Apple launched iPhone in India, a country with only 1.2 billion people and overall not considered rich like their counterparts in USA. In USA Apple launched iPhone for $199 only. Steve Jobbs also promised that it will be similalry priced across all markets. So how did they target a market of 1.2 B with a very high mobile pernetration and nowhere as rich as USA? By pricing iPhone 3G at 4 times the US price at Rs. 31, 000 only (and lockdown for a year to the service provider) and without 3G. Imagine how the market reacted…

Read more (475 words) »

OCC Kolkata organized its first meet of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs wannabes. Overall 7 people attended including the convener Mitesh (nice job by a fresh engg. grad!). The meet was fun, informative and to some extent reliving the difficulties as an entrepreneur in Kolkata and discussing some ways to overcome it.

Are you an entrepreneur in Kolkata or want to be one? If so then you should consider coming to the next meet. Join the google group and make yourself heard.

Read more (177 words) »

Many like Darren Rowse suggest that you should create a stack of ideas to blog about and then use them in lean periods to tide you over.

Now Darren is an amazing blogger. He regularly talks informatively about a subject which I could probably summarize in 5 minutes flat - about blogging. He does a good job out of it and has many dedicated followers.

I do not have his predisposition. Firstly I am not a professional blogger like him. In other words I do not blog for living even though it makes me a decent income. I blog only when I have something to blog about. I blog when I have some new ideas or technologies or code tips to share. If I don't have something interesting to share, I don't. I don't spend time making an uninteresting topic interesting. Read more (536 words) »

Ok to be precise IIT Kharagpur was ranked as the No. 1 Government engineering college in India by Outlook India, a respected news magazine which sells over 11 million copies annually. In India leading government colleges like IIT's are the leading engineering colleges period. Pretty much anyone tries to get first into a government engineering college. If they fail and if their parents have good bank balance then they try for private engineering colleges, no offence intended. To get an understanding of the differences between government and private colleges in India let's take the case of IIIT (not to be confused with IIT) Hydrabad. It was mistakenly identified as government engineering college and ranked 17th. However when it was correctly identified as a private engineering college its rank went up to No. 2 in list of private colleges. So effectively IIT Kharagpur tops the list of engineering colleges in India.

Read more (202 words) »

Electrolux India has very carefully hidden its service center number on its website. The only option you have is to drill-down to the local customer service center. Unfortunately the number given for Ms. Millenium Service Center for South Kolkata (033-24573470 / 24451120 ) doesn't work. I had to hunt down a certain executive to finally find the real phone number for booking complaint across India.

Read more (116 words) »

India has infrastructural issues which impedes the progress of IT industry today. One of the major one is the availability of reliable high-speed broadband service. The major broadband service providers (BSNL Dataone^review & VSNL / Tata Indicom) in India are either currently owned by government or were until very recently so. In general (with very few exceptions) government employees in India are well known for extremely poor customer care & service. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that customers are treated like dirt. Simply because government employees get paid handsomely irrespective of their level of service and / or capability to fulfill their duty. As an IT company on budget we need reliable broadband service (1Mbps +) with 24/7 availability. Here is how we solved it.

Read more (239 words) »

Leading the Indian pack is Reliance Industries with a market value of 89.29 Billion dollars. It is ranked 193 worldwide based on profit. Following closely is ONGC with a market value of 54.11 Billion and ranked 198 worldwide. Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum & Hindustan Petroleum are the three other entrants from Oil & Natural Gas operations. They contribute a total of 166.46 Billion in market value. Mining natural resources is the single most profitable venture for Indian corporations. Unfortunately it requires a huge investment too.

Read more (230 words) »

Check out our career page and open positions. We prefer candidates from Kolkata, India. Exceptional candidates out of state will also be considered. In short we are looking for:

Read more (331 words) »

Holi is the festival of radiance, colors and usher in spring. I wish you all a happy Holi / Dol (as we Bengalis say) and hope that you all remain safe (no colors in eye).

Read more (83 words) »

I have been trying for the last 6 hours to access ICICI PayPal alternative, PaySeal (203.27.235.72). Unfortunately the site is unreachable from India as well as USA. Even the server cannot be pinged.

Read more (79 words) »