siliconindia

In My Opinion: Kunwer Sachdev, Su-Kam VC Talk: Ashu Garg, Foundation Capital Clean Tech Special

PUBLISHED SINCE 1997

BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY IN THE U.S. & INDIA FEBRUARY - 2011 SILICONINDIA.COM

Vidya Ravichandran, President

Contents February 2011
14 Cover Story

Glow touch
TECHNOLOGIES
NurturiNg a lastiNg
EmployEE-CustomEr rElatioNship
By Vimali Swamy

Vidya Ravichandran, President

06 [In My Opinion] 24 [CleanTech] 36 [CleanTech]

My Entrepreneurial Journey Vision 2020 Distributed Solar Green IT for a Healthier Envi-
By Kunwer Sachdev, Su-Kam Power The Way Ahead ronment
By Inderpreet Wadhwa, Azure Power By V.C Gopalratnam, Cisco
08 [Infocus]
26 Clean Energy at the Bottom of 38 [CEO Profile]
11 [VC Chakra] the Pyramid Stay Passionate, Stay Paranoid
Stoke Raises $17 Million in By Sam Goldman, DLight design
Series E Funding Vivek Ranadivé, TIBCO
Tapjoy secures $21 Million in
Series B Funding
28 Clean Technology & India 40 [Feature]
By Nelvin Joseph, Artin Dynamics
India The Promising Vista for
12 [CEO Spotlight] 30 [Technology]
Semiconductor
Open Source, Cloud and Virtualization Actionable Intelligence The By Eureka Bharali
Imperative for Organizational Efficiency
Next Frontier in Telecom
The Telecom Market is Abuzz!
OSS/BSS 43 [CleanTech]
Cleantech Market The Next
By Dr. Hossein Eslambolchi,
19 [Startup Profile] Subex
Favored Investment Destination
Hara: Taking Technology to By Binu T Paul
Greener Pastures
32 [CleanTech]
By Jaya Smitha Menon CleanTech Past, Present & 44 [Management]
Managing the Most Talented
Future
20 [VC Talk] By Shwetank Jain, P2 Power Solutions
By Anonya Roy
Entrepreneurs The fundemental
Raw Material for VCs
34 [Technology] 45 Boss Says, ‘Go!’ A Leader
Ashu Garg,Foundation Capital
What Can We Learn from Says, ‘Let’s Go!’
WikiLeaks? By Suman Ravikumar
22 [Cover Feature]
By Bhaskar Bakthavatsalu,
2011 WhatisinStoreforCleantech?
Check Point 46 [SI 20 Profile]
By Hari Anil

siliconindia
|3| February 2011
 siliconindia FEBRUARY - 2011

Editorial
Publisher
Harvi Sachar

Cleantech, the future

Editor-in-Chief
Pradeep Shankar

beckons!

T
Managing Editor
Christo Jacob
Deputy Editor
Jaya Smitha Menon
alking about Cleantech reminds me of the Black
Editorial Staff Swan theory. People still view it outside the realm
Eureka Bharali of regular expectations, and nothing in the past can
Hari Anil convincingly point to its success quotient. Still, it carries
Vimali Swamy an extreme impact.
A couple of years ago, before things went wrong with
Sr.Visualizer Raghu Koppal the economy, there were a fair number of first-time clean-
Subscription Manager P Magendran tech venture firms out fundraising. But the recession saw
almost flat and down rounds of funding, for the industry in
2008 and 2009. However, 2010 saw a renewed interest and
Mailing Address about $1.9 billion being invested in cleantech ventures.
Thanks to the increasing interest in a broader range of
SiliconIndia Inc cleantech themes, such as smart mobility and resource ef-
44790 S. Grimmer Blvd ficiency, which are now taking over from the historically
Suite 202, dominant renewable energy sector.
Fremont, CA 94538 This time we hope the hype continues and the industry
shelves off its image as an improbable still interesting tag.
But this time around it is not going to be easy either. VCs are
T:510.440.8249, F:510.440.8276
looking out for newer platforms and business models. For
firms and entrepreneurs, it will take double the vigor to make
the point. From the market perspective, only the tier 1 firms
are rethinking about investing and integrating in cleantech to
improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions in
siliconindia order to reduce costs, mitigate energy price volatility risk, and
comply with existing and pending regulations around carbon
February 2011, volume 14-02 (ISSN 1091-9503)
Published monthly by siliconindia, Inc.
and climate change risk disclosure. For the rest of the world,
cleantech still has barely managed to be in the comfort cate-
gory in the economic scale of need, comfort and luxury.
However the current economic contraction and the grow-
ing interest of national governments in kick-starting a world-
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Visit www.siliconindia.com or send email to important long-run economic and environmental challenges
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Copyright © 2009 siliconindia, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction giance to the greener recovery are to be believed, it will see
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no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or illustra- All said and done, in cleantech what will succeed is how
tions. Views and opinions expressed in this publication are not neces-
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well you can predict the future and can invent it the green and
the publisher thereof. clean way. We need great technology and great technologists
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 By Kunwer Sachdev
The author is CMD, Su-Kam
in my
opinion MY ENTREPRENEURIAL
JOURNEY
M
y father was in the railways
and he always wanted to be an
entrepreneur. Just to realize
his dream we shifted to a res-
idential colony full of entre-
preneurs. My father had a lot of different
businesses but he never did well financially. He
was a very hardworking man and that trait is
seen in all the three sons of the family. I and my
whole family have been through hard times
where as a kid on my birthday getting a shoe or
a shirt as a gift was a big thing.
I knew from the start that there is no one be-
hind me, so I had to rely on myself. I took my
own decisions, I became very independent. This
has helped me a lot in life and also cemented me
as a successful entrepreneur.
I had joined Hindu College after schooling
which I term as a big leap and a personality
changing experience for myself. Also, at the
same time I had started helping my brother in his
pens business. To improve on my English I
started reading English books. I did my BA in
Mathematical Statistics from Delhi University. I
learnt how to talk to people, to take people along,
how to make groups and learnt to organize
things. I kept on taking challenges in life and I
set one or two big goals for myself. The main
one being to ‘make it big in business’.
In 1984 I graduated from college and joined
my brothers. I coined the name ‘Su-Kam’ for
siliconindia
|6|
February 2011
the pens and wanted to make it into a
‘brand’. After sometime I realized I
couldn’t work with my brother in his
pens business and decided to embark
on my own journey by myself. I started
pursuing Law from the Delhi Univer-
sity and used to go attend classes in the
evening. I studied seriously for the first
time and in the meantime I got married.
My wife started working soon after
marriage since it was not easy support-
ing the house with only me working. I
had the pressure that I have to become
something in life. What to become
used to keep on changing. Sometimes,
I used to think of becoming a lawyer.
Sometimes, an entrepreneur. Marriage
brought some stability in my life and
so I started my cable TV business with-
out having any technical understanding
or know-how on how to run the busi-
ness. I had realized that I have to learn
how to do this work be it learning
things to actually fixing things. I
started reading my class ninth and
tenth Physics books to gain a greater
understanding. By 1996-97 my cable
TV business was flourishing as I had a
factory with 50 employees and was
making good money.
Whatever I was earning, I was put-
ting in my business because that was my
life and in 1998 I made my move into
the inverter business. I realized that
there was a huge demand for inverters
in north India, but everyone was mak-
ing the same kind of inverter. There was
an inverter at my home which would
constantly get spoilt. So one day when
the mechanic came to repair it, I just had
a peek inside the inverter. I realized they
were using a sub-standard PCB. I knew
about PCB’s because of my cable TV
experience. Later on I brought a high
quality branded inverter and asked my
factory workers to work on it. I had
started reading books and articles on
this. Knowledge for the sake of knowl-
edge is foolish but it is a way forward.
After much experimentation and
testing I launched an inverter but it did
not rock the market so we constantly
kept improvising hoping to deliver the
best product. I was very determined to
make my ideas work. Finally we were
able to make an efficient inverter and
the sales started picking up. I wanted to
make a great product and at the same
time assure the best service. A great
product is a good thing to have, but
even great products need marketing. A
fact that companies focused on tech-
nology often overlook. Su-Kam was no
exception. We soon launched an ad
campaign and our brand got noticed
with a fairly low spend. We switched to
advertising which was a first for the in-
verter category.
There were two or three employees
of mine who were not good at work, so
I put them on the job for putting up
boards reading SU-KAM on it all over
India. It made the Su-Kam brand very
popular. We persuaded dhaba owners to
put their name on Su-Kam boards and
advertise along with their product. We
persuaded them by giving them a T-
shirt, a strategy which brands like Voda-
fone & Airtel follow. By 2002, we were
in a good position. The following year
Su-Kam launched very innovative prod-
ucts including the Sinewave Inverter
and an inverter with a plastic body, both
for the first time in India. We also
brought out a UPS range. We opened
our first branch office in Hyderabad and
started exporting products as well as
participating in overseas exhibition.
Later on we had developed some in-
novative technologies which needed
protection. I realized that we have to
patent our products to survive in this in-
dustry. So in 2004 for the first time I ap-
plied for a patent. With superior
products, a well known brand name and
strong dealer network, Su-Kam has
achieved remarkable growth. In 2004,
our turnover stood at Rs. 100 crores.
Today, it is touching Rs. 500 crores, of
which Rs. 80 crores comes from the ex-
port market.
Around 2007, there were buyout of-
fers from companies but I didn’t really
pay heed to them. Reliance had ap-
proached us with a PE offer and I de-
cided to take that. Reliance India Power
Fund- a JV between Reliance (ADAG)
& Temasek Holdings Singapore in-
vested Rs. 45 crores in Su-Kam. The
stage was set for a scorching pace of
growth. In 2006, we set up our first off-
shore office in Dubai. Su-Kam became
the world’s second company to manu-
facture 100 KVA inverter and inaugu-
rated India’s first SMF battery plant. We
also armed ourselves with a trademark
registration in the US, where we are
now exporting. Su-Kam has 32 people
working on R&D- all engineers. Inno-
vation is a mild way to describe it. What
they do is keep inventing. As an entre-
preneur I need to be make sure that both
me and my company are up ahead es-
pecially with the competition around.
We have applied for 50 technology
patents and now every month we are ap-
plying for two technology patents.
With me innovation is the key to
success. I have this problem of dream-
ing. I am very clear, that I have to on
this. I had made a 100 KW inverter
around three years ago. No one even
thought it was possible at that time.
My dreams are so big that even if
I work for another 50 years and the
new generation also works on it, it
will not be completed. I still don’t un-
derstand the real term of an entrepre-
neur. I think decisions are never
‘right’ or ‘wrong’. It’s the outcome
which may be either positive or neg-
ative. But you can’t sit on the fence,
you have to weigh the pros and cons
and make decisions in life. That is an
essential quality for every entrepre-
neur. Mistakes do happen in life. I
have also made mistakes and learnt
from it. Some people may be with
you and some may not. You should be
driven by your passion or your inter-
est. You should not be driven only by
the monetary value. It comes and then
goes: if you are successful it keeps in-
creasing. This was my passion and I
worked towards it. I have not been
driven by other force. si
siliconindia
|7|
February 2011
in in

T I
Wipro rejigs leadership team
he country’s third largest
software services exporter
Wipro has sent ripples
across the industry with
the recent change in lead-
ership. What Azim Premji has said
about the sudden appointment of TK
Kurien as the new CEO of the Infor-
mation Technology business and Ex-
ecutive Director of Wipro is, with the
market exploding now, there is a need
for a simpler and leaner organization.
Seeing its disappointing performance
and competition from peers who have
shown faster growth in the IT sector,
it’s quite clear that the company has
made the major reshuffle in its leader-
ship hoping to regain its lost ground.
According to Wipro’s earlier
model, the company had several de-
partments targeting the same cus-
banking, financial services and insur-
ance (BFSI) segment has been the
major reason for its slower growth.
This is one thing that Chairman Azim
Premji himself admitted. Premji said
that companies like Cognizant which
have been growing fast have a 50-55
percent revenue contribution from
BFSI, while Wipro’s stands at around
27 percent.
Increased attrition
level is another issue that
the company faced dur-
ing the third quarter this
fiscal. The IT services
business lost 1,092 soft-
ware engineers and the
business process out-
sourcing services lost
226 people during the
quarter under review.
up to 7,829 crore from 7,731 crore and
dollar denominated global IT revenues
rose 5.6 percent to $1.34 billion (QoQ).
Despite this growth, the company still
lagged behind. The numbers were
below street expectations with Wipro
posting a mere 1.26 percent sequential
growth in revenues, while net profit
grew marginally by 2.6 percent.
All said and discussed, we should
not forget the fact that
Wipro has had a good his-
tory of leadership changes
at senior level. From Vivek
Paul to Ashok Soota, Sudip
Nandi, Sudip Banerjee and
even Subrato Bagchi left
Wipro for their good rea-
sons. But the company
tided over the changes
Rishad Premji smoothly, thanks to the
indian americans attaining New heights in the u.s.
ndian Americans are accomplish-
ing great heights these days, more
than ever before. Recently U.S.
President Barack Obama has named
an Indian-American doctor, Vivek
Murthy, to an Advisory Group on Pre-
vention, Health Promotion and Inte-
grative and Public Health, and
re-nominated an Indian American
agricultural scientist, Islam A. Sid-
diqui, as Chief Agricultural Nego-
tiator in trade talks. Murthy, an
attending physician at Brigham
and Women’s Hospital and an
instructor at Harvard Medical
School, is also the Co-Founder
and Chairman of Epernicus, LLC,
a privately-held company
that builds social net-
working platforms for
scientific institutions
and clinical trials. Sid-
diqui will serve as Chief never participated in Ka-
Agricultural Negotiator in sich’s election campaign,
the Office of the United they both worked in
States Trade Representative Lehman Brothers for
(USTR) once more, with the seven years.
rank of ambassador. In yet another instance
Similarly, in Ohio Jai Vijay Sazawal, the Direc-
Chabria became the Senior Islam A. Siddiqui
tor of government pro-
Adviser the Governor John grams for the U.S.
Kasich. His duties include overseeing Enrichment Corporation, got ap-
gubernatorial appointments and pointed to the Civil Nuclear Trade Ad-
managing personnel for state visory Committee by the U.S.
agencies. He will also work di- Department of Commerce Secretary
rectly with the Ohio Depart- Gary Locke. The 35-year veteran of
ment of Development as it both the civilian and defense nuclear
transitions into JobsOhio. industry was among the people who
“Whatever duty is assigned to helped in bringing 2008 U.S.-India
me, I’ll try to fulfill it civilian nuclear power initiative to re-
according to the best ality. These three are among many
of my ability,” said great feats that the Indian Americans
Vivek Murthy Chabria. Even are achieving in the U.S. now, and this
though Chabria seems to be only the beginning.

tomers for different kinds of business.
But from now on, there will be only
one axis. The new structure will have
“mini CEOs” with increased risk-tak-
ing and decision-making powers, head-
ing different vertical businesses. All
functions of sales, consulting, BPO and
technical services such as software
testing will have to align themselves
more closely with these mini CEOs.
Now the question is, how effective this
fresh structure would be and how it
will justify the decision of dumping its
joint CEOs, Girish Paranjpe and
Suresh Vaswani?
While all the top tier IT companies
in India have shown strong recovery
from the recession in recent quarters,
Wipro has been a relative underper-
former, both in revenue and in operat-
ing margins in past one year. Analysts
said that Wipro’s low exposure to the
The impact of such a
high attrition quarter-on-quarter was,
however, neutralized by the IT prod-
ucts business, which added 731 people
in the third quarter. In the world of dif-
ferent challenges, how the new CEO
will address the problem the attrition is
another significant thing to be noticed.
According to some of the employees,
both Paranjpe and Vaswani have been
the face of Wipro and if the leadership
changes then other things will change
too. So, chances are there that if those
new changes are not favourable for the
employees, it will lead to more attrition
in the company.
Wipro’s net profit for the third
quarter of fiscal year 2011 grew 3.4
percent on quarter-on-quarter basis.
The number stood at 1,319 crore as
against 1,276 crore reported last quar-
ter. Its consolidated revenues too went
charisma of Premji. But
there is a bit more curiosity in the lead-
ership change this time. If you look at
Infosys, there is a clear cut Leadership
model practiced. The stake holders see
a lack of clarity on this front today. As
per the Wipro policy, a Chairman has
to step down at 67. That leaves perhaps
only a couple of years for Premji, aged
65. Is Premji laying the foundation for
his son to take over? The mini CEO
structure and other structural changes
point to definitely a simpler path for
Rishad Premji to lead when he takes
over. Rishad’s role also has widened
with much less public attention. Last
September, he was made Chief Strate-
gic Officer. Now he will additionally
look at Wipro’s M&A’s. Will TK
Kurien also follow the same fate of the
CEO duos? This is something to wait
and watch. si
T
taj Employee Behavior During 26/11 is a harvard Case study Now
he 26/11 terror at-
tack, which took
the life of 164, in
Mumbai was among the
worst terror attacks India
has faced. The Taj Hotel
in Mumbai was hit very
badly during the incident
and several guests and
more than a dozen em-
ployees lost their life. The
heroic response by em-
ployees of Taj during the
attacks is now a case study at Harvard
Business School that focuses on the
staff’s selfless service for its cus-
tomers and how they went beyond
their call of duty to save lives.
The multimedia
case study ‘Terror at the
Taj Bombay: Cus-
tomer-Centric Leader-
ship’ by HBS professor
Rohit Deshpande docu-
ments “the bravery and
resourcefulness shown
by rank-and-file em-
ployees” during the at-
tack. “Not even the
senior managers could
explain the behaviour
of these employees,” Deshpande is
quoted as saying in HBS Working
Knowledge, a forum on the faculty’s
research and ideas. According to
Deshpande even though the employ-
ees “knew all the back exits” of the
hotel and could have easily escaped,
many of them stayed back and helped
the guests. “The natural human in-
stinct would be to flee. These are peo-
ple who instinctively did the right
thing. And in the process, some of
them, unfortunately, gave their lives to
save guests.”
The case studies include video in-
terviews with hotel staff and footage
of the attack; it is like a documentary
style account of events. It also focuses
on the hotels history, its recruitment
and training methodology. “Nothing in
the employees’ training could have
prepared them for such an unprece-
dented situation,” Deshpande said. si

siliconindia
|8|
February 2011 siliconindia
|9| February 2011

in
C
CEos of Big global Companies show interest in indian market
EOs of global big companies
like Wal-Mart, Rio Tinto,
Tesco, Sistema, and Applied
Materials are showing great interest in
the fast growing Indian economy.
They met with Commerce and Indus-
try Minister Anand Sharma and shared
their enthusiasm about opportunities
presented by the Indian Economy.
Those who met Sharma include Wal-
Mart CEO Mike Duke, Tesco Chief
Executive Terry Leahy, Sistema Chair-
man Vladimir Evtushenkov, Rio Tinto
Chief Executive Tom Albanese, and
“I
india presents Fantastic opportunity for the u.s.
ndia presents fantastic op-
portunities for U.S. compa-
nies to provide the goods
and services needed to build its rail-
roads, airports, power plants, and
fibre optic cables to facilitate India’s
rise,” Assistant Secretary of State for
South Asia Robert Blake said. The
U.S. is making it a priority to help
private sector help meet India’s
growing needs he added. He said this
while he was speaking on the topic
“India: The Rise of an Economic
Power” at Syracuse University, Syra-
cuse, New York.
“Over the last decade, India be-
came our 14th largest goods trading
partner and we exchanged $37.6 bil-
lion in goods in 2009,” Blake noted.
“U.S. foreign direct investment in
siliconindia
|10| February 2011
Applied Materials Head Michael
Splinter.
A senior official, who was present
at the meeting, said the world business
leaders expressed their interest in
India, in terms of strengthening their
presence in the world's second fastest
growing economy. He also added that,
Sharma told them that barring a few
sectors, India has opened the gates for
foreign direct investment in all the
areas. Davos annual WEF meeting is
all about networking and cementing
ties with India remains on top of the
India reached $16.1 billion in 2008, a
10.8 percent increase from 2007.”
During President Barack Obama’s
visit to India in November, trade
deals were announced that exceeded
$14.9 billion in total value with $9.5
billion in U.S. export content, sup-
porting over 50,000 U.S. jobs. India
is also a notable source of foreign di-
rect investment into the U.S., with
$4.5 billion FDI into the U.S. in
2008, up 60 percent from the previ-
$$$ $$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
agenda of the global corporates, said a
senior Indian industry leader.
“We have been advised to scale up
investment in upstream activities,”
Tesco CE Terry Leahy told. Sistema,
which has collaboration with Shyam
Group in India, is increasing its in-
vestment in the Indian telecom sector
with a subscriber base of 750 million.
Though FDI into India declined in
2010-11 due to global slowdown in the
previous years, the country still seems
to remain as a priority area for the for-
eign investors.
ous year, Blake
added.
With a mar-
ket of 1.2 bil-
lion of the
world’s con-
sumers, and
per capita in-
comes forecast
to grow at a rate of 8 percent over the
next several years, India’s market of-
fers tremendous opportunity to U.S.
exporters of goods and services, he
said. “Our governments need to
match the ambition of our busi-
nesses,” he said. “Washington and
Delhi must serve as catalysts for
growth and innovation, not stifle en-
trepreneurial spirit with overbearing
bureaucracies,” suggested Blake. si
stoke raises $17 million
S
in series E Funding
toke, a Santa Clara based mobile
broadband gateway provider, has
raised $17 million in Series E
funding led by Focus Ventures. With this,
the total funds raised to date by Stoke
have reached $92 million. The company
plans to use the funding to support its
rapidly increasing installed base, and
new LTE and 3G network optimization
projects with mobile networks in Europe,
Asia and the U.S.
The company has delivered over 200
units of its Stoke Session Exchange
(SSX-3000) mobile broadband gateway
since initiating commercial production in
late 2008.According to a new study from
T
tapjoy secures $21 million in series B Funding
apjoy, an app development
company based out of San
Francisco, CA, have roped in
their second round of funding of $21
million. “We sit in the middle of three
very popular and quickly growing
trends: social gaming, virtual currency
and mobile applications. We are the
leader in helping social and mobile ap-
plications grow their apps through
monetization and distribution,” said
Mihir Shah, CEO & President, Tapjoy,
as the reason for VC interest in his
company. The round was led by Rho
Ventures, with participation from all
existing investors including InterWest
Partners, North Bridge Venture Part-
ners and D. E. Shaw Ventures.
The company plans to use these
funds to expand their product lines and
ABI Research, about 16 percent of mo-
bile data is diverted from mobile net-
works today, and that is expected to
increase to 48 percent by 2015. The data
traffic itself will have grown by a factor
of 30, meaning that offloaded data will
expand 100-fold. “Stoke, together with
solution partners, is delivering advanced
and unique solutions for the immediate
requirements of accelerating content de-
livery, traffic optimization service de-
livery cost reduction and secure LTE
deployments. Our outlook for growth in
2011 is promising, given our central role
in the strong operator investment focus
on optimizing current network assets
technology capabilities,
specifically on the iOS,
Android and across
emerging application
ecosystems. They also
want to continue expand-
ing internationally, includ-
ing opening new
international offices and
hiring in their existing Mihir Shah
Tokyo and London of-
fices, as well as in the U.S. headquar-
ters. The funds will also be used for
further investment in application
media licensing and incubation oppor-
tunities. “Our services are used by
most of the top game and application
developers on all of the leading social
and mobile platforms, including Face-
book, Myspace, hi5, iOS and Android,
Vikash Varma
and preparing for or deploying LTE,”
said Vikash Varma, President and CEO
at Stoke.
Its existing investors, including DAG
Ventures, Integral Capital Partners, Pilot
House Ventures, Net One Systems, Do-
CoMo Capital, Mobile Internet Capital,
Sequoia Capital, and Kleiner Perkins
also participated in the round. “Achiev-
ing this level of growth during the global
economic crisis is proof of the strength
of the company, the relevance of their
technology to top tier carriers, and the
high potential of the mobile broadband
market,” said James Boettcher, General
Partner, Focus Ventures.
as well as on the web in-
cluding virtual world
sites, MMOs and other
types of gaming sites,”
said Shah about the mar-
ket opportunity.
The round brought
the company’s total fund-
ing to over $40 million.
Shah seems to be very
happy about his com-
pany’s present position and doesn’t
seem to worry much about the compe-
tition, “There is no one who provides
all of the services we do across all of
the platforms that we operate on. There
are some companies that provide alter-
native payments like we do, but not the
depth and breadth of alt pay solutions,”
he said. si
siliconindia
|11| February 2011
 CEO SPOTLIGHT
it budgets are constrained and enterprise Cios must “do more with less”
while managing a larger, more complex mix of business and technology
challenges. as a result, we will continue to see innovative technology solu-
tions – cloud, virtualization, open source and dense computing – that
allow organizations to become more efficient and green while reducing it
spending.
We’ve heard a lot of buzz around
cloud in the last few years, but I think
this year we will begin to see more
adoption as organizations start mov-
ing more mission-critical applica-
tions to the cloud. Additionally, more
and more organizations will virtual-
ize in order to reduce their IT foot-
print, achieve real, tangible cost
savings and operational improve-
ment.
I believe the open source move-
ment will continue, especially since
Federal CIO Vivek Kundra and lead-
ing government agencies have em-
braced open source.
Finally, dense computing will
find its way into more enterprises as
the needs to carry processing power
into the field, reduce the total cost
per processing unit, CapEx and
O&M and adopt green solutions be-
come more important.
I believe we will see a significant
increase in M&A activity in the gov-
ernment services sector as the econ-
omy continues to pick up and
mid-tier companies struggle to com-
pete with the large systems integra-
siliconindia
|12| February 2011
open Source, cloud and
Virtualization Imperative for
organizational Efficiency
Pramod Sharma, President & CEO, Criterion Systems
Pramod Sharma
tors. Additionally, we will see an in-
crease in the number federal con-
tracts awarded to small businesses
since a lot of federal agencies have
not been meeting their small business
quotas.
While there are significant op-
portunities for entrepreneurs in the
federal IT services market, our in-
dustry is undergoing changes that
pose a challenge for emerging com-
panies. First, there are widespread
CEO SPOTLIGHT
the telecom Market
is Abuzz!
Sudeesh Yezhuvath, Chief Operating Officer
& Wholetime Director, Subex
W
e see bandwidth hungry access devices becoming more prevalent
– be it tablets or smartphones. this is forcing telcos to think of how
they manage the bandwidth in the mobile world and so hence we
increased investments in mobile backhaul, policy management etc.
however, monetizing this traffic remains a significant challenge and
there will be increased need for solutions in the space of Customer Experience
management, margin Driven management , and more.
Telcos are headed towards a two- about providing on-demand, person- going through a lot of change on the
sided business model if they do not alized services to subscribers. Some business model and the services it
want to be commoditized. There will telcos will be able to do both while provides. The ubiquitous nature of In-
be a part of the telecom business some will remain focused on one or ternet and the availability of several
which will be about providing infra- the other. In either case, significant platforms – be it the application de-
structure at the lowest cost and there improvement in efficiency will be velopment platforms or PaaS – have
will be another part which will be called for and that means a sea really lowered the entry barriers.
change in the management style of Challenges that entrepreneurs will
telcos. We see an increased drive to- face will be the other side of the coin
wards actionable intelligence as that here – to be able to think globally and
is what telcos need to really scale up be also prepared for competition from
efficiency. unexpected quarters or unexpected
This is a time of great opportunity moves of competition. Business
for entrepreneurs. The market is agility will be a critical need. si
government budget cuts – the De-
partment of Defense is cutting $100
billion per year. Additionally, the QuickFacts
government in-sourcing initiative
continues to eliminate IT solutions Cleantech venture investment was up by 28 percent compared
and functions that the private sector to 2009 ($6.1 billion) making 2010 the second highest year for
has historically offered in support of investment after 2008 ($8.8 billion). the number of deals was
agencies. Finally, large businesses 715, a new annual record, ahead of the previous high (624
are starting to pursue and bid on deals) recorded in 2009. North america accounted for 68 per-
smaller deals that were traditionally cent of the total invested, while Europe and israel accounted
only competed on amongst small Sudeesh Yezhuvath for 21 percent and asia for 10 percent.
businesses. si
siliconindia
|13|
February 2011

Glow touch
TECHNOLOGIES
T
NurturiNg a lastiNg
EmployEE-CustomEr rElatioNship
By Vimali Swamy
he multi billion dollar
ITeS industry is a compet-
itive one and with big
wigs like IBM and HP
taking more interest in the
services industry, the future looks rosy
too. But in an industry where every
one in a rat race to gain the larger
share of the pie and rake in big ‘moola’
by stepping into every possible area
of IT services, Glowtouch Technolo-
gies thinks otherwise. Founded in
2004 by Vidya Ravichandran and her
father Dr. Ravichandran, Louisville,
Kentucky headquartered Glowtouch
believes in doing some thing different.
Rather than focusing on every possi-
ble service offering available in the
market today, it provides specialized
offerings in niche market segments.
But more importantly, rather than
Vidya Ravichandran chasing a list of clientale, the company
first and foremost focuses on its em-
ployees, for Vidya knows that a happy
organization translates into a happy
business practice and a satisfied cus-
tomer base.
siliconindia
|14| February 2011
COVER STORY
Glowtouch technologies at a Glance
Founded: 2004
headquarters: louisville, Kentucky
other offices: mangalore, india
headcount: 800
Customers: over 100
Verticals: healthcare, mobile, internet
Core Business: it services (tech support,
Business intelligence)
Website: www.glowtouch.com
“The ITeS segment is known for
the high rate of attrition and employee
and personnel issues. But we at Glow-
touch have been able to overcome this
since the beginning,” she explains.
Currently with employee strength of
800 in its headquarters at Louisville
and development center at Mangalore,
India, Glowtouch takes pride in the
fact that its attrition rate has been one
of the lowest in the industry. In fact,
some of the employees who started
during the founding days of Glow-
touch are still continuing with the
company and faring very well in man-
agerial positions. Over the past few
siliconindia
|15|
February 2011

years, the company has received sev-
eral awards and accolades for its orga-
nizational culture from STPI and
FICCI and also be recognized as one
of the fastest growing companies by
Inc 500. “The key to achieving a wide
recognition has been focused approach
in the domain we are involved in and
relying on the strengths that our senior
management and employees have been
able to bring to forefront,” beams
Vidya.
Employees - The Real Assets
One of the founding principles of the
company was to build an organization
that celebrated and took pride in its re-
sources. Hence it was a conscious de-
cision to set up the company in Tier 2
cities in both U.S. and India, the rea-
son being the level of commitment that
comes across from the talent there. Un-
like Tier 1 cities, where the talent scout
is very intensive, leading to high attri-
tion, talent in Tier 2 cities is more sta-
ble and prefers in long term
relationship with organizations.
The back bone of any organization
is the management and employee cul-
ture on which the entire business relies
on. Glowtouch, since day one of its
founding, has encouraged a transparent
siliconindia
|16| February 2011
Execuitve Management of GlowTouch
and entrepreneurial environment, with
entrepreneurial culture not only prac-
ticed by those at management level but
also those at senior employee level, by
taking a sense of ownership in what
they do. “Essentially, one of the things
is that we are not afraid of is to admit if
we are wrong. From the CEO to the
bottom most level, no one is afraid of
making mistakes and or even to learn
from it. We believe in taking risks and
to initiate this challenging bent of
mind, the company ensures that the
employees are not tied down by a strin-
gent corporate structure or policies,”
says Vidya, President, Glowtouch
Technologies.
Over the years, the company has
managed to build a strong talent base
by scouting people across geographies
with just the right mix of passion and
attitude. Despite being 800 people
large across two continents, Glow-
touch still exudes the aura of a close
knit family and leaves no stone un-
turned to keep the family together.
One of the unique things that one
would come across at Glowtouch is a
separate department that helps new
employees settle down both with in the
organization and outside. “We recruit
people from small geographies and un-
derstand the difficulties they face when
settling down at a new place. Hence we
have a have a department in the organ-
ization that takes care of the employee
needs and helps them settle down and
be of help in whatever way they may
need. The company even provides
housing to about 30-35 percent of its
employees. Apart from transportation
to all, 24 hour medical facility with in
the campus, health like yoga and med-
itation classes are additional facilities
that we provide for their well being. On
the whole the idea is to establish a
healthy environment with in the organ-
ization,” explains Dr. Ravichandran,
C.E.O of GlowTouch Technologies.
The result — an agile and nimble
workforce in hand and it is this agility
and nimbleness that the company has
successfully managed to translate into
a strong customer relationship.
Customers — the King
With a senior management based in
U.S. and its development centre in
India (the largest in Mangalore) the
Glowtouch has a set up a flexible busi-
ness model where in the clients are di-
rectly in touch with R&D team. While
all the customer facing activities hap-
pens from U.S. office, with senior tech-
nical managers going onsite, facing
customers and managing customer re-
lationships; the development team in
India works simultaneously with the
clients for project delivery. Of the 800
people, 25 are based in the U.S. and the
rest in India.
One of the essential concerns of a
client is the discontinuity in communi-
cation it faces due to frequent change
in a team. “A question that arises fre-
quently from customers is how they
can ensure that the amount of training
and time they spend on a project with
the company’s employees does not go
waste. Fortunately, for us this has never
been a problem as this is where our
strong organizational culture comes
into play,” says Dr. Ravichandran. In
the last seven years, there has hardly
ever been a circumstance when Glow-
touch’s client had to face discontinuity
during a project and on an average
most of the projects is on going for 3-
4 years. Each of the employee has a
very deep and understanding of en-
gagement with customer. Some of the
customers today stand way back from
early 2000 and some of the employees
have been engaged with them since the
day one. “The journey helps both the
client and employees to re-invent
themselves,” he adds.
A Potpourri of Niche Services
In its strive to stand apart from the tra-
ditional IT services companies, the
company also has a focused approach
towards its business. Instead of offer-
ing a myriad of services, Glowtouch
has had and continues to have a fo-
cused approach towards providing spe-
cialized offerings in niche segments.
The company’s core business is Appli-
cation Development and Tech Support
for Web Hosting companies.
Intelligent Application Development
for Business
Though the company provides a vari-
ety of application development serv-
ices but the primary focus is Business
Intelligence (BI). Glowtouch is a certi-
fied partner of IBM for Cognos and
also Pentaho, an open source platform
for BI.
With the advent of rich interactive
technology, a lot of organizations, es-
pecially in the healthcare sector, have
begun to generate tremendous amount
of data. But unless channelized, it is
very difficult to make intelligent de-
cisions based on that data. Until a few
years back, all of this data had never
been put into a roadmap and hence or-
ganizations could not reap its poten-
tial. Due to this, organizations had
been unable to make key decisions
due to lack of information. With our
BI expertise, we help organizations
process the constantly generated data
into a management dashboard so that
both the organization and its clients
can use it derive useful information.
This information helps organizations
increase efficiency and improve the
process. “What we essentially do is
start as consultants in the beginning
and then transcend into processing the
entire information and developing a
management dashboard so that all the
data generated makes sense,” ex-
plains Vidya.
unlike tier 1 cities, where the talent scout
is very intensive, leading to high attrition,
talent in tier 2 cities is more stable and
prefers in long term relationship with
organizations.
For example, one of the Glow-
touch’s clients is CareMedic Systems.
Based in St. Petersburg, Florida,
Caremedics is a healthcare industry
leader in providing proactive financial
management technology, implemented
in more than 1,500 hospitals and other
institutions across all 50 states and
Puerto Rico. CareMedic’s suite of rev-
enue cycle management solutions help
organizations streamline cash flow and
speed the reimbursement process,
helping customers manage the com-
plexity of the revenue cycle to increase
their bottom lines.
Its revolutionary product, the elec-
tronic Financial Record (eFR), consol-
idates all revenue cycle information
and activity in one place, eliminating
information silos and uniting data from
disparate systems. Not only does this
improve workflow and operational ef-
ficiency, but it also enables CareMedic
customers to put more time and effort
into what’s most important – their pa-
tients.
Glowtouch stepped in by helping
build electronic Financial Record
(eFR) Dashboard, an advanced man-
agement tool that enables effective
management at all levels and decision
makers. Users at any level are able to
access better information with high
speed. The success story of Care
Medic Systems Inc. - electronic Finan-
cial Record (eFR) - IBM Cognos solu-
tion, developed by GlowTouch
Technologies was recognized by IBM
as well. Today, years after the initial
engagement, GlowTouch continues to
provide maintenance and productivity
enhancement features with a highly ex-
perienced and functionally strong Proj-
ect Manager and a dedicated
programming team.
Similarly, the company has built
refinery monitoring system for Gen-
scape, a leading global provider of
energy information for commodity
and financial markets. Utilizing
patented technologies and propri-
etary algorithms, Genscape provides
accurate & timely data on capacities,
flow and utilization for all major en-
ergy commodities. The product range
includes the well known real-time
services for power and gas in North
America and Europe. Genscape also
delivers fundamentals-based market
intelligence services which market
participants rely upon to better un-
derstand drivers, risks, and dynamics
of regional power and gas markets.
Glowtouch developed a refinery
monitoring system which provides op-
erational insight covering critical re-
fineries in the U.S. that supply
gasoline and today it continues to help
monitor three major oil storage fields
which are located across United
States. The team works round the
clock (24x7) to provide real time and
accurate data about the oil storage
fields, a process which involves mon-
itoring the IR images of the storage
siliconindia
|17| February 2011

units very closely and sending the re-
ports at regular/agreed time intervals.
Some of the other bigwigs in its
BI clientele include Research in Mo-
tion (RIM) for which it prepared a
technology planning tool that helps
the company make corporate wide
updates on the status of the various
research projects with in each team,
monitor product development, re-
lease time frame for hardware/soft-
ware launch and more via an
interactive dashboard.
Moving Beyond Tech Support
The other major business for Glow-
touch is Tech Support for Web Host-
GlowTouch Team at India
ing companies where it provides Tier
1, 2 and 3 support including back of-
fice support and infrastructure serv-
ices. Active clients: 100 at a given
time. For years now, these were the
only services it offered to Web Host-
ing companies but now the company
is slowly spreading its wings to ven-
ture deeper into this segment.
“In BPO sector we see a lot of un-
tapped potential. There are several
areas where many of our web hosting
clients is unable to provide services.
They have the customers but are un-
able to leverage on it for providing
add on services. So we have started
to partner with them to provide these
add on services, so that our clients
can continue to monetize on their ex-
isting customer base,” explains
siliconindia
|18| February 2011
With the advent of
ria, organizations
have begun
generating
tremendous
amount of data
which unless
channelized, can
not be used to
make intelligent
decisions.
Vidya. For example, IPower, a web
hosting company, was not offering
add on services such as web design,
SEO, high end custom design serv-
ices previously. Glowtouch put to-
gether a potpourri of add on products
and services for it and some of its
other clients and has started to offer
it in partnership with them. The end
result — an increased revenue life-
cycle for both the company and its
customers.
“From customer standpoint, we are
looking at increasing our engagement
with them and increase the processes
we are involved with them. They are
now bringing us into more processes
than we seeking them,” Vidya says. In
a way tech support has started to per-
form better as the years go by and be-
come more commoditized. What the
company aims to achieve is climb
higher up in the value chain with serv-
ices like back office support and engi-
neering segment. “We want to keep
the focus of the segments limited be-
cause of the domain knowledge but
are looking into engaging deeper in
case of segment and broader in case of
services. In the long run, what we are
hoping to achieve is full life cycle sup-
port instead of just tech support,” says
she.
The Road Ahead
Despite being located in Tier 2 cities
and offering niche services, the com-
pany is quite active in its marketing
activities. The company since found-
ing has acquired over 150 clients
across U.S. and Canada and a few in
UK, of which 100 are active at any
given point.
To continue its successful streak
the company brought in private equity
partners, about three years ago, who
have invested in Glowtouch and
helped it morph into a more credible
and professionally run company than
just a family run organization which it
was in the initial years.
In the long run, Vidya bets on a
promising future in the healthcare sec-
tor. “This is one sector which is wit-
nessing a continuous expenditure on
technology. There is a big need for
augmentation and need for develop-
ment in this sector and we find our-
selves in a sweet spot due to our
presence since early part of the
decade,” says she. The company hopes
to expand its clientele geographically,
especially Europe. Apart from this it
also plans to double its revenues and
resources in the next three years.
With its focused approach towards
its business and a strong organiza-
tional culture, the company is a shin-
ing example of what a simple
“employee care” could do for an or-
ganizations business and its growth in
the long run. si
Startup Profile By Jaya Smitha Menon
Amit Chatterjee, CEO, Hara
Hara’s uniqueness in the space
Hara enables strategic, enterprise-
wide, environmental and energy man-
agement across an organization and its
value chain. Companies and organi-
zations gain transparency and control
of their entire organizational metabo-
lism – beyond just their carbon foot-
print – to optimize their use of
resources including energy, water, and
raw materials, and the corresponding
emissions and water waste and carbon
created. We give customers the ability
to identify, prioritize and track initia-
tives to improve efficiency, track re-
sults in a way that provides an
auditable trail, and innovate based on
best practices.
Entry into the environmental and
energy management solutions/green
IT space
I saw a lack of understanding by busi-
nesses around their utilization of natu-
ral resources and the resulting
environmental impact. “Being green”
is no longer just a CSR objective – it is
hara: taking technology
to Greener Pastures
now a core business priority as organ-
izations look to increase their opera-
tional efficiency, maximize
shareholder value and mitigate risks. I
wanted to create a company that could
resolve a significant problem and I felt
that environmental and energy man-
agement innovation was a need that I
could address.
Market place/opportunities for en-
vironmental and energy manage-
ment solutions
The demand for solutions that enable
companies to more effectively utilize
energy and resources and manage their
environmental impact is rapidly accel-
erating in both the private and public
sectors. More and more, organizations
are turning from spreadsheets and
homegrown systems to enterprise-
level software such as Hara EEM,
which can help them automate these
processes and meet their energy and
resource efficiency requirements. As
more top level executives look to
achieve cost savings through energy
management, we expect to see this
space continue to grow and feel that
Hara is in a great position to capitalize
on the interest in this area. Customers
choose Hara because we are 100 per-
cent focused on their challenges, and
a proven partner.
Changes to expect in the market
place in the next 5 years
The market will continue to grow at
a rapid pace, primarily due to the fi-
nancial benefits, value creation and
risk mitigation that organizations can
gain by implementing solutions like
Hara EEM. The bottom line is what
matters most, and CSOs and CFOs
are increasingly seeing the benefits of
working with Hara to identify, prior-
itize and track their energy and re-
source reduction initiatives.
Adding Value to Customers
We are helping organizations to not
only drive innovation but also recog-
nize that effective environmental and
energy management is now a busi-
ness imperative. From Fortune 500s
to municipalities and spanning a vari-
ety of industries (everything from
utilities to financial services), we’re
helping our customers increase oper-
ational efficiency, maximize share-
holder value and mitigate risk. As an
example, Hara is working with the
city of Palo Alto to monitor the city’s
160 ongoing projects pertaining to
areas of sustainability and resource
management. In the first year of using
Hara EEM, Palo Alto saved $600,000
in costs, including an 8 percent re-
duction in electricity, 25 percent de-
crease in natural gas usage and 12
percent less greenhouse gas emis-
sions.
Hara’s contribution to
sustainability
Hara is leading the way in enabling
companies to make sustainability a
competitive and profitable advantage.
We understand that identifying, pri-
oritizing and tracking the most effec-
tive natural resource reduction and
emissions mitigation strategies is now
a critical business operation. Through
EEM, we are helping leading compa-
nies and government organizations
achieve their sustainability goals. si
siliconindia
|19|
February 2011
VC Talk
from the challenges in an enterprise
From day one what the value proposition is and in-

invest in
segment and both these are very dif- novate around that and keep the main
ferent from an advertisement related focus around that then it is much

attracting an
start up. easy to sustain differentiation.
At the broadest level I would say
the number one challenge is that it is Tips to entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs ecosystem of
still very hard to track the right tal- Being successful is more important
ent whether it is in engineering or than getting funded. So you should

advisors and
business. This is true for both U.S. focus on the basics, find a large proj-
and India, as great talent is in short ect, differentiate its value proposition

angel investors
supply. This shortage in talent is way to your customers and should stay
the fundemental raw more than the shortage in capital. laser focused on that. Then invest

who have
Then the major challenge would early on in building a team around
be finding the right product. This is you, at the end of the day an entrepre-
material for VCs
experience with
especially true for technology ori- neur should be remarkable in selling
ented startups. You have this great his vision to the people around him
initiation, this great idea, but most of and getting them on board. The early

the fundraising
the time no one is buying it. Many team you get goes a long way in your
people who watch online entrepreneurs struggle with this in success. And finally, don’t be afraid to

ecosystem
video as a medium of en- the life of their companies. It is fig- fail, fail fast and get up and start again.
tertainment, whether it is uring out who would pay for what This is sort of the macro advice.
premium or non premium, you have and how to get it to them in On a more specific level, as you start
New Trends Driving the Industry is now comparable to the a repeatable manner are always a a company you have to recognize early
We have a very vibrant eco system of number of people who challenge, irrespective of the market on that fund raising is going to be an on-
entrepreneurs in the valley. The fun- watch TV. The quantum of you are in. going priority and focus for the CEO. If
damental raw material for our busi- time for which they watch The final challenge is that how do you are choosing to be a CEO this will
ness is the supply of great it is lower, but that is you go to a market in a way it is re- be part of your job, this will be some-
entrepreneurs who want to do inter- changing every year. So if peatable and cost effective. The cost thing you do all the time. You might be
esting things, and I think this mo- you think about the world of customer acquisition most of the
QuickFacts doing that for over 20 percent of your
mentum will continue uninterrupted. a few years from now time exceeds the near term revenue. the worldwide semiconduc- time over the course of the company’s
The reasons for this being, the pres- where all video content Over time you will be fine but this tor revenue is forecast to life. This should be recognized, this is
ence of great role models, availabil- will be watched online, increases the burden of a startup. total $314 billion in 2011, my first piece of advice.
ity of capital from high quality firms, then across that eco system just up 4.6 percent from My second advice is, from day one
and the cost of building a start up that there are opportunities for Advice to startups 2010's estimated revenue of invest in attracting an ecosystem of ad-
continues to come down. These make innovation. Not just for Primarily you should go after a very $300.3 billion, as per a gart- visors and angel investors who have ex-
it easier to experiment with new content providers but also large addressable market, since, if ner report. the growth in perience with the fundraising
ideas. The new trends in the themes for infrastructure you are in a large market then you the fourth quarter of Fy10 ecosystem. Great products have advi-
we are investing can be considered in providers, for platforms, can zig and zag and find a market po- will likely become negative sors of different kinds. People always
three folds - from Client Server Sys- and for advertisers. sition that is defensible. But in a for the first time in six quar- look for great technologists to give them
tem, Client Server Infrastructure to- Ashu Garg, Venture Partner, One technology trend small market there is very little room ters. the third quarter of advice which is a great thing to have,
wards Cloud Based Infrastructure. Foundation Capital that I would say is driving for maneuvering. To me this is very 2010 was the turning point, but in addition you need to find great
And this trend continues both to the a lot of change today is the obvious and I am stunned by the marketers, and people who have expe-
come into purview.
as semiconductor manufac-
infrastructure layout and the applica- low cost storage solutions. Cloud number of startups that are going rience with fundraising who understand
The third trend is video. The computing is one of the hosts of un-
turing factory utilization
tion layout. after small markets. The art is about that ecosystem.
growth in online video is reasonably derlying technology trends which is
rates peaked midyear and
The second trend is the fact that figuring out what the real address- The third point is, make sure you
well understood, people still under- enabling that.
subsequently started to re-
the traditional IT budget is been sup- able market for what you are doing find the right investor for you. Depend-
estimate how huge it is. Today Ne-
duce chip lead times and av-
plemented by the marketing budget. and not being overly optimistic. Sec- ing on what you are looking to do, your
flix, an online video streaming Challenges in the startup market
erage selling prices. strong
10 -15 years ago startups were more ondarily, before you go into the mar- goals, and your personal style, find an
portal, has as many subscribers as It is hard to generalize, as the chal-
holiday electronic sales will
focused on budgets for CIOs and ket think about what is the source of investor who works with you and for
Comcast. When you sit back and lenges depend on what market you
be important in keeping the
consumers. Now a third allocation of your differentiation and how you can you and not against you. So keep focus
think about the implications of that, it are going after. The challenges in a
modest chip correction in
the funds for marketing via Google continue to innovate around that. If on these and things will be good.
is very fundamental, the number of consumer segment are very different
check as we start 2011.
Adwords, and online marketing has you are really crystal clear about As told to Hari Anil si

siliconindia
|20|
February 2011 siliconindia
|21|
February 2011
Cover Feature: By Hari Anil
C
What is in store for Cleantech?
leanTech is not a new phe-
nomenon; it has been with
and around us for some
time now and is now a
quite substantial industry.
Its growth was a natural and evolution-
ary one, and has now attained heights no
one would have thought it would a few
years ago. The global warming, scarcity
of resources, and the desire to be energy
independent has made more and
more companies wanting to go
eco-friendly and unlike its
cousin ‘GreenTech’, Clean-
Tech proved to be a practical
option for them as it helps
them to reduce their environ-
mental foot print without dis-
rupting their business
models. Governments, In-
vestors, and Venture Capital-
ists around the globe have also
seen and understood the rele-
vance of the industry and supported
it in its different stages of growth. The
Treasury Grant Program, Section 1603
and the Advanced Energy Manufactur-
ing Credit, Section 48C are examples for
the U.S. Government’s participation in
the sector, whereas, with the Renewable
Energy Certification and Energy Saving
Certification, the Government of India
played its part. The $7.8 Billion invest-
ments by the VC in the U.S. CleanTech
sector in 2010 has marked the second
highest since the $8.8 Billion is 2008,
shows the value VCs have assigned to
siliconindia
|22|
February 2011
2011
the segment. Likewise in India in 2010
Private Equity firms invested $7.974 bil-
lion over 325 deals in the CleanTech
space. While all these stands, let us not
forget 2010 has passed and we are now
in a new year, a whole new decade.
What is there in store for the CleanTech
indus-
Sagar Gubbi
try in this year? What does its future look
like? These seem to be the right ques-
tions to ask.
U.S. CleanTech Space
It is not an easy task to foresee the future
of the industry. The CleanTech industry
in itself is a combination of several in-
dustries, like semiconductor, energy,
waste management, and so on. This
means any disturbance in those in-
dustries, let it be economic, regula-
tory, or technology, will have
their ripples in the CleanTech
industry. A prediction by Na-
tional Venture Capitalist As-
sociation (NVCA) and Dow
Jones Venture Source also
showed that only 28 percent
of VCs are now interested in
making an investment in this
space, whereas another report
by Dallas Kachan of Kachan &
Co. refutes this and predicts 2011 to
be a great year for the CleanTech in-
dustry and expecting a sustained world-
wide VC investment, there seems to be
a lot of confusion in the industry regard-
ing its prospects in 2011. There are even
people who compare the boom in the in-
dustry to that of the DotCom boom in
the 90’s and are expecting a similar
burst. Could this be true? “No,” says
Sagar Gubbi, Co-founder and Managing
Partner, Ecoforge Advisors. “There are
three main things in CleanTech that
makes sure this will never happen.
Firstly the CleanTech com- the U.S. or the European or the Chinese this is also a large criterion for the VCs
panies are not over evaluated CleanTech markets. To begin with, the to invest says Gubbi. He believes with-
like the DotCom companies market structure is different, the number out the government support the VCs
were, secondly the industry of VCs investing in the space is com- would have been much more cautious to
primarily deals with energy, paratively less, people are less aware of invest in the industry.
water, and waste manage- the power quality and its role in energy The Renewable Energy Certification
ment all these are utmost ne- efficiency, the major investments in en- mechanism introduced in India Novem-
cessity for the society, and ergy sectors goes into the wind sector ber 2010 is expected to provide a large
finally the government and unlike the U.S. where the support to the CleanTech en-
international policies are supporting the major investments are in the ergy industry in the country.
development in this industry,” he adds. solar field, and so on and so This mechanism mandates
The global CleanTech product and forth. “In the last one year
service market is above $250 Billion in more VCs came to me that
utility companies to buy a
certain portion of their energy
size and this is expected to grow expo- they did in the three years be- every year from clean energy
nentially in the coming years becoming fore. The Government is also sources. “Such initiatives
four to five times bigger market by spending a lot in the Clean- from the government not only
2017. The market is large, the growth Tech industry. Then new support the growth of the in-
rate is high, and still the last two quar- technologies like Micro Hy- Arati Prabhakar dustry but also make them
ters of 2010 saw a dip in the VC funding brid inverters, which can be used to cap- more commercially attractive for the in-
in the sector, especially Q4 where there ture different sources like wind and solar vestors,” claims Gubbi.
was a 17 percent drop from that of Q3. and provide uninterrupted output, are
But there is nothing to worry about says emerging. All these together are going to Role of Entrepreneurs in this
Arati Prabhakar, Partner, USVP. “Clean- change the whole scenario,” says Shwe- Industry
Tech has carved out a world for itself tank Jain, CEO and Founder, P2Power Great initiative, innovative product,
with in the venture capital space. And 15 Solutions. “With automation of more good customer service, to the point
percent of the whole VC investment last and more equipment, the grid pollution, marketing campaign, all these are nec-
year, was in this industry and this is a quality distortion in power, in the coun- essary factors for a company to be suc-
huge number when compared to the one try is on a rise. Companies like ours are cessful, but ultimately it comes down
percent and two percent a few years trying to put a check to this and so we to the entrepreneur. It is according to
back,” adds Arati. have a huge market and future his vision that the company goes for-
According to VCs 2011 here,” adds Jain. ward and develops. Arati says, “Entre-
will provide the CleanTech “It takes 15 – 20 years for preneurs are the reason VCs are
industry with a more finan- us to achieve 100 percent elec- funding in the space. To me the cre-
cially stable environment trification. Here both renew- ativity of the entrepreneur is the most
and they are expecting to see able energy and fossil fuel optimistic thing in the industry.”
more positive outcomes. based infrastructure develop-
“Something I am looking ment are happening simulta- Conclusion
forward to this year is the neously as there is so much No, the CleanTech industry is not a bub-
Power Fee Alignment. There Shwetank Jain growth left in the industry. ble like DotCom, it is not slowing down
is huge potential in these companies, but This gives us the great opportunity to be or fading or is going to burst, and it is
the national and global impact is not green in the very stage of building the not looking ahead for a bad year. VCs
going to happen with Power Fee Align- infrastructure rather than replacing the and CleanTech companies are expecting
ment,” says Arati. She considers that the existing fossil fuel based infrastructure 2011 to be a promising year for the in-
support from the government so far have with clean energy solution like in the dustry. The need of the hour is for the
been substantial, both funding and pol- west,” said Gubbi while talking about Governments to give the right amount of
icy wise, and this need to continue for how different Indian CleanTech indus- support to the industry, VCs to continue
the sustained and smooth growth of the try is from its western counterparts. their support and participation in the in-
industry. Government support is very crucial in dustry, and the companies to come up
the CleanTech industry. The renewable with more innovative and creative tech-
Indian CleanTech Space energy, particularly solar, wind and nologies and products. If all these fit to-
When we look at the Indian CleanTech hydro are supported by government gether properly the industry might just
market we can see vast difference from policies both in India and in the U.S. and be in for an all time high in the space. si
siliconindia
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February 2011
CleanTech: By Inderpreet Wadhwa
The author is Founder & CEO, Azure Power
Vision 2020
Distributed Solar Power
The Way Ahead
shortage of
12.61 percent. If
something is not
done to bridge this
gap and new
sources of power
are not created, it
I
has the poten-
tial to derail the
entire Indian
growth story.
Let us now
look at the targets
for power produc-
tion for 2020. If the
f India has to develop at the rate
growth continues at similar
of above 8 percent in the years to
levels, the power requirement for 2020
come and achieve its mission of
is expected to be around 4,00,000 MW.
being a developed nation by
It is obvious that this growing require-
2020, the most crucial sector that
ment cannot be met by conventional
we need to focus upon is Power. For a
sources of energy. To achieve this tar-
country that is being heralded as the
get, renewable sources of energy have
new land of opportunities, the fact that
to play a role. Among various sources
45 percent of its one billion people live
of renewable energy, Solar looks the
in a state of electricity deprivation does
most promising source. India, with
not bode well. India has over 1,67,077
about 300 clear sunny days in a year, is
MW (as per the latest figures by the
well endowed by nature to harness this
Ministry of Power) installed capacity of
clean source of energy. The technology
power generation and yet there is an en-
involved, i.e. Solar Photovoltaic (SPV)
ergy shortage of 9.6 percent when it
is extremely flexible, reliable and mov-
comes to peak power and peak power
ing rapidly towards grid parity. In fact,
siliconindia
|24|
February 2011
a solar photovoltaic (SPV)
project can be created in
any size and at almost
any location in India.
For instance a small
5 kW home lighting sys-
tem can manage energy requirements
for a household, a 100 kW system can
run a small commercial center and a
1MW facility can produce enough
power for 20 villages. The modular ap-
proach for solar power (PV) expansion
is very attractive for the Indian market.
The government, after carefully
studying the escalating prices of non-
renewable sources of energy like coal
and the negative environmental impact
that they cause has come up with The
Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mis-
sion, an ambitious but achievable mis-
sion that plans to produce 20 GW of
solar power by 2020.
When it comes to harnessing solar
power, Solar Photovoltaic (SPV) is the
world’s fastest growing energy tech-
nology and holds tremendous potential
for India. Solar Photovoltaic Systems
(SPV) are experiencing considerable
decline in prices year after year due to
intense research, commercialization of
utility projects and increase in poly sil-
icon production. Even though it is still
expensive in contrast to conventional
sources of power in tangible costs, there
is a growing realization that this source
is the most promising one when it
comes to generating power without pol-
luting the environment. Although the
world over installed capacity of solar
photovoltaic (SPV) power is approxi-
mately 8000MW, in India its installed
capacity is just a meager 100 MW. An
important reason for low capacity in-
stallation so far has been the absence of
favorable feed-in tariff as incentive to
entrepreneurs. However, this problem
has since been addressed. The Central
Electricity Regulatory Commission has
declared an FIT for Rs 17.91 kW/hr
SPV power sale for a period of 25 years
as compared to the earlier 50MW Gen-
eration-based Incentive scheme, where
the maximum allowable tariff was Rs
15/KWhr for a period of 10 years. The
National Solar Mission (NSM) prom-
ises rapid growth of utility scale SPV
power projects in the country. The cost
of solar power has shown significant
reduction year over year and with in-
crease in production, a downward trend
continues. It is expected that solar
power will become grid competitive in
costs around the year 2017.
Azure Power operationalised
India’s first private MW scale solar
power plant on the Solar as a Service
model – in Punjab, in December 2009.
This is the first MW scale commercial
sale of solar power to a State Utility
(Punjab State Electricity Board) and a
landmark deal in itself as it paved the
way for future commercial Power Pur-
chase Agreements for Solar Power in
India. The Azure Power 2MW plant in
Awan Village, Amritsar District has
been built over 10 Acres of land and is
a pioneer for MW scale generation of
solar power in India in many ways. The
Azure Power business model is one
such example. We understand that the
high cost of owning and operating a
solar power generating system is one of
the reason why solar power is less de-
veloped in India. Therefore, Azure
Power developed the Solar as a Service
business model where instead of sell-
ing to individual households; the com-
pany builds large scale solar power
facilities to service demands of several
households with a single facility. In
fact, aggregating electricity demand in
rural and semi-urban areas in India and
improving the livelihood of households
by offering energy security through
large scale solar power generation fa-
cilities is one of the guiding principles
of Azure Power. These facilities also
help stabilize the grid at the tail end and
minimize transmission losses which at
present are as high as 23 percent in
India. Solar Power and other distributed
sources of energy can thus help in re-
ducing the impact of grid losses.
The greatest scope for solar power
generation today is in the distributed
model i.e., in building a large number
of small and medium scale projects,
rather than a few large scale projects.
The distributed model will mean small
power plants that can cater to the needs
of a collection of villages and ensure
power generation at the point of con-
sumption. There is a need for projects
that directly benefit the consumers and
it makes great sense for projects to be
set up where grids do not exist.
There is also a lot to look for in
terms of commercial projects as well,
with large corporations showing inter-
est in the sector; huge roof-top based
projects being an obvious opportunity.
The energy security (guaranteed avail-
ability of power) offered by Solar
Power clearly attracts attention from
the commercial sector. Also, the ‘high
cost’ of solar power is also not a deter-
rent for the commercial sector, because
the alternative in many cases is the high
cost of power generated by diesel gen-
erator sets.
However, the future of Solar
Power in India will not be easy. Al-
though the government has promised
support, several steps have to be taken
to meet the aspirations of the NSM.
First, NSM comes with an estimated
$19 billion cost, and the government
has committed to funding $900 million
for the first phase. Subsequent phases
will require additional funding com-
mitments. Second, streamlined project
allocation and development in line
with the gestation period of such proj-
ects will be needed to encourage new
age developers to enter the market for
rapid capacity build up. The typical
gestation period of conventional power
plants could be somewhere between 5
to 6 years whereas that of a solar
power plant is months. Prompt alloca-
tion, Power Purchase Agreements and
swift permissions will help meet the
NSM goals of 1300 MW generation in
it’s initial phase. Setting up decen-
tralized solar power plants also prove
beneficial to the environment and
help solve environmental problems
rapidly, since 1MW of solar power is
equivalent to the removal of 1200
tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.
This emission reduction is equivalent
to 550,000 trees and removing 3,600
cars from roads. Finally, project allo-
cation criteria needs to be succinct
and should be flexible enough so as
to allow foreign investments and
project finance. To encourage new
companies, criteria such as multi
year operations and turnover in India
should not be imposed.
In conclusion, for the NSM 2020
to succeed, policy makers will have
to view solar power generation from a
developmental perspective. Energy
security and rural electrification will
get a huge shot in the arm from solar
power projects that can quickly come
up across the country as part of the
current policy drive. What is also re-
quired are efforts to promote commu-
nity based awareness, especially in
rural areas. My vision 2020 is an
India that will not be held back be-
cause of shortages and that can give
all its citizens higher quality of life in
urban areas and better livelihood in
rural areas. si
siliconindia
|25|
February 2011
CleanTech: By Sam Goldman
The author is CEO, DLight design
E
Clean Energy at the
Bottom of the Pyramid
very evening when the sun sets, over 1.6 billion
people around the world, 350 million of whom
are in India, are plunged into utter darkness.
They light kerosene lanterns and candles in order
to continue with their activities, but everything—
studying, housework, work in the fields, even socializing—
is challenging with a light source that is over 100 times
dimmer than an incandescent bulb.
In addition to being ineffectual, fuel-based lighting
sources such as kerosene can be surprisingly expensive.
Households in Africa may pay up to 30 percent of their
monthly income for kerosene oil. And kerosene is
also dangerous: Indoor air pollution from burning
kerosene and wood for cooking claims the lives of 1.5
million people annually and leads to severe respira-
tory infections. Fires caused by open flames also lead
to hundreds of thousands of burns and fatalities. In addition,
every kerosene lantern emits at least 1 ton of CO2 over five
years.
Lighting is only one of the many challenges that off-grid
families face. While the deep penetration of mobile phones
into rural markets in Asia and Africa has accelerated con-
nectivity to unprecedented levels, the lack of electricity to
charge these mobile phones hampers the true potential of mo-
bile technology in rural areas. In Africa, individuals may need
to walk several kilometers to reach a charging station, the
services of which are not only costly but may actually lead to
the theft of phone batteries and precious pre-purchased min-
utes.
Therefore, for poor rural families, lack of electricity
equals lack of access to technology that will improve their
quality of life. In fact, the United Nations’ Human Devel-
opment Report 2010 uses lack of electricity as one of the top
ten indicators of poverty. In other words, providing energy
for off-grid families gives them much more than lighting or
siliconindia
|26|
February 2011
mobile charging options; it actually
opens up a path out of poverty.
For years, the assumed solution
was to wait for governments to extend
the electricity infrastructure to remote
areas. Many governments have ambi-
tious plans to do just that, including in
India. The reality is that, even under
the best of circumstances, it will likely
take decades to reach full electrifica-
tion; in high-population-growth coun-
tries, even the most ambitious of
electrification plans will be far out-
stripped by burgeoning populations.
And what if the governments of
developing countries do succeed in
building out the electricity grid to the
most remote villages? It may create an
entirely new set of problems, due to
the skyrocketing demand for energy
that will require more fossil fuels than
our planet can provide or sustain.
In the twenty-first century, is this
really the best we can do? With our
wealth of technology and innovative
thinking, there has to be another op-
tion.
d.light design, the social enterprise
that I co-founded with my business
partner Ned Tozun, aims to bring elec-
tricity to households in developing
countries now. Our company develops
and sells highly durable and affordable
solar-powered consumer products de-
signed especially for rural families.
We began selling a product line of
solar-powered LED lanterns in June
2008, and have since expanded the
line to include d.light S10, one of the
most affordable solar lanterns, and
d.light S250, a premium solar lantern
with a mobile phone charging feature.
In less than three years, with our
solar lanterns we have been able to
change the lives of over two million
people in 40 countries. As a result of
having bright, reliable lighting, and
being free from reliance on kerosene
oil, our customers will cumulatively
save about $60 over the lifetime of the
products. Resulting increased produc-
tivity will put another $65 million into
While clean technology is often discussed in the
context of highly polluting developed nations like the
U.S. and UK, it is in fact a key solution—and perhaps
the only sustainable one—to meeting energy needs in
emerging markets as well.
the pockets of these poor rural fami-
lies. And the environment benefits too:
Our products sold thus far will reduce
carbon emissions by at least 82,000
tons.
d.light is only one actor among a
growing field of enterprises, NGOs
and development agencies that are ad-
dressing energy needs in the develop-
ing world. We all recognize that it
benefits no one—from an economic,
environmental or even social justice
perspective—to wait for the electric-
ity grid. According to the Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratories, burn-
ing fuels like kerosene oil are the pri-
mary source of greenhouse gas
emissions in the developing world.
Moving hundreds of millions of
households from kerosene to coal can-
not in good conscious be celebrated as
sustainable progress.
So a new vision is emerging in
which entire populations leapfrog over
the electricity grid altogether to envi-
ronmentally sustainable energy solu-
tions. While clean technology is often
discussed in the context of highly pol-
luting developed nations like the
United States and the United King-
dom, it is in fact a key solution—and
perhaps the only sustainable one—to
meeting energy needs in emerging
markets as well.
In developing nations, where
large-scale solutions like solar or
windmill farms are too costly and de-
pendent on incomplete infrastructure
for dissemination, this turns energy
into a decentralized business. The ad-
vantages are clear: Without the need
for expansive infrastructure, the
spread of the technology can take
place much more efficiently; when
broken down into smaller units, the
technology becomes more affordable
for populations with extremely limited
incomes. Just as mobile phones made
phone lines obsolete throughout rural
Asia and Africa, so small-scale energy
solutions like d.light’s solar lanterns
can and will render the electric grid
unnecessary.
The market is particularly ripe for
solar-powered solutions. Solar is a
natural choice for regions that receive
abundant sunshine nearly year-round,
and the falling cost of solar cells is
bringing this technology to a price
point that more and more can afford.
The great opportunity is that poor
rural households may in fact be even
more ready to adopt clean energy so-
lutions than their more affluent coun-
terparts. For them, the alternatives to
relying on solar-powered products are
decidedly dreadful, with affordability
being the main barrier to adoption.
There is still quite a bit more
work to be done, of course, in devel-
oping new technologies and innova-
tive distribution models, as well as
reducing costs such that even the
poorest of rural families can experi-
ence the higher standard of living
that energy access brings. But d.light
is committed, just as many of our
colleagues in this space are, to en-
suring that renewable energy be-
comes an option that everyone can
afford.
At d.light, we like to imagine a
world in which the poorest families
in the world are using the cleanest
energy solutions in existence. I be-
lieve this is entirely possible. Best of
all, it is a world in which life will be
better for all of us. si
siliconindia
|27|February 2011
CleanTech: By Nelvin Joseph
The author is CEO, Artin Dynamics
Recent advances in
engineering has vastly
increased the efficiency of
various devices and
equipments and the entry
of advanced automated
management system
which includes Artificial
Intelligence based systems
and SWARM based
systems that have helped
predict and balance the
supply demand
variance curve
siliconindia
|28|
February 2011
Clean technology
india
“E
very disaster is
a Change” we
are quite famil-
iar with this
poster wording
it is actually true in all perspective.
Global warming or the concept of in-
crease in global temperature due to
the increasing presence of green-
house. When Wallace Broecker of
Columbia University coined the term
“Global Warming”, he might not
have anticipated the birth of a boom-
ing industry where the attempt to re-
verse or at least curb this issue, called
the clean technology would be born.
This also included the growing en-
ergy crunch. The conventional energy
resources are poised to many threats
and security issues due to which now
it is the time to not think but imple-
ment alternate energy resources. Two
major countries in the world, India
and China are in constant R&D for
balancing clean technology. In 2007–
national level policy for clean tech-
nology. The state governments
should setup a technology cell within
the Industries department or Infor-
mation Technology department to
provide information and other sup-
port on clean technologies.
Undoubtedly we can say that clean
technology is one of the emerging
sectors in India. The overall level of
awareness for doing more with re-
sources as well as creating alternative
sources of energy is high. There is a
considerable push from the central
government in terms of incentives, re-
sources and subsidies to the sector
which makes more capital efficient.
The Centre should study the future of
the industry and take some steps
which can motivate the sector and the
entrepreneurs. India has a very large
and growing market, many experi-
enced executives who are returning
from the U.S. or any other foreign
countries to India for any reasons are
now either joining or starting clean
tech companies. As a result these un-
2008 Gallup Polls had conducted a
explored innovations are actually in-
survey in 127 countries about global
warming. Over a third of the world’s
teresting to many investors and
population was unaware of global
venture capitalists. Especially the
young generation has realized the pos-
warming, with people in developing
sibility of the sector and the end prod-
countries less aware than those in de-
ucts are undoubtedly groundbreaking.
veloped. But now the scenario has
been changed. Though India is a de-
Talking to a layman, clean tech-
nology would be to him the setting up
veloping country it has attracted huge
of solar panels, wind turbines, build-
investments in clean technology sec-
ing more dams and other forms of har-
tor and shows promise that she will
be an emerging power in the clean
nessing renewable sources of energy.
Or he may speak about recycling,
technology sector soon.
waste management, biogas, and more.
The clean tech future is vivid and
But in today’s world there is one seg-
the scope will be stupendous. Actu-
ment which is proving to be equally
ally India needs more initiatives like
effective; it’s the management side of
clean technology to adapt the cli-
clean technology. This is the space
mate change phenomenon. It is re-
where technology steps in to conserve
ally appreciable that India is
and monitor energy usage and other
becoming a hub for clean tech.
forms of wastages. Starting from cre-
Many industry bigwigs already an-
ating bio-degradable plastics to green
nounced their expansion plans to
cement or concrete to creating ad-
India. The central government has
vanced building management system
announced some subsidiaries to the
come under this domain of the clean
solar industry. However we need a
technology industry.
If you look at the power usage in
India or in the world, the requirement
never comes down nor does the gen-
eration catch up to the demand. This
results in the demand supply gap in-
creasing at the same time the urgency
to go for more polluting forms of
power generation which contributes
more to the global warming. The re-
cent concept of BMS (building man-
agement System), the Smart Grid etc
try to hit the nail on the head by try-
ing to conserve and manage the
power which is originally produced to
match the demand. Recent advances
in engineering has vastly increased
the efficiency of various devices and
equipments and the entry of advanced
automated management system
which includes Artificial Intelligence
based systems and SWARM based
systems have helped predict and bal-
ance the supply demand variance
curve. These systems have become so
advanced that they are even able to
monitor and advice the managers of
the installation on efficiency im-
QuickFacts
While traditional pCs will re-
main the workhorse com-
puting platform for most of
the globe this year, Deloitte
predicts that more than 50
percent of computing de-
vices sold worldwide in 2011
will not be pCs - and will ex-
tend their lead over tradi-
tional pCs in 2012. users are
bringing the latest shiny
gadgets to work and expect-
ing it to support them. But
the lack of standardization
on these non-pC devices has
costly implications for the it
department, according to
Deloitte.
provement changes. The smart grid is
another space where these advanced
technologies have made a big differ-
ence. The smart grid like the name
suggests are able to manipulate and
manage the power generators and
power consumers into a adaptive bal-
anced state by using various systems
and algorithms. The niche point in
this system is the fact that the gap or
differentiation between a generator
and consumer is reduced. Anyone
with a solar panel, regardless of being
a consumer automatically becomes a
power generator too. This concept
could be thought of as the ancient
barter system which was present in
most villages in the country.
Coming to an economic outlook,
clean technology is a good catalyst
for the economic growth of a nation,
provided the central government is
pro active in executing the latest tech-
nology. Many MNCs have shown in-
terest in investing in India and some
of them are already started working
on it which is actually a good sign.
The International Finance Corpora-
tion (IFC), the private sector lending
arm of the World Bank has guaran-
teed $300 million for renewable en-
ergy project developments in India.
Also the banking major HSBC to
fund energy efficiency projects in
India. The clean Technology sector
is predicted to have intense invest-
ments in the coming years. Accord-
ing to reports in 2009, Indian clean
tech industry had attracted $2.3 bil-
lion in private investment, placing
India tenth in the G-20’s investment
ranking. All these developments
prove that clean technology is India’s
treasure.
Although it would seem that
technology is unable to catch up to
the rate at which the situation is de-
grading, but if we include the speed
at which technology advancements
are happenings, a time frame of less
than ten years can be given as the
time to achieve break-even. si
siliconindia
|29|
February 2011
Technology: By Dr. Hossein Eslambolchi
C
actionable intelligence
the Next Frontier in telecom oss/Bss
ommunication service
providers (CSPs) have
long talked about achiev-
ing better “business syn-
ergy” through greater
cross-departmental coordination and
sharing of data. Unfortunately “syn-
ergy” never seems to get a high
enough priority. Historically, different
departments in a CSP—finance,
billing, marketing, network engineer-
siliconindia
|30| February 2011
ing—have built or bought their own
systems, with little thought as to how
to share data and make it truly useful
across the organization.
However, CSPs today are realizing
that they cannot continue to operate
this way, as it puts them in danger of
falling behind at a time when the tele-
com business is changing so radically.
Not only are telecom margins getting
thinner and the list of competitors
growing, but the sheer number of serv-
ices and the way those services are
being offered has exploded. Plus,
many of the services, such as content,
are off-net services that the CSP nei-
ther owns nor controls. In short, it’s
much tougher to understand the bot-
tom line impact of decisions on pur-
chasing, third party partnering, prices,
discounts, offers, network build-
outs—even customer support policies.
Now telecom departments cer-
tainly know that greater coordination
and better data exchange would help,
but each is saddled with its legacy data
and processes. What they lack is an in-
ternal data currency and mechanism
for monitoring business performance.
Yes, they can roll up performance
data at a macro level to produce a
quarterly report for stockholders, but
as they say, “the devil is in the de-
tails”. The most valuable intelligence
here is not the macro intelligence pro-
vided by existing DW/BI systems, but
actionable intelligence—the ability,
for instance, to look at the revenues
and costs associated with individual
subscribers, business customers, or
products. Without that low level of de-
tail, business decisions about the
prices, offers, and markets for a niche
telecom product or service are mostly
guesswork. Why? Because no granu-
lar data exists to base an informed de-
cision on.
Not only is the kind of intelligence
important here, but also the timeliness
of it. Because DW/BI systems typi-
cally run in an offline mode for analy-
sis and reporting purposes, they are
not meant to provide intelligence in an
operational time frame. CSPs are find-
ing that expecting this of their existing
DW/BI infrastructure is like asking an
elephant to dance—they’re just not
built for that purpose.
Therefore, having the right soft-
ware platform is critical, because it
will need to aggregate and correlate
data from hundreds, if not thousands
of data sources. In addition, it needs
an ability to collect, classify and roll
up data records into a robust hierar-
chy in near-real-time. It also needs to
be able to:
 Apply different types of business
logic to this data, depending on the
specific business problem to be
solved
 Run automated analytics on this
data, to identify micro trends
which are operational in nature
 Present the information so gleaned
in a manner that business users
can make sense of it and ‘play
around’ with it (to do what-if
analyses, for example)
 Provide the CSP with a mecha-
The most valuable intelli-
gence is not the macro
intelligence provided by
existing DW/BI systems,
but actionable intelli-
gence—the ability, for in-
stance, to look at the
revenues and costs asso-
ciated with individual
subscribers, business
customers, or products.
nism to act on this intelligence—
trigger actions on this information,
and to track such actions to closure
Once the above is in place, it can be
used to solve a variety of business
problems that CSPs are facing today.
Possible applications include:
 Computing the propensity of cus-
tomers to make inbound calls to
the call center. If a CSP can iden-
tify this, and get a view of why
certain customers are likely to call
the call center, they can potentially
save millions of dollars in call cen-
ter costs by proactively reaching
QuickFacts
as per the "Cellular handset
Chip markets 2010: an in-
Depth analysis of Chips
used in Cellphones" report,
silicon chips that are the
substance of cellphones con-
stitute almost a $50 billion
market this year. although
displays themselves are not
chips, per se, display con-
trollers for increasingly pop-
ular touch screens are very
important chips.
out to these customers using a
cheaper mode of communication
(an e-mail, for instance).
 Giving CSPs granular visibility
into their profit margins, such as
margin by customer / customer
segment, by product, by geogra-
phy, etc. This information can be
critical in making multiple busi-
ness decisions – for example, how
to respond to a price cut by a com-
petitor? Or which customers to
focus on most for retention poli-
cies?
 Monitoring the performance of
new products, such as actual ver-
sus anticipated uptake goals. This
can include analyzing trends in the
outcome data to predict deviations
before they occur (such as margins
not succeeding in the future, even
though they are on track today).
Also, by carefully tracking, in
near-real-time, a number of met-
rics related to service delivery,
CSPs can ensure that rollout prob-
lems can be readily detected and
repaired preemptively, before they
negatively impact the customer
experience.
One company that identified this im-
pending crisis before others is Subex.
And the solution they have been rec-
ommending to address it is the ROC.
The ROC, or Revenue Operations
Center, is a vision that a CSP can
monitor their business through a vir-
tual operations center analogous to
the NOC, or Network Operations
Center. While a NOC monitors net-
work performance across specific
nodes, regions, and layers, a ROC
monitors business performance by an-
alyzing data that resides across a host
of B/OSS systems from billing and
provisioning to customer care. si
About Author
Dr. Hossein Eslambolchi is
Chairman of 2020 Venture
Partners and the Advisor on
Strategic Matters at Subex
siliconindia
|31|
February 2011
CleanTech: By Shwetank Jain
Cleantech
past, present & Future
C
lean technology, better
known as CleanTech
today, can be defined as
any technology, product,
service or process which
includes a limited usage of non-renew-
able resources and delivers significantly
lesser waste than the conventional offer-
ings in the market. CleanTech not only
entails the usage of non-renewable
power sources, but also involves efficient
usage of existing natural resources and
increase in the efficiency of existing dis-
tribution systems, e.g. energy and water.
Some of the major clean technology sec-
tors are – hydro power, solar power, wind
power, power distribution systems, bio-
fuels, water filtration, green buildings,
Smart Grid, public transportation.
Clean technology, in the 1970s and
1980s, was considered to be an expen-
sive alternative to the technologies preva-
lent during those times, a pleasure for the
siliconindia
|32| February 2011
richer and effluent mass or advocates
of back-to-the-land lifestyle, and a
province of the environmentalists or sci-
entists with huge research funds. The
continued exponential growth of the
world economy over the last few
decades, the depletion and fear of ex-
haustion of the natural resources, volatile
energy and petroleum prices, environ-
mental concerns, and huge losses and in-
efficiency in the distribution system have
forced a major rethink on the usage of
clean technologies. These technologies
are not only more efficient and reduce the
strain on the limited natural resources,
but also contribute to a cleaner and
greener earth.
Consequently, the governments
throughout the world have put an in-
creased focus on the rapid development
of these clean technologies and their ef-
ficient deployment in all types of indus-
tries, distribution system and even in the
day-to-
day lives of the peo-
ple. Denmark which
generate most of their
power from wind energy, and
some regions of the USA and main-
stream Europe are classic examples and
role models for countries globally on
how to effectively employ at least few of
these technologies.
Clean technologies have become
even more relevant for rapidly develop-
ing economies like India and China.
These countries have a continued and
ever-rising demand for cleaner and
greener power. The mass adoption of
these technologies at a very rapid pace
becomes even more necessary for India
due to its huge power demand which is
not being met by the existing power gen-
eration infrastructure, large amounts of
transmission losses, ever increasing en-
ergy theft, continued depletion of natural
resources and the greenery cover, acute
water shortage, and the astronomically
huge and ever increasing demand pool,
i.e. the Indian population.
The two main focus areas for appli-
cation and development of clean tech-
nologies have been reduction of green
house gas emmissions, and efficient uti-
lization and conservation of energy. Sev-
eral new technologies are being
developed and various new laws are
being passed to achieve the two ob-
jectives mentioned above. Both the
industrial fraternity and the various
governments have also been taking var-
ious measures to encourage the usage of
clean technologies.
As per a recent report by ‘Economic
Times’ India has undertaken an unoffi-
cial discussion mechanism that would fa-
cilitate adoption of climate technology
by industrialised and developing
economies in a cost effective manner.
India has set June 2011 as the date for op-
erationalising this mechanism. India has
also been taking several steps for in-
creased adoption of cleaner and greener
technologies in the villages, Indian in-
dustries, and by the common masses.
Clean Technology Initiative (CTI), is
another such program of the United
States Agency for International Devel-
opment (USAID) emphasizing on pri-
vate voluntary initiatives to promote
cleaner, climate friendly technologies
and improve environmental management
practices. Implementation and promotion
of the concept of carbon accounting
among Indian industries is one of the ini-
tiatives of the overall Clean Technology
Initiative program.The results of the car-
bon accounting road test will help the
GHG Protocol Initiative develop a com-
mon standard for measuring and report-
ing business greenhouse gas emissions
from the developing country perspective.
CTI has established a dedicated En-
vironmental Information Center at FICCI
that compile and distribute information
on energy efficiency and clean technolo-
gies, environmental policies, regulations
and company success stories. The main
objective of EIC is to facilitate business-
to-business linkages in the area of envi-
ronmental technologies, products and
services, with a special emphasis on
clean as well as greenhouse gas mitigat-
ing technologies.
The result of such initiatives has
given impetus to various new and inno-
vative technologies that are being recog-
nized and are open handedly welcomed
by the industrial fraternity who are not
only ready to experiment but also paying
a premium price for such technologies.
CleanTech not only helps the hu-
mankind and is a gift to the rapidly dete-
riorating environment, but also provides
a vital opportunity for the existing and
new companies to commercialize and
generate huge profits from a limitless and
relatively untapped market. As a conse-
quence, global players like GE, Goldman
Sachs, Toyota, and several other compa-
nies are making investments to the tune
of billions in clean technology. The new
startups which provide new and innova-
tive clean technologies are also support-
ing to the otherwise chugging train of
CleanTech adoption.
One of the major domains (more ap-
plicable in the Indian context) of Clean-
Tech is increased utilization and
efficiency of the energy transmission and
consumption. As per a recent study by
the Indian Planning Commission, the
bane of power sector in India seems to be
the high transmission and distribution
(T&D) losses which account for almost
40 per cent of the electricity produced. It
would be close to impossible for any so-
ciety or commercial entity to sustain such
high scale losses. Further, the huge
amount of power theft and the already
bleeding power generation infrastructure
in India would derail all efforts for em-
powerment and development of the In-
dian population and initiatives to make
the nation a global economic force.
The Indian government too, with the
help of industrial chambers and associa-
tions like FICCI (Federation of Indian
Chambers of Commerce and Industry)
and CII (Confederation of Indian Indus-
try), and several heavyweight compa-
nies, has been working towards achiev-
ing increased energy efficiencey and
generation of power from renewable
sources. The governement and industrial
chambers have organized special initita-
tives to promote new and innovative
technologies and to encourage new start-
ups working in this domain. Conse-
quently, several new startups have
sprung up across India which focus on
various aspects of CleanTech.
In two separate initiatives organ-
ized by FICCI and DST Lockheed
Martin, and CII and Agilent Technolo-
gies, an Indian startup “P2 Power So-
lutions” was adjudged as the best
innovator for its flagship active filter
(iCon) product. The company,
founded in 2006 by a bunch of IIT
Kharagpur graduates, works in the
clean and green technology space in
India and claims to address the two big
concerns – high distribution losses and
lack of power generation infrastructure
– for the overall development of the
Indian economy and upliftment of the
vast Indian population. The company
is focused to change the power gener-
ation and distribution landscape in
India through its avant-garde solutions
on energy efficiency, power quality
enhancement and renewable energy
sources.
Such recognitions to these young
and talented upcoming companies and
an encouraging market response indi-
cate readiness of the market for not
only accepting these new technologies
but also giving the startups a chance to
prove themselves.
Cleantech has become the new
buzz word in the global market today.
Times are not far when it would
become a revolution making a great
contribution to conserving the deplet-
ing resources of the planet. si
About Author
Shwetank Jain is Founder
and CEO at
P2 Power Solutions
siliconindia
|33|
February 2011
Technology: By Bhaskar Bakthavatsalu
The author is Regional Director – India & SAARC,
Check Point Software Technologies
What Can We
Learn from
WikiLeaks?
T
he WikiLeak issue has been all over the
news lately, emphasizing organizations’
need for stronger information security.
With this in mind, how can businesses
reinforce their security posture and
avoid future security breaches?
It is not uncommon in the corporate world to see
large data breaches occur because of a lack of secu-
rity. The recent WikiLeaks incident, whereby hun-
dreds of thousands of sensitive government
documents were released to the public, is yet another
reminder to businesses of the importance of data se-
curity, and should serve as a good warning for or-
ganizations - data loss can happen to anyone,
anytime.
Despite repeated examples of data loss the in-
dustry has witnessed over the past few years, and de-
spite their disastrous consequences, many
siliconindia
|34|
February 2011
organizations still lack clear data se-
curity policies and fail to deploy the
right security arsenal to prevent them.
While they take all the necessary
measures to protect their physical in-
frastructure and facilities – controlling
and restricting access to their physical
sites – they fail to protect their infor-
mational and digital assets. Yet, this is
where a company’s innermost secrets,
intellectual property and value resides
– confidential files, financial docu-
mentation, acquisition plans, customer
information, sensitive emails, exclu-
sive product releases and other corpo-
rate records – are all ultra-capital
assets that need to be shielded from the
outside world.
How to protect sensitive corporate
information
In order to protect corporate data,
computers, devices and infrastructure,
organizations need to deploy a holis-
tic and multi-layered security ap-
proach. The first step is to define and
implement strong data security poli-
cies. Businesses need to establish the
appropriate privacy settings and
clearly define who is entitled to access
specific types of information, as well
as what confidential data is visible and
to whom.
Second, businesses need to imple-
ment specific data security solutions
that secure their sensitive data in mul-
tiple forms and throughout its lifecy-
cle: data-at-rest, data-in-motion, and
data-in-use. They must choose an ap-
proach that can effectively prevent
data loss before it occurs, rather than
just detect it, after it occurs.
Below are few basic mechanisms
and technologies that an organization
can deploy to curb the risk sensitive
data loss:
Data Loss Prevention (DLP):

The purpose of a data loss pre-
vention solution is to help prevent
sensitive data from being leaked
out of the organization – regard-
less of intent. For instance, in
While they take all
the necessary
measures to protect
their physical
infrastructure and
facilities – controlling
and restricting access
to their physical
sites – they fail to
protect their
informational and
digital assets.
case an employee inadvertently
sends out a confidential email to
the wrong recipient, or with the
wrong attachment, the DLP solu-
tion can identify the fault, block
the email and proactively prevent
the data loss before it occurs.
 Encryption: Encrypting corpo-
rate data and devices will make it
harder for unauthorized people to
QuickFacts
global spending on retail
banking technology will in-
crease by 24 percent over
the next five years to hit
$132 billion, according to
the new figures by the ana-
lytics firm ovum. the in-
crease in investment will be
driven by the need to grow
revenues and improve cus-
tomers' trust, which in re-
turn will lead to accelerated
investment in online and
mobile banking technology
in branches and channel in-
tegration.
view or use the confidential in-
formation. Businesses need to de-
ploy data encryption solutions to
protect both “data-at-rest” and
“data-in-transit” on all com-
pany’s endpoints, for example not
only employees’ corporate lap-
tops, but also the USB sticks,
smartphones and other portable
devices that can store sensitive
information. Should the devices
be lost or stolen, the data remains
encrypted and inaccessible to an
outsider.
 Document security: Document
security can provide IT adminis-
trators (or end-users) with granu-
lar control over who can view,
open, send or even print confi-
dential information. This helps
prevent the misuse, modification,
loss or theft of sensitive informa-
tion and adds an additional layer
of protection throughout the data
lifecycle.
 Virtual Private Network
(VPN): A VPN solution provides
secure connectivity to corporate
networks, remote and mobile
users, branch offices and business
partners. It turns any corporate
network into a private, secure and
encrypted communication chan-
nel, and efficiently protects all
corporate data in transit.
In an era where more and more in-
formation is becoming digital, the
importance of data security is only
growing. Luckily, data security
technology, combined with proper
use policies and compliance stan-
dards, can help corporations signif-
icantly decrease the risks of data
disclosures.
After all, it’s not too late to pre-
vent the next Wikileaks. An event of
such magnitude will hopefully help
organizations understand the ur-
gency, and push data security higher
up on their agendas in 2011. si
siliconindia
|35|
February 2011
CleanTech: By V.C Gopalratnam
The author is VP, Information Technology and CIO Globalisation, Cisco
systems, radio frequency identifica-
tion, Web services, unified communi-
cations, next-generation broadband,
Green IT
wireless, smart urban infrastructures,
and other new integration technologies
make it possible for organizations to
become eco-friendly.
ICT is increasingly being viewed
as a tool by organizations to address
business challenges and play a signifi-
cant role in working towards a sustain-
Healthier
Environment
able ecology. Towards that end, Cisco
for a
has utilized collaboration technologies
G
like Cisco Telepresence, Unified Com-
munications, Webex and Cisco Shared
Workspace to decouple revenue and
headcount growth from carbon emis-
sion growth, and reduced its carbon
emissions by 10 percent per employee,
over the past two years (emissions of
oing green is top priority for most organizations today. 98 Telepresence meetings equals one
Having realized that green technology brings with it, im- international flight from North Amer-
proved business productivity and a significant reduction ica to Europe).
in energy costs, companies are coming up with innovative Energy consumption is an impor-
measures to reduce their carbon footprint. tant consideration for businesses when
Growing consensus from the scientific community that global warming is it comes to adopting green technology.
largely man-made has increased pressure on governments, corporations and Thinking beyond simple power con-
consumers to go the green way. There has been a shift from implementing ‘green’ sumption and considering how effec-
technologies primarily for cost reduction, to a more balanced awareness of improv- tively and efficiently all energy and
ing an organization’s environmental standing. business resources are being used, can
broaden the range of benefits. Invest-
Adoption challenges: ing in green IT products that offer new
Corporations that wish to follow a green business model tend to have delivery approaches such as data center
apprehensions regarding the contribution of green policies to their virtualization furthers the advantage.
business profitability. They wish to know the revenue opportu- Adopting a broader network-based
nities and cost savings that can be realized by ‘going green’. approach helps to deliver bigger gains
The answers often depend on how broadly one is willing to de- in power efficiency and cost reduction.
fine green practices. New innovations in green IT, leverage
Going green presents many challenges. Extensive alterations a corporate network to manage power
to existing infrastructure such as datacenters, computer systems, consumption of both IT and non-IT
building power systems and air conditioning are capital intensive. systems. Developing products that
Government policies that support use of green products, services have a longer life helps to maximize
and processes along with a provision for tax rebates on energy ef- energy-efficiency, enables upgradabil-
ficient buildings, products, and carbon trading can bring about ity and modularity of products and bal-
large-scale adoption of green IT. ances the ecological footprint.
Initiatives such as recycling help re-
Green strategies: duce levels of both hazardous and non-
Leveraging on technologies like telecommuting and telepresence, hazardous waste, resulting in a
server and storage virtualization, procurement of environmentally healthier environment. From a busi-
friendly PCs and servers, PC power management, optimization of en- ness perspective, recycling helps to ef-
ergy consumption in data centers and responsible management of e-waste, fectively manage costs and reduce
businesses have been able to reduce carbon footprint. Global positioning carbon footprint.
siliconindia
|36| February 2011
Thinking beyond
simple power
consumption and
considering how
effectively and effi-
ciently all energy and
business resources
are being used, can
broaden the range of
benefits of
GreenTechnology
Advantage green:
Corporate have logical reasons to go
green. In addition to substantial re-
duction in the overall cost of opera-
tions and savings on energy and water
resources, LEED (Leadership in En-
ergy and Environmental Design) cer-
tification by the US Green Building
Council (USGBC) helps them acquire
a better corporate image. A green
building concept is the demonstration
of the company’s commitment to en-
vironment protection.
Increase in office space utilization
and reduction in building operating
expenses, electrical and network ca-
bling, construction materials and land
are some of the advantages of green
buildings. A case in point is building
number 14 at the Cisco Globalization
Centre in Bangalore. Low height cu-
bicles with natural light flow are the
key features here. Power usage is con-
trolled in meeting rooms and the
lights and air conditioning automati-
cally switch off when the room is un-
occupied for more than 15 minutes.
Dustbins are located at the centre of
every floor and are segregated as food
waste, paper waste, plastic and metal
waste. This ensures better garbage
disposal and recycling. All furniture
in the building is made of recycled
material.
In order to encourage more cor-
porate to go ‘Green’, the Indian
Green Building Council (IGBC) is
trying to advance the green building
concept and has received registra-
tions from about 640 projects in
India for its rating program. About
100 of these are already certified and
functional green building projects.
The green theme allows business
leaders to embrace purpose as well as
performance. Organizations are com-
pelled to take the green route in order
to keep up with society’s rapidly
changing expectations, besides tak-
ing care of a corporation’s reputation,
managing its risks and gaining a
competitive edge. This is what good
business leaders ought to do anyway.
Paying attention to green technolo-
gies can amount to enlightened self-
interest because truly responsible
corporations never lose sight of the
commercial imperative.
Introducing a degree of accounta-
bility for carbon emission reductions
makes it easier for corporations to
trade carbon credits and generate ad-
ditional income. The equation is sim-
ple: The more a corporation can
record, audit, and verify its energy
savings, the more carbon credits it
can sell. The network in this context
plays a pivotal role as it allows cor-
porations to measure, track, and
manage the use or savings of green-
house gases, down to the very last
emission.
At the end of the day, going green
is about transforming the business
ecosystem for the future, creating a
new mindset, and using technology
to its fullest. After all, we are on this
journey together and need to exercise
and demonstrate best practices in
running our business operations.
True success lies not just in adopting
these practices internally, but in
being able to influence our cus-
tomers, suppliers and partners. If we
achieve this, we can change the way
people work, live, play, and learn. si
siliconindia
|37|
February 2011
CEO Profile
eyes’. Look at me and my people, you
are never going to meet a more com-
mitted, passionate group anywhere on
the planet, and we are going to make
this work for you.” So he gave us the
$20 million contract and that was a
start. That was the defining moment.
Our first deal. We became the gold
standard, and that’s what got it all
Stay Passionate,
going.
Staying ahead, staying focused
Stay Paranoid
It may sound bold, but I have always
believed and worked based on this be-
F
lief that in five years, 80 percent of my
revenue will come from things I
haven’t yet invented. So, first chal-
lenge is ‘Am I innovating fast
enough?’, but that has been my his-
tory, if I look at my revenues now 70
Passion the Entrepreneur’s Wings to Success percent of it is coming from things that
or any entrepreneur, the hardest part is to crack the first major I didn’t have five years ago, and so I
deal. In my journey as an entrepreneur the first deal was sell- know in five years 70 – 80 percent of
ing the trading floor at Salomon Brothers (now part of Citi- company’s revenues will be coming
group), I was competing against IBM and other such big from things that we are starting to in-
companies. They threw all their might on winning the deal. I vent now. And so, am I moving fast
had a final meeting with Head of Technology, and he asked me, “You are enough? Am I focusing sufficiently on
a small company, why should we work with you?” I was expecting this innovation? Am I hiring the kind of
question and I had the answer prepared and I gave him that. I told him the people I need to facilitate that innova-
technology was better, double the features, the scalability and he asked tion? It is like the great hockey player
me the same questions again, “Why should I work with you?” I thought he Wayne Gretzky said, “I skate to
didn’t understand, so I repeated the reasons and he looked bored! So I where the puck is going to be, not
stopped and said, “You know you are right. The reasons I gave where it has been,” so I need to do
you are good but not good enough, and there is only one rea- all those things that is going to posi-
son for you to work with me. It is that ‘we have fire in our tion me for that. That is probably the
number one thought that occupies my
mind. The next factor is am I moving
Vivek Ranadivé, 53, is the Chairman, CEO and Founder of TIBCO
fast and have I done enough things,
Software, the computer software technology company he
have I been responsive to my cus-
founded in 1997 with the vision of bringing real-time tech-
tomers’ needs not just today but what
nology into the mainstream. The Palo Alto company now
they will be in the future, and am I
employs 2,000 and has annual revenue of more than
moving fast enough. It is important
$700 million. Ranadivé’s New York Times business
to stay paranoid to these factors to a
bestseller, “The Power of Now: How Winning Com-
great extent. Someone in a garage
panies Sense and Respond to Change Using
right now could be inventing a prod-
Real-time Technology” has been widely used
uct that could be threatening to me.
in academia. Ranadivé has an MBA from Har-
vard Business School, where he was a Baker
Making the best and world class
Scholar. He also received both a Master’s and
products
Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from
According to me, for building best and
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Vivek Ranadivé world class products, two things are
mandatory. They are, hiring the best
siliconindia
|38| February 2011
talent and listening to your customers.
We start with hiring the brightest
people. We believe in hiring people
straight from college who are very
smart, I like to give people the op-
portunity to try. When the mind is
fresh, the ideas are fresh too. That
doesnot mean success is guaranteed
100 percent. If you don’t succeed
that is ok. Our next strategy is to get
customers involved early on which is
very different from a venture capital
approach. So what we do is we inno-
vate, we come up with something
new and then get customers to get
involved very quickly. As a result
we have a very high success rate
when we do innovate, because we
are not doing it in a vacuum we are
doing it with the costumers’ partici-
pation. Then I have a culture where
the people that are the value cre-
ators, innovators are the stars of the
company, so the people who do that
have superstar status in the com-
pany. Such a combination of getting
the right people, creating the right
environment for them, getting them
run freely, and getting the costumers
involved pretty early.
Thoughts on leadership
I believe that more than being a man-
ager, you have to be a leader. The
usual analogy I make is a comparison
between two types of enterprises. In
enterprise 2.0 model, which I believe
typically is the old model is like a
‘Sousa Marching Band’ where every-
body robotically marches to the
drummer. My model, the enterprise
3.0 model, is more jazz, so basically I
am like the jazz conductor and I have
people in the orchestra who are a lot
more talented than I am and I have to
create an environment where each of
them can make their own music and
do their own thing and my job as the
leader is to make that all come to-
gether and make it all sound beauti-
ful. So my leadership model is more
‘Jazz’ than ‘Sousa Marching Band’.
A CEO’s challenge
For me the greatest challenge is that
our business is growing rapidly and
we are still having difficult time hir-
ing good people globally and in
India. So I spend a lot of time think-
ing about how I can hire the next
generation of the brightest people.
For most CEOs globally, I think, the
biggest challenge is that there con-
tinues to be economic uncertainty
for a lot of people and the reflex re-
action to that is to just hold back and
cut cost and kind of apply the peanut
butter strategy where you just
spread out the cost cuts equally
everywhere. In fact you cannot do
that to become a 21 st century busi-
ness. Balancing out the economic
uncertainty with making a grab for
the 21 st century market, requires
tradeoffs and judgment calls and in-
vestment decisions, and that is the
issue that is top most in most CEOs
mind. Where do I invest? How rap-
idly do I invest? Which market
should I go after? How do I hold on
to my existing customers?
The Indian IT scenario
I often tell my friends in the Indian
IT industry that they really should-
n’t congratulate themselves too
quickly, because so far what has re-
ally happened is merely cost arbi-
trage and all the innovation that is
taking place is still taking place in
silicon valley, it is not happening in
Bangalore or Mumbai. All that In-
dian companies are doing up to this
point is cost arbitrage. They are ba-
sically doing services at a lower
cost. And so what the Indian IT in-
dustry needs to prove is that they
can indeed innovate, they can create
products. The government needs to
make it easier for businesses to
flourish in India and ease regula-
tions and obviously it is a fact that
Indian IT companies have done out-
standingly well.
(As told to Jaya Smitha Menon) si
siliconindia
|39|
February 2011

Feature: By Eureka Bharali
iNDia
thE promisiNg Vista For
25
sEmiCoNDuCtor
years earlier,
Typically semiconductor India found its
firms have expertise on first software de-
designs with silicon but sign center from
now the differentiation the multi-national
will be created through player, Texas Instruments, which had
softwares, device a special eye on simple analog de-
sign. The operation started small, cre-
structures, system
ating software to automate chip
architectures
design. Currently, it has become the
company’s largest R&D center out-
side the U.S., designing chips end-to-
end. Over the years many followed
suit and today, India is an R&D hub
for each of the semiconductor play-
ers including Intel, Qualcomm,
Broadcom and NXP, and electronic
design automation firms such as Men-
tor Graphics, Cadence and Synop-
sys. The country has come a long
way since then and there’s more for
it. “Typically semiconductor firms
have expertise on designs with silicon
but now the differentiation will be
created through softwares, device
structures, system architectures. In
fact, to cut the chip design cost there
would be embedded software au-
tomation and distributed model based
designs,” says Walden Rhines, CEO
and Chairman, Mentor Graphics. In
Walden Rhines, CEO and
this new paradigm, India stands to
Chairman, Mentor Graphics
gain. The country has always been
siliconindia
|40|
February 2011
People here are not akin
to idea sharing. For in-
stance, it took me one
year to make my team
enthusiastically partici-
pate in brainstorming
sessions
Neeraj Paliwal, Vice President
and Country Manager,
NXP Semiconductors India
strong on software and with more
software creeping into the chip de-
signs, India’s competency is lever-
aged.
Initially, it was the low cost that
turned the chip industry on, now, as
Rhines says, “It is more about finding
the software rockstars for product
building in the opportune land.” Half
of the masters and 71 percent of the
PhDs in electrical engineering from
U.S. universities are foreign nation-
als. In 2000, the number of foreign
nationals who remained in the U.S.
after they finished their doctorates
was about 97 percent. However,
while contributing to the companies
and the U.S. economy, these highly
educated graduates must wait for
years for their green cards, putting
their lives in limbo. As a result, there
has been a massive transition since,
and today, a number of foreign na-
tionals with PhDs are increasingly
heading back to their own mother-
lands, especially to China and India.
Thumbs Up to more Startups
The author of ‘The World is Flat’,
Thomas Friedman, once while rea-
soning out the importance of the high-
tech foreign workers for a more
competitive America said, “Not only
do our companies need them now, be-
cause we’re not training enough engi-
neers, but they will, over time, start
many more companies and create
many more good jobs than they would
possibly displace.” Silicon Valley is a
living proof of that. But those high-
tech rockstars are steadily returning
back, enhancing the product talent
pool, who are being readily absorbed
by the MNCs, with India being the
best place. Rhines pinpoints, “It was
always preferable to hire Indian engi-
neers than their Chinese counterparts
as, if you hire and let 5-6 Chinese en-
gineers work in a process for six
months, they would spin off and start
their own company. Now, a similar
trend is catching up among Indians
too.” This implies a chain of product
startups lining up in the near future.
And why not? After all, as Rajiv
Kapur, Managing Director, Broadcom
India says, “The revenue per em-
ployee is the highest in the country
compared to anywhere in the world.”
It’s an encouraging statistic, for any-
one to start-up in India. In fact, for
those who are mulling on a product
start-up in the semiconductor realm,
there’s more good news. The industry
is rapidly climbing up, for instance, it
grew 15.6 percent in 2009 while the
global market shrunk by 11 percent.
The Product Challenge
The positive vibes linger all around,
however, when it is about product-
centric strategies, a number of chal-
lenges haunt the country. “There are
no offbeat product innovation from
Indian designers which could be rec-
ognized worldwide,” says John Coo-
SiliconIndia-Mentor Graphics panel discussion: Semiconductors: Emerging Technologies and New Markets for the next decade.
Why India can't be ignored? Part of the siliconindia-Mentor Graphics Leadership Awards for the Embedded/VLSI industry, held in
Decemeber, 2010 in Bangalore, which saw over 150 leaders of the semicondiuctor industry participating.
ley of Deepchip.com. The country, it- nurtured. “Personally, to highlight
self, does not entertain product start- their knowledge VLSI designers
ups, considering the IT services tag should go more online and online in
attached to it. Easy and quick revenue this phrase does not connotate being
models are appreciated more, and socially active in Twitter and Face-
considering product models take time book, rather more on tech websites
to prove its revenue generation poten- and forums,” says Cooley. More so-
tial, the funds too do not comes its cial participation, wherein they can
way. The discouragement at times
forces many product firms to get a
Technology has reached
portfolio change and end up providing
IT services. a stage, where it is
India has poor infrastructure, low touching more people in
literacy levels for many people, and India than earlier and to
labor inflexibilities. So, high-volume an extent that even
manufacturing has not taken off yet in grandmothers have
a big way and adding onto it are cer- started apprising on
tain typical traits of the Indian work- business models.
force, which fails them to showcase
their innovative streaks even within
companies as employees, let alone as
entreprenurs. The key to innovation is
brainstorming of ideas, however,
“People here are not akin to idea shar-
ing. For instance, it took me one year
to make my team enthusiastically par-
ticipate in brainstorming sessions on
‘how to ensure more product innova-
tion in India’,” says Neeraj Paliwal,
Vice President and Country Manager,
NXP Semiconductors India.
Nurturing the Innovative Streak
Innovation is just on the edge. The
creative streaks of the Indian de- Srini Rajam, Chariman & CEO,
signers are yet to be recognized and
Ittiam Systems
siliconindia
|41| February 2011

actively suggest solutions to peers
worldwide, will benefit them to get a
better know-how of the market. At the
industry level, the leaders of the prod-
uct firms are also providing a helping
hand to encourage the innovation
within their Indian workfrorce.
As the Mentor Graphics Chief
maintains, “The product strategy is
all about getting them more involved.
For instance, creating an analog de-
sign tool, with bits of the project
spread all across the globe including
a part of it in India. This wouldn’t
create any interest in the Indian cen-
ters. They look for more challenging
roles and hence, when we entrust the
entire tool production process to the
Indian centers and the brainstorming
goes beyond limit.”
This tactic has shown valuable re-
sults. The best example would be
NXP’s low-powered integrated circuit
- NXP MPT612 IC, entirely built by
the India team. The circuit ensures 98
percent efficient power extraction in
Solar PV Applications. The team
joined hands with independent design
The revenue per employee
is the highest in the
country compared to any-
where in the world.
Rajiv Kapur, Managing Director,
Broadcom India
siliconindia
|42|
February 2011
Personally, to highlight
their knowledge, Indian
VLSI designers should go
more online on tech
websites and forums
John Cooley, Deepchip.com
houses and also indulged in informal
peer reviews, as well as innovation
concept budget and protection via
patents and non disclosure agree-
ments. Such feats of innovation have
been shown time and again. Another
instance of a great feat of innovation
would be when Texas Instruments’
India center delivered the first mobile
phone ever built entirely in India, TI’s
AR7 DSL modem. The modem is on a
single chip, digital signal processor
(DSP) - based digital media proces-
sors and affordable motor control
DSPs. Several of these single chip
mobile phone technologies are being
designed today in 45 nanometer (nm)
processes across the world.
Point of Focus for the Firms in
India
While innovation plays a great role to
succeed in the semiconductor realm, the
targeted market also plays a big role, es-
pecially India – the land of diverse prob-
lems. Firms in the semiconductor space
were more inclined to reach out to the
international market, sorting the prob-
lems globally. Due to this approach,
they missed out on a potential revenue
growth. Now, the strategy has changed,
as for the firms, the new mantra is solve
the local problems first, and later, go on
to address similar international prob-
lems. Semiconductor companies in
India are on trials
to exploit the com-
plexities and
achieve the remark-
able 35 percent annual
cost reduction – a standard
set by the high tech industry itself.
Currently, in India the next phase
in semiconductor market revolves
around one fact – create solutions to
make the Indian consumers’ life easy
as the semiconductor consumption
will thrive incessantly. Paliwal, pin-
points at the China situation 10 years
back. “Their consumption of semicon-
ductors was around five percent of
global production. Today, it is close to
20 percent,” he says, while eyeing the
statistics that China accounts for a fifth
of revenue for all semiconductor play-
ers. Paliwal expects a similar con-
sumption road for India, which will
explode in the next decade.
To explain further, Srini Rajam,
the Founder of Ittiam Systems men-
tions a small instance, which high-
lights the intensity at which
technology is spreading across India.
“My mom wanted to talk to her grand-
daughter in U.S. As soon as I handed
over the phone, her face had an an-
noyed look. Why? Because she didn’t
want to make a mere phone call rather
a video call through Skype and see the
new activity of the 11 month old kid,”
says Srini. The next retort from her on
the same scene took away all his pride
as she said, “You consider yourself as
a technology innovator, but see, there’s
hardly anything you have done to
make my life easy and that too which
can be availed free.” The very next
moment, Rajam was out of sight but
he did understand – ‘Technology has
reached a stage, where it is touching
more people in India than earlier and
to an extent that even grandmothers
have started apprising on business
models’. Hence, the next turn in semi-
conductor has to be – solutions which
are “Made in India, Made by India and
Made for India”. si
CleanTech: By Binu T Paul
Cleantech market
C
the Next Favored investment Destination
lean technology is an
umbrella term including
both the new energy effi-
cient technologies and
the related business
models that offer competitive returns
for investors and customers while pro-
viding solutions to global challenges.
It is driven by productivity-based pur-
chasing, and therefore, enjoys wider
market economics with greater finan-
cial upside and sustainability.
Cleantech incorporates a wide
range of products, services and
processes all aimed to provide high
standard performance at a lower cost,
eliminate negative ecological impact
and to improve the production and re-
sponsible use of natural resources.
According to a report by
Bloomberg New Energy Finance,
global investment in clean energy
reached $243 billion last year, which
is a 30 percent growth from $186.5
billion in 2009. The rapid growth was
mainly driven by players such as
China, European rooftop solar, Euro-
pean offshore wind, and research and
development. China topped in invest-
ment with 30 percent growth reaching
$51.1 billion in 2010.
Investment in this sector will hit a
new high in 2011 due to the continued
growth in Asia and the ongoing push
for resource efficiency. Energy effi-
ciency represented the highest number
of deals last year. Solar energy was the
most popular technology area for in-
vestment which is followed by trans-
port and energy efficiency.
As the global economy is recover-
ing from the recession, 2011 is ex-
pected to be a record year for
renewable energy generation as more
and more clean power plants open.
Many countries like Germany, France
and Spain will generate more energy
from zero carbon sources without any
deterioration in reliability.
The revenue generating aspect of
cleantech comes from a variety of
areas such as energy generation, en-
ergy efficiency, energy storage, energy
infrastructure, transportation, air & en-
vironment, water & wastewater, mate-
rials, agriculture, manufacturing/
industrial, and recycling & waste.
The investment trends in cleantech
shows a very positive approach be-
cause the market has a gigantic poten-
tial to reap huge profits if successfully
exploited. Development of a viable
system for carbon capture and seques-
tration is a prominent market in clean-
tech which is not fully explored. It is
obvious that the development of effi-
cient, zero-emissions coal plants will
revolutionize the energy market. Low-
cost desalination is undoubtedly going
to be the point of attraction in the fu-
ture. Another huge market of the fu-
ture will be vertical or protected
farming. It is expected that low-cost
farming using hydroponic and aero-
ponic methods within large urban
structures will be a necessity to feed
the ever-growing world population.
Solar energy and PV systems will
emerge as another viable, long-term
prospect for replacing fossil fuels.
Other major trends in cleantech in-
vestments for the coming year include
a low growth rate for solar standards,
a shift from biofuels to biochemicals
and increased investment on energy
efficiency efforts.
Although cleantech offers a multi-
billion dollar opportunity for in-
vestors, it has a number of snags
which stops investors from step into
it. The venture capital investors are
mostly deterred by the lengthy time
lag between investment and commer-
cialization. It is a fact that the num-
ber of successful cleantech exits
remains few because either the tech-
nology is not as disruptive as com-
peting solutions or it is simply taking
longer to adopt it. The large-scale
capital expenditures required to de-
velop the technology is also another
obstacle. si
siliconindia
|43|February 2011
Management: By Anonya Roy
managing the
E W
most talented
very organization desires
to hire very talented and
promising employees.
Now when you say tal-
ented, the question comes
how do you recognize their talent and
make most out of it? During the hir-
ing process, everyone who comes on
board does so because he/she has
some merit or talent. However, as
they enter the work environment, it
does not take time for a manager to
spot who is truly talented.
Now that you know the team you
are managing is comprised of both
talented and somewhat less talented
people. The question arises how do
you manage the most talented, and in-
spire the somewhat less talented to be
as motivated. There are challenges in
managing both the groups but the
hard work of management goes in
managing and retaining the most tal-
ented. Why we stress on the most tal-
ented is because this is where the
‘Paretos’s Law’ comes into play,
which says 20 percent of the peo-
ple in your organization do 80
percent of the work. So to nur-
ture that 20 percent, who form
the most talented group, is
crucial for you as a manager.
So what is it that you
need to do with the so called
talented bunch? Once you
have recognized the talent,
you need to collaborate
siliconindia
|44|
February 2011
with the other managers to accept
their talent and listen to what they
have to say. Talented people have a
constant need to grow and as a man-
ager you can encourage this need of
theirs to make them feel valued.
They also want to be abreast of the
happenings in the field, so increase
their attendance to conferences and
summits, and have them write jour-
nal papers.
Bipin Shah, Chairman and CEO,
Kovair Software says that talented
people get bored very easily. He adds
that to keep
them from
getting
bored, tal-
ented peo-
ple need
to be
given chal-
lenging as-
Bipin Shah
Boss Says, ‘Go!’
A Leader Says, ‘Let’s Go!’
signments, the right kind of task to
make sure they are contributing to-
wards the growth of the company.
However, Shah is cautious when he
says that this is easier said than done.
Egos, complexities, seniority issues
can come into play, says he.
Another issue with talented peo-
ple is that their attention span is short-
lived and a manager should keep
varying the type of assignments given
to them. As a manager, you cannot
take them for granted. They always
think of what to do next in life, so you
need to set their expectations.
With respect to promotions, tal-
ented people expect quicker promo-
tions. The manager has to plan in
long terms for this set of people. Spe-
cial educational programs have to be
conducted if the need arises. A mutual
roadmap for the management and tal-
ented people does a world of good to
both the parties.
Having discussed at length about
the most talented, one should not neg-
lect the less talented group. It is es-
sential for a manager to strike a
balance between the two and con-
stantly strive to bring up the less tal-
ented ones to the level of the most
talented. A manager who is able to
achieve this equality in his team will
have his work reduced in many ways
as a team of motivated individuals
will do their jobs without the need of
intervention from their seniors. si
Management: By Suman Ravikumar
hen you take a look
around you and
throughout history,
the world has been
fortunate to have
been inhabited by a whole host of in-
fluential leaders. Some of the most ad-
mired leaders have been Mahatma
Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. What
made these people such great leaders?
Is it a guiding vision, a certain princi-
ple that they adopted or the people
who supported made them great lead-
ers? “Leadership is like beauty: it’s
hard to define, but you know it when
you see it.”
Prashant Ranade A leader is one who sees more than
others see, who sees farther than oth-
ers see, and who sees before others
see. In today’s world of business, what
defines the strengths and weaknesses
of an organization is a powerful
leader. He is the most powerful asset
any business can dream of. Barrack a
famous French painter once said that
what matters the most is difficult to
describe and leadership is like that.
Both art and leadership is so rich in
knowledge that both elements excel at
seeing trends, extracting their essence,
synthesizing their meaning, and com-
municating them back to people in a
way that inspires emotion and action.
A scientist at the University of
Michigan some years back listed out
Ambareesh Murty 10 dangers for the world. Some of
them were very obvious. The first one
was nuclear war, second one was a
global epidemic of some sort, but the
third one was destruction of society by
quality of management and leadership.
Emphasizing more on this, Prashant
Ranade, CEO & President of Syntel,
says that there are different areas that
a leader needs to focus on to improve
the quality of management and to have
a successful company. Every leader
needs to have a clear vision of what he
is aiming for and what will it bear him
in future. Also he needs to think in
parallel to his followers who will sup-
port him to achieve his goals. Emo-
tional intelligence is very important
for a leader. A judgment or decision
that a leader makes will depend on his
Emotional quotient and will play a
very vital role when it comes to build-
ing a team.
Ambareesh Murty, Country Man-
ager, eBay India, beautifully describes
the importance of leaders and leader-
ship in an organization, “Leadership
comprises of fairly simple stuff. You
need have a great vision, a vision for
yourself, keep things simple, and the
most important thing is get the right
people on the bus. It is ok to make
mistakes as a leader but it is not ok to
repeat the same mistakes redundantly.
Every leader should see failure as an
event and not as a person. As long as
we can differentiate it then we can be
great leaders.” si
siliconindia
|45| February 2011
 siTech20 siliconindia
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