Inside India

By Swati Prasad

Its size, its people, its coming of age

Archives for 2009

Will there be too many chefs cooking India's UID broth?

Thursday, November 12 2009 12:31 PM

Today's newspapers carry a photograph of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz offering a bouquet of flowers to India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

It wasn't just another meeting between the Indian PM and the CEO of a multinational. Like several other CEOs of MNC IT companies, Bartz offered help to India for..... Read more ť

Tags: Google, Cisco, Amazon, Wipro, Infosys, Microsoft, TCS, Nandan Nilekani, Yahoo, Carol Bartz

A case for mobile-based micro banks in urban areas

Friday, October 02 2009 05:50 PM

Today is Mahatma Gandhi's birthday--or Gandhi Jayanti, as the day is known here in India. While most know Gandhiji as the pioneer of satyagraha (resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience) that was founded upon ahimsa or total non-violence, he was also a good economist. He believed in the principles..... Read more ť

Tags: Mahatma Gandhi, National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, A Little World, mobile-based micro-banks, biometrics, mobile banking, NREGA, Sita, New Delhi, ID Card

Being Twitter deft or Twitter dumb: is that the question?

Wednesday, September 23 2009 12:28 AM

Social networking has assumed immense importance in our lives. Over the last few months, we have seen how a tweet, a profile status or personal information on Facebook can cost some people their job, marriage, image and much more.

In fact, there is an ongoing debate on whether blogs, tweets and..... Read more ť

Tags: Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, microblog, Twittergate, Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party, Facebook, Twitter, Shashi Tharoor, Twitter Inc.

Will India finally see 3G spectrum auction in December?

Wednesday, September 16 2009 12:45 AM

The auction for 3G spectrum was to happen in December 2008, but a host of issues (such as lack of agreement between ministries over the reserve price for the spectrum, the forthcoming general elections, the global financial meltdown coupled with telecom operators' reluctance in making huge expenditure on 3G) led..... Read more ť

Tags: 3G, Swati Prasad, MTNL, BSNL, DoT, ARPU, Auction, Spectrum, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd., average revenue per user

Why don't we want to pay our teachers more?

Wednesday, September 09 2009 12:44 AM

In March 2007, I got the opportunity to visit the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. It was interesting to visit the alma mater of thousands of successful engineers and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. The faculty members were fondly narrating episodes of some of their brightest students.

But, throughout the day-long visit,..... Read more ť

Tags: Faculty Member, Salary, Indian Institute of Technology, Human Resources Inc., virtualization, IIT, Education, teacher, professor, Social Networking

The lowdown on India's Web 2.0 generation

Tuesday, August 18 2009 08:36 PM

India's demographics (50 percent of India's population is below the age of 25 years) has been perceived as both a boon and a bane. During this decade, however, we have repeatedly heard the phrase "India's demographic advantage". That's also the reason why most marketers feel targeting the youth can be..... Read more ť

Tags: Talent, New Delhi, Globetrotter, iPod Indian, Nation-Builder, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., survey, Social Networking, India, career

If not IT, what is India's next growth engine?

Wednesday, July 29 2009 05:38 PM

When you are used to double-digit growth rates (ranging from 13 to 50 percent per annum), a growth forecast of 4 to 7 percent definitely comes as a surprise. At Chennai today, Nasscom (the trade body of Indian IT-BPO industry) announced that the industry is estimated to grow by 4..... Read more ť

Tags: Growth, Financial Year, Export Corp., Chennai, Morgan Stanley, foreign-exchange, Thomson Reuters Corp., Nasscom Survey, survey, India

Could this be the most critical budget for India?

Friday, July 03 2009 11:59 AM

For business journalists in India, budget time is excitement time. It's like sports journos covering the Olympics. As a newspaper correspondent, I too had my fill of budget-time excitement. But I often wondered why the government must play with the (fiscal) fate of 1 billion Indians every year.

Till today,..... Read more ť

Tags: ESOP, Software Technology, Tax, Indian IT-ITES Industry, Recession, Software, India, Olympic Games, journalist, public sector

Should India now look forward to unique ID cards?

Friday, June 26 2009 06:10 PM

In his book Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century, Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys, talks about how the future of India depends not just on simple economic growth, but also on reforms and innovations in all sectors of public life.

Today, he has the rank equivalent to that of an..... Read more ť

Tags: Project, biometric identification, ID Card, UID, Government, E-government, Software, India, food, partnership

When customer care doesn't seem to care

Wednesday, June 10 2009 11:58 AM

Do companies that wash their hands of several functions--especially "customer care"--by handing over contracts to business process outsourcing (BPO) outfits really "care" about their customers?

More importantly, even after nearly a decade of having them around, most call centers remain centers of inefficiencies. It's only every once in a while that..... Read more ť

Tags: IP Television, landline phone, broadband, telecommunications, BPO, SMS, phone, call-center, TV, IP

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About the blogger

Swati Prasad

Swati Prasad is a New Delhi-based freelance business journalist. Over the last 15 years, Swati has worked in both Delhi and Mumbai as a correspondent and editor for Indias leading publications, such as The Economic Times, Business Standard and Business Today. As a freelance journalist, she regularly writes on technology, economy and corporate issues.