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| Empowering the visually impaired |
Look
at it from whichever way you want, it's a win-win deal. The visually
impaired get a chance to experience the internet, and Microsoft
gets to tap an entirely new segment of users. Last fortnight, Microsoft
India teamed up with the National Association for the Blind to give
Mumbai its first cyber café for the blind.
The software giant wouldn't tell how much it
has invested in the internet centre, but there are five computers
at the centre with screen reading software morbidly named jaws,
which stands for Job Access With Speech. jaws makes every page on
the internet ''talk''. All input-output commands are also voice
activated. That means the visually impaired can talk the computer
through their commands (voice-surfing the Web, if you will).
The cyber
café also offers access to a voice-based word processor,
and allows downloading and printing of text in Braille. This isn't
the first time that Microsoft is doing something for the blind.
Earlier, in February, it also funded a much-needed Braille printing
unit in NAB's Bangalore (Karnataka) Branch to help print books at
subsidised costs. Redmond may actually have a heart...
-Abir
Pal
RADIO BOO-BOO
Who Killed The Radio Star?
Private FM stations were supposed
to change the face of radio in India. So, what went wrong?
It's
deja vu time. The government opens up a hitherto regulated sector,
private companies rush to obtain licences, often bidding unrealistic
amounts, then realise their folly, lobby with the government, obtain
some concessions, and hope for more. Telecom? No, this is the story
of the Indian fm radio market.
A full two-and-half years after the sector
was opened up, only three stations, Bennett, Coleman and Company
Ltd's Radio Mirchi, Millennium's Gautam radio, and Star's Music
Broadcast are on air, and that too after I&B Minister Sushma
Swaraj played Santa Claus and gave them use of All India Radio's
infrastructure in Delhi, Kolkata, and Chennai and extended the deadline
to go on air to August 29, this year.
Sure, other broadcasters will go on air: Radio
Mid-Day and Radio Today (part of the India Today Group that owns
BT) may already be on air by the time you read this. ''We are launching
in Mumbai by the middle of May. Delhi and Kolkata will happen by
August,'' says G. Krishnan, Executive Director, Radio Today. But
the industry would like some more sops.
''We are hoping that the government will rationalise
licence fees,'' says Preetam Parigi, CEO of Entertainment Network
India, the radio arm of BCCL. The industry is also hoping that the
next round of auctions, expected towards this end of this year,
will draw upon the lessons of the first round. So what's new?
-Suveen K. Sinha
ADVERTISING DELIVERY
The Stork Sells
Suddenly, expecting mothers are
advertising's flavour of the season.
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| The new wave: Selling to Gen-next-to-be |
It
isn't new. advertisers have, time and again in the past, tried to
build campaigns around expecting mothers with varying success. This
year, though, the trend has become a wave. The airwaves are replete
with ads featuring mothers-to-be for products (and services) ranging
from cellular services (BPL), airconditioners (LG), bottled water
(Kinley), powdered soft drinks (Rasna), and detergents (Ariel).
Says Sagar Ghoting, Creative Consultant, Ogilvy & Mather Advertising:
''(The spurt in such advertising is based on the) perception that
the target audience empathises with pregnant women.'' Well, the
hope-filled visage of a parent-to-be makes for better viewing than
raucous pitches exhorting potential customers to buy and save. Still,
in a country of a billion-plus, pics of all those expecting mothers
on the tube may send out the wrong message.
-Shailesh Dobhal
P2P
No more Basmati Hijacks
A government research and development
agency finally wakes up to the power and potential of patents.
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| That's #5663484 you see |
A
patent for processing maize noodles? Vague as it sounds, this actually
represents the new-found zeal with which the Central Food Technological
Research Institute (CFTRI) in Mysore is filing for patents in India
and abroad. The provocation, of course, was the famous row over
basmati rice. Four years after Rice Tec, an American company, obtained
patent No. 5663484 on basmati, the Indian government woke up and
challenged the patent. ''This case opened our eyes, as it was not
only basmati, but neem and turmeric that were in danger of getting
patented by somebody else,'' says V. Prakash, Director, CFTRI.
Its documentation beefed up, CFTRI is stepping
on the patent pedal. So far this year, it has applied for 100 patents,
61 of which are in countries such as the US, Canada, and China.
Over the last 50 years, CFTRI had applied for only 224 patents.
''This is only the beginning. We are determined to file more patents
in order to sustain and protect our traditional and innovative knowledge
on a continuous basis,'' promises Prakash. The one for maize noodles
processing, for instance, is targeted against the US, which is the
world's largest producer of maize. It's a tough battle, but one
worth fighting.
-Venkatesha Babu
TWIST-AND-SHAKE
What Works?
Warning: Indian business models could be in
danger.
When
the human genome was unravelled in June 2000, India quickly saw
mainline it companies and small biotech startups target bioinformatics
tools-computer programmes that sift through the helical chaos. But
worldwide, that business model is in distinct danger.
Last month, U.S. bioinformatics-tools provider
Double Twist collapsed after burning $76 million in funding. This
despite a few good clients and some money in the bank-but not enough.
Celera Genomics (one of the companies that unravelled the human
genome) and high-flyer Incyte Genomics are both now getting into
drug development. Like many bioinformatics startups, they've realised
that while there is a $1-billion market for bioinformatics tools,
the money is being largely spent by big pharma companies on in-house
development. That's not good news for India's struggling startups.
Creating a biotech product isn't something you do overnight. It's
also sobering to realise that no player outside the US and Europe
has yet got FDA approval to make biotech products. So if Indian
startups find contracts hard to come by, this might be a good time
to start re-evaluating their business models.
-Samar Halarnkar
CORP-O-REEL
A 70-mm Attraction
Pantaloon, Sony Pictures, and now Tata Infomedia.
The corporate dribble into Bollywood promises to turn into a deluge.
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|
Zee's diversification--it produced Gadar--was
related; others won't be
|
There's
no business like show business-even for someone like a telecom-to-steel
behemoth Tata group, which recently announced its entry into Hindi
language film production through Tata Infomedia, the country's biggest
commercial printing company. ''We are in the process of going through
scripts and in the next three-four months will be able to share
details of our first venture,'' says Rahul Shah, Deputy General
Manager, Tata Infomedia. The company will invest Rs 8-10 crore,
through internal accruals, on producing low-to-medium budget films,
and will stay out of the distribution end.
Other new entrants, however, want to straddle
the entire gamut of production, distribution, even exhibition. ''We'll
invest more than Rs 80 crore over the next five years as part of
our integrated approach,'' says Ajay Shanghavi, Executive Director
of Mumbai-based Metalight, an associate of Rs 21-crore Inhouse Productions
(of Movers & Shakers fame). The company expects to release its
first three films by the end of May.
There's tonnes of money to be made in Bollywood.
Already the likes of entertainment-only corporates Balaji Telefilms,
Mukta Art, and Pritish Nandy Communications that have been producing
films for a while are busy leveraging their movie libraries to add
to their bottomlines. Mukta Arts recently sold the rights to 11
of its productions (including Hero, Pardes, and Yaadein) to Sony
Entertainment Television for Rs 16 crore. Watching from the sidelines
is Sony Pictures. ''We have received clearance from the FIPB to
enter into film production, but for the moment our focus is on distribution,''
says Vikramjit Roy, Manager, Columbia Tristar Pictures India. Expect
plenty of action in front of and behind the camera.
-Abir Pal
Kellogg's Say Cheez
After cereals and biscuits, it's snack-time
for Kellogg's in India. But will it get third-time lucky?
Its chocos biscuits
were actually not biscuits, but a brand extension of its eponymous
breakfast cereal into the biscuit market. And now Cheez-It, its
biggest cheese biscuit brand in the world, soft-launched in Chennai
recently, is, yes, not a biscuit, not even a proper snack, but something
in-between. ''It will compete with branded potato wafers and other
snack items, not biscuits,'' says R.C. Venkatesh, Managing Director,
Kellogg's India. Despite the hybrid positioning, Kellogg's is looking
at targeting a much wider consumer market with Cheez-It, with a
mass-market pricing of Rs 5 for a 15-gram pack, its lowest-priced
product in the country so far. The cheapest Kellogg's cereal retails
at Rs 28. Cheez-It is another step away for the Indian subsidiary's
from its staple cereals business. Already more than a third of its
Rs 100-crore sales comes from its three extensions of the Chocos
biscuits. When in India...
-Nitya Varadarajan
VIRTUAL ESTATE
The Calcutta Syndrome
The city's blow-hot, blow-cold real estate
boom hides more than it tells.
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Kolkata: The east comes to the rescue
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From
the looks of it, Kolkata is riding a real estate boom. Look again:
prices have remained stagnant for the past three years, held there
by overcapacity. The only bright spot is the area surrounding the
Eastern Metropolitan Bypass (EMB) on the eastern fringes of the
city. Blame it on price: Rs 45 lakh will fetch a modest 1,500 sq.
ft. residence in uptown Alipore; the same amount translates into
a duplex 2,500 sq. ft apartment in an upmarket complex (pool and
club inclusive) on EMB. Result? Real estate prices in areas surrounding
the EMB have risen from around Rs 1,300 per sq. ft to Rs 1,900.
It's not quite Gurgaon (Delhi's thriving satellite), but it will
have to do.
-Debojyoti Chatterjee
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