Ideas are Cheap - Build your mobile
It’s that time of the year when proto.in fever spreads. And the ideaworm has got to me.
Inspired by Vijay Anand’s “Ideas To Toss” series, I thought why not start my own occasional series as well? I’m calling it the “Ideas are Cheap” series. The name is a take on the common proverb “Ideas are Cheap. Execution is Everything.”
So here’s the idea for today:
Can we have a business where the users can customize the hardware that goes into their phone?
This is not a new idea. We are just applying Dell’s business model to mobile phones. If Dell can do it for desktops and laptops, why can’t it be done for mobile phones?
The customization can range from how much memory you want, whether you need a camera or not, etc. to choosing the color and the type of body (candybar or flip or other form factors) and so on.
The range of customization possible depends on the capabilities and costs involved in the assembly process. For example, users may be able to customize the phone by having a name for a special button called ‘Mom’ (or ‘Dad’ or ‘Son’ and so on) that is hotwired to call you. You can gift this to your corresponding loved ones. The advantage is it becomes a wonderful ‘personal’ phone and becomes easy-to-use for technophobic people.
The implementation will be challenging. For one, desktops and laptops can be assembled because of the plug-and-play IBM PC architecture as well as because the operating system easily adjusts to changes in the hardware. AFAIK, mobile phones are not built that way as of today and requires some configuration in the software based on which hardware features are present and which are not (please correct me if I am wrong). Making the software easily adaptable will be a major feature.
The other interesting part is to build a factory that facilitates this. It is very hard to build a supply-chain system for such a factory.
The good part is that the technology could be built on top of OpenMoko - after all, this is the kind of ideas that FIC (the sponsors of the OpenMoko project) had in mind in creating a mostly-open-hardware and open-source-software mobile computing project.
Personalization is one of the buzzwords that is supposed to make the big moolah for companies these days, and allowing people to customize a device that they carry around all day definitely has potential.
End credits: This idea was part of a random discussion between Ramjee and myself.
On a different tangent, there are lots of ideas waiting to happen in the software. For example, it’s not only Apple that can do an App Store for their phone, this can be done for this platform too. Of course, we’ll have to start off a holy war of choosing that one linux distro…
Perhaps similar ideas can be done on top of the Asus EEE PC as well?
Tips for Working From Home
Working from home full-time is a different experience than we are used to. You make or break things, there’s no one asking about your progress and there are no deadlines. It’s all up to you.
My productivity has varied a lot during this time and I was wondering how to make more days productive than they are as of now.
So I polled some of my friends who also work out of a home-office on how they they maintain productivity / motivation / focus, and I got some interesting replies:
Manish Jethani says:
- Make a separate “office room” in your home. You could convert your old study room into your office. You go into this room only for work — fully dressed for work (not in pyjamas!). When you get out of this room, you leave your work behind. In other words, you have a proper office located inside your home.
- Cut out the distractions. Make your family know that this is your office. No visitors, no phone calls (except work-related), etc.
- Follow proper timings. Work fixed hours.
- To stay motivated while working out of your home, I think you basically have to enjoy what you do.
- Self-discipline is the key.
- The concept of an office, as we know it, is relatively new in our history. Throughout the ages humans have worked out of their homes. Think about it. It’s the more natural way of things. Thanks to the internet, working from home is likely to become the norm in the 21st century (also because commuting might become prohibitively expensive).
The Need to Fight
Long ago, a wise friend I used to know once told me that humans have many kinds of needs - physiological, emotional, etc. Along with these, there is also the need to fight.
I’ve been thinking over and over on how true this is. Or whether it is just baloney.
The need to fight. And I’m not talking physically. There is something that you’re always fighting against - whether your focus is challenges at work, or road rage, or even fighting with your loved ones.
A basic human need is to fight. That’s why we have wars and battles all the time. Especially in the mind. I know many people who coded best when they were angry. Maybe our genes and body are built for action, for the rush of the battle.
Maybe that’s why the milestones in a startup feels more “earned” than when working in a big company where the same situations are so shielded.
Maybe that’s why you get things done only when you have a deadline.
Maybe that’s why people do sports, trekking, adventures, long distance biking, etc.
Maybe that’s why people with rags-to-riches stories are more happier than kids of rich people.
Maybe that’s why people feel fired up after a debate or a race, irrespective of whether they win or lose.
Because you’re trying to fight the odds.
And if people don’t have the fight in them, or don’t fight for anything, that’s when they seem so boring, so bored and so lifeless.
Maybe that was part of the message in the Fight Club.
P.S. Has there been any organized pillow fights in India?
Launch of ion2
Last week, we quietly relaunched ion, our USB
charger. The very next day, we shipped ions to
customers in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Mumbai. And an hour
ago, I shipped one to Bhubaneswar. It’s good to be back! 
First of all, thanks to all those 96 people who wrote to us in the past few months who kept asking us when we’ll be back in stock. The fact that there are people really interested kept us going. And we really needed that boost.
I’m sure there are a lot more people who would have also visited the website, saw the ‘Out of stock’ sign but not written to us. We felt bad in having to turn away so many people for so long. But we are very conscious of delivering the best goods, hence we ended up taking a lot of time to do it right.
<shameless plug>
The good news is that the next generation of ion, unimaginatively called “ion2″ is here and now available.
Not only does ion really solve a pain point, what sets it apart from other USB chargers are:
- Is the smallest USB charger available in the Indian market.
- Of very high quality. It is CE certified.
- Works anywhere in the world. No more voltage conversions.
- Works with almost any device that can be charged via USB, including all kinds of mp3 players (the entire iPod family, Zune, iRiver, etc.), mobile phones, and so on.
- Advantage of ion working with so many devices is that you no longer
need to say “Do you have an iPod charger” or “Do you have a Nokia
6300 charger?”…
Just ask “Do you have an ion?”
</shameless plug>
Smart Techie Startup City
Yesterday, I attended The Smart Techie Startup City event. It was intended as a showcase of startups as well as for learning/sharing/mentoring.
I had taken some notes during the day. As I was expanding it into a blog post, I realized I was just adding filler words which was a waste of bits, so here it is as-is:
- Ashish Gupta, Helion VC on “Concept to Success : Milestones for
startups”
- India is a startup (positive way of looking at things)
- High energy
- Lots of growth
- Small absolute number (relatively)
- Little infrastructure or process
- Lack of talent
- Lots of optimism
- Need to innovate to survive
- ⇒ Once in a lifetime opportunity
- Significant change in dynamics (negative way of looking at it)
- Whatever can be made efficient will be done so.
- We can in turn get bangalored and some other country will benefit.
- Creative folks will thrive.
- ⇒ We have no choice.
- Whatever can be made efficient will be done so.
- Hardest evolutionary steps
- Those that requires behavior change
- For example, starting to think “Become cash flow positive”
- Next level CEO, process, tech, business model, etc.
- Those that requires behavior change
- Put in place metrics to measure everything - will help identify whether one has already hit an inflection point.
- Rules of thumb
- Focus on customer/issue
- Focus on continuous improvement
- Intellectual honesty
- Results matter - only for MEASURING (measure progress on a larger scale)
- ⇒ Same rules for person, family, company
- India is a startup (positive way of looking at things)
Happy Birthday to ion
One year ago, on this day, we launched ion, the ipod charger. The launch was just one blog post. That’s it. Within two hours, Atul Chitnis bought the first ion in our online store. We celebrated.
But hold on, let’s rewind the story a bit.
As people might have heard in our recent running talk, it all started when Vikram, Niara and myself started training together for the 2006 Bangalore Marathon.
During one of our runs, Vikram told us that he had created his own charger circuit and came up with this wacky idea of manufacturing and selling them. I never took it seriously but Niara did. She convinced Vikram to take the idea forward. Nearly six months later, the idea had taken wings.
The prototype looked nothing like something we could sell.
Later, I was planning to attend the first proto.in. Vikram and Niara joined in and we went together. I was totally floored by the energy of the people there and the fire in the eyes of these startup guys. I told those two that they should talk to this guy called Arif Vakil of “Vakil Housing” fame and how he was looking to fund interesting ideas. Immediately, Vikram swung into action, approached Vakil and started explaining the idea. Surprisingly, he showed interest!
Luckily, Vikram had brought his prototype and went to fetch it from his bag. Then Vikram started searching for his iPod when Arif said “Let’s try with my iPod”. Wow. That moment. Imagine if your VC is a would-be customer and the product solves a problem that he himself faces. Nothing like it.
We connected Arif’s iPod to the charger and the charger to a power socket. The blue LED came on. The iPod was showing the charging symbol. We all had smiles on our faces. Arif was impressed and went on to even ask us where we live and so on. That means he really was interested.
After that incident, it was time to head back. Vikram was on an all-time high. That was when we were all convinced that we were on to something. And throughout the bus journey from Chennai to Bangalore, those two convinced me to join ion. I wasn’t so sure. Yeah, it was a Saturdays-only part-time thing. Yeah, Vikram and me had discussed about such things endlessly. But still, I wasn’t sure.
I thought about it the next day and thought “Why not?” I don’t lose much if it bombs and it was a good excuse for us three to keep meeting up.
For various reasons, we didn’t approach Vakil for funding and put in the initial investment ourselves. And we went from shopping for running shoes to shopping for resistors and capacitors and modifying Drupal code.
Then there was the countless decision-making sessions like coming up with poster ideas and then the stories about how we decided the logo for ion, how we landed in trouble with the cops, and finally the launch of ion.
We sent an email to friends asking them to forward to their company internal groups and anybody who would be interested. We also gave posters to put up on their company notice boards. That was pretty much our ‘marketing strategy’. The idea was that we marketed it as an iPod charger and our target audience was the techie crowd.
We marketed it as an iPod charger even though it will work with anything that can be charged with USB right from mobile phones to battery chargers. We use the term iPod charger because that’s what people have most demand for. The second part about targeting techies was because they will be the ones who will look to finding a solution that is cheaper than the official charger which costs 2000 rupees but still is reliable. Ours was one-fifth that price.
The most humbling experience for me was trying to sell ion outside the Aerosmith concert. That was such a good example of a wrong person (me) in the right place doing the job not suited for him. But yet Niara and me did it for ion.
Then came the amazing customer feedback and our highest point - getting featured in a half-page article in Economic Times:
And yes, Arif congratulated us.
But you want to know what’s the craziest part? We made just 200 pieces of ion. Yes, that’s it. 200 ions. Crazy. And see how far it went.
After that ET article happened, we ran out of stock. That was six months ago. Many people have asked me why we’re not selling more ions. So I thought I’ll tell the hidden part of the story today - We never intended ion to live longer than those 200 pieces. It was just a business experiment for us, nothing more. Why? To learn what it takes to convert an idea to a reliable quality product and take it to market.
We never called ourselves a startup back then. That has happened only in hindsight. In fact, I was in it because I thought I could help since I had some experience in maintaining my own websites and maybe I can learn a thing or two in running an ecommerce store.
After we managed to the finish selling the batch of 200 pieces and made decent profit, Vikram moved to USA, Niara moved on to other things in life and so did I.
But the response hasn’t stopped. Even last Thursday (Apr 17), we got emails from four different people in a single day asking when we’ll be back in stock. Crazy, I tell you.
I have had so many personal failures and failed projects in the past few years that it seemed stupid to kill a successful project of ours. So Vikram and myself have been working on reviving ion. We hope to be back with a batch of second generation ions in the next month.
The experiment continues.
A Business Mind
From Tina Seelig’s talk on “What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20″:
… I also have the honour of participating in the new Stanford D-School, the design institute. Last quarter, I was invited to teach one week on entrepreneurship. So I figured out how do I distill this down, this concept of turning problems into opportunities, into one week.
I gave each of the 14 teams an envelope with seed funding. It contained, you’re not going to believe this, a total of 5 dollars. Every time had as much as they wanted from Wednesday afternoon to Monday morning to brainstorm and do whatever they wanted. But as soon as they opened the envelope, they had 2 hours to make as much money as possible.
This was about identifying opportunities and creating value.
On Sunday night, they had to give me one powerpoint slide to describe what they did and how much they made. And on Monday, they get to do a 3-minute pitch to the class on what they had done.
Think about it for a second and think what YOU might do? If you had 5 dollars and 2 hours. How much money do you think they could have made?
Well, the winning teams brought in well over 600 dollars. And the average amount that was brought in was 200.
The trick is that the teams that made the most money did not use those 5 dollars. These were ideas that they looked around and found these incredible opportunities lying on the floor.
So, the winning team that made 650 dollars, they challenged all the assumptions. They sold their 3-minute pitch time in class on Monday to a company that wanted to recruit the students in the class. But guess what? They were incredibly successful.
And there were more teams like this. For example, this other team…
The rest of the video is on the Stanford EdCorner.
What is NDTV’s online strategy?
I wonder if all of these are actually part of some game plan:
- ndtv.com
- ndtvtravels.com
- ndtvgadgets.com
- ndtvshopping.com
- ndtvlumiere.com
- ndtvmovies.com
- ndtvmusic.com
- ndtvgoodtimes.com
- ndtvcooks.com
- ndtvprofit.com
- ndtvimagine.com
- doctorndtv.com
- cricketndtv.com
- etc.
It looks to me like they’re trying to mimic Network18’s portfolio:
- ibnlive.com
- tech20.com
- storeguru.com
- buzz18.com
- cricketnext.com
- indiwo.com
- moneycontrol.com
- jobstreet.com
- commoditiescontrol.com
- yatra.com
- bookmyshow.com
- compareindia.com
- etc.
The reason why I say that is because Network18 seems to be putting in effort to make each vertical the best-of-breed in the respective categories. For example, MoneyControl, Yatra, BookMyShow, Tech2.0 are popular.
But many of NDTV’s counterparts don’t seem to have any value-add. That’s the impression I get when comparing, say, ndtvgadgets.com and tech2.com.
It’s interesting how these offline media businesses are venturing online and how they’re faring.
Useful Websites for India
Like a broken record, I keep coming back to What are the killer web applications for India? So, I decided to make a list.
A list of websites that are useful for most people in India. But what kind of websites am I looking at? The website should be something useful enough to compel a person without internet access to go to a cybercafe just to access this website.
Here’s what I have so far:
- RedBus.in for bus tickets
- Also KSRTC.in for govt bus tickets in Karnataka
- IRCTC.co.in for train tickets
- Inasra.com to book hotel rooms
- HungryZone.com (especially HungryBangalore.com) for restaurant reservations and home delivery
- YellowPages.Sulekha.com for finding local businesses and services
- BookMyShow.com for movie tickets
- MapMyIndia for maps and driving directions (even in Bangalore)
- Handiman for handyman services
Note: The definition of usefulness here is in terms of the concept. However, these websites are not verified in any sense. There’s no guarantee that they are good or even trustworthy, but I would encourage you to check out their services if they are useful. That’s the whole point.
I’ll keep updating this list as and when I find more such websites.
Update: Added BookMyShow, KRSTC.in, MapMyIndia.
Update on 2008 May 15 : Added Handiman
Innovation in Indian universities?
A while ago, I was asking myself Where are the killer applications on the web for India?
Today, when I read ReadWriteWeb’s article on The State of Innovation in India, a thought struck me about the relationship between innovation and universities. Everyone knows the story of about how many companies like Yahoo!, Google, Sun Microsystems all started at Stanford University, how FreeBSD came out of Berkeley University, and so on. I hope you also know how the great Nalanda University in the 5th century was a hotbed of advancements (more on that in another story).
Is it that a strong ideas culture is instilled only in a good university environment and the ecosystem around it which includes startups and businesses? Perhaps this explains why there is such amazing stuff being incubated at the TeNeT, IITM.
It reminded of an article by Prabhakar Raghavan, Head of Yahoo! Research where he says:
India’s real infrastructure problem–with no solution in sight–is not airports or electricity; it is the virtual nonexistence of graduate education and research in information and other crucial technologies. Consider this for starters: The U.S. produces about 1,400 Ph.D.s in computer science annually and China about 3,000. By stark comparison, India’s annual computer science Ph.D. production languishes at roughly 40. That number is about the same as that for Israel, a nation with roughly 5% of India’s population size.
Now you may ask why is this important? That is best explained by C.N.R. Rao, Science Advisor to India’s Prime Minister speaking about why money is spent on moon rockets when there is poverty to address:
You cannot be industrially and economically advanced unless you are technologically advanced, and you cannot be technologically advanced unless you are scientifically advanced.
Amen.
Vegetable 2.0
The other day, mom was telling me why she has completely switched from the traditional neighbourhood HOPCOMS (Horticultural Produce Cooperative Marketing Societies) outlet to the fresh@ store to buy the vegetables. I got curious and asked to explain. She mentioned several points:
- HOPCOMS doesn’t allow the customer to choose the vegetables/fruits, they can’t pick the good ones. fresh@ allows it and this ensures quality.
- A minimum quantity of 250gm is imposed at HOPCOMS, but no such thing at fresh@.
- fresh@ is open from 7am-11pm compared to HOPCOMS which is open for 8 hours and is closed during the afternoon.
- fresh@ provides all kinds of items, like milk, curds, rice compared to going to HOPCOMS, neighbourhood shop i.e. different places for these items.
- fresh@ provides separate covers for each item whereas HOPCOMS requires customers to carry their own bags.
- fresh@ stores perishable food in the freezer whereas HOPCOMS keeps it in the open.
- fresh@ has a much better ambience and a more friendly environment (don’t underestimate this)
- They have many offers and a points systems - this is not important according to mom, but if you’re anyway going to buy from fresh@, people are going to use it.
- Amazing thing is that the cost is not the differentiator!
- The important thing is that mom never intends to go back to the old way. If fresh@ goes poof one day, it is going to have a negative effect. This shows that fresh@ is really making a difference.
This brings me to the 2.0 part… consider how fresh@ takes a leap forward in bettering the customer’s life. Compare that to the latest mumbo jumbo startups out there. Are they really adding value?
I think the first thing a wannabe-entrepreneur should consider is whether it is a must-have or a nice-to-have utility that they are creating.
I mean how many more photo sharing sites or video sharing sites do you really need? And how many more social networking sites?
(Well, on the other hand, if you can sell your me-too social networking site for Rs. 39.3 crore, sure why not?)
But seriously, how many people really know all the India-specific social bookmarking sites out there? Ever heard of xoomly.com? Well, neither did I until just now. And I’m probably never going back again.
I don’t mean to pick on only ’social’ websites, but I feel many other hardware and software startups out there are solutions looking for a problem. (On a lighter note, a christmas tree that lights up when I connect it to my laptop via USB can be really handy).
As Paul Graham says:
Let me repeat that recipe: finding the problem intolerable and feeling it must be possible to solve it. Simple as it seems, that’s the recipe for a lot of startup ideas.
I can say that this is true because of (yes, you know it was coming) our experience in ion.
In fact, in one of the interviews we have given, we were asked the question “Why a product like ion?”, and we replied:
“To scratch an itch.” Vikram didn’t want to spend money on the expensive official Apple iPod Charger, and being an electronics geek, he designed a circuit himself and started using it to charge his iPod.
Then, we discussed about many people who are facing the same problem. For example, people who are not aware of the official charger (or don’t want to purchase such an expensive one) even leave their computer switched on overnight just to charge their iPod! That’s a lot of unnecessary wastage of electricity.
There are many unbranded chargers available in the market, but it is sold on the condition that it may or may not work, and there is no assurance on the quality, or even that your iPod will be safe when using these chargers.
The charger that Vikram built was a perfect fit to solve all these problems, with reliability, and within a reasonable cost. We got together to take it to market.
The bad news is that ion ran out of stock sooner than we expected after the recent Economic Times article and we apologize for the several customers who wrote in to us asking when it’ll be available. We’re working on it and will update you all as soon as possible.
One customer said he desperately needed it before Christmas because he’s going for a long vacation and he wants to be able to use his iPod during the trip.
It feels good to know that we are solving a real problem. It’s not life-changing but it does meet Paul Graham’s criteria.
