The challenges and opportunities that an internet entrepreneur faces are huge. It is a pertinent exercise to understand what it takes to operate a successful digital business and also to realize the evolution process and latest trends of the mobile internet. Is it profitability or is it market share – what comes first? Start ups need to answer these questions. These sessions of brainstorming will benefit the participants to take back a great deal of ideas in their briefcases, to shape and re-shape their objectives and company visions. The Conclave will also aid in recognizing new funding strategies for SMEs.

Industry leaders will also discuss the next set of mobile applications that one should watch out for! So, become a part of the action since We’ll be there!

India’s 63rd Independence Day was enjoyed with full gung ho at One97!

Have a look at how our Chennai office was adorned with the colours of freedom.

   
The center point of the Conclave will lie in understanding how emerging and start-up companies can reap economic benefits out of upcoming web-based social platforms, mobile devices and AppStore. Vijay will be speaking on a current hot topic: “Smarter and Faster: How will cheaper smart phones and 3G networks impact the mobile ecosystem?” (more…)

Organised by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and partnered by One97, Bangalore witnessed the first Mobile Application Developers’ Meet at Indian Institute of Management (IIM) yesterday.
The flavour of the seminar revolved around promoting innovative changes in the mobile ecosystem and to give a single platform to application developers to drive the industry to higher levels.

Vijay enthralled the audience with a speech on “Potential Business Partners” which included the following key points:

• Application developers evolve by deciding how to make an application as per the market needs. But what must be noted is that very few go for actual research
• The consumers are unaware of what they need
• Amount of resource needed is inversely proportional to the time required in the development process
• The application developer should always be on the lookout for long term benefits and opportunities
• Don’t add one feature and give it to the market, some body else might be doing the same strategic move
• For resource optimization, emulate consumers’ lives. Your mobile application will not grow if the developer doesn’t attempt to understand the consumer’s mind
• If you are not the best consumer of your product, you will not be successful

(more…)

Saturday night brought good news for One97 with our mobile application, Dakia being declared as one of the winners in the ‘m-Inclusion’ category at mBillionth South Asia Awards 2010. Held at Hotel Intercontinental Eros, New Delhi, mBillionth witnessed 165 mobile VAS nominations, 121 coming from India alone.

Our persisting efforts behind making Dakia possible attained recognition when it was announced as one of the winners of the big night. Dakia is a voice based multi-lingual mobile application for the aggregation and dissemination of community centric information in rural areas, irrespective of the literacy levels of the user. It is meant to empower the rural population by being informed about major issues like impending power cuts, weather reports, crop diseases and treatments, new market prices and general welfare, which in turn affect their daily lives.

As Vijay puts it in an earlier interview published on Medianama:

“We have an application called Dakiya. You can’t sell SMS in the rural market – even Hindi is non-native. You have to have a vernacular application, and vernacular in text does not exist. (more…)

In an interview with BBC World on the India Business Report, Vijay comments on the current trends in the mobile industry. “All the services that go beyond messaging, internet, application, commerce, etc. are what the corporate is looking at to earn the revenues from.

The telecom operator is now going back to the whiteboard and saying what we could do for the consumer.” (more…)