Bridging the two Indias
Yesterday I had the privilege of attending two high profile events in New Delhi.
Number 1, was Microsoft and Hutch press conference announcing the signing of Letter of Intent between the two companies to offer soon Windows Live Services in Hutch Mobile. This will be the first mobile search deal in the country. The service will offer Windows Live Services like Search through WAP & SMS, Live Messenger & Live Mail in Mobile in a phased rollout plan. The event was attended by Senior Leaders from both Microsoft (SteveB, Ravi Venkatesan, Jaspreet Bindra) and Hutch (Azim Ghose, Sandip Das, Naveen Gupta). Felt great to be near these industry stalwarts.
Number 2, was a panel discussion of Industry Stalwarts moderated by Dr.Pranoy Roy of NDTV with the keynote being delivered by President Abdul Kalam. This was the first talk of President Kalam that I listened – his energy and sincerity for the betterment of India is fantastic.
For two minutes once he reminded, that you can refer more on this on his website including the PowerPoint Slides, if you differ on his views you can please email him and he will respond by 24 hours. I was proud that Indians have such an enthusiastic technology-savvy president. SteveB who came next on stage had to say I feel embarrassed coming after your president because I neither have a PowerPoint slide for today’s talk or a website for myself.
Some interesting points came up during the event:
- India has One-Third of World’s Software Engineers and it has the same number of children suffering from malnutrition (Shame on every Indian)
- President recommended his plan for Bandwidth to be set up and given free – just like how government today do other basic infrastructures like Roads free
- The more someone is educated they will use lesser the bandwidth – Computer Experts People will do Text/Email (lowest B/W), Computer Savvy will use VoIP (Medium B/W), Illiterates will use Video Phone (Highest B/W)
