

Why the Great Indian Media Companies will Fail on the Internet - bosky101
http://indianstartupgyaan.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/why-the-great-indian-media-companies-will-fail-on-the-internet/

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oldgregg
I was strong-armed into opening an office in India for an american media
company a couple years ago. The caste system is strong as ever-- it's just an
economic caste. On the whole people don't give a shit about the technology --
only how many people work under them. It's really quite laughable.

For instance, if you are a "fresher" right out of school you crashed through
some .NET/Java course that didn't teach you a damn thing about how to think.
But after an afternoon of writing shitty code that someone else will
undoubtedly have to clean up, you'll be damned if you have to get up and pour
your own hot tea. That's what servants are for. They are so openly demeaning
to people it's disturbing. Strict hierarchy is so culturally ingrained that
people rarely know how to function outside of a bureaucratic structure.

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karteek
Rediff is a very bad excuse for an internet portal. It just lives on flame-
baits, scarcely dressed bollywood divas and lots of mediocrity. A simple
example of their technical capability -

[http://shopping.rediff.com/product/%22;-alert%28document.coo...](http://shopping.rediff.com/product/%22;-alert%28document.cookie%29;%22)

Few more @ <http://karteek.selfdabba.com/tag/rediff/>

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zaidf
And yet they make millions every quarter.

I'm no fan of rediff yet somehow I end up visiting it often.

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boundlessdreamz
This is so so true!. Rediff can't even copy well. They tried to rip off
facebook platform in june 2008 and they have not launched it till now. (It
never will). More info here <http://www.manu-j.com/blog/rediff-rips-off-
facebook/25/> and here <http://www.manu-j.com/blog/rediff-platform-is-
dead/34/>

The ripoff was so bad that it was painfully hilarious. Their documentation was
copied directly from facebook and they just changed FBML to RBML etc but there
were places where they had forgotten to make the change!

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jdrock
Speaking as an Indian by ethnicity but American (U.S.) by birth and heart, I
can say I have always found India to be void of innovation. There is a general
attitude there that there making leaps and bounds in terms of developing their
economy and technology, when in reality they are just doing grunt work for the
rest of the world. Being a cost leader is not sustainable, and they don't
realize that.

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zaidf
_Being a cost leader is not sustainable, and they don't realize that._

I don't think it is so much that they don't realize it as it is that they see
cheaper cost as a huge advantage, jump on that bandwagon and end up building
some huge corporations(ie. Wipro, Infosys, Tata). I don't see anything wrong
with those companies.

Secondly, I get the sense that you are defining innovation very narrowly. All
of the huge consulting companies out of India are a work of a lot of backend
innovation. The smaller ones also do innovation--albeit at a smaller scale.
Difference is they are innovating on things like management and education.

 _they are just doing grunt work for the rest of the world_

So are many of the programmers at Google.

I feel what you are seeing in India is a huge bunch of people for whom the
Wipro and Infosys salaries were akin to selling a small startup in the Valley.
Your standard of living takes a major jump. Overtime, and we are already
seeing more and more of this, these employees of big corps realize they need
more money and the once-enough salaries are no longer that motivating. This is
when you'll see more startups. And if few of them end up becoming the next
Wipro/Infosys, I don't care if people attack it for lack of innovation.

There are far more companies known for "innovation" than companies doing
multi-billion in sales. I'd rather be in the latter though that may be a
personal choice.

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jdrock
I'll admit that I only have a passing familiarity with consultancies and other
companies in India, but I don't think I'm defining innovation too narrowly.

A striking example is the IITs. These universities are lauded as some of the
best in the world, but where is the ground-breaking research? Maybe I'm
looking in the wrong places, but I haven't seen anything amazing come out of
these schools.

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zaidf
I don't know much about IITs beyond the standard. But is research their
strength? I'm not sure. On the other hand, I did find this:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_Institutes_of_Te...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_Institutes_of_Technology_alumni)

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jdrock
I would argue that most tier 1 universities in the world should have a strong
research focus.

Posting a list of accomplished alums is nothing special, right? I mean, any
good university is going to have that.

