Bits & Bytes. Beeps and Rings – (NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 – 41st session)

Posted by Paritosh Sharma
November 14, 2008


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Nasscom Fridays 2.0 One97 Communications 

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Look at my stars! Well for Vijay Shekhar Sharma, his stars fore-tell! Literally!

So for the first time I am blogging LIVE about a guy who is a prodigy literally! A guy who finished schooling @ 14. Became an engineer by 19 sold off his first startup for bucks and today owns a billion call mobile communications company.

The man on the street!

So Vijay started sharing his experiences as an entrepreneur and the entire room is filled with pin drop silence. YES! filled with silence.

The world I saw

So started Vijay, by sharing his initiation as an entrepreneur. How he rose up and went down rose up again and went down, was shown the way many a times, and all that was common in all his time was he never stopped. He never succumbed to the pain.

So shared Vijay, I thought of starting a broadband company and I almost got funded by Intel teh valuations were right, but when I thought of the future opportunities I immediately left teh business. Hence within 3 months I realised I was not on the right path.

I wanted to make the furst people search in the country. From people search I went to mobile operators. So i finally figured out how to sustain in the market. SO I ended up figuring out that I must do something to create cashflows to sustain.

So I finally started a “Pandit ji call centre” which was an opportunity which came to me through a network contact by Airtel. So like a lame starting off entrepreneur I did take the work but also had my mind and my gut feeling said TELECOM has to work. So I instantly thought if I could do things differently, hence doing stuff defferently and earning.

“So I started truly looking at moentizing the internet properly. SO why not grow it to a new space and venture into content”

We were the first people to offer internet music in India.

Lessons I learnt

Whether you knwo the cost or not, well you need to know what the customer wants. So I partnered with a company called Dialnet.

These are high throughput days

You don’t necessarily need to stick to a business plan, quickly moveon-move on-move on, there is something that you exist for. THRIVE ON that USP of YOUR’s.

SO initially my focus was the mass market services. Though I understand I started vague, but today I know it gave me a chance to connect to the end customer. Within a time of about 6 months I spent I did 10 times the revenue. So my first billing was INR 33000 and next worth INR 300,000.

So I was excited by the monetization of the Internet!

So I became from the central story, to the side story!

Even the operators demoted me and I was back on the brinks, so the trut is finally, I had just two people left in the team (along with the pandit ji’s though)

It became a race for me and I decided there would be at least a million of such servers in India and today there are a 150,000 and today we handle billion calls. By the time I was raching out, OnMobile was everywhere.

INNOVATION is the name of the game!

In those days when we were being clouded by bigger competition I figured out what other businesses I could do with a business.

Don’t think you have been written off.

“Any failure becomes a failure when you accept it! So we were ready to come back everytime we were thrown off”

- VSS

So looking at the market growth we moved from contenet to technicals. Market space is growing @ 10 million customer a month. Thus we as a company invest more and more into the rigth resources.

Today we are:

So now think why there exists such a huge opportunity in telecom?

Its logic, plain simple steps which grow as logical extensions of services built on each other.

  1. Internet
  2. Applications
  3. OS
  4. Device (PC) makers
  5. Chip makers

Look at it downwards up.

SO the value chain is increasing up and reaching out.

MOBILE COMPUTING

  1. VAS provider
  2. Handsets
  3. Operator
  4. NEP’s

So a value chain is a logical entension why internet is powerful because there is an influx of users thus exist the applications. Look at the mobile space with the similar view.

This is a HUGE opportunity. Things have changed since the time internet has come.

VAS, I believe is a telecom application. So its a cloud of connected devices today!

No company is a company, if you dont have good company

We are:

So localize within the communities. Go niche.

“In some cities if light comes its an event, and somewhere light does is an event”

Go local with content. Lets distribute content. IN a village we have seen 1000 messages in 30 days!

So go achieve, there is action!

SO what is a good KILLER IDEA? Well, your customer knows the best.

The Session ended with a highly interactive session. With predication on social networks by Vijay!

Thanks Vijiay, it was great blogging you!

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EMERGE, Emerging Technologies, Entrepreneurship, Friday's 2.0, Innovation, Marketing

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