iPhone Tech Talk Delhi 2008

Last Thursday, I attended the Apple iPhone Tech Talk conference in Delhi. Inspite of the initial hassles due to tightened security at the venue (due to the attacks in Mumbai), the event was very insightful. One of the key points discussed during the conference was - "Usability". To build applications for iPhone, you have to first be an iPhone user. And I think this is a very valid point. It's been years for us at Wirkle developing mobile applications, and it's the usability that decides if your application will sell or be just thrown away. Software Usability should become a mandatory part of any college curriculum.This is the least understood subject by most of the software engineers.

One of the proud moments for Wirkle was, when the apple guys asked from the audience, if there are developers amongst the audience who had developed applications for iPhone and put it on the app store. And all the hands raised were from Wirkle guys. We were the only company at the conference in Delhi that had developed applications for iPhone and put it on the AppStore. I am sure there would be other companies and developers who have developed but were not present in the conference. But overall I felt quite jubilant.

Recruiters and Property Dealers - Are they Alike?

Dealing with Property Dealers is normally a very tedious job especially with the value that they bring to the table, at times you just despise them.

In case one is looking to buy or sell property, property dealers take 1-2% of the deal. So in a one crore deal, they would get a cool 1-2 lakhs. The situation is much worse for rented properties.

Consider a case, if you are looking for a commercial office space on Rent. If you are looking to get 1000 sq feet office on rent, and the price is around Rs 100 per sq feet, a property dealer would want to get a cool Rs 1,00,000/- (considering the fact that they normally take 1 month rent as their fees). Most of the property dealers in India are uneducated, don't even are aware of the legal contracts - just want to close the deal as fast as possible.

Similar is the case with Recruiters in IT industry.

I have dealt with number of recruiters, but none of them has ever tried to understand the recruitment process of an organization. Most of them will have an account with a portal like Naukri, Monster etc. and will send in resumes. Every organization puts in tremendous effort and already has accounts with such portals. If the recruiters are not able to give a significant advantage in terms of success rate (25% success rate), their is no advantage of using a recruiter versus hunting yourself.

A recruiter normally takes 8.33% of an annual salary for 0-3 years, and then this factor can increase up to 15-20% or even more for mid to senior levels. The actual headhunting might be even more expensive. Recruiting one Software Engineer with an annual package of 5 lakhs can take a cool Rs 50,000/ including taxes on a company's pocket.

In case a recruiter is just sending resumes on a trial and error basis assuming someone will get selected, their is no value add.

Recruiters might be more educated than an average property dealer but their professionalism in providing value addition is of the same nature.

I think the IT industry should all come together and define policies and rates to make the recruiting industry more organized. I think 8.33% is just too huge. Even if few companies come together and make a commitment, this industry would start falling in place.

Muskaan - Spread a Smile

At times, I am tremendously impressed by the enthusiasm of Wirklites. This Friday on Children's day,14th November, the philanthropy group at Wirkle organized an event at an evening school in Bijwasan (outskirts of Gurgaon).

From last few months, Wirkle had partnered with Literacy India and has been organizing fun events where we play fun games and bring smiles on the faces. As a part of the program, few of the Wirklites have also been taking Internet and Communication Skill classes and teaching them on a weekly basis.

This program has been very successful. On children's day, we organized a website and a poster competition. We all had been amazed by the results. Some of the posters were just too brilliant.

I strongly believe, you need to start things when you are small. If you wait to be big or wait for the right time to come in future, one will never reach there. So start NOW!!

Mobile Advertisement - Landscape

This was the topic of my presentation at Mobile Monday, Delhi.

Mobile Advertisemt

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: india sunilwirkle)

IPhone getting midnight launch in India

I recieved emails, smses from Airtel today about IPhone 3G launch today from Airtel. This confirms the price tag that had been hitting each and every IPhone lover!! And I guess it would be the first technology product, that is getting launched at midnight !!!

At Rs 31,000 it looks a lot pricey. I had thought the price to be between Rs 20,000 - 25,000. It's priced more than a laptop. I guess there would still be lot of apple lovers who would buy iPhone at such a price level. But it might take some time to be a mainstream phone. I remember similar stuff happening with Motorola Razor in India. Moto Razor was launched with a big price tag, it made a style statement. Even being expensive, lot of people bought it. Then over the next months, the price dropped significantly and it became an instant hit.

Lot of guys would be waiting to get the price dropped.
Below is the email, that I recieved from Airtel:

The moment you have been waiting for is here. The new iPhone 3G premieres August 22, 2008. iPhone 3G will be available in 2 exciting options:


8 GB (Black) for Rs 31000
16GB (White & Black) for Rs 36100

To celebrate the launch of the iPhone 3G in India, we will be opening three of our Airtel stores, one each in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore at the stroke of midnight 12.00am (Friday Morning) on August 22nd.

Join us early on the red carpet as we camp out throughout the evening.
We are expecting some long queues, so plan your day and reach the location as soon as possible. Remember, our stock is limited and will be available only on first cum first basis.

So, gear up to witness the biggest launch event on August 22, 2008 and be a part of history at

Airtel Brand Shop
S-45, Ground Floor, Sahara Mall,
MG Road, SEC- 28, Gurgaon
Haryana

Ps: Can’t make it for the midnight launch!

In case you can't make it you can still get your iPhone on priority. Just visit one of the select Airtel stores & confirm your booking by paying Rs 5000 on August 20 or 21.You'll get an appointment to collect your iPhone after paying the balance amount. For list of the select Airtel stores log on to www.airtel.in/iphone3g

Koshish ... for a better tomorrow

Today had been a remarkable day for all of us at Wirkle. We always wanted to contribute to society, and time always get the better of us. But, today we partnered with Literacy India based in Gurgaon and made a beginning in this direction.

We went to a small village school in Bijwasan just at the outskirts of Gurgaon. Coming back to this school, made us remember our own school times.

So what did we do?
We were there for around half a day to put smiles on some of the faces. And I guess we succeeded in that. So we had lot of games, quizzes for kids from 3rd standard to 9th standard.

Below is a picture of a small girl who is doing a prayer. She won a prize in one of the events and when we asked her to perform/sing a song, she made this prayer ..



We asked one student, who is the first man to step on Moon? And of them answered "Kalpana Chawla". The answer is wrong, but I don't think the word Kalpana Chawla appears in any textbook. Role models like Kalpana Chawala make tremendous influence on young kids.

Private institutions today fund a lot of labs, but village schools are not able to get quality teachers/volunteers. I guess atleast we made a beginning and as we go ahead Wirklities would be proud of their initiatives and could help in educating the uneducated in India.

Inteviews for an IT startup - practical approach

We at Wirkle always keep looking for passionate guys, people who want to make a mark.

And we often debate, what should be an interview process for a startup? Who's an ideal candidate? Do degrees like IIT make a difference? Working in companies like Infosys, TCS make a difference? Or, working in another startup makes a difference?

My ideal candidate is the one who is very passionate about what he has developed in the past. I love guys who can show demo of a working product that they have made in the past and are very proud to show it. I have had experience where guys with little experience showed very impressive demos. But make sure you verify the genuineness of the person. You can see passion flowing through the eyes of genuine guys.

But such persons are not easy to figure out. So what's your best bet?

Make an interview more of a discussion and keep it "practical" e.g. if you are recruiting a Project Manager, ask him to make a project plan; if you are hiring an HR executive, ask her to define a HR policy and put it in a document. Analyse what are the pain points in your organization and ask a candidate to figure out solutions for those tasks.

We at Wirkle have often been recognized by the candidates for keeping the interview "practical".

For software technical interviews, look for guys who love programming or have a flair for programming, have participated in programming contests and won awards. Look for guys who are very strong in core computer science concepts. I have often seen guys who have worked in struts/j2ee for 3-4 years but if you ask them to write a fibonacci program, they would fail. On the other hand if the guy is logically strong, picking new stuff is a breeze.

The interview process gets more complicated if you are hiring guys at technical lead and architect level. One would assume guys at technical lead or architect level to understand core computer science concepts. But if in a telephonic interviews you ask some basic logical questions, they might get offended and even put down the phone. This is the state of the current IT industry.

A startup needs to be very practical. Amongst all these positives and negatives, a startup needs to navigate smartly on a bumpy road full of potholes.

So, if you are taking a technical interview, make sure
- make people write simple logical programs
- ask them to solve practical programming problems in software projects/products
- make them debug a piece of code
- see their past history, does he want to stick and learn or wants to change jobs every 1-2 years.
- team fit, make sure he/she works for the success of the team.

Make interviews real-world and one could clearly judge weather that candidate is suitable for the job.

iPhone at Wirkle

Currently on Apple's appstore as of August 1st 2008, there are around 1200 applications. And amongst the top 100 selling applications , around 45-50% are games. Applications in the Entertainment, Music category are the next ones and Business applications haven't yet made much of an impact.

On the other end, devices like RIM's blackberry, windows smart phones are geared around business users. Sites like handango that distribute applications for smart phones are more geared towards business users and this landscape might change with iPhone becoming more and more popular.

My belief is manufacturers like Nokia, RIM, HTC for windows smart phones would bring in lot of new devices to compete with iPhone and one would see their shift of focus from business users to young and happening crowd.

And I guess India would also see a bigger jump in this context. The iPhone cost is not going to be a barrier, Indians are used to paying a lot for their handsets. If cheaper data services are available, that's going to get Indians crazy!!

We at Wirkle have also been doing iPhone development and it is simply cool.

Developing native applications on iPhone is a breeze. And I think much of it is also because of the development tools that are based on Mac. Apple as a company has always been strong in usability and that also clearly shows up not just in the application but also the development tools.

For building native iPhone application, one needs a mac system or one could also install the latest Mac OS X (Leopard) on an Intel machine. Installation is a bit tricky but once installed it works with a breeze. The OS is much more responsive than windows and linux. After that one just needs the iPhone development kit from Apple and one is ready to go..

Developers not used to Mac would have an initial difficulty as the development is in Objective -C, lot different from C and java world, but for smart programmers it's just another language. The concepts are similar.

Building application is easy but distributing them is going to be tough. Apple is closely guarding it and the applications can be installed only from its appstore. The license is cheap $99 , but as of now Apple has opened it to a very few developers. So once that becomes a main stream activity, there's going to be a massive activity.

I am just waiting to see some real action here in India. Airtel and Vodafone have already announced plans for iPhone, till then need to have some patience!!

Semantic Web - Salzburg Research a look back

While googling on the internet, I came across a Report on various semantic web technologies that I myself prepared while working at Salzburg Research.

http://colab.cim3.net/file/work/SICoP/DRMITIT/metokis_d10_kcca_final.pdf

I remember working, reading tens of research papers, writing and reviewing this 90 page document. This was one of my first big and professional deliverables and being the lead was a hard time :-). In meetings I was perhaps the youngest guy and here I was talking to experts, researchers, professors, industry folks and trying to make them understand and build use cases, tools for Semantic Web.

But I owe all this to my mentors Sigi and Wernher. They boosted my thinking and always were very appreciative of what I did. They were one of the best guys that I met in my life.

Another interesting experience was a RDF graphics tool that I built along with a smart guy Rupert. I didn't realise when me and Rupert became great team members and made this tool for viewing RDF graphs. And this all started as a pass time weekend hobby.

http://semweb.salzburgresearch.at/apps/rdf-gravity/

But all this looks way back in 2004. At times it looks I have become really old :-)

Proto4 at IIT Delhi

Last weekend I was at Proto4 at IIT Delhi. It felt great to be back both being an alumni of Proto and IIT Delhi. The event was great, met some great guys and interesting companies.

There were some great presentations in the fast track session. One interesting part in Proto is most of the audience is very young, dynamic, students and entrepreneurial. This is both good and bad. Good in the sense looks like the young India is becoming more and more entrepreneurial. The bad part is most of the stuff that is talked about is very basic in nature. Most of the people talk about how to get VC money and don't focus on how to build a big business.

As a pass time hobby I used to watch a lot of Demo videos in the past. And they are really superb and one could see break through products in Demo. Nevertheless Proto has been a great initiative and the team behind Proto is to be appreciated for all the hard work.

I have a lot of debate with other colleagues about most of the people in indian IT industry are out there for money and job prospects rather then interest. We started using computers only in our engineering college and most people in US are using them when they were kids. My personal belief is the next generation would make a much bigger impact in the Indian IT industry and will change the landscape forever.