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Posts Tagged ‘city’

Earlier this morning, social networking giant Facebook announced on its blog that, one week after it said it would be opening an office in Austin, Texas, it will set up an additional support center in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, the capital of the state of Andhra Pradesh.

In the statement, the company says both offices will allow them to better serve its users, advertisers and developers. Facebook added that it is currently recruiting people to staff the online sales and operations teams for both office locations.

The India-based support center will not be Facebook’s first international office – it already established a presence in Dublin, Ireland, just over a year ago (PDF). Don Faul, director of global online operations at Facebook, in the blog post said that having multiple support centers in a variety of time zones helps Facebook provide better round-the-clock, multi-lingual support.

According to the company, seventy percent of the people using Facebook are now located outside the U.S. and are accessing the service from more than 70 languages. In India alone, Facebook says it has more than 8 million people actively connecting on Facebook

A quick glance on Wikipedia teaches us that Hyderabad houses many computer software companies and consulting firms, so much so that the city is sometimes referred to as “Cyberabad”. Microsoft apparently has established its largest R&D campus outside the US in the ‘City of Pearls’, and other names on the list of companies with one or multiple offices in Hyderabad include Google, Alcatel Lucent, Amazon, HP, Dell, IBM, Motorola, Oracle and Deloitte.

Last time I was in India I wrote about the amazing business model innovation that had allowed telecom operators in India to make money on a paltry $6 a month per average user. That compares to a desired average monthly payment of $50 or more in the U.S.

The results have been phenomenal—550 million people in India have phones, and it has transformed the poorer service economy by giving them an affordable way to be reached and arrange jobs. Just last month, nearly 20 million new mobile accounts were opened. That’s more than double the people than have high speed Internet in the entire country. Even in slums where people live on less than $2 a day, everyone has a phone. If “Slumdog Millionaire” was more accurate, Jamal wouldn’t have had to go on TV to find Latika. He could have just called her, or worst case, called a few friends until he found her number.

It’s unequivocally India’s most successful infrastructure achievement —despite some mounting concerns about the effects of all those towers dotting nearly any urban rooftop that can hold one. And a host of exciting applications are being built on top of this invisible thread that connects a disparate country with a vast terrain and even bigger gulfs in language, literacy, income, religion, language and living standards

But amazingly, when Rajiv Mehrotra (pictured below) looked at the existing telecom penetration in India, he saw failure. What about the people who can’t afford $6 a month or live too far to get service? Don’t they deserve to be connected as well? The result was VNL, a company that’s already gotten a good deal of press and acclaim for its dead-cheap, low-maintenance, Ikea-like easy-to-assemble, solar-powered base stations that extend existing mobile footprints into rural villages for a fraction of the price, allowing the remotest, poorest villages to have mobile phones in every household at drop-dead low prices. “We are the bottom of the bottom,” boasts Mehrotra, practically daring competitors to try to play his low-cost, super-durability game.

The World Economic Forum named it one of 26 Technology Pioneers, and just last month VNL won the Mobile World Congress’s Green Mobile Award. Time called it a “Tech Pioneer that Will Change your Life” and Fast Company named it one of the world’s 50 Most Innovative Companies in the world.

I met with Mehrotra at the company’s headquarters in Gurgoan during my November trip to India. This time I wanted to see its technology live in villages and hear first hand what the impact had been. I traveled to a village that had now had phones for about seven months to see how the technology had changed their lives. Of the 500 families spread across this area, almost all of them had a phone—and most for the first time.

The majority of the people I spoke with said the first calls they made were to family members, and that the biggest impact was the ability to stay in touch with family, to know when there was an emergency and be able to respond quickly.

But there have been business effects too. One man (pictured here) has a business operating several trucks traveling between this village and Delhi and before he’d have to ride on a bike between them to coordinate them. Now he can sit at home and just call the drivers. He installed one of VNL’s small base stations on his roof, and he said it had increased his standing among his peers—he is frequently the one called on to settle disputes now. And now they can just call him. Similarly wives will call husbands out in the fields when its time to come in and eat, rather than trudging out to get them, allowing them to focus on kids and the housework.

Another woman (pictured to the below) I spoke with was a widow with six kids and 21 grandchildren. (So many, she actually had to ask someone else how many she had.) As grandkids clambered in and out of her lap, she explained that she gets pension checks from the government, but the delivery used to be spotty. Before her phone she had no recourse but to travel to Delhi to inquire about it. Not exactly something she relishes, having lived her whole life in this village and only been to the big city twice. Now she can call the office and gives them an earful. Not surprisingly, the checks have started to come more regularly.

Another man (pictured to the right) told me he felt more connected to the rest of India as a result of having a phone. This village is surrounded by mountains, and he said that he felt “imprisoned” and cut off, despite being just a few hours drive from Delhi. Now he has a renewed interest in politics and what’s happening in other villages and the country at large. This man had only had his phone for six months, but he expected it would change his life in ways he couldn’t articulate or imagine. “Since the day I got this, my life has already changed,” he said through an interpreter.

Indeed, Mehrotra says it’s already having a ripple affect on the politics of Rajisthan—the state between Pakistan and India where VNL did its first installations. Politicians come through and make promises and villagers demand their cell phone numbers and call to check up on whether those promises are kept. “They have to be accountable,” Mehrotra says. “They can’t wriggle out.”

These phones are not just a nice-to-have, they’ve quickly become a must have for these villages, deeply tied to the way they make money, participate in their government and retain closely important family relationships. And these ripple effects are only now beginning. Think of what the impact will be when there are better programs for marketing crops, saving money and even learning and game playing rolled out on these very basic phones. Life will always be different in a village or a city, but India can at least gain some basic common denominators between the two.

Mehrotra is a big believer in the Ghandian mantra: Change the villages and you change India. He’s a serial entrepreneur who has already built businesses rolling out satellite TV and landlines to rural areas, but he thinks this company will have a bigger impact than anything else he’s done and is the one with the real potential to go global. It bears noting that he’s invested all of his own money in the project—and it’s taken far more than he expected.

This is not a cheap venture—Mehrotra has invested more than $100 million in the last five years and is still investing more. But I’m not sure it could be built any other way. I don’t think there’s the venture capital appetite or risk profile in India to fund something like this and most of the mobile equipment companies Mehrotra talked to back when he started thinking about this insisted it couldn’t be done. Once he built it he’d take equipment and operator executives out to see it and they still couldn’t believe it. They were making calls to test the quality from different areas of the village trying to find pockets without a signal. “They were climbing on the antenna and shaking it like monkeys trying to break it and they couldn’t,” Mehrotra says.

From a business point of view, the operators love VNL because it cheaply expands their existing footprint. The equipment operators aren’t so sure. In theory, VNL isn’t competing with them because they’re not going into the cities. Now that VNL has proved this model works, could a larger established vendor steal the market? The best chance of that would likely come from a Chinese powerhouse like Huawei. That said, any vendor that builds such a low cost solution that’s too good will risk eroding his higher priced systems designed for urban areas. “They’ll say ‘Give it to me in the city too.’ ” Mehrotra says.

All these awards aside, this is the year for VNL to prove it’s really a viable business. And Mehrotra says there are some surprises in store. In terms of market, VNL is already rolling the technology out in other countries and in terms of product they’re not done with just simple mobile access. The countries are likely in Africa and perhaps Latin America, and my guess is the new functionality will entail turning on some kind of Internet access through the existing base stations. Expect much more on this newly minted international do-gooding darling in 2010.

A couple weeks ago, we noted the city of Topeka, Kansas’ humorous attempt to get Google’s attention: by rebranding their city “Google, Kansas.” Why would they do such a thing? Because they want in on Google’s fiber action — the search giant’s proposed plan to sell 1 gigabit-per-second broadband to consumers. Now Baltimore, Maryland is getting in on the fun as well.

The city has appointed a “Google Czar” — yes, that’s the actual title — to lobby the company to put Baltimore on the list of cities in the initial trial. Tom Loveland, CEO of a local tech company, Mind Over Machines, has been appointed by Baltimore’s mayor to take this exalted, but volunteer position.

The Baltimore movement has also launched a website, BmoreFiber, which states in huge, bold letters, “Ask Google to Invest Billions in Baltimore’s Future.“

These attempts by cities to catch Google’s attention, while humorous, show a massive desire for better broadband in this country. It’s kind of sad that it takes an outsider, Google, to spur faster broadband development. Meanwhile, companies that offer broadband as a core business, like Comcast, drag their feet with service that is an order of magnitude slower at huge prices.

One of the most detailed 3-D mapping apps on the iPhone is UpNext, which lets you click on 3-D buildings and see a list of the businesses and offices inside. Up until now, however, it only covered New York City.

A new update adds three new cities: Boston, Washington, D.C., and Austin (just in time for SXSW, of course). The Austin map won’t be available until later tonight, where it will appear in the app’s city selection screen. UpNext lets you zoom around the city in a very Google Earth-like fashion, search for restaurants, bars, and stores.

You can favorite and bookmark different venues, see Citysearch and Yelp reviews, and broadcast a tip about the place through Facebook or Twitter. UpNext now pulls in local listings data (addresses, phone numbers, reviews,menus, websites, photos) from CityGrid, Citysearch’s local content and advertising network.

And what would an Austin update be without Foursquare integration. Once you log into Foursquare through UpNext you can see where all your friends are checking in. The checkins are overlayed as glowing blue dots on the map.

Here’s a video demo showing off all the features of the app:

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not a loquacious orator.

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A call to arms: Reboot the public bathroom

Last month, Google announced plans to sell 1 gigabit-per-second fiber optic broadband to consumers. The plan called for it to be rolled out to no fewer than 50,000 homes in the initial test, and maybe as many as 500,000, but didn’t specify where it would be rolled-out. Topeka, Kansas wants in. Bad.

The city’s mayor today signed a proclamation that for the rest of the month, Topeka will be known as “Google, Kansas.” Yes, you’re reading that correctly — Topeka is now “Google.”

Now, to be clear, this isn’t a legal name change. Lawyers advised the mayor and the city council that they wouldn’t be able to change the name for just the month and then change it back (no word on if they also advised them that it would be well, stupid) — so instead their going with this proclamation asking people to simply call the city “Google.”

While this is a silly way to get Google’s attention, the benefit could be huge. The 1Gb/sec fiber is roughly 100 times faster than what most Americans get today for Internet speeds. That’s especially true in rural areas. And while Topeka may not be the most rural city in the country (it is the state capital and has over 120,000 citizens), they could undoubtedly make good use of this ultra fast connection. Google’s fiber connection is still more than 20 times faster than even most fast broadband connections.

Humorously, this isn’t the first time Topeka has tried something like this. Apparently, in August 1998, the city has a proclamation to change its name to “ToPikachu” — yes, after the Pokemon character. So this move seems roughly 100 times more sane than that one.

Also funny — apparently this special city council meeting lead to the postponement of another one, where they were actually going to talk about real issues. Ah, local governments.

Data storage company Pivot3 has raised $25 million in Series D funding led by Focus Ventures with existing investors InterWest Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mesirow Financial Capital Partners IX, and Silver Creek Ventures participating. This brings the startup’s total funding to over $75 million.

Pivot3’s storage solutions offer integrated server virtualization for data to enterprise customers. Its RAID-based solutions are generally used to store video surveillance data. The company has over 140 customers including Port of Seattle, the Mall of America, and the City of Trenton. The investment will be used to expand sales operations internationally and for product development.

Twitter is becoming a serious marketing vehicle for local businesses. Everyone from your local baker to your favorite restaurant is getting on Twitter to talk to customers and draw in new ones. Just last weekend when I was driving to Vermont with my family, I sent out a Tweet asking for a good place to eat lunch. I got more than five responses, including one from a local innkeeper couple recommending two spots in town (not owned by them). That was in Brattleboro, Vermont.

But that was so random. How do you even find out which of your favorite local businesses have Twitter accounts or what their Twitter handles are? Well, CitySearch is doing it for you. The local business guide is starting to build out a definitive directory of Twitter accounts and Tweets about local restaurants, hotels, spas and stores. It is starting small, with about 5,000 business listings currently tied to their Twitter accounts (which businesses can add themselves when they claim their CitySearch page), but its aim is to add Tweets by and about any of the 15 million businesses in its listings.

Every page on CitySerach now prominently highlights a Twitter Buzz widget on the upper right hand corner of the page showing recent Tweets about businesses in your city. If the business has a known Twitter handle, recent Tweets with their @handle (their Twitter name) will show up above the user reviews. These include both Tweets from the business and Tweets that mention the business. For instance, apparently people love @artichokepizza and the “calzones are off the chain too!” Chelsea Piers also gets a lot of Tweets.

“It really lowers the threshold for reviews,” CitySearch senior VP Kara Nortman tells me. It also makes the reviews more immediate, and therefore relevant. I’d much rather know how a chef’s Mahi-Mahi is going over with diners today than last week when a different chef might have ben on duty. Since it started rolling out the local Tweets a couple of weeks ago, engagement metrics are noticeably higher across the site: session durations are up 10 percent, pageviews per visit are up 7 percent, and exit rates are down about 3 percent.

In addition to being able to look up businesses by name, CitySearch has Twitter directories of local businesses by city. So far there are only 820 in New York City and 281 in San Francisco , but CitySearch is just getting going. Any business with a Twitter account can add their account to their CitySearch page. In fact, they can sign up for a Twitter account while they are at it right from within CitySearch and use CitySearch as a Twitter client. Also, right now CitySearch is only showing Tweets that explicitly mention the @handle a business uses on Twitter. Over the next few weeks, CitySearch will start to surface Tweets that mention the business whether or not the @handle is used. So those 5,000 listings should expand quickly.

Nortman says that the Twitter business directory was inspired by CrunchBase, our own directory of startups, people, and venture capital firms. She wants it to become the definitive directory of Twitter business accounts. CitySearch is in a unique position to build this because it already has millions of local businesses in its database. All it needs to do is associate Twitter accounts and related Tweets to each business, and it can slice and dice them by city, neighborhood, or type of business. An update of its iPhone app which is making its way through the App Store approval process right now will double as a Twitter client and let you Tweet out your reviews from the app. It will even have a social tab showing all the Tweets about a business (see leaked screenshot at right). Sentiment analysis is also on its way, which will let consumers see which restaurants and stores are trending with positive or negative vibes lately.

Once the Twitter directory is built out, it and the resulting Tweet stream will become available to developers through its new CityGrid APIs. It could also make it easy for consumers to create Twitter lists of their favorite local shops and restaurants, or curate their own lists and maybe even charge on a clickthrough basis. But maybe it should wait for Twitter to define its advertising rules before committing to any one model.

Rent The Runway, a Netflix for designer clothes, has raised $15 million in funding according to an SEC filing. The startup does exactly what it’s name indicates: it allows anyone to rent designer clothes for a fraction of the price.

Once you pick a design on the site that you’d like to wear, you can schedule a delivery date. Rent The Runway will send two sizes, to ensure that you receive a dress that fits. Rentals on the site run from $50 to $200 for a four night loan, or 10% of the retail price. According to the New York Times report, Bain Capital Ventures provided seed financing for the startup. It appears that Rent The Runway raised $1.5 million according to a previous filing. We’ve contacted the company to confirm the investors and funding and will update when we hear back.

A young man by the name of Dave Osborne built an interesting project called SWASAlert, a super-speedy weather severe alert service that supplies super fast weather alerts via Twitter and SMS. The easiest way to try it is to pop over here and select your city. You’ll then receive instant emergency weather updates straight into your TweetStream.

Weather seems to be overlooked in the hyperlocal news world so projects like this, however oddly constructed, are an important addition to the mash-up ecosystem. Osborne recounted the genesis of his product thuswise:

I had a friend in Minnesota complain to me about a year ago that the tornado warning got to him about the same time that the tornado did, and he asked why nobody had developed a faster system. We checked into it and the only valid claim we could verify was Superfeedr which was about 15 minutes for fetches. this was the primary impulse or inspiration to build our system.

What we have here, then, is a good, old-fashioned mash-up. Osborne makes most of his money now from advertising and deals with about $1000 or so in costs to keep up the service and the timely feeds.

This is obviously not for everyone – I suppose if you live in a high traffic tornado area, this would be great, but for the rest of us “34 degrees and it may snow later” is enough of a weather report for the whole day. However, airplane pilots and the weather-obsessed may find SWASAlert quite useful.