportunities.

If I had a college-age or graduate-school-age child right now, I'd try to encourage him or her to spend a year or a semester in China, or in India."

The ring!

My roommate (who in his previous job has test driven these) says my bike's clutch lever's too hard.
That's one complaint with my bike almost everyone makes first time they ride it.
Every time I go on a long ride, I lose some skin on my ring finger and the little one on my left hand.
"You continue riding that thing and you will have a hard time wearing a ring" they say.
Someting me mom says too, but that has nothing to do with the clutch, I guess.

Empathy: The religion of Globalization

In a world where every action has an impact on everyone else in the world.
When walls cannot keep "your" people together and "them" away, rules and rituals stand no legitimacy in boundaries of geographical areas or epochs of time.
Anything that puts your mind into a category is evil
For the first time "Capitalism" and "Communism" are both bad words, everywhere and always.
Fanaticism, the greatest evil of them all.
Inclusion, greatest virtue.

I declare Empathy my religion.

Swami Vivekananda started his address at the1893 World Parliament of Religions with the words
"Sisters and brothers of America."
This was followed by a wild applause that lasted a few minuets they say.

These words were never more relevant than they are today.

"As the different streams having their sources in different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee."

"Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me."

"Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal."

And he concluded with

"If the Parliament of Religions has shown anything to the world, it is this: It has proved to the world that holiness, purity and charity are not the exclusive possessions of any church in the world, and that every system has produced men and women of the most exalted character. In the face of this evidence, if anybody dreams of the exclusive survival of his own religion and the destruction of the others, I pity him from the bottom of my heart, and point out to him that upon the banner of every religion will soon be written in spite of resistance: "Help and not fight," "Assimilation and not Destruction," "Harmony and Peace and not Dissension."

One Child One Laptop!

News from PC Magazine: $100 Laptop Effort Gains Momentum: "The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's plan to deliver low-cost laptop computers to children in developing nations and impoverished American students is moving forward, according to Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and co-founder of the school's Media Lab."

Honesty!

A mobile phone rings in the parliament, the speaker asks the "culprit" to hand it over to the marshals and no one does.

This, a day after they discussed witnesses turning hostile in Jessica Lal murder and Best Bakery trials.

A friend asks me what I intend to do after my MBA, I tell him I want to work in the social sector. He says "So that’s what you wrote in your essays. What do you REALLY want to do?"

My roomie is hit from behind at a signal. Falls. Few bruises. Before he is up on his feet and lifts his bike, the car's gone.

Someone puts a spoon in the office microwave. The thing just blew up. Charred black. No one admits to it.

And no one's surprised.

No one's surprised because we are culturally dishonest.

Google Buys Writely

Writely Blog: "Here are our 'top 10' reasons why being part of Google is fantastic for Writely and the Writely team:

10. Writely is like a caterpillar that we hope to make into a beautiful butterfly at Google!
9. We love Google's philosophy and values -- especially 'Focus on the user.'
8. We're as passionate as Google is about respecting users' privacy.
7. Many of our users are already Google fans using other Google services.
6. Being at Google will help us do more great things faster.
5. Some people didn't feel comfortable trusting a tiny startup with their documents...and we're no longer a tiny startup.
4. We like lava lamps and they're pretty much standard decor at Google.
3. Three words: Free Googleplex lunches ;)
2. As fun as it's been to launch a popular, global, 24x7 Web service, it'll be nice to take a vacation once in a while!
...and the number one reason???
1. We'll be able to bring Writely to not just thousands but millions of users -- the more, the merrier :-)"