NAFIS, Shabbir Husain

Source startupdunia.com:

An insightful article by “Businessworld” on the scene of online advsertising market in India. Informative and interesting.

SDA India Magazine and sda-india.com present the first of its kind conference on Java, Eclipse, Enterprise Architectures, SOA, Web Services, Software Testing, and Project Management, to the Indian Enterprise IT community of CIOs, CTOs, Management, System Analysts, Development Managers, IT Managers, Project Managers, Project Leaders, Software Architects, Software Developers, Software Testers, Database Administrators, and Web Developers. Whether you are a decision maker evaluating the use of these technologies, an IT business looking for partners and networking opportunities, or a working professional looking to stay on the cutting-edge of technology, this is one conference you don’t want to miss.

The core of the program is aimed at dissemination of information on all Java technologies, Eclipse and related technologies, Enterprise Architectures, and SOA, which are necessary ingredients for a successful business. Besides this, JAX also focuses on aspects pertaining to project management and software testing, which are key to the functioning of distributed enterprises

Date and Venue: 28th to 31st May 2007, J N Tata Auditorium, IISc, Bangalore, India

More details here.

This event seems to be for Ruby and Rails enthusiasts to create web services and application.

More event details on – http://punehackathon.pbwiki.com/

Venue and Date:

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Better Labs 
14 Trade Field,
Opposite Sony World Showroon
Sanghavi Nagar, Aundh
Pune 411007
India

July 29-30, 2006
All day and night
Presentations will start Sunday afternoon

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I am looking forward to attending it, though I just know a very high level of Ruby and Rails. Booking my calendar for this one right away.

India must have, never been so talked about, amongst the VC circles as it has been lately. There is an ever increasing number of highly experienced, seasoned and educated mass of Indian software engineers who are daring to start a software firm of their own, spinning off from their comfort zones of a normal day to day job, availability of talent, broadband penetration, telecommunication infrastructure, growing importance of the wireless world, and a huge consumer market, all are attracting a lot of VC investments.

The companies which have made it big and are riding the growth curve, are a great source of inspiration and learning for aspiring enterpreneurs. They also further help, strengthening the trust which the VC’s have on the Indian market. This in turn is leading to more software companies and more investments.

As Pramod Haque points out, the Indian software company surely has moved from the Y2K services to outsourced software development/integration services to outsourced product development. And now India stands at a phase of coming up with highly innovative ideas of their own for the world as a market.

However, most of the companies (atleast in the web or internet services space) are replicating the successful and proven internet business models which are prevelant in the developed countries viz. travel, dating sites, matrimonials, classified, e-commerce sites etc.. And I am sure this will also give the VCs a lot of comfort level too. No doubt that some of them surely are very successful and that they are creating a lot of value for the indian customers.

But my concern here is that, these successful companies are still kind of not innovating a lot, as they are cloning proven business models or internet services. Sure they are creating value in the Indian market, but from an Indian IT industry stand point, can we boast of a technology, product or a service that is purely and entirely “Made In India” for the world. Aren’t we cloning existing models, using created technologies and serving corporate America still? Yes one would say, it is a win-win for all as of now, for the companies, VCs and Indian consumer base, but is this the grand prize for the Indian IT industry as a whole.

This is in no way to undermine the acheivements of the Indian IT industry – we have done a great deal !. But are we there yet in terms of creating a highly innovative technology, service or a product, which the world recognizes and uses? How far are we from that stage and what is the most likely trigger?