Category — Internet@India

Much as we Indians never miss an opportunity to crow about our freedom of speech, our government is no different from its Chinese counterparts, which is pilliorised the world over for internet sensorship.

God knows for what reason, The Indian Government has directed ISPs to block off access to certain blogs. The list of blogs apparently, runs into 22 pages. This has been confirmed by this Rediff story.

I can’t for a minute fathom what the hell, the Goverment of India finds objectionable in these blogs.

This has been confirmed by voices all over the Indian blogosphere. Here are a bunch of posts that are talking about this.

Will the Government restore sanity and explain the rationale behind this nonsense ?

It’s two years since I’ve been a web entrepreneur. During this period, I have graduated from being an occasional internet user to somebody, whose basic livelihood depends on the internet. As such, I take the liberty of counting myself amongst the more ‘advanced’ (whatever that means) 40 million Indian internet users.

The majority of the web content that I see everyday in the Indian internet space fails to inspire me. Most of the contemporary Indian web products, internet services, web applications etc seem amateurish, are poorly designed, lack real innovation or are copied unimaginatively from successful western product concepts. As an Indian, this hurts me somewhere deep in my heart.

Much as I never miss an opportunity to crib about this, on this occasion, I have decided to do something regarding this. Webyantra is a first step in that direction and is my way of trying to make a difference in a small way.

Webyantra is a blog, which is dedicated to profiling innovative Indian web products and internet services. It’s a platform for Indian web startups, ecommerce websites and internet based businesses to showcase their products & services to Indian internet users. To see what Webyantra looks like, go here.
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Trust something like this to happen only in India. An Indian blog is at the epicenter of the gossip-circuit in New Delhi’s media/internet circles and is sending out blogospheric tremors (and after-shocks) on a daily basis. The blog is titled WarforNews and is written ANONYMOUSLY. It was started about five months back and now commands a rocketing readership. Its popularity can be gauged by the number of comments each post attracts- anything between 40-100 and all of these are ANONYMOUS as well. I’m sure this is quite unparalled anywhere in the blogosphere.

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(This review is based on interactions I had with the founders of OLX, an international online classifieds and auctions website. OLX is launching the Indian edition of its website and is looking to customize it to the Indian context through reviews/ user feedback received from Indian bloggers)

OLX stands for ‘OnLine Exchange‘ and it is positioned as the ‘next generation online classifieds and auctions website‘. The company has offices in NY and Buenos Aires. It wants to be a significant player in the online ecommerce space in the emerging markets of the world (as is apparent from country specific websites that are launching - India, Mexico, South Africa, New Zealand, Hong Kong etc).

OLX has been co-founded by two successful international tech entrepreneurs, Fabrice Grinda & Alec Oxenford. Between them, they have founded successful web businesses like Zingy.com, the largest mobile Media Company in the Americas and DeRemate.com, a leading online auction site in Latin America. Alec also has an Indian connection, as he was an early stage investor in India’s leading ecommerce site, Bazzee.com (he has since exited from that venture).

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Ever since we organized DelhiBarcamp, I have been asked this question many times over– ‘what made you all think of organizing an event like this, in a place like Delhi?’

Well, the answer to this question is obviously a no-brainer. For, BarCamps (anywhere) are a great way for the tech community to learn from the experience of others in a shared and unrestricted manner.

However speaking for myself, I can say that I was motivated by a selfish self-interest as well. For, I head a small software product development team at Uzanto. I have previously attended events organized by Nasscom & TiE but those events typically are dominated by the mid & large sized tech companies. They don’t capture or reflect the aspirations/concerns of the small tech/startup community. And so, I had hoped that BarCamps would provide me an opportunity to discover and meet lots of other (similar) software product startups.
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