Grow innovation as culture: Pitroda

Thiruvananthapuram, Jan. 25:

Young leaders, entrepreneurs and students should work to grow innovation as a culture, according to Dr Sam Pitroda, Adviser to the Prime Minister of India on public information infrastructure and innovation.

Delivering a lecture on ‘Leadership and innovation: Ideas for India' at the Technopark here on Wednesday, he said a single-minded focus on innovation is what the country needs to drive itself toward greatness.

EXCITING TIMES

The lecture was organised jointly by the Aspen Institute India and Group of Technology Companies in Kerala (GTECH).

“We are living in very exciting times when evolution of Internet has changed the world like it has never been,” Dr Pitroda said.

Today the Internet is bringing the entire global community together and this offers very different ways of looking at challenges that stare at us.

We must look at meeting these challenges in an innovative manner. The spirit of innovation also facilitates the unique opportunity to change the very paradigm of conventional development.

The Government has been trying to bring innovation to the way it conducts itself, Dr Pitroda said.

The seed for the same has already been sown as becomes clear in the several new initiatives proposed in the various areas of e-governance, banking, health and education.

Dr Pitroda called for the need to bring about new innovation even as we dispensed with the old systems of governance. People with great ideas will definitely have the opportunity to pursue them to fruition with the right funding.

But he felt that the country has a dearth of domain expertise, which was posing was a major challenge to the growth of its economy.

“We have been growing at over eight per cent and have over 550 million youngsters below the age of 25.

DOMAIN EXPERTISE

We also have lot of interesting technologies at our disposal that could offer unique ways of addressing various situations and concerns,” Dr Pitroda said.

As a nation, India has got what it takes to build a great power of itself; all what is needed of our leaders is the statesmanship of a high order to ensure that various pieces of the nation-building puzzle fall in the right places.

Mr Shaffi Mather, Fellow, Aspen India Leadership Initiative; Advocate, Supreme Court of India; a public policy analyst and entrepreneur; and Mr. V. K. Mathews, President, Group of Technology Companies, also participated in the discussion.

Meanwhile, speaking to newspersons separately, Dr Pitroda once again sought to dismiss reports of his having recommended a hike in railway passenger fares in the capacity as Chairman of a high-level committee on Railways.

These are speculative bits and pieces of information being pushed by interested parties and lack any concrete base, he added.

Earlier this week, reports had suggested that the expert committee had recommended a 25 per cent hike in railway passenger fares. It had also wanted to index railway fares to inflation.

NO PROPOSAL YET

Dr Pitroda said the committee is still some days away from submitting its recommendations, which would be publicised then and there. He denied having taken any decision on proposing a hike in railway fares.

The expert committee was set up last September to recommend modernisation of the Railways with a view to improving overall efficiency and safety.

Aspen Institute, GTECH to host Sam Pitroda

The Aspen Institute India and Group of Technology Companies (GTECH) will jointly host Mr Sam Pitroda, Adviser to the Prime Minister of India on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations here.

Mr Sam Pitroda, who is visiting the State Capital on January 25, would address young leaders, entrepreneurs and students on ‘Leadership and Innovation: Ideas for India,' a spokesman for the organisers said.

The session will be held from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Travancore Hall, Technopark. Mr Pitroda's talk would highlight how leadership could be the catalyst for and source of creativity and innovation. In a country of one billion, driving growth and improving competitiveness is not possible without motivated leadership.

Innovation in the 21st century offers a unique opportunity to change the paradigm of conventional development.

So, the session would deal with the question of how future leaders could establish an environment conducive to build a nation that encourages creativity and innovation to propel growth.

The other speakers include Mr Shaffi Mather, Fellow, Aspen India Leadership Initiative, who is an advocate with the Supreme Court apart from being a public policy analyst and an entrepreneur, and Mr V. K. Mathews, President, GTECH.

vinson@thehindu.co.in

Map earth from ‘cloud', get carbon credits cheap

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, JAN. 2:

DES Mapping Solutions, a Singapore-based company, is bringing to India cloud-based ‘data appliance' product that helps clients develop and own carbon credits.

Announcing this to the Hindu Group of Newspapers, Mr Ajith Menon, Chief Executive Officer, DES, said that the company has already opened an office in New Delhi.

Mr Menon, whose venture has been funded by the Singapore Government, was here to network with the Group of Technology Companies (GTECH) in Kerala.

NICHE SPACE

He offered hand-holding facilities for companies here looking to set up business in the city-nation, a regional hub for IT, finance and banking business. He was accompanied by Mr Binu Shankar, Chief Executive Officer, GTECH.

Mr Menon said that the ‘data appliance' sits somewhere between the cloud and the normal server-based IT infrastructure on ground.

“We seek to offer the best of both worlds at a fraction of the costs that the specific data (mainly satellite images) would otherwise cost,” he added.

Explaining the niche space his company occupies, Mr Menon said there's a discussion going on in Indonesia whether to preserve the tropical forests or promote the logging industry, though at a huge environmental cost.

But there is also increasing realisation that keeping the forests is much more valuable, because 5,000 sq km of forests can create $30-$40 million worth of carbon credits.

BASE DATA

The company deals in satellite images and other base data used for city and infrastructure planning. It also finds traction as a finder of natural resources as in forests and mines.

According to Mr Menon, the per-sq km of data made available by US companies costs around $30. The whole of India is 2.1 million sq km, so it would cost $60 million, if a company wants to purchase the data outright.

The company would also need to do a lot of customising job of the data through sizing of the hardware, buy software and develop applications. It will cost an additional $10-15 million.

ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION

“What our data appliance, the ‘black box,' will do is… we have a back-to-back link with the data supplier in the US.

“We put this data in this black box. The client cannot take out the data, but can use it for their application for an annual fee.

“Subscription cost for one year is $1 million. So the cost gets cut from $30 to just $1 per sq km. That's the kind of costs benefit the client company is going to enjoy.”

DES APPLIANCE

DES offers to productise 70-80 per cent of ones requirements into this data appliance. It also provides required data, hardware and software.

The ‘black box,' sits behind the company's firewall. It can subscribe to this black box and use it. The costs are reduced because it is only subscribing to it, not purchasing them.

The ‘black box' is named DES Appliance, Mr Menon said. It's getting good traction not just in India but in other countries such as Brazil and Indonesia also.

Software product start-ups rely on smaller cities

Even as the Indian IT services industry has not been able to make much inroads into the tier-2 and tier-3 cities, many software product development companies incorporated in recent years are banking on smaller cities to minimise operational costs.

By operating out of smaller cities, most of these software product start-ups — led mostly by first-generation entrepreneurs — want to minimise their cost of operation during initial days. This helps them significantly, as the gestation period for product companies are considerably higher when compared with the IT services companies. Besides, these companies manage to attract good talents in these towns at a comparatively lower price, according to industry analysts.

According to various industry reports, the start-up activity in Indian IT space has witnessed rapid growth with more than 1,100 start-ups being incorporated in the past five years. The studies say that of these, over 330 companies are based out of tier-2 and 3 cities such as Belgaum, Madurai, Coimbatore and Thiruvanthapuram.

IBS notes that there are “lots of innovations” happening in smaller towns and the sustainability rates in these towns are higher than the bigger cities.

“The main reason is the cost advantage which will help them to pass through the gestation phase,” notes V K Mathews, founder and executive chairman of the product company located in Thiruvanthapuram.

Take for example the case of Vayavya Labs, an embedded software tool developer. Founded in 2006 by a team of four engineers, the firm counts technology companies like Trident, Synopsys, NDS and Electra Plc as its customers. Technopark, an IT park based out of the Kerala capital, houses around 70-75 software product companies. Located across 360 acres, Techno Park houses a total of over 230 companies.

Smaller cities adopting the product route than the traditional services route is an advantage, notes Sharad Sharma, Chairman of Nasscom product forum.

“The problems they see and the way they try to solve it is real innovation. This will help the growth of product ecosystem in smaller towns. This will create clusters in the country.”

He is confident that, slowly, with various steps taken by the industry, more companies like Fusion Chart, Zoho and IBS will evolve from smaller towns. The software product market in India is estimated to be worth $2 billion (approximately Rs 10,500 crore). There are about 2,400 software product companies in India.

Some of the challenges that small companies face are finding right customer and marketing. However, the great advantages of smaller towns are that most of the companies are located closely and act as a cluster to develop the location.

“There was a notion that smaller companies located in small cities are finding it difficult to market their products,” recalls Kathir Kamanathan, CEO of Chella Software, a Madurai-based company that develops software products for capital markets.

“But with the availability of various technologies, we can now reach any part of the globe.”