Kiran is the Director, Engineering, OnMobile Global Private Limited, Bangalore, India. He has played an active role in shaping the growth of OnMobile from a start-up with big dreams to the No.1 Mobile VAS player in India. Prior to joining OnMobile, he worked for Infosys as Project Manager and was responsible for developing Telecom speech services.

Here’s the excerpt from his talk:

Mobile Application Market is well established. Though there’re lot of hype as to how the market is growing, we as developers should understand how we should make the most of it.

Today, mobiles are broadly of 3 types- Though high end phones are only 2% in volume, they are highly likely to use new applications.

Bulk of phones fall under mid range- 6000-15000 Rs. Most of them are GPRS enabled and the users are getting comfortable with data services.

A large volume still relies on entry level phones and use them for nothing but voice call and may be SMS.
There’re also another segment- called Chinese phones- QWERTY, GPRS and touchscreen enabled and priced very low, but not compatible with external applications.

Though the stats above are for India, by and large it holds good worldwide.

What to do with next big killer application idea? How do we go after the right viable application that makes money?
My suggestion would be to choose the market first. One is handset app stores-(telecom operators are also starting their own app stores) such as iStores, the other market is to build and sell our apps through telecom operators.
Handset app store is like internet, but telecom operators’ app store is a closed set, tough to get it and operator continues to control the end user. They act as a gate keeper…

Service discovery: Service discovery (how do you ensure your application is noticed among thousands of apps) in open world is not bad, though it is difficult to get into top 50 (featured app list) Its even difficult at telecom operators’ app store.

Only 1 out of 4 apps are paid and 3 are free for download. Deciding if it is free or charged is a challenge. But when in operators’ world, this is fairly easier due to a better revenue sharing model.

There’s quite a competition. It’s important to stand apart. It’s fairly easier for someone else to copy your idea. One needs to stand out for the target keyword. However, it’s a bit more safer in operators’ world as they may not entertain duplicate apps.

Estimates for the market are great. In terms of revenue, operators have much larger share, compared to app stores. Even for ringtones, the global market is estimated at 6 billion dollars. The shelf life is fairly longer.

What are these companies are willing to give out to developers? 70% of Apple app revenue goes to developers, but need not be the same for operators.

You need your creativity, technical skills and great idea to succeed. Most of the companies developing these apps are fairly smaller ones.

OnMobile Developers network can help address various concerns of mobile app developers. OnMobile provides APIs and all infrastructures. However, as of now the only guys creating and feeding apps using these infrastructure and APIs are us. We’re evaluating how this can be opened up to larger community. We’ve got some developers’ on board as Beta
We associate under 3 categories: Magnum Partners, Classic Partners and Associate Partners

Just to give an example, Hexolabs came up with multiplayer antakshari application, which won several awards and generated topline of 1.3 crores,

Sasken, VoiceTAP and Dialify are other few partners.

Not everyone who walks into OnMobile are invited. We evaluate the ideas from a marketability perspective. We also help selective companies with seed fund.

VERSE (which got seed fund from OnMobile) founder also shared the stage and spoke about his experience.

Gurumukh S Malhotra-Head, Business Marketing, Inter South India, explained how adopting to technology is critical for SMEs. Here’re the excerpts from his talks.

Internet is the biggest and killer application. Best of internet experience comes on PC than any other device. Technology adoption is no longer an option. It’s imperative for SMEs to adopt aggressively.
SMEs will continue to be growth drivers for the country.

Why should one use technology? How do we give better product, better services or get into newer business using technology?

Nothing in life is free, however, crux of the matter is, is technology something ur vendor is responsible or something you’d base your business on. This mindset would change the perspective.

20 years back, it was not easy to advertise. But today, technology has allowed us to advertise at virtually no cost. SMEs have a huge potential and leveraging technology is quite critical…

Key Notes from the Panel Discussion

Moderator:  R Sukumar, Editor, Mint

Question: 1. Is there going to be a tipping point?

                       2. Are we (media houses, publishing cos.) doing all we can, in terms of  technology needed, to create a Hybrid (Print& digital) model?

Session1 – Panel Discussion

Divya Gururaj, Managing Director, Mediacom

• The Internet penetration in India is still low at 51Mn active users
• Another 30Mn. use internet via mobile phones
• The Digital growth is veryunorganic in nature; difficult to assign a multiplier; DTH has risen from 2Mn. to 20Mn. in 2 yrs
• As far as marketing for Mass products are concerned, Print & TV would still be preferred over digital media but digital scores when it comes to industries like recruitment, education, etc
• The market research in India is poor; Difficult to know what customers want
• To grow, understanding of the different media is critical
• In digital media, action changes at a much faster pace than print which goes in favour of Digital
• If Economic Times can give the advertisers an option to buy space for newspaper which automatically provides space for e-newspaper as well; others need to follow suit
• They need to integrate their different (Print, TV & Digital ) service verticals
• More media/publishing companies need to integrate their services team combining Print, TV & Digital

 

Mitya New, Managing Director, Dow Jones India

• Internet Penetration is low; Mobile offers an alternative platform for Internet
• The key to the success of print and digital is the relationship between the VALUE offered and the PRICE charged for it
• Indian consumer is a sophisticated customer; If they see value, they are willing to pay for the service
• We see 40,000 downloads p.m.of our applications which is promising
• Transition from print to digital media is dependent on the needs of the people; The content needs to fit into people’s workflow; This concept needs to be need to be addressed seriously
• An advertiser cannot blindly follow the 360 degree media approach; The ads/content need to be more focussed and targeted well

Mohit Hira, President www.training.com, NIIT

• The Transition from print to digital is happening but at its own pace; kids still read books on the move;
• Given India’s population size, it would be in perpetual transition
• The tipping point would come; Hybrid model is already there and companies are doing a good jobh out of it
• The fact that news companies can break a news in 140 characters makes you want to pick up the newspaper and read details
• The customer and marketers are integrating the various media but publishing houses also need to join in quickly
• Ads in E-papers are a great way of directing focused customers to company websites and portals; This is going strong 
• Print is my 1^st love but digital is the new seductress on the block

T K Arun, Editor, Economic Times

• A very important factor for Digital media is POWER/ELECTRICITY
• India is short of electricity & power
• The power infrastructure & capacity in India is improving by the day and soon,power shortages in India will be the thing of the past
• In Gujrat & West Bengal – One can be put behind bars within four hours of stealing electricity
• Another factor affecting the digital growth in India is the TELECOMMUNICATION Infrastructure
• At present, Indian companies are not investing in manufacturing of Telecommunication equipments (Except mobile phones); they are dependent on companies like Siemens, Cisco and the likes
• Once Indian companies start investing in Telecom equipment, things would improve substantially
• The advertisers need to adopt hybrid model as they move ahead

 

R Sukumar, Editor, Mint

• Feel that 3% advertisement spend as a percentage of total Ad-Ex is shocking; It is not in syn with anything; It doesn’t justify the investment in digital media, recurring expenditure, no. of users, etc
• We are still using Cost-per-thousand(CPT) matrix to judge the value of customers
• CPT for digital does not seem to be a viable model
• New matrix needs  to be developed/used if we really want to measure customer value and ROI accurately

If you compare mobile revenues to the TV market, the number one channel, talks about owning households.
What comes first when it comes to owning the consumer- Is it the content tht comes first, the channel? There has to be a matrimony of sorts. Maybe now there are too many players. In the TV space, perhaps so much fragmentation does not occur. In TV, the top 10 channels get the best ads. In mobile, there is enough opportunity for content companies for mobile to come in and get the advertising.

The mobile gets informed through voice, IVRs. And the audience has the option to just cut the call. So therefore, we need to build customers through offering relevant content.

Ravi V S Prasad analysed Cyber security threats, from international aspect.

Several militant organizations were early adopters of new communication technologies for propaganda warfare and for efficient communications, before we framed the word cyber terrorism.

Stealing information, hacking govt websites, planting their own propaganda started later. Cyber warfare and Cyber Terrorism are converging now. CCCI (Command Control, Communications and Intelligence) is now CCCI (Command Control, Communications and Computer Intelligence)

1991 Gulf war was the first incident where Cyber warfare was used very effectively, next was by China to invade Taiwan, to disrupt command and control systems of enemy defence facilities (warships and air force) so that they won’t be able to offer enough resistance.

Diplomatic warfare aims to immobilize state’s infrastructure. This is where Cyber terrorism is heading at. Kill with a borrowed sword- routed through servers of foreign countries, making it very difficult to trace it back to original source.

Protection of critical infrastructure again depends on technology and communication. Stock exchanges, banks, power grids and many other facilities are prone to cyber threats. We need to be prepared for such threats and also be sure to counter Cyber Espionage by both friendly countries and potential threats.

An international legal frame needs to be in place to evaluate the cyber threats and plan counter measure. Opening the discussion to panel for further thoughts on this

Amitabh Singhal, the last member of the panel (of session 2), made a great cameo considering that he was a late un-announced addition to the panel, and his thoughts were, candidly, extempore.

Amitabh harked back to the days way back to circa 1994, when he worked with Mr. R. Ramaraj, now of iCANN, also the moderator of the session. He recalled how, when as one of just 4-5 vendors applying for license to be email providers for the average citizen, was mandated by the government that they will use 40-bit encryption, and that kind of regime continued for a long time, way past the time that the Western world had moved away from public-key based means of securing access, as it was realized that it was an unreliable method.

Even later, around the year 2000, Amitabh mentioned of the time we were connecting digitally whole-heatedly with the outside world, a team of Israeli consultants who were working on a brief to validate the security scenario demonstrated their ability to replicate chat sessions that had taken place 6 months prior, with all its content, participant details, and interaction.

Amitabh mentioned that it is due to the inherent “open” nature of the internet that security will always be a concern and area of focus. Now with the proliferation of use of social networking, which he stressed, need to be looked at as the source or domain of new forms of cyber-attacks. In closing,

Amitabh ended by saying that both telecom carriers as well as content providers have their responsibilities in this regard, the expensive aspect of  monitoring systems notwithstanding.

Shyamal Ghosh is Chairman, DSCI and also an Independent Expert for ICT related promotional and regulatory matters and management consultant.

Mr. Shyamal Ghosh belonged to the Indian Administrative Service (Gujarat Cadre1965 batch). He was the Chairman of Telecom Commission & Secretary, Department of Telecommunications, Government of India from 7th February, 2000 to 31st May, 2002 when he retired from Civil Service. He was Administrator, Universal Service Obligation Fund, Department of Telecommunications during May 2002 to May 2005. He is at present Chairman of the Data Security Council of India, a Self Regulatory Organization promoted by NASSCOM.

Here’re excerpts from Shyamal’s talk on Balancing Security and Rights of the Citizen, wherein he set the stage for panel discussion, giving an overview of what all constitute privacy…

Security and Rights of citizen is an important topic that needs to be debated extensively…

Privacy is a cultural issue. What is private in west may not be so in India and vice versa. India is more open society unlike in Europe where all PII (personally identifiable information) is treated private.

Individual privacy is different from community privacy.

Political orientations, religious beliefs, personal activity details, financial data are some of the issues which are believed to be private. Details of top 10 tax payers are announced. Isn’t it a privacy issue? Online advertising is customized to the extent possible. Medical information are again sensitive.

Section 43A of amended IT act 2008 refers to sensitive personal information that needs to be protected. The more Information Technology is used, more intrusive it becomes. Emerging technologies become challenge to those trying use technology but at the same time defend their interests.

Cyber stalking, hacking, Nigerian spams and the phenomenon of social network opens whole new level of security issues.

At the corporate levels, they need to comply with regulatory requirements, defend their service, data from DOS and other attacks. Privacy, security and RTI ultimately boils down to people, process and technology.

Is CCTV intrusive? Some companies put restrictions on employees in the name of security. Is UID is an intrusion to security? These are few of the issues we’ll try to debate over the session and find some insights.

Keith, Head – Competence Development at Nokia Siemens Network (NSN) gave an interesting presentation.

He mentioned that historically, carriers have been in the business of just transporting data. Now the scenario is quite different.   Security is an important differentation for the discerning customer. Alluding to the example by Mr. Rajat Mukherji of Idea Cellular, the previous speaker, Keith said that the telecom carrier that is seen to be taking care of the consumer’s security concerns will be at an advantage.

Keith stressed that carrier’s network infrastructure that are stable during major disruptive events like the Winter Storm that hit USA’s NorthEast recently, will gain tremendously. Availability during normal times are taken to be a commodity, but availability during those events will make that telecom carrier trust-worthy.

The position of the carrier in the cyber-security equation is of paramount importance. When planning networks, what is needed is to identify the small number of “weak links” which if compromised by, for example, malicious code, then an entire network can be brought down. So those need to be reinforced.

Vendor Trust was his key take-away.

Speaker Profile:
Keith White is Head of Competence Development for the Nokia Siemens Networks global Business Solutions Organization.

He was formerly Head of the Security Practice for Asia Pacific within the Consulting & Systems Integration Group at Nokia Siemens Networks.

Key notes from the talk given by K Santhanam, Former Chief Advisor (Technologies) DRDO

• The code maker and the code breaker should not function under the same roof.
• The asymmetry between Soviet and west was stark.
• India does not look at buying a super computer from any part of the world.
• India was bad in manufacture of hardware but very good in high end software – compilers, linkers and assemblers, Good human resources and English proficiency.
• Our main exports in the applications area and maintenance support. This is the entry point. This is a crutch. We should get into the area of system development as well as design and dev of chips.
• We should start with partnership with chip makers in Japan and Taiwan.
• The policy clashes could affect the visas. We must create lobbies abroad.
• In the wake of bofors incident, we clamped the usage of agents.
• Lobbying is a perfectly legitimate activity in US and Europe. Indian Software Companies should learn the tactics.
• Sooner rather than later, we will face competition from Indonesia and Philippines. We should co-op them and not confront them.
• We should promote public private partnerships.

Compiled by Kiruba Shankar

Vishal Dhupar is MD, Symantec and gave some interesting insights on security.

Digital Economy: One word that resonated everywhere: Data. Every minute, every second, the volume of data is increasing.

We’ll have to look at how the info comes from, how do we access it, how do we deal with it. Trust and confidence are major hinges for information economy. Whole economy depends on value of information we have.

There’re 2 threats: Cloud Computing and proliferation of digital devices.

Most people may say these two are not interlinked, but they are. When there’s a service there’ll be devices. Users are going to define how they’re going to use the device while cloud ensures that the content provided when you want it, the way you want it.

The very fact that makes us prosper is a risk. We’ve dealt with viruses-in 1970s, in 1980s internet started gaining foothold. We’ve a huge community of hackers-who are extremely intelligent but do not have the right mindset for overall community good. They wanted to prove a point, get publicity.

People realized that there’s an easy way to make money through hacking. SO hacking is no more about publicity, but it has turned into organized crime aiming to more and more money.

Threat landscape: Symantec surveys over 2100 corporations, over 75% of the companies surveyed had cyber attacks. 100% of them had well framed cyber policies in place

At times, even an error leads to cyber threat, or it could be personal grudge. 60% of people fired usually carry sensitive company information with them.

So we’ve to deal with people from outside world and people from inside world. If vulnerability is not exploited, it is mainly because it is not popular.